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51st out of 283 books
—
1,015 voters
Selected Poems
by
Marina Tsvetaeva,
Elaine Feinstein (Goodreads Author) , Марина Цветаева
Elaine Feinstein is a poet of lyrical directness. That clear, passionate voice which she brought to her celebrated translations of Marina Tsvetayeva's poetry is her own. She writes about love, loss, jealousy, the fear of abandonment. Her powerful rhythms flow down the page, seeking to draw a coherent shape out of the inner uncertainties. She also writes with tenderness abo...more
Paperback, 160 pages
Published
January 1st 1994
by Penguin Classics
(first published 1971)
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Of the great 'silver age' poets (Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Pasternak, Blok, Mayakovsky...) I find myself returning more and more to Tsvetaeva--the expansive emotion is most like Mayakovsky's--explosive--but the she has the control and compressed power of an Akhmatova. They're astonishingly good. She's a great lover, a great hater, sarcastic, vulnerable, more emotionally ragged than Akhmatova. But no less precise as an artist.
I've found a couple of wonderful girls reading Tsvetaeva poems on Youtube...more
I've found a couple of wonderful girls reading Tsvetaeva poems on Youtube...more
Dec 08, 2011
Jeremy
added it
Tsvetaeva is one tough nut to crack. Her poetry has this searingly personal intensity. Like you're with her in a hermetically sealed room watching her stab wildly out at the dark with a knife. I could never figure out who or what she's trying to confront, her absentee husband? an affair? the stalinist purges? having to put her daughter in an orphanage because she couldn't afford to feed her? She has so much to be burned up and consumed by emotionally. Maybe she's just railing against life itself...more
her poems feel as if she is drawing a straight line from her guts to your heart. it's almost too much, and i found myself physically buckling at points, snapping the book shut to save myself from the fire. Tsvetaeva brings all of my favorite dinner guests together: unyielding authorial voice, raw honesty and unflinching self-reflection, a keen eye for that porous gauze between the self and the other, she reads as one of the last honest witnesses of human history. i only wish i could read the ori...more
Wait, I'm confused. The book description above is the same as for the Tsvetaeva collection Elaine Feinstein translated for Penguin, and carries the same reader reviews. The Bloodaxe book I'm holding is translated by David McDuff, and it's awful. It's awful because it rhymes. I know Tsvetaeva in Russian rhymes, and the boxy quatrains he favors are probably hers, too. I know the temptation clever translators feel to stretch their chops and replicate rhyme in English. I know that given the rich mil...more
2 likes · like · see review
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"If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold I know no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry." - Maria Tsvetaeva
Weariness and beauty permeate the poetry of Maria Tsvetaeva. She struggled with life and love, but endured, supported in part by fellow artists, most notably Mandelstam, Rilke and Pasternak. The poetry in this selection is arrayed in chronological order and ranges from the "starry nights, in the apple orchards of Paradise"(p 5) to the "muffled blow" of Epitaph (p 106). I...more
Weariness and beauty permeate the poetry of Maria Tsvetaeva. She struggled with life and love, but endured, supported in part by fellow artists, most notably Mandelstam, Rilke and Pasternak. The poetry in this selection is arrayed in chronological order and ranges from the "starry nights, in the apple orchards of Paradise"(p 5) to the "muffled blow" of Epitaph (p 106). I...more
Tsvetaeva was a remarkable poet and a remarkable person to boot, not because she could suck a golf-ball out of Gertrude Stein's backside or wrestle tapirs with Hemingway--none of this artiste crap. Rather she was an obsessive, driven sensualist poet who recognized she was at the whim of a greater force. Unfortunately for her, and this is where she is most fascinating, she was stuck in exile taking care of her kids while her Communist spy husband traipsed about Europe before getting arrested. In...more
One of my favorite poems from the collection:
On Parting
Teasing and tempting and playing
We loved like children, us both
But somebody, hiding a smile,
Set up the ungentle nets -
And here we are at the harbor,
Not seeing the wished-for abodes,
But knowing that I will be yours
In the heart, without words, until death.
