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In the Inmost Hour of the Soul
" .. .1 have no love for life as such; for me it begins to have significance, i.e., to acquire meaning and weight, only when it is transformed, i.e., in art. If I were taken beyond the sea into paradise-and forbidden to write, I would refuse the sea and paradise. I don't need life as a thing in itself." This, written by Tsvetayeva in a letter to her Czech friend, Teskova, in 1925, could stand as an inscription to her life. Marina Tsvetayeva was born in Moscow on September 26, 1892. Her fathel~ a well-known art historian and philolo gist, founded the Moscow Museum of the Fine Arts, now known as the Pushkin Museum; her mother, a pianist, died young, in 1906. Marina began writing poetry at the age of six. Her first book, Evening Album, contained poems she had writ ten before she turned seventeen, and enjoyed reviews by the poet, painter, and mentor of young writers, Max Voloshin, the poet Gumilyov, and the Symbolist critic and poet, Valerii Bryusov. Voloshin and Gumilyov welcomed the seventeen year-old poet as their equal; Bryusov was more critical of her, though he too, in his own belligerent way, acknowledged her talent.
- GenresPoetry
124 pages, Hardcover
First published May 25, 1989
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...
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 27, 2016
In the inmost hour of the soul,
In the inmost one-of the night ...
(The gigantic stride of the soul,
Of the soul in the night)
That hour, soul, reign
Over the worlds you desire.
To rule is the lot of the soul:
Soul, reign.
Cover the lips with rust; snow lightly
Upon the lashes ...
(The Atlantic sigh of the soul,
Of the soul in the night. .. )
That hour, soul, darken
The eyes in which you will rise
Like a Vega ... make bitter
The sweetest fruit, soul.
Make bitter: darken:
Grow: reign.
(1923)
March 17, 2013
I love these translations...
March 14, 2025
adoreeeeeeeee
(the first poem in the collection)
(the last poem in the collection)
You, rushing past on your streets
To some dubious magic you've tasted,
If only you knew how much heat,
How much lifeblood I've already wasted,
How much heroic passion I threw
At a random shadow or rustling...
How each time my heart flamed anew
And spent its powder for nothing.
O trains flying into the night,
Making off with the sleep of the station...
But I know nevertheless that you might
Never answer—if you heard it—the question:
Why are my words so strong and so sharp
To my cigaret's perpetual smolder.
How much gloom and imperiling dark
In the light-haired head on my shoulders.
(the first poem in the collection)
My veins slashed open: unrestrained,
Unrestorable, my life gushes forth.
Hold steady your plates and your bowls!
Each bowl soon will be shallow,
The plates—too flat to contain it.
Up the brim and over
Staining earth dark, nourishing reeds.
Irreversible, unavoidable,
Unrestorable, the poem streams.
(the last poem in the collection)
May 9, 2021
“Poems grow like stars, and like roses—
Like beauty not meant for home.
And to the wreaths and the apotheosis
The same answer: Where are they from?
We sleep—and then, as through the cobbles—
The heavens'-guest and its four petals loom.
O, world, take note! A sleeping bard discovers
The law of star, the formula of bloom.”
“God, I live!—God, it means you haven't yet died!
God, we are allied, you and I.
But you are a glum old father,
And I, a herald with a horn.
God! Sleep in your azure darkness. While I still walk the Earth,
Your house stands. I face the tempests, I am the drummer for your troops.
I am your bugler. It is I who heralds
The coming of evening and of dawn.
God! My love is not a daughter's.
I love you like a son.
Look: my tent keeps glowing
Like an ever-burning shrub.
I will not change places with a seraph. I volunteered for you, God.
Give me time: soon every village
Will learn of the tsar-maiden. Till then—
To others, I am a garret singer,
And you, an old king of clubs.”
Like beauty not meant for home.
And to the wreaths and the apotheosis
The same answer: Where are they from?
We sleep—and then, as through the cobbles—
The heavens'-guest and its four petals loom.
O, world, take note! A sleeping bard discovers
The law of star, the formula of bloom.”
“God, I live!—God, it means you haven't yet died!
God, we are allied, you and I.
But you are a glum old father,
And I, a herald with a horn.
God! Sleep in your azure darkness. While I still walk the Earth,
Your house stands. I face the tempests, I am the drummer for your troops.
I am your bugler. It is I who heralds
The coming of evening and of dawn.
God! My love is not a daughter's.
I love you like a son.
Look: my tent keeps glowing
Like an ever-burning shrub.
I will not change places with a seraph. I volunteered for you, God.
Give me time: soon every village
Will learn of the tsar-maiden. Till then—
To others, I am a garret singer,
And you, an old king of clubs.”
May 11, 2018
Read on of my favorite collections of poetry for the millionth time. I’m gonna go ahead and count it again because I gotta make my 50 books challenge!
January 18, 2022
The war, the war! The incense at the altars,
The chirring spurs.
But I don't give a damn for the tsar's problems
And people's war.
It's as if on a slightly frayed tightrope
I dance to tiny tunes.
A shadow of someone's shade, I am a sleepwalker
Of two dark moons.
* * *
Here, darling, take these rags
That once were tender flesh.
I tore it up, I wore it down -
All I have now are these two wings.
Dress me in your splendor.
Save me and forgive.
Take away to the sacristy
Those poor rotting rags.
* * *
I am. You shall be. Between us - chasm.
I drink. You thirst. All talk is futile.
Ten years - a hundred thousand years
Part us. God dos not build bridges.
Be - This is my commandment. Let me pass
And not disturb your growth with my breathing.
I am. You shall be. In ten years' time
You'll say: I am - I will say: I was.
* * *
Poems grow like stars, and like roses -
Like beauty not meant for home.
And to the wreaths and the apotheosis
The same answer: Where are they from?
We sleep - and then, as through the cobbles -
The heavens'-guest and its four petals loom.
O, world, take note! A sleeping bard discovers
The law of star, the formula of bloom.
* * *
You wanted this. So. Alleluia.
I kiss the hand that strikes me.
I pull to my chest the hand that pushed my chest away.
Stunned, you will head only silence.
So that later, with an indifferent smile, you'd say:
"My woman grows tame."
Not for a day - for centuries
I draw you to my chest, the monk's
Hand, cold until burning,
The hand - O Heloise - Abelard.
In the cathedral thunder: to lash me to death -
You, whip soaring up like white lightening!
* * *
Shaggy star
Rushing nowhere
From terrible where
Stray sheep invading
The gold-fleeced flocks
- Like jealousy -
Shaggy star of the ancients.
* * *
She has neither rights, nor forebears,
Nor a handsome falcon.
She walks on - wrenches away -
So distant!
The gold-winged fire lit
Under her swarthy eyelids.
With her rugged hand
She takes and forgets.
Her skirt untucked,
Scraps laid bare.
Neither wicked, nor kind,
But merely distant.
Neither weeps, nor complains:
Draw her up close - she yields.
With her rugged hand
She gives and forgets.
Then, with the guttural
Sprouting, with the screech...
Take care, O Lord,
Of this distant one.
* * *
You will have your proof - wait! -
That, thrown into the hay,
She needed neither glory, nor
Solomon's treasury.
No, wringing her hands behind her head,
- With a nightingale's throat!
Shulamith begs not for the treasury
But for a handful of red clay.
* * *
The gold of my hair
Lapses into grayness, meekly.
Do not pity me! It has transpired:
My chest has welded all in singing.
Singing - distances are joined
In the country chimney's moans.
Lord! My soul has emerged:
My main and most secret purpose.
* * *
The hour when the kind on high
Bear gifts each to each
(The hour I descend the mountain):
The mountain begins to see.
Plots densely crowd the circle.
Fates draw together: no escape.
The hour I don't see my hands:
The soul begins to see.
* * *
You who loved me with the falsehood
Of truth - and with the truth of falsehood;
Who loved me to the limits
Of the possible - beyond all limits -
You who loved me longer
Than Time - one sweep of an arm!
You no longer love me:
These five words are the truth.
* * *
Squeezed with the hollows
Of existence, in a stupor of backwoods,
Buried alive under the avalanche
Of days, I serve my sentence in life.
My tomb-like, forsaken wintering.
Death: frost on my red lips -
No health other than this
I ask from God and from spring.
The chirring spurs.
But I don't give a damn for the tsar's problems
And people's war.
It's as if on a slightly frayed tightrope
I dance to tiny tunes.
A shadow of someone's shade, I am a sleepwalker
Of two dark moons.
- The war, the war, pg. 2
* * *
Here, darling, take these rags
That once were tender flesh.
I tore it up, I wore it down -
All I have now are these two wings.
Dress me in your splendor.
Save me and forgive.
Take away to the sacristy
Those poor rotting rags.
- Here, darling, take these rags, pg. 13
* * *
I am. You shall be. Between us - chasm.
I drink. You thirst. All talk is futile.
Ten years - a hundred thousand years
Part us. God dos not build bridges.
Be - This is my commandment. Let me pass
And not disturb your growth with my breathing.
I am. You shall be. In ten years' time
You'll say: I am - I will say: I was.
- I am. You shall be., pg. 15
* * *
Poems grow like stars, and like roses -
Like beauty not meant for home.
And to the wreaths and the apotheosis
The same answer: Where are they from?
We sleep - and then, as through the cobbles -
The heavens'-guest and its four petals loom.
O, world, take note! A sleeping bard discovers
The law of star, the formula of bloom.
- Poems grow like stars, pg. 21
* * *
You wanted this. So. Alleluia.
I kiss the hand that strikes me.
I pull to my chest the hand that pushed my chest away.
Stunned, you will head only silence.
So that later, with an indifferent smile, you'd say:
"My woman grows tame."
Not for a day - for centuries
I draw you to my chest, the monk's
Hand, cold until burning,
The hand - O Heloise - Abelard.
In the cathedral thunder: to lash me to death -
You, whip soaring up like white lightening!
- You wanted this, pg. 32
* * *
Shaggy star
Rushing nowhere
From terrible where
Stray sheep invading
The gold-fleeced flocks
- Like jealousy -
Shaggy star of the ancients.
- Shaggy star, pg. 37
* * *
She has neither rights, nor forebears,
Nor a handsome falcon.
She walks on - wrenches away -
So distant!
The gold-winged fire lit
Under her swarthy eyelids.
With her rugged hand
She takes and forgets.
Her skirt untucked,
Scraps laid bare.
Neither wicked, nor kind,
But merely distant.
Neither weeps, nor complains:
Draw her up close - she yields.
With her rugged hand
She gives and forgets.
Then, with the guttural
Sprouting, with the screech...
Take care, O Lord,
Of this distant one.
- The Muse, pg. 49
* * *
You will have your proof - wait! -
That, thrown into the hay,
She needed neither glory, nor
Solomon's treasury.
No, wringing her hands behind her head,
- With a nightingale's throat!
Shulamith begs not for the treasury
But for a handful of red clay.
- You will have your proof, pg. 57
* * *
The gold of my hair
Lapses into grayness, meekly.
Do not pity me! It has transpired:
My chest has welded all in singing.
Singing - distances are joined
In the country chimney's moans.
Lord! My soul has emerged:
My main and most secret purpose.
- The gold of my hair, pg. 70
* * *
The hour when the kind on high
Bear gifts each to each
(The hour I descend the mountain):
The mountain begins to see.
Plots densely crowd the circle.
Fates draw together: no escape.
The hour I don't see my hands:
The soul begins to see.
- The hour when the kings on high, pg. 76
* * *
You who loved me with the falsehood
Of truth - and with the truth of falsehood;
Who loved me to the limits
Of the possible - beyond all limits -
You who loved me longer
Than Time - one sweep of an arm!
You no longer love me:
These five words are the truth.
- You who loved me with the falsehood, pg. 97
* * *
Squeezed with the hollows
Of existence, in a stupor of backwoods,
Buried alive under the avalanche
Of days, I serve my sentence in life.
My tomb-like, forsaken wintering.
Death: frost on my red lips -
No health other than this
I ask from God and from spring.
- Squeezed with the hollows, pg. 105
September 8, 2022
Sister
"Hell and Haven are not enough
They already dying for you..."
A primeira leitura achei incômodo e difícil de me conectar com o lirismo metafísico extremamente íntimo de Tsvestaeva,quase imcompreensivel. Ela se utiliza de conto de fadas e realismo,mitologia grega e sagas nórdicas , figuras emblematicas da Bíblia ou mesmo Shakespeare para compor seus poemas que talvez pra muitos seja imcompreensivel ou aleatório. Por fim fiquei encantada com seu estilo, sim é muito intimo da sua alma mas o que ela oferece a quem lê mesmo que não chegue a ser tão profundo quanto a sua alma poeta, enfeitiça com seu ritmo.
Meu poema favorito: "Its not fated"
"Hell and Haven are not enough
They already dying for you..."
A primeira leitura achei incômodo e difícil de me conectar com o lirismo metafísico extremamente íntimo de Tsvestaeva,quase imcompreensivel. Ela se utiliza de conto de fadas e realismo,mitologia grega e sagas nórdicas , figuras emblematicas da Bíblia ou mesmo Shakespeare para compor seus poemas que talvez pra muitos seja imcompreensivel ou aleatório. Por fim fiquei encantada com seu estilo, sim é muito intimo da sua alma mas o que ela oferece a quem lê mesmo que não chegue a ser tão profundo quanto a sua alma poeta, enfeitiça com seu ritmo.
Meu poema favorito: "Its not fated"
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews