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Moscow in the Plague Year: Poems
Written during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed, these poems are suffused with Tsvetaeva's irony and humor, which undoubtedly accounted for her success in not only reaching the end of the plague year alive, but making it the most productive of her career. We meet a drummer boy idolizing Napoleon, an irrepressibly mischievous grandmother who refuses to apologize to God on Judgment Day, and an androgynous (and luminous) Joan of Arc.
"Represented on a graph, Tsvetaeva's work would exhibit a curve - or rather, a straight line - rising at almost a right angle because of her constant effort to raise the pitch a note higher, an idea higher ... She always carried everything she has to say to its conceivable and expressible end. In both her poetry and her prose, nothing remains hanging or leaves a feeling of ambivalence. Tsvetaeva is the unique case in which the paramount spiritual experience of an epoch (for us, the sense of ambivalence, of contradictoriness in the nature of human existence) served not as the object of expression but as its means, by which it was transformed into the material of art." --Joseph Brodsky
While your eyes follow me into the grave, write up the whole caboodle on my cross! 'Her days began with songs, ended in tears, but when she died, she split her sides with laugher!'
--from Moscow in the Plague Poems
"Represented on a graph, Tsvetaeva's work would exhibit a curve - or rather, a straight line - rising at almost a right angle because of her constant effort to raise the pitch a note higher, an idea higher ... She always carried everything she has to say to its conceivable and expressible end. In both her poetry and her prose, nothing remains hanging or leaves a feeling of ambivalence. Tsvetaeva is the unique case in which the paramount spiritual experience of an epoch (for us, the sense of ambivalence, of contradictoriness in the nature of human existence) served not as the object of expression but as its means, by which it was transformed into the material of art." --Joseph Brodsky
While your eyes follow me into the grave, write up the whole caboodle on my cross! 'Her days began with songs, ended in tears, but when she died, she split her sides with laugher!'
--from Moscow in the Plague Poems
268 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
6 people are currently reading
196 people want to read
About the author
Marina Tsvetaeva
571 books578 followers Марина Цветаева
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow. Her father, Ivan Tsvetaev, was a professor of art history and the founder of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her mother Mariya, née Meyn, was a talented concert pianist. The family travelled a great deal and Tsvetaeva attended schools in Switzerland, Germany, and at the Sorbonne, Paris. Tsvetaeva started to write verse in her early childhood. She made her debut as a poet at the age of 18 with the collection Evening Album, a tribute to her childhood.
In 1912 Tsvetaeva married Sergei Efron, they had two daughters and one son. Magic Lantern showed her technical mastery and was followed in 1913 by a selection of poems from her first collections. Tsvetaeva's affair with the poet and opera librettist Sofiia Parnok inspired her cycle of poems called Girlfriend. Parnok's career stopped in the late 1920s when she was no longer allowed to publish. The poems composed between 1917 and 1921 appeared in 1957 under the title The Demesne of the Swans. Inspired by her relationship with Konstantin Rodzevich, an ex-Red Army officer she wrote Poem of the Mountain and Poem of the End.
After 1917 Revolution Tsvetaeva was trapped in Moscow for five years. During the famine one of her own daughters died of starvation. Tsvetaeva's poetry reveals her growing interest in folk song and the techniques of the major symbolist and poets, such as Aleksander Blok and Anna Akhmatova. In 1922 Tsvetaeva emigrated with her family to Berlin, where she rejoined her husband, and then to Prague. This was a highly productive period in her life - she published five collections of verse and a number of narrative poems, plays, and essays.
During her years in Paris Tsvetaeva wrote two parts of the planned dramatic trilogy. The last collection published during her lifetime, After Russia, appeared in 1928. Its print, 100 numbered copies, were sold by special subscription. In Paris the family lived in poverty, the income came almost entirely from Tsvetaeva's writings. When her husband started to work for the Soviet security service, the Russian community of Paris turned against Tsvetaeva. Her limited publishing ways for poetry were blocked and she turned to prose. In 1937 appeared MOY PUSHKIN, one of Tsvetaeva's best prose works. To earn extra income, she also produced short stories, memoirs and critical articles.
In exile Tsvetaeva felt more and more isolated. Friendless and almost destitute she returned to the Soviet Union in 1938, where her son and husband already lived. Next year her husband was executed and her daughter was sent to a labor camp. Tsvetaeva was officially ostracized and unable to publish. After the USSR was invaded by German Army in 1941, Tsvetaeva was evacuated to the small provincial town of Elabuga with her son. In despair, she hanged herself ten days later on August 31, 1941.
source: http://www.poemhunter.com/marina-ivan...
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow. Her father, Ivan Tsvetaev, was a professor of art history and the founder of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her mother Mariya, née Meyn, was a talented concert pianist. The family travelled a great deal and Tsvetaeva attended schools in Switzerland, Germany, and at the Sorbonne, Paris. Tsvetaeva started to write verse in her early childhood. She made her debut as a poet at the age of 18 with the collection Evening Album, a tribute to her childhood.
In 1912 Tsvetaeva married Sergei Efron, they had two daughters and one son. Magic Lantern showed her technical mastery and was followed in 1913 by a selection of poems from her first collections. Tsvetaeva's affair with the poet and opera librettist Sofiia Parnok inspired her cycle of poems called Girlfriend. Parnok's career stopped in the late 1920s when she was no longer allowed to publish. The poems composed between 1917 and 1921 appeared in 1957 under the title The Demesne of the Swans. Inspired by her relationship with Konstantin Rodzevich, an ex-Red Army officer she wrote Poem of the Mountain and Poem of the End.
After 1917 Revolution Tsvetaeva was trapped in Moscow for five years. During the famine one of her own daughters died of starvation. Tsvetaeva's poetry reveals her growing interest in folk song and the techniques of the major symbolist and poets, such as Aleksander Blok and Anna Akhmatova. In 1922 Tsvetaeva emigrated with her family to Berlin, where she rejoined her husband, and then to Prague. This was a highly productive period in her life - she published five collections of verse and a number of narrative poems, plays, and essays.
During her years in Paris Tsvetaeva wrote two parts of the planned dramatic trilogy. The last collection published during her lifetime, After Russia, appeared in 1928. Its print, 100 numbered copies, were sold by special subscription. In Paris the family lived in poverty, the income came almost entirely from Tsvetaeva's writings. When her husband started to work for the Soviet security service, the Russian community of Paris turned against Tsvetaeva. Her limited publishing ways for poetry were blocked and she turned to prose. In 1937 appeared MOY PUSHKIN, one of Tsvetaeva's best prose works. To earn extra income, she also produced short stories, memoirs and critical articles.
In exile Tsvetaeva felt more and more isolated. Friendless and almost destitute she returned to the Soviet Union in 1938, where her son and husband already lived. Next year her husband was executed and her daughter was sent to a labor camp. Tsvetaeva was officially ostracized and unable to publish. After the USSR was invaded by German Army in 1941, Tsvetaeva was evacuated to the small provincial town of Elabuga with her son. In despair, she hanged herself ten days later on August 31, 1941.
source: http://www.poemhunter.com/marina-ivan...
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
December 29, 2018
4.5 stars
I really enjoyed reading this book of Russian poetry.
I will share my favorite poems and verses below:
The morning dove has found a place
to perch on my right shoulder, while
the eagle owl of night has found
a place to perch upon my left.
Like Kazan’s emperor, I pass
knowing I have no cause to fear –
enemies having joined in league
to offer me common defence!
***
With my shawl’s ends I tie a knot
around your melancholy.
Watch me as, shawlless, I proceed
singing from square to square.
The curse has been dispelled. From now
on you’re in thrall to me!
***
You won’t succeed in driving me away!
Nobody’s able to push spring aside!
You wouldn’t dare so much as lay a finger
on me – my lullabies are far too tender!
You won’t succeed in giving me a bad
name, for my name is water to the lips!
Nor will you succeed in leaving me:
the door stands open, your house is deserted!
***
But on my forehead stars
– take note! – are burning.
In my right hand – heaven,
in my left hand – hell.
The silken belt I carry
wards off all afflictions.
My head reposes on
the book of Kingly Realms.
Many are like me
here in holy Russia –
you should ask the winds,
you should ask the wolves.
From one land to the next,
one city to the next,
In my right hand – heaven,
in my left hand – hell.
I gave you heaven mixed with hell to drink,
now your whole life is like one single day.
See me on my way,
bridegroom, for seven leagues!
Many are like me
here in holy Russia.
***
I’ll let the wind transport this book,
it and the cranes it comes upon.
Long since I tore my vocal chords
drowning separation out.
A bottle in the waves, I toss it
into the whirlwind of war.
Let it wander, like a feast day
candle, passed from hand to hand.
Wind, wind, my trustworthy witness,
take it to the ones I love,
proceeding, even in their sleep,
night after night from north to south.
***
Along great, silent roads,
taking great, silent strides …
Stone cast into water, the soul
sends out ever-widening ripples.
How deep that water is, how dark!
How much I want to reach the soul
buried eternally inside
and tell it: Enter into me!
All of the sea needs all of the sky,
all of the heart needs all of God.
***
Stop trying to change me. Owlets need the night,
and sleepless people need their sleeplessness.
***
Filled with wonder, totally enraptured,
a daylight visionary, everyone
is used to seeing me with bleary eyes,
but nobody has ever seen me sleepy.
Given that from daybreak until nightfall
dreams float uninterrupted past my eyes,
I fail to see the point in going to bed.
It makes more sense, a melancholy shade,
to watch over the slumbers of my friends.
***
Even though nailed to the pillar of shame,
I keep declaring doggedly: I love you.
A woman who is mother to the core
doesn’t give her child the looks you get.
You’re too absorbed to notice I’d be willing
not just to die, but keep on dying for you.
Talking gets me nowhere, you can’t grasp
the pillar of shame’s no cause of shame to me!
I really enjoyed reading this book of Russian poetry.
I will share my favorite poems and verses below:
The morning dove has found a place
to perch on my right shoulder, while
the eagle owl of night has found
a place to perch upon my left.
Like Kazan’s emperor, I pass
knowing I have no cause to fear –
enemies having joined in league
to offer me common defence!
***
With my shawl’s ends I tie a knot
around your melancholy.
Watch me as, shawlless, I proceed
singing from square to square.
The curse has been dispelled. From now
on you’re in thrall to me!
***
You won’t succeed in driving me away!
Nobody’s able to push spring aside!
You wouldn’t dare so much as lay a finger
on me – my lullabies are far too tender!
You won’t succeed in giving me a bad
name, for my name is water to the lips!
Nor will you succeed in leaving me:
the door stands open, your house is deserted!
***
But on my forehead stars
– take note! – are burning.
In my right hand – heaven,
in my left hand – hell.
The silken belt I carry
wards off all afflictions.
My head reposes on
the book of Kingly Realms.
Many are like me
here in holy Russia –
you should ask the winds,
you should ask the wolves.
From one land to the next,
one city to the next,
In my right hand – heaven,
in my left hand – hell.
I gave you heaven mixed with hell to drink,
now your whole life is like one single day.
See me on my way,
bridegroom, for seven leagues!
Many are like me
here in holy Russia.
***
I’ll let the wind transport this book,
it and the cranes it comes upon.
Long since I tore my vocal chords
drowning separation out.
A bottle in the waves, I toss it
into the whirlwind of war.
Let it wander, like a feast day
candle, passed from hand to hand.
Wind, wind, my trustworthy witness,
take it to the ones I love,
proceeding, even in their sleep,
night after night from north to south.
***
Along great, silent roads,
taking great, silent strides …
Stone cast into water, the soul
sends out ever-widening ripples.
How deep that water is, how dark!
How much I want to reach the soul
buried eternally inside
and tell it: Enter into me!
All of the sea needs all of the sky,
all of the heart needs all of God.
***
Stop trying to change me. Owlets need the night,
and sleepless people need their sleeplessness.
***
Filled with wonder, totally enraptured,
a daylight visionary, everyone
is used to seeing me with bleary eyes,
but nobody has ever seen me sleepy.
Given that from daybreak until nightfall
dreams float uninterrupted past my eyes,
I fail to see the point in going to bed.
It makes more sense, a melancholy shade,
to watch over the slumbers of my friends.
***
Even though nailed to the pillar of shame,
I keep declaring doggedly: I love you.
A woman who is mother to the core
doesn’t give her child the looks you get.
You’re too absorbed to notice I’d be willing
not just to die, but keep on dying for you.
Talking gets me nowhere, you can’t grasp
the pillar of shame’s no cause of shame to me!
August 4, 2017
I could be an abandoned church
Above me hang heavy clouds of pointless sympathy
----
A drop fell on my eyes
like a warm tear.
High in heaven,
someone’s crying for me.
Above me hang heavy clouds of pointless sympathy
----
A drop fell on my eyes
like a warm tear.
High in heaven,
someone’s crying for me.
June 5, 2022
"An entry in the guest book:Written between November 1918 and May 1920—during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine—these poems are like a lyrical diary, a mixture of the deeply personal and the (hopefully? wretchedly?) artistically detached. I especially liked the section of 'four-liners', some of which were connected and played off each other.
'I went out empty-handed.'
From a professional thief—
be thankful for small mercies." (176)
"But look, where tears are being shed,
entering I reconcile them all!
I'm an oriole, after rain
my voice is heard first in the wood." (163)
July 1, 2021
"All at once, while leafing through my songs, I come upon – my soul..."
The poetry in this volume had been written while Tsvetaeva - separated from her husband (who was fighting with the White Russians) - suffered a crippling lonliness , sickness, starvation, and loss during the war communism years after the Revolution. At times very difficult to hear the strain of her voice. One cannot listen without being pierced through.
"I strain all my throat’s strings until they snap!
If I entered the world a nightingale,
it wasn’t so I could preserve my throat! […]"
…........
"just outside our attic window.
Pigeons knock against the pane – what use are they as company?
The passing winds shout me their greeting – what good is that? Winds, on your way!
They’re colourless, and like the flocks
of pigeons, quite incapable of saying,
in the wonder-working tones that you would use:
‘Marina!’
November 1919
..........
"If Moscow in the plague year takes too lively
an interest in the poet, there’s an answer.
We’re capable of doing without bread!
It’s just a step from the roof – into heaven."
........
"You can decide: I’ve chopped up so much firewood
I can’t tell if it’s splitting, or my back.
The main thing is, I spoke no ill of you.
The main thing is, I kept my own good nature."
.......
"I want neither to eat, nor drink, nor live.
Merely to fold my arms, while silently
my gaze surveys an untenanted skyline.
I neither care for freedom, nor deplore it,
dear God! I won’t so much as lift a finger.
With folded arms, all I want’s to stop breathing."
........
"While your eyes follow me into the grave,
write up the whole caboodle on my cross!
‘Her days began with songs, ended in tears,
but when she died, she split her sides with laughter ! '
The poetry in this volume had been written while Tsvetaeva - separated from her husband (who was fighting with the White Russians) - suffered a crippling lonliness , sickness, starvation, and loss during the war communism years after the Revolution. At times very difficult to hear the strain of her voice. One cannot listen without being pierced through.
"I strain all my throat’s strings until they snap!
If I entered the world a nightingale,
it wasn’t so I could preserve my throat! […]"
…........
"just outside our attic window.
Pigeons knock against the pane – what use are they as company?
The passing winds shout me their greeting – what good is that? Winds, on your way!
They’re colourless, and like the flocks
of pigeons, quite incapable of saying,
in the wonder-working tones that you would use:
‘Marina!’
November 1919
..........
"If Moscow in the plague year takes too lively
an interest in the poet, there’s an answer.
We’re capable of doing without bread!
It’s just a step from the roof – into heaven."
........
"You can decide: I’ve chopped up so much firewood
I can’t tell if it’s splitting, or my back.
The main thing is, I spoke no ill of you.
The main thing is, I kept my own good nature."
.......
"I want neither to eat, nor drink, nor live.
Merely to fold my arms, while silently
my gaze surveys an untenanted skyline.
I neither care for freedom, nor deplore it,
dear God! I won’t so much as lift a finger.
With folded arms, all I want’s to stop breathing."
........
"While your eyes follow me into the grave,
write up the whole caboodle on my cross!
‘Her days began with songs, ended in tears,
but when she died, she split her sides with laughter ! '
August 21, 2014
Tsvetaeva is fascinating, the translation if readable and has a wonderful rhythm, but I have very low tolerance for, as the blub itself puts it, a lyrical diary that pays hommage to other poets. There's just too many poems in which Tsvetaeva talks about whom she wants to sleep with, or whom she's sleeping with, or subtle variations on that wanting to sleep with stuff. And for whatever reason, I have a very hard time reading 'tribute to...' poems.
Given these facts--which are about me, not the book--this is a pretty solid volume. When Marina's imagining herself as an aged grandmother hitting on the young men, it's fun. The poems to Alya are very moving. Some of the narratives are masterpieces of compression. She's funny, she's smart, and the context for the volume makes it worth a look: Tsetaeva wrote these poems during the chaotic years after the revolution, while her husband was away fighting the Bolsheviks.
Given these facts--which are about me, not the book--this is a pretty solid volume. When Marina's imagining herself as an aged grandmother hitting on the young men, it's fun. The poems to Alya are very moving. Some of the narratives are masterpieces of compression. She's funny, she's smart, and the context for the volume makes it worth a look: Tsetaeva wrote these poems during the chaotic years after the revolution, while her husband was away fighting the Bolsheviks.
October 17, 2014
The only thing on my bucket list is to put flowers on Marina Tsvetaeva's grave in the snow. Rings, songs, dance and heartache fill the pages in taut but supple stanzas. Love and loss are woven into golden braids full of spirit and spunk. All the poems were written between 1918 and 1920 when half the population of Moscow died.
This upper class titan felt the full brunt of the Revolution, losing everything, even one of her two children. Yet she maintained a solid core of determination, defiance and divinity. She will bowl you over like a cannon ball. Absolutely stunning.
This upper class titan felt the full brunt of the Revolution, losing everything, even one of her two children. Yet she maintained a solid core of determination, defiance and divinity. She will bowl you over like a cannon ball. Absolutely stunning.
April 6, 2016
All I could steal, one meagre little
hour out of eternity.
One hour for […] love from start
to finish.
I take the blame, I’ll pay the price.
hour out of eternity.
One hour for […] love from start
to finish.
I take the blame, I’ll pay the price.
May 26, 2025
keywords - stale bread, crosses, drummer boys, grandmothers, thieves, raspberries, crimson roses, stone, knees/kneeling, garlands/being garlanded, faint, abandoned, plague, ice bride, snowstorm, rubies, skirts and blouses, Psyche & Eros, muslin
"How deep that water is, how dark! / How much I want to reach the soul / buried eternally inside / and tell it: Enter into me!"
"How deep that water is, how dark! / How much I want to reach the soul / buried eternally inside / and tell it: Enter into me!"
From "To N(ikolay) N(ikolayevich) V(ysheslavtsev)"
Some are made of stone, and some of clay
but glittering silver is my element!
Named Marina, I'm set on betrayal,
the foam that teeters on the wave's poised crest!
Some are made of clay, and some of flesh,
such as the gravestone and what lies beneath-
baptized in the sea's font, when I take flight
I'm broken into fragments ceaselessly!
Subservient to none other than my will,
I drench each heart, each net I come upon.
Can you see these ungovernable curls?
You'll never extract earthbound salt from them.
Shattered on the granite of your knees,
wave after wave summons me back to life!
Accept this greeting from the joyous froth,
the foam that teeters on the wave's poised crest!
July 18, 2023
Flirtations and relationships during the hardships of war communism. The best ones quickly, deftly sketch scenes.
December 5, 2022
As anyone knows who has seen the film Doctor Zhivago, World War I and the Bolshevik revolution produced awful upsets in the lives of Russians. But it also produced marvels, of which this collection of short poems is one. The afterword explains its title and origin. “Tsvetaeva spent the years of War Communism camping out in the attic of a house she had moved to not long after getting married.… Repeatedly, in both poems and notebooks, she describes 1919 as a plague year, one when the inhuman conditions of survival in the capital reached a nadir.” Her door had no lock. A thief who entered, “shocked at the misery he found, is said to have offered Tsvetaeva money.” Somehow, “amid severest woe” (to use a phrase Samuel Beckett borrowed from Thomas Gray), she found happiness in simply thinking and writing.
Some of us, living through our own plague, have done the same, and we’ve also been able to take refuge in readings books such as this one. I pulled it off my shelf early in the coronavirus pandemic and have been dipping into it ever since.
Much of the verse Tsvetaeva wrote during her plague year (broadly construed to range from November 1918 to May 1920) is here, from the polished to the rough and fragmentary. It’s surprisingly broad in theme, scope, and style, and possibly the biggest surprise is the flashes of humor. (The Beckett line I quoted above began with the phrase “laughing wild”—he could’ve been talking about her.) A few examples of the other notes she struck have been quoted in my reading updates. I’ll close, as the afterword does, with an instance of the humor:
While your eyes follow me into the grave,
write up the whole caboodle on my cross!
‘Her days began with songs, ended in tears,
but when she died, she split her sides with laughter!’
Some of us, living through our own plague, have done the same, and we’ve also been able to take refuge in readings books such as this one. I pulled it off my shelf early in the coronavirus pandemic and have been dipping into it ever since.
Much of the verse Tsvetaeva wrote during her plague year (broadly construed to range from November 1918 to May 1920) is here, from the polished to the rough and fragmentary. It’s surprisingly broad in theme, scope, and style, and possibly the biggest surprise is the flashes of humor. (The Beckett line I quoted above began with the phrase “laughing wild”—he could’ve been talking about her.) A few examples of the other notes she struck have been quoted in my reading updates. I’ll close, as the afterword does, with an instance of the humor:
While your eyes follow me into the grave,
write up the whole caboodle on my cross!
‘Her days began with songs, ended in tears,
but when she died, she split her sides with laughter!’
August 15, 2021
From 1918 to 1920, Marina Tsvetaeva suffered in a tiny Moscow apartment with her two young daughters, hoping her husband would return from fighting the Bolsheviks. This compressed window of time gave itself over to a prodigious wealth of poetry, the only abundance in years marked by famine, grief, appalling poverty and political tumult. By turns playful and profoundly wretched, Tsvetaeva mines the abyss for hope, which glints in these verses like the brightest stars.
“I’ve loved you every day of my whole life,
like a huge shadow cast on me, or like
the ancient smoke of Arctic villages.
I’ve loved you every hour of my whole life.
Your lips, your eyes, though, are superfluous.
It all began -- and ended -- without you.
I can recover something -- a rainbow
of sounds, a giant collar, untouched snow
horns lowered against a backdrop of stars…
They cast a shadow over half the skyline…
The ancient smoke of arctic villages…
I get it now: you are a northern stag.”
14/31
#TheSealeyChallenge
“I’ve loved you every day of my whole life,
like a huge shadow cast on me, or like
the ancient smoke of Arctic villages.
I’ve loved you every hour of my whole life.
Your lips, your eyes, though, are superfluous.
It all began -- and ended -- without you.
I can recover something -- a rainbow
of sounds, a giant collar, untouched snow
horns lowered against a backdrop of stars…
They cast a shadow over half the skyline…
The ancient smoke of arctic villages…
I get it now: you are a northern stag.”
14/31
#TheSealeyChallenge
November 28, 2019
Uneven, but worth sifting through. A favorite:
A red bow for my hair!
A red bow for my hair!
The man I love’s on guard,
doing sentry duty.
When the wind blows cold,
when the moon is chill,
he stands outside the tent,
salt pillar in the field.
I sneak up quietly,
he cries aloud: ‘Password?’
‘It’s me!’ ‘Move on, the king
is sleeping soundly now!’
‘It’s me, my heart! This is
your own heart calling you!’
‘No time for joking here,
my rifle’s in my hand.’
‘But would you let your king
sleep through the hour for mass?’
‘For the third and last time –
move on, I tell you, move!’
A shot rings out, noiseless
I slump upon the heath.
The sentry looks northwards
and then looks to the south,
to the east, to the west.
No yawning while on duty!
A red bow for my hair!
A red bow for my hair!
November 10th 1918
April 30, 2015
The translation is perfectly nice, the concept is interesting, and it's always wonderful to have more Tsvetaeva in translation. But this is very much a historical/biographical curiosity for completists; the quality of the often-unfinished poems varies wildly and much of what is best has already been published elsewhere. A delightful gift for the diehards (of which I am one) but hard to recommend to the casual reader.
August 10, 2014
I edited this book. February-June.
July 16, 2016
Good, but I've read other translations that were more lively. Lots of poems about her boyfriends but the most touching tell of her daughter's death.
February 23, 2020
I would have give it five stars if facing pages in Russian had been included. The translations are works of art in themselves but I would Like to see how close they are to Tsvetaeva’s original texts.
April 30, 2020
Even in translation, the defiance, beauty, humor and terror in the poems of this woman — living in the “plague year” of Russia in 1919 as tsarist — is undeniable. Hungry to read her journals next, during our own plague year.
February 6, 2025
I’ve been craving poetry lately, and apparently this was exactly what I was craving. The stark, elegiac imagery is absolutely beautiful, although I do wonder what these were initially like in Russian.
October 31, 2020
Entrancing, soul-captivating, but NOT about plague or pandemic as I was hoping from the title. Maybe that's a good thing.
February 26, 2021
i don't think she was having a great time living through the russian revolution. lots of good lines though.
June 7, 2022
The plague years in Russia during the time of revolution and civil war brought out some of the best with Russian poetry and memoirs. This is but one of the highlights.
Read
August 20, 2022this was just unfortunately not for me, but i tend to have a hard time connecting with older poetry
Read
August 21, 2023She’s the goat.
May 19, 2020
The poem cycle dedicated to Nikolay Nikolayevich Vysheslavtsev is my favourite from this collection. Don't miss the afterword!
March 26, 2023
I really enjoy Tsvetaeva's work. There were so many inspiring lines and poems I just sat and read over again, sitting with the poem.
I would be interested to read a translation of these by a woman to see how the two would compare.
I definitely want to find a biography about Tsvetaeva. I'm also very sad I've not been able to find any of Sofia Parnok's poems :(
I would be interested to read a translation of these by a woman to see how the two would compare.
I definitely want to find a biography about Tsvetaeva. I'm also very sad I've not been able to find any of Sofia Parnok's poems :(
August 25, 2021
4.5
This book never leaves my bedside table. I adore Tsvetaeva.
This book never leaves my bedside table. I adore Tsvetaeva.
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