You told me of all things - so early!
I guessed them so late! In our hearts
A wound is eternal, a silent
Question exists in our eyes,
The desert on earth is so endless,
The heaven, s...more
On Parting
Teasing and tempting and playing
We loved like children, us both
But somebody, hiding a smile,
Set up the ungentle nets -
And here we are at the harbor,
Not seeing the wished-for abodes,
But knowing that I will be yours
In the heart, without words, until death.
You told me of all things - so early!
I guessed them so late! In our hearts
A wound is eternal, a silent
Question exists in our eyes,
The desert on earth is so endless,
The heaven, s...more
I first fell in love with her "Poems for Akhmatova":
"Muse of lament, you are the most beautiful of
all muses, a crazy emanation of white night:
and you have sent a black snow storm over all Russia.
We are pierced with the arrows of your cries
so that we shy like horses at the muffled
many times uttered pledge--Ah!--Anna
Akhmatova--the name is a vast sight
and it falls into depths without name
and we wear crowns only through stamping
the same earth as you, with the same sky over us....
I stand head in...more
"Muse of lament, you are the most beautiful of
all muses, a crazy emanation of white night:
and you have sent a black snow storm over all Russia.
We are pierced with the arrows of your cries
so that we shy like horses at the muffled
many times uttered pledge--Ah!--Anna
Akhmatova--the name is a vast sight
and it falls into depths without name
and we wear crowns only through stamping
the same earth as you, with the same sky over us....
I stand head in...more
It's generally agreed that there were four great 20th-century Russian poets: Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, and Pasternak. Akhmatova herself, with her characteristic lack of false modesty, acknowledged this fact in her poem "There Are Four of Us." For me, the fact of this tetrad (two females and two males) brings to mind the fact that Leda, when impregnated by Zeus-disguised-as-a-swan, had four offspring: two girls (Helen and Clytemnestra) and two boys (Castor and Pollux). Akhmatova, who was...more
I read this over a period of 39 days, during which so much has happened, and these poems by Marina Tsvetaeva were almost narrating my feelings.
I want to share my favorite poems:
1. "I'm glad your sickness"
2. "Poem of the Mountain" & "Poem of the End" in one pdf
It's been a long while since I've read poems that refresh me, but as I started this, it felt like every poem-of-the-day by Poets.org was also new, exciting, refreshing, I feel happy about this.
I've been crossing the Michigan Avenue Bri...more
I want to share my favorite poems:
1. "I'm glad your sickness"
2. "Poem of the Mountain" & "Poem of the End" in one pdf
It's been a long while since I've read poems that refresh me, but as I started this, it felt like every poem-of-the-day by Poets.org was also new, exciting, refreshing, I feel happy about this.
I've been crossing the Michigan Avenue Bri...more
What's the Russian for "so much better than David McDuff's rhyming translations I blew kvass out my nostrils with gleeful surprise while reading these?" Hooray for a translator who sees that Tsvetaeva's "consistent adherence to rhyme and to metrical regularity would, if copied in the English poems, probably enfeeble them," and whose worst sin is the venial one of setting the poems to standard plainspoken translatorese. Them's the pitfalls of the trans biz, as Feinstein's the first to acknowledge...more
2 likes · like · see review
When in 1941 the Nazis started bombing Moscow, Marina Tsvetaeva and her son were evacuated to Yelabuga, a town in the Tatar Soviet Socialist Republic (now Tatarstan).
She desperately sought work and even applied for a dishwashing position but was refused. On 31 August 1941, Tsvetaeva hanged herself. Marina Tsvetaeva’s exact burial place was never found. Her husband, Sergey Efron, was executed in August 1941 – the same month that she committed suicide. Her 19-year-old son Mur was killed in World...more
She desperately sought work and even applied for a dishwashing position but was refused. On 31 August 1941, Tsvetaeva hanged herself. Marina Tsvetaeva’s exact burial place was never found. Her husband, Sergey Efron, was executed in August 1941 – the same month that she committed suicide. Her 19-year-old son Mur was killed in World...more
17 likes · like · see review
One of the Best poems ever!
