Selected Poems

Marina Tsvetaeva

Marina Tsvetaeva

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781780372303
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

During the Stalin years Russia had four great poets to voice the feelings of her oppressed people: Pasternak, Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetayeva. The first two survived the terror, but Mandelstam died in a camp and Tsvetayeva was driven to hang herself in 1941.

This comprehensive selection of Tsvetayeva's poetry includes complete versions of all her major long poems and poem cycles: Poem of the End, An Attempt at a Room, Poems to Czechia and New Year Letter. It was the first English translation to use the new, definitive Russica text of her work. It also includes additional versions ascribed to F.F. Morton which first appeared in The New Yorker: these rhyming translations are actually the work of Joseph Brodsky (who lived at 44 Morton Street in New York).

'Tsvetayeva is one of the great poets of the century and David McDuff's translations are very good. This is all the more remarkable because, like the poems they translate, they rhyme. There are overlaps with Elaine Feinstein's excellent but unrhyming translations of the same poet, but not too many. McDuff conveys Tsvetyeva's commitment to poetry's musical force, Feinstein substitutes a beautifully nuanced syntax for music; Tsvetayeva shines and appals in both' - Martin Dodsworth, Guardian

'It must be said right away that those who want to have an inkling of what Tsvetayeva is actually like, and that includes her form, her rhyme, and the tone of that accompanies form and rhyme, will have to go to McDuff. His diligence with metre and rhyme is remarkably successful, and is the only proper tribute to the poet's linguistic virtuosity. Readers may find that Feinstein comes across more fluently, but that fluency is not Tsvetaevan. McDuff has caught her abruptness, her veering and tacking, and has tried to show something of the curious modern music this produces - "modern" not through free verse but by dint of straining traditional patterns to breaking point' - Cencrastus

UNCOLLECTED POEMS

I will win you away from every earth, from every sky

I will win you away from every earth, from every sky,

For the woods are my place of birth, and the place to die,

For while standing on earth, I touch it with but one foot,

For I’ll sing your worth as nobody could or would.

I will win you from every time and from every night,

From all banners that throb and shine, from all swords held tight,

I’ll drive dogs outside, hurl the keys into dark and fog,

For in the mortal night I’m a more faithful dog.

I will win you from all my rivals, and from the one,

You will never enjoy a bridal, nor I – a man,

And in the final struggle I’ll take you – don’t make a sound! –

From Him by whom Jacob stood on the darkened ground.

But until I cross your fingers upon your breast,

You possess – what a curse! – yourself: you are self-possessed,

Both your wings, as they yearn for the ether, become unfurled,

For the world’s your cradle, and your grave’s the world.

[15 August 1916]

translated by F.F. MORTON

Nailed against the shameful stake

Nailed against the shameful stake

Of the inveterate Slavic conscience,

My forehead marked, at my heart a snake,

I testify that I am guiltless.

I testify that in me is the calm

Communicants know before communion,

That it’s not my fault if with palm

Outstretched on squares I stand – for fortune!

Examine all my earthly goods and say

– Are my eyes stricken with blindness? –

Where is my gold? The silver that’s for me?

In my palm is a fistful of ashes.

This is all that with flattery and prayer

I have coaxed from those whom fortune blesses.

And this is all that I’ll take with me there,

Into the land of silent embraces.

[19 May 1920]

Bush

1

What does it need from me, this bush?

Not speech. Not my dog’s destiny

Of a human, to curse which I push

My head (growing greyer each...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Description
• Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• Note on translating Tsvetayeva
• From POEMS OF YOUTH (1913–18)
• From BON-VOYAGES (1921–22)
• From SWANS’ ENCAMPMENT: POEMS 1917–1921
• From THE CRAFT (1923)
• From AFTER RUSSIA: POEMS 1922–1925
• UNCOLLECTED POEMS
• About the Author
• Copyright