Status Updates From Letters: Summer 1926

‘Goethe says—one cannot achieve anything of significance in a foreign language—& that has always rung false to me. Writing poetry is in itself translating—No language is the mother tongue. Writing poetry is rewriting it. A poet may write in French, he cannot be a French poet. That’s ludicrous. Dear one—tear out the heart that is full of me—Take life as it comes. Remember that our blood is older than we are—’ (Marina)

‘—I don’t like the sea. A vast expanse—nothing to walk on—notorious, involuntary immobility. And the sea at night?—unloving, filled with itself. A mountain is—what I stand on, Boris. My exact worth. A mountain is a great dash on the printed page—to be filled in with a deep sigh. On a mountain I’m as good as any mountaineer, but on the sea—I’m not even a passenger. One wearies of all things; never of you.’ (Marina)

‘—and the blue violets. I wonder if you understand me, given my bad German? French I write more fluently—that’s why I don’t want to write to you in French. From me to you nothing should flow—better to halt and stumble. Lightning on lightning (lightning—night—lightning), that’s how it takes me as I read you. Here all your clairvoyance is good for nothing. Something in you must still get used to me.’ (Marina to Rilke)

‘Tomorrow I'll be a different person—But don’t destroy me. I want to live with you for a long, long time. I saw our shackles—the starvation—we must hold on—for a year if you can survive—I am not joking—Promise me that you rely upon me—I believe in your reasons—reasons that you must have, & that must remain unknown to me, but form a part of my life nevertheless—truly I am yours, Marina—Everywhere, everywhere.’ (Boris)

‘‘A letter is like an otherworldly communication—less perfect than a dream but subject to the same rules,’ Tsvetayeva. Rilke—sympathised w/ her. Their correspondence—conversation of people who understood one another—as if they'd been initiated—the same mystery—felt no need to explain—The uninitiated reader must labour over—their letters. The impression at times that they were conspirators—accomplices—mutually aware—’

‘—domain of reckless feeling—Tsvetayeva writes: ‘The poet can have only one prayer—not to understand the unacceptable—let me not understand, so that I may not be seduced.’ Leading readers through—labyrinth of elliptical memoiristic prose—Maybe the ecstasies channeled into this correspondence—Nothing can dim the incandescence of those exchange—Today,—their ardors & tenacities feel like raft, beacon, beach. (Sontag) ’