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Letters: Summer 1926
Edited by Yevgeny Pasternak, Yelena Pasternak, and Konstantin M. Azadovsky
The summer of 1926 was a time of trouble and uncertainty for each of the three poets whose correspondence is collected in this moving volume. Marina Tsvetayeva was living in exile in France and struggling to get by. Boris Pasternak was in Moscow, trying to come to terms with the new Bolshevik regime. Rainer Maria Rilke, in Switzerland, was dying. Though hardly known to each other, they began to correspond, exchanging a series of searching letters in which every aspect of life and work is discussed with extraordinary intensity and passion. Letters: Summer 1926 takes the reader into the hearts and minds of three of the twentieth century's greatest poets at a moment of maximum emotional and creative pressure.
The summer of 1926 was a time of trouble and uncertainty for each of the three poets whose correspondence is collected in this moving volume. Marina Tsvetayeva was living in exile in France and struggling to get by. Boris Pasternak was in Moscow, trying to come to terms with the new Bolshevik regime. Rainer Maria Rilke, in Switzerland, was dying. Though hardly known to each other, they began to correspond, exchanging a series of searching letters in which every aspect of life and work is discussed with extraordinary intensity and passion. Letters: Summer 1926 takes the reader into the hearts and minds of three of the twentieth century's greatest poets at a moment of maximum emotional and creative pressure.
380 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1926
About the author
Boris Pasternak
645 books1,701 followersBoris Leonidovich Pasternak was born in Moscow to talented artists: his father a painter and illustrator of Tolstoy's works, his mother a well-known concert pianist. Though his parents were both Jewish, they became Christianized, first as Russian Orthodox and later as Tolstoyan Christians. Pasternak's education began in a German Gymnasium in Moscow and was continued at the University of Moscow. Under the influence of the composer Scriabin, Pasternak took up the study of musical composition for six years from 1904 to 1910. By 1912 he had renounced music as his calling in life and went to the University of Marburg, Germany, to study philosophy. After four months there and a trip to Italy, he returned to Russia and decided to dedicate himself to literature.
Pasternak's first books of verse went unnoticed. With My Sister Life, 1922, and Themes and Variations, 1923, the latter marked by an extreme, though sober style, Pasternak first gained a place as a leading poet among his Russian contemporaries. In 1924 he published Sublime Malady, which portrayed the 1905 revolt as he saw it, and The Childhood of Luvers, a lyrical and psychological depiction of a young girl on the threshold of womanhood. A collection of four short stories was published the following year under the title Aerial Ways. In 1927 Pasternak again returned to the revolution of 1905 as a subject for two long works: "Lieutenant Schmidt", a poem expressing threnodic sorrow for the fate of the Lieutenant, the leader of the mutiny at Sevastopol, and "The Year 1905", a powerful but diffuse poem which concentrates on the events related to the revolution of 1905. Pasternak's reticent autobiography, Safe Conduct, appeared in 1931, and was followed the next year by a collection of lyrics, Second Birth, 1932. In 1935 he published translations of some Georgian poets and subsequently translated the major dramas of Shakespeare, several of the works of Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, and Ben Jonson, and poems by Petöfi, Verlaine, Swinburne, Shelley, and others. In Early Trains, a collection of poems written since 1936, was published in 1943 and enlarged and reissued in 1945 as Wide Spaces of the Earth. In 1957 Doctor Zhivago, Pasternak's only novel - except for the earlier "novel in verse", Spektorsky (1926) - first appeared in an Italian translation and has been acclaimed by some critics as a successful attempt at combining lyrical-descriptive and epic-dramatic styles.
Pasternak lived in Peredelkino, near Moscow, until his death in 1960.
Pasternak's first books of verse went unnoticed. With My Sister Life, 1922, and Themes and Variations, 1923, the latter marked by an extreme, though sober style, Pasternak first gained a place as a leading poet among his Russian contemporaries. In 1924 he published Sublime Malady, which portrayed the 1905 revolt as he saw it, and The Childhood of Luvers, a lyrical and psychological depiction of a young girl on the threshold of womanhood. A collection of four short stories was published the following year under the title Aerial Ways. In 1927 Pasternak again returned to the revolution of 1905 as a subject for two long works: "Lieutenant Schmidt", a poem expressing threnodic sorrow for the fate of the Lieutenant, the leader of the mutiny at Sevastopol, and "The Year 1905", a powerful but diffuse poem which concentrates on the events related to the revolution of 1905. Pasternak's reticent autobiography, Safe Conduct, appeared in 1931, and was followed the next year by a collection of lyrics, Second Birth, 1932. In 1935 he published translations of some Georgian poets and subsequently translated the major dramas of Shakespeare, several of the works of Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, and Ben Jonson, and poems by Petöfi, Verlaine, Swinburne, Shelley, and others. In Early Trains, a collection of poems written since 1936, was published in 1943 and enlarged and reissued in 1945 as Wide Spaces of the Earth. In 1957 Doctor Zhivago, Pasternak's only novel - except for the earlier "novel in verse", Spektorsky (1926) - first appeared in an Italian translation and has been acclaimed by some critics as a successful attempt at combining lyrical-descriptive and epic-dramatic styles.
Pasternak lived in Peredelkino, near Moscow, until his death in 1960.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
October 30, 2020
Letters is a lovely if petulant collection of correspondence amongst Rilke, Tsvetayaeva and Pasternek who found themselves scattered across Allah's creation but were all of the same lyrical tribe. Marina T (living in Paris) announced herself as German and beyond social trappings, she wanted to live in Rilke's poetry, apparently there's a favorable tax code for its inhabitants and administrative fees are usually waived. Rilke was on his last lap, privately dying while tossing off amazing letters. Poor Boris P was the cover boy for all the Russian fanzines. He couldn't hold his kvass and impetuously said several things which would haunt him later. These three began a season long series of letters, praising one another, proclaiming why they needed one another, and often heated diatribes against why they couldn't live together. Then Boris and Marina reviewed each other's work and the wheels fell off. Rilke then died and the remaining two pondered the significance of their non-meeting for the rest of their lives, both which were often miserable.
September 17, 2021
Letters: Summer 26 is a tantalising read. In December 1925, Leonid Pasternak wrote to his old friend Rilke. Rilke replied, saying that Leonid had awoken all his memories of his youth in Russia. Eventually, this led to Rilke and Boris Pasternak connecting, then at his request Rilke wrote to Maria Tsvetayeva. And so began the triumvirate in these letters: Rilke, Pasternak, Tsvetayeva (and a few other minor correspondents). These are the letters of three exiles, one in Russia, one in France, and one in Switzerland, all of them feeling that they are emigres from normal life. The letters feel insubstantial as they float between minds and construct a world of poetry. They are otherworldly to the point that reality slips through the fingers. Pasternak is struggling with the state's attack on writers and its increase in censorship, Tsvetayeva is battling tuberculosis, and Rilke is facing leukemia and imminent death. The tone of the letters is struck by Tsvetayeva in a letter of July 6, 1926, when she challenges the notion of a mother language. For her, there is language -- poetry. To talk of Russian or French or German poetry or the mother tongue is to commit heresy. These complex letters are letters about writing letters and writing poetry. At times, a reader feels sealed inside an hermetic bottle with the three of them as they breathe rarified air. The three poets exist as a Trinity with Rilke as the Father, Pasternak as the Son, and Tsvetayeva as the Shekinah/Holy Spirit. Of course, Creation falls apart with the death of Rilke -- a silence that filters out slowly and transmutes into elegy. A deeply moving series of letters.
September 13, 2017
I am giving this chronicle of one Summer five stars all around. It especially goes to the translators who had to translate Russian, French, and German into English. There were passages in the text that were untranslated but had footnotes that were in English. And I was rather glad for the footnotes because I could tell if my own partial translations were correct.
The letters in this volume were written during a turbulent time during The Soviet Era. Many poets and writers left the country because of Stalinist persecution and the fear of being sent off to Siberia. Marina Tsvetayeva left with her family into exile. Pasternak stayed and wrote what he saw despite the fact at anytime he could have been arrested.
The correspondence started with Pasternak thanking Rilke for his praise of Paternak's poems that had been translated. Pasternak asked that Rilke get in touch with Tsvetayeva who was in exile in Europe. This created a passionate cycle of letters that ended with Rilke's death due to leukemia.
This relationship created a dynamic situation that fueled creativity in everyone involved.
Read the letters and see what was created during the Summer of 1926.
The letters in this volume were written during a turbulent time during The Soviet Era. Many poets and writers left the country because of Stalinist persecution and the fear of being sent off to Siberia. Marina Tsvetayeva left with her family into exile. Pasternak stayed and wrote what he saw despite the fact at anytime he could have been arrested.
The correspondence started with Pasternak thanking Rilke for his praise of Paternak's poems that had been translated. Pasternak asked that Rilke get in touch with Tsvetayeva who was in exile in Europe. This created a passionate cycle of letters that ended with Rilke's death due to leukemia.
This relationship created a dynamic situation that fueled creativity in everyone involved.
Read the letters and see what was created during the Summer of 1926.
Read
November 19, 2020LETTERS: SUMMER 1926 by Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva, Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. from the Russian & German by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, and Jamey Gambrell, 1926/2001 @nyrbooks edition
#ReadtheWorld21
#RedOctoberRussianReads
.
In the Introduction to this 2001 edition, essayist Susan Sontag describes what we are about to read as "a portrait of sacred delirium of art. There are three participants: a god and two worshipers, who are also worshipers of each other... These three-way love letters - and they are that - are an incomparable dramatization of ardour and poetry and about the life of the spirit."
Through archival correpondence - of which has an interesting story in itself - readers see the inner lives of three major European 20th-century writers. #Pasternak and Tsvetayeva both claim #Rilke as one of their key influences in writing, and the opportunity arises to correspond with the poet, in what is (unbeknownst to them...) his last months of life as he is dying of leukemia.
A flurry of letters between the three - passionate expressions of love and veneration over a matter of months in 1926.
Reading these letters was extremely intimate. It felt like reading someone's diary, or rummaging through personal belongings. I can only imagine how that felt for the translators in the archives. There is a thrill, yes, but there's also a slight discomfort that comes from the soul-bearing declarations, especially in light of the tragedies all three of the writers will face.
There is a fiery romance happening here with deep ramificiations, but is this played up by the distance between and the inability to act upon the impulses? Perhaps.
Urgency - there are so many passionate and spontaneous declarations... But due to letter delivery and censorship, days and weeks go by, emotions shift. Letters compound one after another, and sometimes arrive out of order to the recipient leading to miscommunications.
This book was SO rich in detail, and this post doesn't even scratch the surface of this spiritual/literary love triangle. There's an innate tragedy of secrets kept - particularly Rilke hiding his mortal illness from Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, while wasting away... Finally, unable to answer letters in his last days, leading to all sorts of emotional outcries before the correspondents learn of his passing and are grief-stricken and wounded by words left unsaid.
Rilke's death, as well as a few other circumstances, place a wedge between Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, as their love was enriched by the German poet, and passions cooled.
Hard to describe fully - It was captivating and ecstatic, but always with this undercurrent of impetuousness and brimming jealousy. Perhaps best enjoyed by readers familiar with the poets/writers work already, but still an amazing moment crystallized in time of a passionate summer epistemolary love affair that ended abruptly and in tragedy.
#ReadtheWorld21
#RedOctoberRussianReads
.
In the Introduction to this 2001 edition, essayist Susan Sontag describes what we are about to read as "a portrait of sacred delirium of art. There are three participants: a god and two worshipers, who are also worshipers of each other... These three-way love letters - and they are that - are an incomparable dramatization of ardour and poetry and about the life of the spirit."
Through archival correpondence - of which has an interesting story in itself - readers see the inner lives of three major European 20th-century writers. #Pasternak and Tsvetayeva both claim #Rilke as one of their key influences in writing, and the opportunity arises to correspond with the poet, in what is (unbeknownst to them...) his last months of life as he is dying of leukemia.
A flurry of letters between the three - passionate expressions of love and veneration over a matter of months in 1926.
Reading these letters was extremely intimate. It felt like reading someone's diary, or rummaging through personal belongings. I can only imagine how that felt for the translators in the archives. There is a thrill, yes, but there's also a slight discomfort that comes from the soul-bearing declarations, especially in light of the tragedies all three of the writers will face.
There is a fiery romance happening here with deep ramificiations, but is this played up by the distance between and the inability to act upon the impulses? Perhaps.
Urgency - there are so many passionate and spontaneous declarations... But due to letter delivery and censorship, days and weeks go by, emotions shift. Letters compound one after another, and sometimes arrive out of order to the recipient leading to miscommunications.
This book was SO rich in detail, and this post doesn't even scratch the surface of this spiritual/literary love triangle. There's an innate tragedy of secrets kept - particularly Rilke hiding his mortal illness from Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, while wasting away... Finally, unable to answer letters in his last days, leading to all sorts of emotional outcries before the correspondents learn of his passing and are grief-stricken and wounded by words left unsaid.
Rilke's death, as well as a few other circumstances, place a wedge between Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, as their love was enriched by the German poet, and passions cooled.
Hard to describe fully - It was captivating and ecstatic, but always with this undercurrent of impetuousness and brimming jealousy. Perhaps best enjoyed by readers familiar with the poets/writers work already, but still an amazing moment crystallized in time of a passionate summer epistemolary love affair that ended abruptly and in tragedy.
June 21, 2026
‘Dear reader, the best poet of our generation is Marina Tsvetayeva. Not every role in emigration is voluntary, nor is every role here at home.’ May, 1929. Boris Pasternak.
Nothing to ‘say’, just thoroughly doused in immense and boundless awe. Below, taken/borrowed from Marina’s essay(s) about Rilke, February 1929 .
‘Counting the echoes—it’s enough to last a lifetime. And today I want Rilke to speak—through me. In the vernacular, this is known as translation. But translation has another meaning. To translate not only into (the Russian language, for example), but also across (a river). I translate Rilke into the Russian tongue, as he will some day translate me to the other world.’
Read
January 5, 2021Stumbled upon this one, a curious crossing of three writers in one year -- 1926. Cast in the role of star-struck fans we have two Russkies, Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetayeva. Cast in the role of The King of Poetry? Rainer Maria Rilke.
Rilke's letters are fewest in number here because, unbeknownst to the starstruck Russians, he is dying of leukemia and not telling anyone. I'm sure most readers would be struck by how effusive these letters are, by how loosely the words "love" and "adoring" are used. Even Rilke writes that way, and he's only heard from these two (first Boris, then Marina) for the first time thanks to Borya's dad, Leonid, who had met Rilke many years before.
Other than a lot of spent emotion, you get a little poetry talk, a little literary gossip, and a lot of psychology. If you saw or read (or both) Dr. Zhivago, you'll recognize the hyper-Romantic Pasternak and his troubled marriage. To me, though, it was Tsvetayeva's letters that stood out. A lot of them were poems unto themselves. You can see how her mind was equal parts troubled and creative and, if you didn't know, might even guess she'd wind up a suicide (after ill-advisedly returning to the Soviet Union from France).
All in all, an interesting window into a short frame of time. Speaking of interesting, in her preface, Susan Sontag cites Safe Conduct, not Dr. Zhivago, as Pasternak's greatest work. She also gives a shout-out to Rilke the novelist. Seems he wrote something called The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge in 1910. She calls it his "supreme achievement in prose."
You see what happens when you go epistolary with the literati? You add to your never-ending reading list.
Rilke's letters are fewest in number here because, unbeknownst to the starstruck Russians, he is dying of leukemia and not telling anyone. I'm sure most readers would be struck by how effusive these letters are, by how loosely the words "love" and "adoring" are used. Even Rilke writes that way, and he's only heard from these two (first Boris, then Marina) for the first time thanks to Borya's dad, Leonid, who had met Rilke many years before.
Other than a lot of spent emotion, you get a little poetry talk, a little literary gossip, and a lot of psychology. If you saw or read (or both) Dr. Zhivago, you'll recognize the hyper-Romantic Pasternak and his troubled marriage. To me, though, it was Tsvetayeva's letters that stood out. A lot of them were poems unto themselves. You can see how her mind was equal parts troubled and creative and, if you didn't know, might even guess she'd wind up a suicide (after ill-advisedly returning to the Soviet Union from France).
All in all, an interesting window into a short frame of time. Speaking of interesting, in her preface, Susan Sontag cites Safe Conduct, not Dr. Zhivago, as Pasternak's greatest work. She also gives a shout-out to Rilke the novelist. Seems he wrote something called The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge in 1910. She calls it his "supreme achievement in prose."
You see what happens when you go epistolary with the literati? You add to your never-ending reading list.
July 23, 2012
Marina Tsvetaeva was a brilliant Romantic poet who lived in the early 20th Century in the Soviet Union. Her letters to Rilke and Pasternak in the Summer of 1926 are transcendent. Rilke matches her in poetic grace. Pasternak has a harder time keeping up and, to be frank, he spends a lot of his time whining when, among the three of them, he had the least to complain about.
Each of these poets was a tempestuous soul. Rilke and Tsvetaeva really did seem to speak their own second language, but all three of them recognized each other as kindred spirits, and they fell in love quickly with one another, even though they hadn't met.
Finally, their letters bring home how much and yet how little has changed in the way we correspond with soul mates. The three poets exchange photographs, poems they've written, and news about each other, and talk about crossing paths or meeting up one day, just like Facebook friends.
Each of these poets was a tempestuous soul. Rilke and Tsvetaeva really did seem to speak their own second language, but all three of them recognized each other as kindred spirits, and they fell in love quickly with one another, even though they hadn't met.
Finally, their letters bring home how much and yet how little has changed in the way we correspond with soul mates. The three poets exchange photographs, poems they've written, and news about each other, and talk about crossing paths or meeting up one day, just like Facebook friends.
August 31, 2025
m’han agradat sobretot les cartes entre la tsvetàieva i el rilke, em sap greu pasternak… però ets una mica pesat deixa’m dir-t’ho
i així acaba un estiu molt poc lector :( a veure si aquest curs remonto una mica…
i així acaba un estiu molt poc lector :( a veure si aquest curs remonto una mica…
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February 9, 2010What to make of these letters exchanged by three of the greatest poets of the 20th century in that glorious summer of 1926? Immediately the heart-on-the-sleeve will put a sour taste in a number of readers' mouths. The raptures will ring excessive for many, as it seems as if these poets are trying to outdo each other for beauty of expression. Tsvateava is in exile in France, cut off, sounds desperate and needy, directs the exchanges, acts as though she wants to possess the great German poet. Rilke is cooler in the exchange, he can't match Tsvataeva's oppressive enthusiastism, and he knows he's dying. Pasternak is in Russia in the midst of enormous turmoil and full of anxiety and foreboding, and his exchanges have a touch of melancholy, a touch of worry, about them. There is much here to marvel at for those who are interested in poetry and especially these poets whose burning exchanges reveal their longing to cling to the idea of the necessity of poetry as the world is being rocked all around them.
April 8, 2009
Heartbreaking and poignant, the letters between Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke and Boris Pasternak show the strength of the written word in extraordinarily difficult times; Tsvetaeva in exile in France, Pasternak squeaking by in Moscow, and Rilke slowly dying in the Swiss countryside. Their emotive and passionate letters show the evolution of their poetic ideas that would remain with Tsvetaeva and Pasternak for the entirety of their lives. Without this creative collaboration between the three (neither Tsvetaeva nor Pasternak would ever meet Rilke in adulthood), the salient poems from this time would not exist. Tsvetaeva and Rilke's ruminations on the purpose of the poet is particularly moving. Timely, and beautiful.
April 20, 2016
Conozco poco de los tres escritores, solo he leído algo de la poesía de Tsvitaieva, pero vale la pena leer este encuentro de tres poetas, bastante intensas sus cartas, y su postura frente a la vida.
February 16, 2024
This book follows the correspondence between three European writers during the summer of 1926- it is elegant, dramatic, soulful, and full of adoration for each other.
October 19, 2022
«Cuando abrazo a un extraño, es algo natural; cuando lo relato, es algo no natural (¡para mí misma!). Pero cuando lo transformo en poesía, vuelve a ser natural. Es decir, la acción y la poesía me dan la razón. Lo que se encuentra entre ambas me acusa. Mentira es lo que está en medio, no yo. [...]
Querido, arranca el corazón que está lleno de mí. No te atormentes. Vive. No te consternes por tu mujer y tu hijo. Te concedo el indulto de todos y de todo. Toma todo lo que puedas - mientras tengas deseos de tomarlo. Recuerda que la sangre es más antigua que nosotros mismos, sobre todo la tuya, semita. No la domestiques. Toma todo esto desde una altura lírica - no: ¡desde una altura épica!
Escríbeme o no me escribas sobre todo esto, como quieras. Yo, además de todo, - no, antes y después de todo (¡hasta la primera luz del amanecer!), - soy tu amiga. »
Querido, arranca el corazón que está lleno de mí. No te atormentes. Vive. No te consternes por tu mujer y tu hijo. Te concedo el indulto de todos y de todo. Toma todo lo que puedas - mientras tengas deseos de tomarlo. Recuerda que la sangre es más antigua que nosotros mismos, sobre todo la tuya, semita. No la domestiques. Toma todo esto desde una altura lírica - no: ¡desde una altura épica!
Escríbeme o no me escribas sobre todo esto, como quieras. Yo, además de todo, - no, antes y después de todo (¡hasta la primera luz del amanecer!), - soy tu amiga. »
November 14, 2021
Extraordinary collection, so beautifully written; full of soul & passion
July 13, 2023
exquis, et puis la durée…. ça fait plaisir de se traîner un aussi beau livre, avec une forme aussi spéciale
August 9, 2024
Sans doute intéressant pour des personnes qui feraient de des recherches sur les auteurs, ou pour des romantiques snobs... Personnellement j'ai vraiment peiné, trop de mystique romantico-littéraire (et ultra élitiste, également misogyne) à mon goût.
August 19, 2011
When a writer takes my interest on unexpected journey my desire to know everything about the writer becomes a little excessive and a new journey begins not only to read all of his or her's work but anything they have written. Poetry, short stories, essays but most importantly letters. My home library has expanded through these searches to a bursting point with the heavy tomes that constitute "The Complete Letters of ......." you can fill in the blank. Samuel Beckett, James Joyce et al, but this set of letters are unique in our fore-knowledge that the wonderful poet Rainer Maria Rilke during the period when they were written was dying. Three unique poetic voices are captured here in their letter to each other; Marina Tsvetayeva living in exile in France, Boris Pasternak in Moscow, and Rainer Maria Rilke in Switzerland. You may ask does one need to be familiar with their works for it to be meaningful? .... and the answer is no! these intensity and passionate letters speak as a unique commentary on their wonderful and diverse talents.
December 7, 2012
I had just finished reading Doctor Zhivago when I happened upon this book at the library. I was curious... After reading this, I see an interesting reflection of Boris Pasternak's life (as laid out in these letters from 1926 to Tsvetayeva and Rilke) in Doctor Zhivago. As I read it, I realized that Boris is Yuri and Marina (Tsvetayeva) is Lara! It gave more context and deeper meaning to a much loved novel that I read fairly often. Interesting!
July 28, 2008
This is an amazing collection of letters between three poets throughout one summer. Questions and conversations about poetry, censorship, artistic influence, and dying. You know, typical light read.
March 18, 2008
the most beautiful letters, so much soul and exile and love
November 23, 2008
Every thing I read that has Marina Tsvetaeva's hand in it lets me know how one should feel life - grab it shake it and hold on to it tight as it takes you for a wild ride
June 9, 2012
I've read this book twice. Three great poets--Rilke, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva--and up-close glimpses of their lives and work. A must read.
September 25, 2017
broke me
November 3, 2024
Finally finished. Took half a year, despite what this site says. During the last year of Rilke's life, Pasternak, Tsvetayeva, and the author of Duino Elegies began a correspondence that would end with Rilke's death, of leukemia, on 30 December of that year.
These letters, for someone who has read only Rilke (like myself), can be tedious from time to time, but they serve as a fascinating portrait of the darkening state of Russia. Tsvetayeva's end was brutal. Her husband and daughter killed by Soviets, she committed suicide in 1941. Pasternak outlived them all significantly to write Doctor Zhivago many years later.
Rilke, of all of them, seems to have lived the most pacifically. His geographic removal to Prague meant that he escaped the worst of the Russian Civil War and the Soviet revolution, even as he adored Russia almost more than his own homeland.
These letters are full of generous musings on art, love, and life. Great bedside reading for anyone remotely interested in three of the greatest writers the 20th century produced. It inspired me to go back and read the memoir of Nadezhda Mandelstam that I kept ignoring for so long...
These letters, for someone who has read only Rilke (like myself), can be tedious from time to time, but they serve as a fascinating portrait of the darkening state of Russia. Tsvetayeva's end was brutal. Her husband and daughter killed by Soviets, she committed suicide in 1941. Pasternak outlived them all significantly to write Doctor Zhivago many years later.
Rilke, of all of them, seems to have lived the most pacifically. His geographic removal to Prague meant that he escaped the worst of the Russian Civil War and the Soviet revolution, even as he adored Russia almost more than his own homeland.
These letters are full of generous musings on art, love, and life. Great bedside reading for anyone remotely interested in three of the greatest writers the 20th century produced. It inspired me to go back and read the memoir of Nadezhda Mandelstam that I kept ignoring for so long...
January 9, 2025
Letters: Summer 1926 ended. 94 years later. It ended, once again, after my previous reading of Chinese version in my younger time, in another way and in another language.
It was a tragic crash of spirit, occurring in a world beyond any dust ground. Yes, ” Never turns to wood, always to ashes.” Such an accident ( due to missing or loss of soul one another) just brought ashes.
After that I will have to forget this book, these wonderful human beings( of course, for the only woman of the three, I know well of her, her soul, which was so deep but definite, so dark but divine, so destructive but devout, so distant but dear, and destined ) Anyway, I will have to put them back to their eternal time. I will no longer meet them. There is no need to meet, again and again and again. Something I just only keep as the sort of silence and I cannot (or I don't want to) name is already in me.
But, as well as I realize, more powerfully, the feelings else will come to engulf all grief. A fate but above and beyond the fate itself. Not only comes it from the past of book but also comes along with many today.
So, at last, it is indeed It, which blocks and silences me.
It was a tragic crash of spirit, occurring in a world beyond any dust ground. Yes, ” Never turns to wood, always to ashes.” Such an accident ( due to missing or loss of soul one another) just brought ashes.
After that I will have to forget this book, these wonderful human beings( of course, for the only woman of the three, I know well of her, her soul, which was so deep but definite, so dark but divine, so destructive but devout, so distant but dear, and destined ) Anyway, I will have to put them back to their eternal time. I will no longer meet them. There is no need to meet, again and again and again. Something I just only keep as the sort of silence and I cannot (or I don't want to) name is already in me.
But, as well as I realize, more powerfully, the feelings else will come to engulf all grief. A fate but above and beyond the fate itself. Not only comes it from the past of book but also comes along with many today.
So, at last, it is indeed It, which blocks and silences me.
August 30, 2025
lowkey still have like 20 pages until I’m done w letters but why not go ahead and say what i wanna say. The grass isn’t getting any greener and this has been a slow read so I’ve been kind of rushing through the end.
Picked this up bc I’m a Rilke fan but I have to say, this hasn’t been very enjoyable. Probably bc it’s mostly the first two writers and i am not invested in them in the slightest.
we got challengers at home ahh book because why are they all in love with each other like poetry threesome contest or something
to be fair i kinda half paid attention while reading this so maybe i missed the memo but why are they so messyyyyyyy
“I fear death only because it is I who will die, without having had the chance to be everyone else. But sometimes when I am writing to you or reading what you have written, I am free of this clattering, jostling threat. Now you let me embrace you strongly, strongly, and kiss you with all the feeling that has accumulated during these reflections.”
like whatttt that quote is so me but also you got a wife at home bro why are you feigning for this Russian poet and why is she feigning for a sickly old man
Picked this up bc I’m a Rilke fan but I have to say, this hasn’t been very enjoyable. Probably bc it’s mostly the first two writers and i am not invested in them in the slightest.
we got challengers at home ahh book because why are they all in love with each other like poetry threesome contest or something
to be fair i kinda half paid attention while reading this so maybe i missed the memo but why are they so messyyyyyyy
“I fear death only because it is I who will die, without having had the chance to be everyone else. But sometimes when I am writing to you or reading what you have written, I am free of this clattering, jostling threat. Now you let me embrace you strongly, strongly, and kiss you with all the feeling that has accumulated during these reflections.”
like whatttt that quote is so me but also you got a wife at home bro why are you feigning for this Russian poet and why is she feigning for a sickly old man
June 1, 2021
This book has been on my shelf to be read, calling my name, for several months now. But when it first reached my possession, I decided that it must be read during the months of late spring or summer, as that is when this triangular correspondence took place.
One day recently I was out and about, and wondering to myself which book to read next, when I noticed a penny on the ground (see a penny, pick it up - all day long, you’ll have good luck!). Since I have been a small child, I have loved to collect older coins. The penny had landed on tails when it reached the ground, and while I have heard that it is strictly heads-up pennies that will give good luck when picked up, the tails side showed me that this was an older penny (older pennies do not show the Lincoln Memorial on tails side), so I already felt lucky. I flipped it over to see what year it came into circulation: 1926. I immediately thought of this book and believed it to be an omen that I absolutely must read it next. So I did.
It was enchanting to watch these three poets fall in love through letters, poems, and the like. And what fascinated me perhaps the most was that they never met face-to-face, but came to know each other deeply despite this fact. In a letter to Pasternak, Tsvetayeva concludes: ... It is as if I had seen you yesterday.”
This volume of letters solidified my already-solid belief that there is something so very intimate and passionate about letters, the written word on paper addressed to someone, that is lost in this age of email, text, snapbookfaceinstachatagram.
One day recently I was out and about, and wondering to myself which book to read next, when I noticed a penny on the ground (see a penny, pick it up - all day long, you’ll have good luck!). Since I have been a small child, I have loved to collect older coins. The penny had landed on tails when it reached the ground, and while I have heard that it is strictly heads-up pennies that will give good luck when picked up, the tails side showed me that this was an older penny (older pennies do not show the Lincoln Memorial on tails side), so I already felt lucky. I flipped it over to see what year it came into circulation: 1926. I immediately thought of this book and believed it to be an omen that I absolutely must read it next. So I did.
It was enchanting to watch these three poets fall in love through letters, poems, and the like. And what fascinated me perhaps the most was that they never met face-to-face, but came to know each other deeply despite this fact. In a letter to Pasternak, Tsvetayeva concludes: ... It is as if I had seen you yesterday.”
This volume of letters solidified my already-solid belief that there is something so very intimate and passionate about letters, the written word on paper addressed to someone, that is lost in this age of email, text, snapbookfaceinstachatagram.
October 1, 2018
Effusive and brimming over with great feeling, these letters were very touching to read. The ardour in which Tsvetayeva was quickly able to come into the confidence of Rilke, with just a short introduction from Pasternak, signified to me the warmhearted and trusting natures of the protagonists. Unfortunately, the correspondence as presented here suffers from incompleteness, as Tsvetayeva's letters to Pasternak were not as yet released prior to publication, on her wishes. That, when combined with Pasternak's own inability to muster the courage to write to Rilke more than one salutary letter prior to the latter's death means that what is presented is less of a shared conversation, and more of an intimate portrait of Tsvetayeva's and Rilke's brief acquaintance through letters in 1926. Lovely to read of course, but sadly all too fleeting.
September 6, 2023
A beautiful window into the poetic sentiment through the lens of the incomparable Rilke, perhaps the preeminent pan-European poet, and his two Russian correspondents. Pasternak is familiar to Western reads for Dr. Zhivago, though his reputation as a poet surpassed his acclaim as a prose writer in his lifetime. Tsvetayeva is the beating heart of the book though, jealous with a passionate intensity. Rilke is near death and Pasternak comes across as a lesser star - at least at the time- overshadowed by Rilke and Mayakovsky and yes, Tsvetayeva. It is also a glance at the friendships of intellectuals who loved and supported and challenged each other, impetuously and imperfectly but for the betterment of each.
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