What do you think?
Rate this book
The Demesne of the Swans
English, Russian
210 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 1980
About the author
Marina Tsvetaeva
581 books585 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...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 31, 2023
A counterrevolutionary cycle of poems. Romantic ideas and historical images of Russia.
June 22, 2011
This was not what I expected, which doesn't say much, given that I picked the book because of its title. I never imagined it would offer a stark image of a world falling apart.
It might even be more accurate to say it is Marina Tsvetaeva's unsparing lament for the Bolshevik dismemberment of Russia, as she had known it, in the wake of the October Revolution. Her style is spare, direct and forceful, each poem a vivid snapshot. I wish I knew Russian, so as to actually have an opinion on the translation. (For those interested, this is a bilingual edition, with extensive translator's notes.)
Also referred to as "a diary in verse," the volume is composed of sixty-two poems, detailing Tsvetaeva's impressions from 1917 to 1920, the year of the White Army's defeat. If the poem cycle is political, and it is, this arises out of Tsvetaeva's strong personal convictions rather than an explicit desire to create propaganda.
It is, in effect, a very personal chronicle of devastation, seemingly written from inside the belly of a beast in the act of devouring.
It might even be more accurate to say it is Marina Tsvetaeva's unsparing lament for the Bolshevik dismemberment of Russia, as she had known it, in the wake of the October Revolution. Her style is spare, direct and forceful, each poem a vivid snapshot. I wish I knew Russian, so as to actually have an opinion on the translation. (For those interested, this is a bilingual edition, with extensive translator's notes.)
Also referred to as "a diary in verse," the volume is composed of sixty-two poems, detailing Tsvetaeva's impressions from 1917 to 1920, the year of the White Army's defeat. If the poem cycle is political, and it is, this arises out of Tsvetaeva's strong personal convictions rather than an explicit desire to create propaganda.
It is, in effect, a very personal chronicle of devastation, seemingly written from inside the belly of a beast in the act of devouring.
March 10, 2009
I didn't like this translation so much. Some of my favorites were nearly unrecognizable, and lacked the punch I associate with her. Of course, I still don't read Russian. So what do I know?
April 23, 2019
Chronicles the downfall of Imperial Russia until the defeat of the White Army, as translated from a copy of her works left behind in Switzerland before she emigrated back to a Soviet Russia where her husband was executed, her child was sent to a Gulag camp, and Marina eventually committed suicide.
Read
December 2, 2016891.7142 T882d 1980
March 4, 2025
Finished THE DEMESNE OF THE SWANS (1917-1921) by Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941). The collection of 62 poems celebrates and laments the White Guards who fought against the Red armies during the Russian civil war (1918-1920). The swan symbolized for Tsvetaeva the courtly, aristocratic Russia whose values were defended by the Whites. “Happy New Year, Swans’ Demesne!—poor lone / Remnant—valiant soldiers! / Happy New Year—warriors far from home—Pack upon your shoulders.” She writes of the demise of an admired nobleman, Alexey Stakhovich (who could’ve been a model for the Count in Amor Towles’ novel, A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW), “But should a child, in homage, once, grown weary / Of taking cash, hand you a flower—behold, / You’d kiss that tiny hand of hers, as surely / As the Tsarina’s, once, of old.” Her poems were admired by her literary peers for their passion and technique, but she was considered too avant-garde by Russians in exile and too old-fashioned (i.e., she was not sufficiently ideological) by communist censors. Tsvetaeva lived a tragic life—her youngest daughter starved, her husband executed, and she herself overcome with suicidal depression. Her son Georgy died fighting for the Russian Army in 1944. Daughter Ariadna Efron (1912-1975) wrote a memoir of her mother, NO LOVE WITHOUT POETRY.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews