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Bells and Cupolas: The Formative Role of the Female Body in Marina Tsvetaeva's Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Sibelan Forrester
Sibelan Forrester*
Affiliation:
Department of German and Russian, Oberlin College
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Extract

Like many other Russian women writers, Marina Tsvetaeva did not merely include women's language and physical experience in her poetry; they were central to her concern with poetry and poetic creation. These elements of her work have in recent years evoked an interest from women readers and feminist scholars of Russian literature which is reflected in the number of studies devoted to aspects of her work. Antonina Gove discusses the presence and chronological development of female roles in Tsvetaeva's poetry; Anya Kroth illustrates the importance of gender and specifically androgyny in Tsvetaeva's construction of a dichotomous world-view. Barbara Heldt's landmark study of women in Russian literature, Terrible Perfection, devotes several pages to Tsvetaeva as an autobiographer and a woman poet liberated from the “split selves” of her predecessors.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , Summer 1992 , pp. 232 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1992

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References

1. Antonina F. Gove, “The Feminine Stereotype and Beyond: Role Conflict and Resolution in the Poetics of Marina Tsvetaeva, Slavic Review 36 (1977): 231-55.

2. Kroth, Anya M., “Androgyny as an Exemplary Feature of Marina Tsvetaeva's Dichotomous Poetic Vision,” Slavic Review 38 (1979): 563–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Heldt, Barbara, Terrible Perfection: Women and Russian Literature (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987), 98–102, 130-43.Google Scholar

4. Svetlana Boym, “The Death of the Poetess,” in her Death in Quotation Marks: Cultural Myths of the Modern Poet (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 191 — 240.

5. One useful study of a woman's use of “male” language in poetry is Antonina Gove, “Gender as a Poetic Feature in the Verse of Zinaida Gippius,” in American Contributions to the Eighth International Congress ofSlavists (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1978), I: 379-407.

6. Helene Cixous, “Difficult Joys,” The Body and the Text: Helene Cixous, Reading and Teaching, ed. Helen Wilcox et al. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), 5-30, esp. 14-18. Nancy K. Miller offers a detailed discussion of ecriture feminine and issues surrounding it in contemporary feminist theory in her book Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), esp. 15-16.

7. M. Tsvetaeva, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy v piati tomakh (New York: Russica, 1980), I: 132.

8. See for example the three poems in the cycle “Moskve,” 1918, ibid., II: 66-67.

9. Jane A. Taubman emphasizes Tsvetaeva's rivalry with Akhmatova in her Life Through Poetry: Marina Tsvetaeva's Lyric Diary (Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1988), 94 ff.

10. M. Tsvetaeva, Izbrannaia proza v dvukh tomakh (New York: Russica, 1979), II: 131-41.

11. Ibid., 133.

12. Ibid., 136.

13. “In Moscow, the church to Mary built in the Kremlin in the fifteenth century and called the Dormition, was regarded as the heart of the capitol. The edifice was the symbol of Mary's protection and power … .” Joanna Hubbs, Mother Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988), 103.

14. Jane A. Taubman, “Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova: Two Female Voices in a Poetic Quartet,” Russian Literature Triquarterly 9 (1974): 355-90.

15. ” …the terminology of ecclesiastic architecture stressed the analogy with the female body. The dome was called the head; the drum, the neck; the gable, the shoulder; and the vaulting below the drum, the bosom. In northern churches, the domes […] received the name of kokoshniki, feminine headdresses. The liturgical analogy of the church edifice as the place within which sky and earth, heaven and humanity, are conjoined suggests too the union of mother and child, male and female, in the context of the maternal body.” Hubbs, 102.

16. This appearance of church architecture may have originated in Tsvetaeva's “conversation” with Osip Mandel'stam at the time. Compare the Moscow cathedrals in his “V raznogolositse devicheskogo khora,” 1916.

17. Homans, Margaret, Beating the Word: Language and Female Experience in Nineteenth-Century Women's Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 22–31.Google Scholar

18. See “Ale,” 2, “Ty budesh’ nevinnoi, torikoi,” Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, I: 166, and the first of the “Stikhi o Moskve,” “Oblaka—vokrug,” ibid., 215.

19. Tsvetaeva's mother made it clear to her daughter that she had wanted a son. See for example “Mat’ i muzyka,” Izbrannaia proza, II: 172-73.

20. Laura Weeks offers two reasons why Tsvetaeva might reject the Jesus-Mary myth in treating her own motherhood: “First, it would have been impossible to reconcile Mary's humility with Tsvetaeva's proud, rebellious persona. Second, the archetype is dependent on the relationship between a mother and her first-born son, while George was Tsvetaeva's third child.” ‘ “I named her Ariadna…': The Demeter-Persephone Myth in Tsvetaeva's Poems for her Daughter,” Slavic Review 49 (1990): 570 n. 9.

21. Sandler, Stephanie, “Embodied Words: Gender in Cvetaeva's Reading of Puskin,” Slavic and East European Journal 34, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. From a 1923 letter to A. Bakhrakh, cited in Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, III: 440.

23. Mary, however, does provide a subtext for the meaning of reproduction throughout Tsvetaeva's career. Thus reproduction and poetic creativity are potentially separate from sexual activity, since Mary is pure mother: “The Virgin in the Catholic Church represents motherhood in its fullness and perfection.” Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976), 192.