Мне нравится, что вы больны не мной,
Мне нравится, что я больна не вами,
Что никогда тяжелый шар земной
Не уплывет под нашими ногами.
Мне нравится, что можно быть смешной -
Распущенной - и не играть словами,
И не краснеть удушливой волной,
Слегка соприкоснувшись рукавами.
Мне нравится еще, что вы при мне
Спокойно обнимаете другую,
Не прочите мне в адовом огне
Гореть за то, что я не вас целую.
Что имя нежное мое, мой нежный, не
Упоминаете ни днем, ни ночью - всуе...
Что никогда в це...more
Мне нравится, что вы больны не мной,
Мне нравится, что я больна не вами,
Что никогда тяжелый шар земной
Не уплывет под нашими ногами.
Мне нравится, что можно быть смешной -
Распущенной - и не играть словами,
И не краснеть удушливой волной,
Слегка соприкоснувшись рукавами.
Мне нравится еще, что вы при мне
Спокойно обнимаете другую,
Не прочите мне в адовом огне
Гореть за то, что я не вас целую.
Что имя нежное мое, мой нежный, не
Упоминаете ни днем, ни ночью - всуе...
Что никогда в це...more
Original Review
The first part of the 20th century was the Silver Age of Russian Poetry, the time of many of Russia's greatest poets both inside and outside the Soviet system: Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Blok, and lots of other folks that we, as Americans have never heard of (except for Pasternak, and that's for his novel, after all). Marina Tsvetaeva was one of these poets. Born into a well-to-do but very unstable family, and coming of age just as the Russian revolution came to fr...more
The first part of the 20th century was the Silver Age of Russian Poetry, the time of many of Russia's greatest poets both inside and outside the Soviet system: Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Blok, and lots of other folks that we, as Americans have never heard of (except for Pasternak, and that's for his novel, after all). Marina Tsvetaeva was one of these poets. Born into a well-to-do but very unstable family, and coming of age just as the Russian revolution came to fr...more
1 like · like · see review
This month's sleeper hit at my house is this slim volume of vivid and intense poems by the gifted Russian poet and badass Marina Tsvetaeva.
I mean, check this stuff out:
(from "The Poet")
Now what shall I do here, blind and fatherless?
Everyone else can see and has a father.
Passion in this world has to leap anathema
as it might be over the walls of a trench
and weeping is called a cold in the head.
What shall I do, by nature and trade
a singing creature (like a wire-sunburn!-Siberia!)
as I go over the br...more
I mean, check this stuff out:
(from "The Poet")
Now what shall I do here, blind and fatherless?
Everyone else can see and has a father.
Passion in this world has to leap anathema
as it might be over the walls of a trench
and weeping is called a cold in the head.
What shall I do, by nature and trade
a singing creature (like a wire-sunburn!-Siberia!)
as I go over the br...more
I fell in love with Tsvetajeva (the Finnish spelling) years ago while reading a thick poetry anthology. When I saw this collection in a used books store in Paris, I had to have it. These words hold such beauty and meaning, so many different feelings. She makes me feel like all exceptional poets: she knows all my secrets.
Что тут сказать, моя девичья душа долго ее не принимала, во многом из-за узости школьной программы. Цветаева мне открылась после прочтения эссе Бродского о ней
Nov 23, 2008
Spider
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
anyone who appreciates poetry
This is a wonderful introduction to the brilliant work of Marina Tsvetaeva - the translations do an admirable job of giving the reader a glimpse into her mastery of her language, but can not possibly bring forth the lyric quality of her poems, for that they must be heard in Russian
Your name is a -- bird in my hand
a piece of -- ice on the tongue
one single movement of the lips.
Your name is: five signs,
a ball caught in flight, a
silver bell in the mouth
a stone, cast in a quiet pool
makes the splash of your name, and
the sound is the clatter of
night hooves, loud as a thunderclap
or it speaks straight into my forehead,
shrill as the click of a cocked gun.
Your name -- how impossible, it
is a kiss on the eyes on
motionless eyelashes, chill and sweet.
Your name is a kiss of snow
a gulp...more
a piece of -- ice on the tongue
one single movement of the lips.
Your name is: five signs,
a ball caught in flight, a
silver bell in the mouth
a stone, cast in a quiet pool
makes the splash of your name, and
the sound is the clatter of
night hooves, loud as a thunderclap
or it speaks straight into my forehead,
shrill as the click of a cocked gun.
Your name -- how impossible, it
is a kiss on the eyes on
motionless eyelashes, chill and sweet.
Your name is a kiss of snow
a gulp...more
feels like a bad translation.
can anyone confirm?
some of the early poems feel like they have a lot of life.
but the selection mostly leaves something to desire.
it seems to miss the point to select only portions of a longer poem broken into sections.
can anyone confirm?
some of the early poems feel like they have a lot of life.
but the selection mostly leaves something to desire.
it seems to miss the point to select only portions of a longer poem broken into sections.
I am entranced by this woman and how she managed to write such powerful poems in the midst of the chaos that was 1920's Russia. Beautiful, confessional, open, important writing.
Extract:
Two trees want to be with one another,
Two trees, right opposite my home.
The trees are old. The house is old
I am young, or it may well be
I would not pity the trees of others
The smaller one stretches forth its arms,
Like a woman, strains its very utmost -
It is cruel to watch how it strains
To that one, that other one which is
Older, firmer and - who is to know? -
Even more unhappy, it may well be
Two trees: in the flow of sunset
And in the rain, even under snow
Always, always: one to the other,...more
Two trees want to be with one another,
Two trees, right opposite my home.
The trees are old. The house is old
I am young, or it may well be
I would not pity the trees of others
The smaller one stretches forth its arms,
Like a woman, strains its very utmost -
It is cruel to watch how it strains
To that one, that other one which is
Older, firmer and - who is to know? -
Even more unhappy, it may well be
Two trees: in the flow of sunset
And in the rain, even under snow
Always, always: one to the other,...more
2 likes · like · see review
There are some great, biting lines in her poetry that make you sit up and pay attention. None are uplifting, but they aren't dreary either.
Love her so much! but some of my favorite poems were not selected:( hard to find a good edition of her work.
looking forward to Jean Valentine's translations
I've read her work many times and, though Mandelstam and even Akhmatova nose ahead from time to time, she is my favorite Russian poet. I am rereading now thinking of doing a translation of one of her poems for the Compass Translation Award. To do that though, I'll need to find other editions with the original Russian.
Beautiful collection
dark, but great.
Good translation!
Very beautiful, however the english translations do not channel the emotional intensity of the original poems which Tsvetaeva is so well known for. "Poem of the End' -definitely one of my favourites!
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also known as: Марина Цветаева, Marina Tsvetaieva, Marina Tsvetaïeva, Marina Tsvétaïéva, Marina Cvetaeva, Marina Svetájeva.
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (Russian: Марина Ивановна Цветаева; 8 October 1892 – 31 August 1941) was a Russian and Soviet poet. Her work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature. She lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution of 191...more
More about Marina Tsvetaeva...
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (Russian: Марина Ивановна Цветаева; 8 October 1892 – 31 August 1941) was a Russian and Soviet poet. Her work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature. She lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution of 191...more
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“And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we who never let each other sleep above it.”
—
14 people liked it
“I opened my veins. Unstoppably
life spurts out with no remedy.
Now I set out bowls and plates.
Every bowl will be shallow.
Every plate will be small.
And overflowing their rims,
into the black earth, to nourish
the rushes unstoppably
without cure, gushes
poetry ...”
—
8 people liked it
More quotes…
life spurts out with no remedy.
Now I set out bowls and plates.
Every bowl will be shallow.
Every plate will be small.
And overflowing their rims,
into the black earth, to nourish
the rushes unstoppably
without cure, gushes
poetry ...”
