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.