GIRLFRIEND
by MARINA TSVETAEVA
"I WILL NOT PART - THERE IS NO END"
SHE CLINGS AND CLINGS
AND IN THE BREAST
THE RISE
OF THREATENING WATERS
OF NOTES
STEADFAST
LIKE AN IMMUTABLE MYSTERY WE WILL PART
THE END
The moment I read this poem, I fell in love with Marina Tsvetaeva.
When people have the ability to drive so much feeling, with so few words....
I think that is a rare art form.
When I mentioned to Finley that I discovered her, he just shrugged his shoulders and told me matter of factually....
"The only reason you get to read her work today is because Americans like her since she was anti Soviet."
That kinda wrecked it for me.
I want my Russian Cold War poets to worship the Hammer & Sickle.
If you ever get a chance, go online and read the bio on this woman's life.
Her circumstances were inspiring, and tragic.
This lady didn't write poems.....
She was a poet.
Oops! She was suddenly available in translation in the 1980s. People liked her because she was brimming with personality, and her stories were on the edge of terrible experiences.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with Russian poetry then -- which was much huger and more popular than anything we have ever had here -- was that there always was a political reason for the poem being in our hands.
You can see why people loved her -- she was so human.
If you read her bio......she led the life of 10 humans, none of which were having fun.
DeleteMarina Tsvetaeva is a wonderful but somewhat minor Russian poet who always labored in the shadow of Ahkmatova, Mandelstam and Pasternak. Mike is right: if it were not for the Cold War context her poems, which are notoriously difficult (or simply impossible) to translate into English in a way that is both faithful to the original and works as a poem in English, we would probably never have heard of her in this country, which is not to say that she isn't a real poet, as you so astutely point out.
DeleteFor an interesting read, pick up sometime her eccentric book of essays entitled "Art in the Light of Conscience" as well as "Letters: Summer 1926", a selection of letters exchanged between herself, Rilke, and Pasternak during the months just before Rilke's untimely death. Great stuff!