Bride of Ice

by Marina Tsvetaeva

  Poem of the End

  p. 1 There are fourteen poems in this cycle (some divided into two or three lyrics); the eleventh poem is not translated.

  The love affair with Rodzevitch was over by December 1923, and this poem records exactly how she learns of his decision to end their relationship, as they meet, walk about the city of Prague with its many bridges, and talk over café tables.

  p. 2 a window under the roof…/it is burning?: a rephrasing of lines from a poem by Blok.

  who shall I tell my sorrow: words from the Psalter.

  p. 3 Semiramis: Assyrian princess (c.800 BC) famous for her hanging gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

  p. 4 Star of Malta: the emblem of a medieval knightly order.

  p. 5 powder/made by Berthold Schwartz: gunpowder.

  p. 6 The stamp left on your heart/would be the ring on your hand: an allusion to the Song of Songs (8:6): ‘Set me as a seal upon thine heart…’

  p. 7 Khlebnikov: a Russian Futurist poet.

  p. 8 Marinkas: Marinka is a diminutive of Marina, a common Polish name (and well-known to Russians from the princess in Pushkin’s Boris Godunov).

  New Year’s Greetings

  p. 1 Ariadna Efron writes that the correspondence between Tsvetaeva and Pasternak began in 1922, and continued until 1935. It was at its most intense in the mid-1920s. The correspondence between Tsvetaeva and Rilke was set in motion by a letter from Leonid Pasternak written to congratulate Rilke on his fiftieth birthday. Rilke, then in a sanitorium with leukaemia, replied warmly, mentioning that the fame of Leonid’s son Boris had reached him from all sides, and praising particularly poems which had been translated into French by Helene Izvolskaya and published in Paul Valéry’s journal Commerce. Boris had to wait for his father to send him a copy of Rilke’s letter, which was too precious to be risked in the post. In his first letter to Rilke Pasternak asked the poet he so admired to send a copy of Duino Elegies to Marina Tsvetaeva, whom he described as ‘a born poet, a great talent…’ More practically, he asked Rilke to send any reply through Tsvetaeva, since there was no direct post between the USSR and Switzerland. The first exchanges between Tsvetaeva and Rilke were ecstatic on both sides. But Tsvetaeva longed for greater intimacy and even a meeting, unaware that Rilke was already in the final months of his life. She was wounded by his subsequent silence. Her elegy for Rilke was written in the days following his death.

  p. 2 German is as native to me as Russian: Tsvetaeva had been brought up by her mother to speak and read German fluently.

  p. 3 Baobab: a strange tropical tree native to Africa which looks as if its branches were roots. Many creatures live in the branches. The Baobab has gathered many superstitions around it.

  The Ratcatcher

  p. 1 These are three sections from a long narrative poem which follows the story of the Pied Piper. It is marked throughout with a disgust for material well-being, so that the abundance in the town is felt as a direct cause of the plague of rats. In later sections of the poem the burghers give the flute-player a contemptuous dressing-down on the use of his art. D.S. Mirsky wrote of ‘The Ratcatcher’: ‘… it is not only a verbal structure that is astounding in its richness and harmony, it is also a serious “political”… and “ethical” satire.’ Tsvetaeva began writing the poem in Vshenory in early 1925, and completed it in Paris in November that year.

  p. 2 poods: a Russian measure.

  Poems to a Son

  p. 1 Georgy returned to Russia with Tsvetaeva in 1939, to join his father and sister. When they were arrested he lived with his mother until they were evacuated to Yelabuga. After Tsvetaeva died, he left to join the army and died, still in his teens, in the defence of Moscow.

  Homesickness

  p. 1 Kamchatka: a far-eastern Siberian peninsula, sometimes invoked in the sense of ‘back of beyond’.

  Epitaph

  p. 1 These poems were written for N.P. Gronsky, a young poet killed in a street accident when he was twenty-four. Tsvetaeva had been close to him as a young boy of eighteen in Meudon, and continued to value his poetry highly after they stopped seeing one another.

  Desk

  p. 1 Three lyrics from a sequence of six.

  p. 2 thirty years: the lyrics were written between 1933 and 1935, and Tsvetaeva must have had in mind her very earliest attempts at poetry.

  Bus

  p. 1 Easter toys: on Palm Sunday most Russian towns held markets at which sweets, trinkets, and small devils and cherubim were commonly sold.

  p. 2 A moist, wood-twig smoke of green: although this verse appears to be another draft of the previous one, both appear in the Moscow-Leningrad edition.

  p. 3 Nebuchadnezzar: cf. Daniel, 4:31–3.

  p. 4 thief: there is multiple punning on the idea of pillaging as a form of (literal) ‘ripping-off’, or fleecing, throughout the passage.

  Poems to Czechoslovakia

  p. 1 Tsvetaeva was thinking of the region known to her as ‘Chekhia’ in the country we have until recently called Czechoslovakia.

  Vary/Tatras: Karlovy vary (Karlsbad), a famous spa in western Czechoslovakia. By mentioning it along with ‘Tatry’, the Tatras, mountain ranges in the eastern part of that country, Tsvetaeva means to emphasise that the Germans took the whole of the country, and all the pleasures that it offered.

  they won: ‘won’ in Russian can also mean ‘took’.

  spittle: the original poem is headed by a sentence from the newspapers of March 1939: ‘The Czechs went up to the Germans and spat.’

  p. 2 give back to God his ticket: this is a reference to Ivan Karamazov (in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov), who defiantly offered back to God his entrance ticket to Heaven so long as Heaven is built upon or despite the suffering of children on earth.

  Select Bibliography of Works in English

  Joseph Brodsky, Less than One: Selected Essays (New York, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 1986)

  Lily Feiler, Marina Tsvetaeva: The Double Beat of Heaven and Hell (Durham NC and London, Duke University Press 1994)

  Elaine Feinstein, A Captive Lion: The Life of Marina Tsvetaeva (London, Hutchinson 1987)

  Elaine Feinstein (trans.), Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Oxford University Press 1971; paperback enlarged edition, Oxford University Press 1981; third edition re-issued Hutchinson 1986; fourth, further enlarged, edition, with revised introduction, Oxford Poets, Oxford University Press 1993; enlarged fifth edition Carcanet Press 1999)

  Simon Karlinsky, Marina Tsvetaeva: The Woman, Her World and Her Poetry (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1985)

  Robin Kemball (trans.), Marina Tsvetaeva, The Demesne of the Swans: a bi-lingual edition (Ann Arbor, Ardis 1980)

  J. Marin King (ed.), A Captive Spirit: Selected Prose of Marina Tsvetayeva (Ann Arbor, Ardis 1980)

  Nina Kossman (trans.), Poem of the End: Selected Lyrical and Narrative Poetry by Marina Tsvetaeva, with facing Russian text (Ann Arbor, Ardis 1995)

  Irma Kudrova, Death of a Poet: The Last Days of Marina Tsvetaeva, trans. Mary Ann Szporluk (London, Duckworth 2004)

  Angela Livingstone (trans.) Art in the Light of Conscience: Eight Essays on Poetry by Marina Tsvetaeva (London, Bristol Classical 1992)

  Angela Livingstone (trans.), Marina Tsvetaeva, The Ratcatcher: A Lyrical Satire (London, Angel Press 1999)

  David McDuff (trans.), Marina Tsvetaeva, Selected Poems (Newcastle, Bloodaxe 1987)

  Boris Pasternak, An Essay in Autobiography, trans. Manya Harari (London, Collins and Harvill Press 1959)

  Yevgeny Pasternak, Yelena Pasternak and Konstantin M. Azadovsky (eds), Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva, Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters, Summer 1926, trans. Margaret Wettlin and Walter Arndt (London, Jonathan Cape 1986)

  Ellendea Proffer, Tsvetaeva: A Pictorial Biography, trans. J. Marin King (Ann Arbor, Ardis 1980)

  Viktoria Schweitzer, Tsvetaeva, trans. Robert Chandler and H.T. Willetts (London, HarperCollins 1992)

  Jane A. Taubman, A Life Through Poetry: Marina Tsvetaeva�
�s Lyric Diary (Columbus, OH, Slavica Publishers 1989)

  Appendix

  Note to 1971 edition: On Working Method

  No poet’s voice can be exactly recorded in the medium of another language. Marina Tsvetaeva’s is particularly difficult to capture, both because her consistent adherence to rhyme and to metrical regularity would, if copied in the English poems, probably enfeeble them, and because so many of the linguistic devices which she powerfully exploits (such as ellipsis, changes of word-order, the throwing into relief of inflectional endings) are simply not available in English. On the whole, the English versions are consciously less emphatic, less loudly-spoken, less violent, often less jolting and disturbing than the Russian originals. Most noticeable of all in Tsvetaeva’s poems, especially the later ones, are the very strong rhythm and the unprecedently vigorous syntax. There is, too, a somewhat idiosyncratic and highly emotional use of punctuation, particularly of exclamation marks and dashes.

  Except in the case of the ‘Poem of the Mountain’, a literal version of which was prepared by Valentina Coe, and a number of earlier poems, where the literal version was dictated on to a tape-recorder, Elaine Feinstein and I worked as follows: I would write out each poem in English, keeping as close as made sense to the word-order of the Russian; joining by hyphens those English words which represented a single Russian word; indicating by oblique lines words whose order had to be reversed to be readable, and by asterisks phrases where several changes had had to take place; adding notes on metre, sound properties, play with word-roots, and specifically Russian connotations. All this material was then changed into poetry by Elaine Feinstein, who took those liberties with it that the new English poem demanded, but returned constantly to the Russian text to check the look, sound, and position of Tsvetaeva’s own words.

  To give one example – the opening of lyric 6 of ‘Poem of the End’. One of the most original and effective features of the poems making up this cycle is the way they tend to be structurally based each upon a single syntactic unit which is several times repeated almost identically. This determines the structure of every stanza in which it appears, throwing into different kinds of relief the words and phrases that are not part of it, and bringing a peculiar rhythm into the expressed emotions. When it ceases to recur, we read the rest of the poem in strong recollection of its shape.

  In lyric 6 the dominant phrase (italicised, by me, in the extract below) is one that has the verb ‘to hand’ as its final and basic element, and involves the prominent use of the dative case. Each time, the phrase is in brackets and, each time, its last word comes as an enjambment. It occurs in stanzas 2, 3 and 5; is implied in stanza 4; and is referred to (through similar enjambment and rhythm) in stanza 6, where a sharp irony arises from the combination of the rhythm and pattern of that unit with the idea of ‘dividing’ – the opposite, one would think, of ‘handing’. Here are those six stanzas, in Russian and ‘literal’ English. (I omit my notes on diction, connotations, etc.)

  2

  …

  (Da, v chas, kogda poyezd podan, (Yes, at the-hour when the-train is-served,

  Vy zhenshchinam, kak bokal, pechal’nuyu chest’ ukhoda You to-women, like a-goblet, The-sorrowful honour of-departure

  3

  Vruchayete…) – Mozhet, bred? Oslyshalsa? (Lzhets uchtiviy, Lyubovnitse kak buket Krovavuyu chest’ razryva Hand…) – Perhaps, delirium? I-misheard? (Courteous liar, To-you-lover like a-bouquet The-bloody honour of-rift

  4

  Vruchayushchi…) – Vnyatno: slog Handing…) (It’s)-clear: syllable

  Za slogom, itak – prostimsa, After syllable, so – let’s-say-goodbye,

  Skazalivy? (Kakplatok V chas sladostnovo beschinstva You/said? (Like a-handkerchief At the-hour of-voluptuous recklessness

  5

  Uronenny…) – Bitvy sei Vy – Tsezar’. (O, vypad nagly! Dropped…) – Of-this/battle You-are Caesar. (O, insolent/thrust!

  Protivniku – kak trofei, Im otdannuyu zhe shpagu To-(your)-opponent – like a trophy, The very sabre that he surrendered

  6

  Vruchat’!) – Prodolzhayet. (Zvon V ushakh…) – Preklonyayus’ dvazhdy: To-hand!) – It-continues. (Sound In (my)-ears…) I-bow twice:

  Vpervye operezhon For-the-first-time-I-am-forestalled

  Vrazryve. – Vy eto kazhdoi? In a-rift. – Do-you-(say) this toevery-(woman)?

  7

  Ne oprovergaite! Mest’ Dostoinaya Lovelasa. Zhest, delayushchi vam chest’, A ne rzvodyashchi myaso Don’t deny-(it)! A-vengeance Worthy of-Lovelace. A-gesture doing you honour, But for-me dividing the-flesh

  8

  Ot kosti. From the-bone.

  All subsequent instances of the dative case in this poem stand out strongly because of this established pattern: as, for example, the ‘Do you say this to everyone?’ in stanza 6; the later plea not to speak of their love to anyone coming after; and, especially, the final interchange about whether to give each other a parting gift such as a ring or a book.

  Different syntactic patterns dominate other lyrics in the cycle. Their presence, as a fundamental structure, is typical of the whole of ‘Poem of the End’, and is a device which Tsvetaeva has elaborated with complete originality.

  Angela Livingstone

  About the Author

  MARINA TSVETAEVA was born in Moscow in 1892. Her father was a professor of art history at the University of Moscow and her mother, who died of TB when Tsvetaeva was fourteen, was a gifted pianist. Tsvetaeva’s first poems, Evening Album, were self-published in 1910. In 1912 Tsvetaeva married Sergei Efron, with whom she had two daughters, Alya and Irina. During the Civil War Efron fought in the White Army while Tsvetaeva and the children endured the Moscow famine. Irina died of starvation in 1920. In 1922 the Civil War ended with Bolshevik victory and Tsvetaeva joined Efron in exile in Prague. It was here that she wrote some of her greatest poetry. In 1924 Tsvetaeva’s son Georgy was born. The family moved to Paris in 1925. Tsvetaeva became isolated from Russian literary émigrés and, increasingly, from Efron and Alya, whose allegiances moved towards Communism. Both returned to Russia in 1937, Alya freely and Efron to avoid arrest for his involvement in the murder of a defector. Tsvetaeva followed him to Russia with Georgy in 1939, unaware of Stalin’s Terror. Alya was arrested and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Efron was shot in 1941. In the same year, following the German invasion, Tsvetaeva and Georgy left Moscow for Yelabuga in the Tartar Republic. Tsvetaeva hanged herself there on 31 August 1941.

  ELAINE FEINSTEIN was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She has worked as a university lecturer, a subeditor, and a freelance journalist. Since 1980, when she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she has lived as a full-time writer. In 1990, she received a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry, and was given an Honorary D.Litt from the University of Leicester. Her versions of the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva – for which she received three translation awards from the Arts Council – were first published in 1971. She has written fourteen novels, many radio plays, television dramas, and five biographies, including A Captive Lion: the Life of Marina Tsvetaeva (1987) and Pushkin (1998). Anna of all the Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova was published in 2005. Elaine Feinstein’s Collected Poems and Translations (2002) was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Her evocation of Stalin’s Russia, The Russian Jerusalem, was published by Carcanet Press in 2008.

  Also by Elaine Feinstein from Carcanet Press

  Poetry

  Daylight

  Gold

  Selected Poems

  Collected Poems and Translations

  Talking to the Dead

  Fiction

  The Russian Jerusalem

  As editor

  After Pushkin

  Russian poetry from Carcanet Press

  Alexander Blok, Selected Poems, trans. Jon Stallworthy and Peter France Joseph Brodsky, Collected Poems in English, trans. Anthony Hecht,

  Howard Moss, Derek Walcott, Richard Wilbur et al.

  Afte
r Pushkin, ed. Elaine Feinstein

  An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets ed. Valentina

  Polukhina and Daniel Weissbort

  What I Own: Versions of Holderlin and Mandelshtam by John Riley and Tim Longville

  Copyright

  First published as Selected Poems in 1971 by Oxford University Press

  Revised, enlarged and reissued 1981, 1986, 1993, 1999

  This revised and enlarged sixth edition published in 2009 by

  Carcanet Press Limited

  Alliance House

  Cross Street

  Manchester M2 7AQ

  Selection and Translations copyright © Elaine Feinstein 1971, 1981, 1986, 1993, 1999, 2009

  Introduction and Bibliography copyright © Elaine Feinstein 2009

  This ebook edition first published in 2011

  All rights reserved

  © Elaine Feinstein, 2009

  The right of Elaine Feinstein to be identified as the editor and translator of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly