Tsvetaeva Marina Ivanovna, *26 September 1892 Moscow, †31 August 1941 Yelabuga, Russian poet. The daughter of a philologist, art historian and the founder of a museum of fine arts, and pianist Maria Mein, Marina Tsvetaeva spoke three languages from childhood and possessed perfect pitch. She was trained by her mother to be a professional musician. The intellectual and artistic atmosphere of her family home shaped the poet’s personality and future work. Her literary talent manifested itself early; she was already writing verse as a child, making her debut in 1910. From 1922, she lived in exile in Berlin, Prague, and Paris, returning to the USSR in 1939. Facing harassment and uncertainty about the fate of her arrested husband and daughter, she eventually took her own life.
The dramatic twists and turns of Tsvetaeva’s life are embedded in her art – deeply personal, with a poignant leitmotif of the inevitability of fate and a longing for an Arcadian haven. An individualist, she did not identify with any group, yet her work, with its Romantic genealogy, is close to Expressionism, and in its understanding of the role of words, to the experiments of the Futurists. In addition to intimate themes, Tsvetaeva addressed universal ones, drawing on ancient and Germanic myths, as well as Russian and Gypsy folklore (with its characteristic chants, incantations, and laments). Her extensive legacy – collections of lyrics (including Versty (1921–22), Remeslo and Psikheya (1923), Posle Rossii (1928)) and poems (Poema gory and Poema kontsa (1924), Poema vozdukha (1927), and others), as well as dramas, essays, memoirs, and autobiographical and epistolary prose – are characterised by a unique style in which an unconventional perception of the world competes with formal inventiveness.
“I was not born a musician […] but for the essence of music” (sketch Mother and Music, 1935). One could speak here of a specific transposition of musical talent into poetry. Intellectualism and spontaneity – the two complementary poles of Tsvetaeva’s poetics – reflect the very essence of music: emotion and active form. While maintaining the discipline of craftsmanship, these are feelings “that know no measure in the world of measures” (Tsvetaeva), translated into a distinctive style: expansive neologisms, hyperbole, oxymoron, antithesis, and sarcastic irony. Statements about music, motifs, metaphors, and intense sound patterning – anaphoric sequences, alliteration, paronomasia – are merely superficial manifestations of the connection between Tsvetaeva’s writing and music, which reaches deep into the structure of language itself. This is particularly revealed in the syntactic and intonational flow. Expressing the pressure and complexity of sensation, the “acoustic,” rhythmically variable phrase – restless, clipped, based on elliptical structures, interjections, silences, sudden rises and falls – is addressed directly to the listener and articulated as if on the fly, “kinetic” (Marc Slonim, in: Stichotvoreniya i poemy, vol. 3, appendix). The dynamics and dissonant tension are emphasised by “overused” punctuation: question marks, exclamation marks, ellipses, parentheses, and especially dashes; these pauses rhythmise the utterance in a unique way, creating “metrical syncopes,” while the division of words into syllables renders phonemes autonomous and makes the text resemble musical notation. This is the result of the poet’s fascination with musical scores: “the texts of the romances of my childhood, full of necessary dashes […] were also books, but supplied with sheet music” (Mother and Music). Another statement from the same sketch – about the chromatic scale, which she calls “the harmony of my soul,” “Romanticism and Dramaticism”—allows us to interpret Tsvetaeva’s characteristic expansion of the range of poetic expression through the prism of her musical training. The poem Krysolov (1925), in particular, demonstrates connections with music; the flautist motif, juxtaposed against the triviality of existence (in the phonic layer, the “spiritualistic melody of vowels” contrasted with the “matter of consonants” – J. Etkind), simultaneously emphasises the ambivalent nature of music – its seductive, demonic element – while the varied metro-rhythmic structure of the piece alludes to musical forms (couplets, march, variational progression of themes).
Tsvetaeva’s style is often associated with the music of Scriabin, and also with Shostakovich, who composed the vocal cycle Six Poems by M. Tsvetaeva (1973). B. Tishchenko turned to her texts three times (Marina. Symphony No. 2, 1964; Three Songs, 1970; Echo. Symphony No. 6, 1988). Among the most frequently set to music is the cycle Insomnia, arranged in 1977 by G. Gontarenko (she also authored the cantata Laments, 1968), and later by M. Bronner and Y. Gokhman. Songs, choral, and vocal-instrumental works were also written by A. Schnittke (1963, 1965), A. Nikolayev (1967), G. Okunev (1967), S. Gubaidulina (The Hour of the Soul, 1974; versions in 1976 and 1988), M. Tariverdiev (1975), S. Zhukov (Monologues on Poems by M. Tsvetaeva, 1980–82), A. Brytsyn, Y. Kozhevnikova (cantata Earthly Bow), T. Nazarova-Metner (1988), A. Petrov, and A. Zarytsky. In addition, larger compositions to texts by Tsvetaeva and other poets were written by B. Tchaikovsky (Signs of the Zodiac, 1974), Y. Falik (Parable, Zvienie Den, 1980), L. Yefimtseva (The Island of Love, 1986), G. Zhuganova (The Island of Women), V. Rubin (My Age, My Beast, 1991), and A. Kulygin (Intersecting Parallels, 1995), among others.
Editions: Dom koło starego Pimena. Szkice i wspomnienia, trans. W. Bieńkowska and S. Pollak, Warsaw 1971; Wybór wierszy, translation and with afterword by J. Salamon, Kraków 1977; Izbrannaja proza, ed. A. Sumyerkin, 2 vols., New York 1979; Stichotvorenija i poemy, ed. A. Sumjerkin and W. Szwiejcer, 5 vols., New York 1980–85; R. M. Rilke, B. Pasternak, M. Cvietajewa, Pis’ma 1926 g., Moscow 1990; Sobranije soczinienij, 7 vols., Moscow 1995.
Literature: Certainly — here is the literature list with the titles transliterated, not translated, and the rest translated into English:
Literature: A. Tsvetayeva, Vospominanija, Moscow 1984; E. Stankiewicz, The Orchestration of Rhythms in the Poetry of Marina Tsvetayeva, “Slavica Hierosolymitana” 1981, no. 5–6; W. Aleksandrov, Fol’klorno-piesiennyje motivy w lirykie M. Cvietajewej, in: Russkaja literaturnaja i fol’klornaja tradicija, ed. D. Medrish, Volgograd 1983; B. Kac, “Stań muzykoju, słowo!”, Leningrad 1983; A. Saakjanc, Marina Cvietajewa, Moscow 1988; J. Płatek, Wiertie muzykie, Moscow 1989; S. Jelnickaja, Poetičeskij mir Cvietajewej, Vienna 1991 (includes bibliography); Vokalnyje soczinienija na stichi M. Cvietajewej, ed. Ł. W. Koptiewa, Moscow 1991; Marina Tsvetaeva, materials from the Lausanne symposium, 30 June–3 July 1982, ed. R. Kemball, J. Etkind, and L. Heller, Bern 1991; J. Etkind, Flejfist i krysy, “Voprosy literatury” 1992, no. 3; I. Malinkowicz, Swoja čužaja pieśń. “Krysołow” M. Cvietajewej, “Literaturnoje obozrienije” 1992, no. 11; J. Sobolewska, Mifopoetika “Poemy gory” i “Poemy konca” M. Cvietajewej kak osnova muzykal’noj architektoniki cikla, in: K. Balmont, M. Cvietajewa i chudožestvennyje iskanija XX w., Ivanovo 1993; A. Grigorjeva, Kamiernaja wokalnaja muzyka. Poli i obrietenija, “Muzykalnaja akademija” 1997, no. 2; B. Kac, Muzykalnyje ključi k russkoj poezii, Saint Petersburg 1997.