24. Tsvetaeva uses the term “angel” for her husband, but this is later, when he is fighting in the White Army.

25. Mary is pure mother, whose only desire is to intercede for those who appeal to her. “The most evident function of the Virgin today is intercession … . Mediation has been the most constant theme of her cult … .” Warner, xxiii.

26. The possibility that Roman Catholic presentation of the Virgin Mary influenced Tsvetaeva should be kept in mind. In her memoirs, Tsvetaeva's sister Anastasiia stressed that the two girls became attached to Catholic rites in their Swiss pension in 1902-1903. A. I. Tsvetaeva, Vospominaniia (Moskva: Sovetskii pisatel', 1983), 130-53, esp. 148.

27. In a 1932 letter to Rilke's daughter, Tsvetaeva claims, “S moei mater'iu … ia ntkogdane razgovarivaiu, ona vsia dlia menia obratilas’ v obraz i vechnost” (I never converse with my mother, for me she has turned entirely into image and eternity). Russkaia mysl', 3885, Literaturnoe prilozhenie 12 (28 June 1991): xi. The strength of the denial suggests that, as elsewhere, this never might contact the opposite extreme, always.

28. See Warner, 256 ff. for Mary's amenability for association with other celestial objects.

29. Tsvetaeva uses the word “chernoknizhnitsa” elsewhere: besides this example, she calls Marina Mniszek “chernoknizhnitsa” in “Dimitrii! Marina! V mire” (Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, I, 213-14); in “Akhmatovoi” (ibid., II, 143, December 1921), she calls Akhmatova “chernoknizhnitsa” four times.In “Ne chernoknizhnitsa! V beloi knige” (III: 30, March 1923), she rejects the term though her self-depiction in the poem would seem to justify its use.

30. See especially “Na kryl'tso vykhozhu—slushaiu,” dated 23 March, and “Govorila mne babka liutaia,” dated 1 April. In “Da s etoi l'vinoiu,” dated both 2 Apriland Palm Saturday (Verbnaia Subbota), Tsvetaeva refers—as she often does—to the Orthodox church calendar. In the poem, however, the speaker asks her girlfriends to bury her without priest or incense.

31. At the end of “Dimitrii! Marina! V mire,” Stikhotvoreniia ipoemy, I: 213-14.

32. In “Koli milym nazovu—ne soskuchish'sia!,” ibid., 223.

33. “Nezdeshnij vecher,” Izbrannaia proza, II: 136. Jane Taubman's Life Through Poetry discusses the issue of Tsvetaeva's rivalry with Akhmatova in detail.

34. The idea that a grain must die in the earth ih order to be reborn occurs in the Bible and folklore. One example resonant for the mother/daughter dynamic between Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova is the Eleusinian mysteries, sacred to Demeter, which involved the planting and “resurrection” of grain. See also Laura Weeks, op cit.

35. This further explains the meaning of the sixth poem in the cycle, “Ne otstat’ tebe! la—ostrozhnik” (Stikhotvormiia i poemy I: 235).

36. The speaker contemplates Akhmatova's dead body in “Eshche odin ogromnyi vzmakh—,” Stikhotvoreniia ipoemy, I: 233 (dated 23 June 1916) and predicts Akhmatova's installation as “bogoroditsa khlystovskaia” in “Na bazare krichal narod,” 236 (dated 27 June).

37. Ibid., 225, dated 26 April 1916.

38. See for example the last two lines of the second poem in the cycle, “Okhvatila golovu i stoiu” (Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, I: 232-33): “la vpervye imenem nazvala / Tsarskosel'skoi Muzy.”

39. See her comments on Pushkin's wife accepting the names Pushkin chose for their children, in “Natal'ia Goncharova. (Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo),” Izbrannaiaproza, I: 300.

40. In Homans's summary, “ … motherhood is an attempt to reproduce the relation of daughterhood.” Homans, op. cit., 27.

41. Compare the 1923 poems “Naklon” and “Rakovina,” Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, III: 89-90.

42. Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, II: 20, dated March 1918.

43. The stressed “o” vowels, alternating rol-/ ro-/ -ol, are accompanied by secondary variations on the sounds 1, i, and s/z: lis’ / ys-1 / iz.

44. Anya Kroth, op. cit., 577-78.

45. This recalls part of Tsvetaeva's 1935 prose piece, “Chert,” Izbrannaia proza, II: 160-61.

46. The resulting permanence of the speaker's dilemma makes the poem an analogy of the poet's uncomfortable position in earthly life.

47. Reference to Judgment ties this poem to Tsvetaeva's 1932 prose work, “Iskusstvo pri svete sovesti,” where she claims that at the Last Judgment, if there is one, she will be cleared (Izbrannaia proza, I: 406). The essay addresses the same problems raised in this poem.

48. Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, I: 199.

49. Ibid., 209.

50. The combination of linear and cyclical elements in the poem recalls the division of poets in Tsvetaeva's later essay “Poets with History and Poets without History” (1933), an article which does not explicitly address the writer's own possession or lack of “a history.” Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh (Moskva: Khudozhestvennaia literature, 1984), II: 394-424.

51. The best-known examples are “la—stranitsa tvoemu peru” (Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, II: 226, dated July 1918) and “Est’ nekii chas—kak sbroshennaia klazha” (ibid., II: 96, dated April 1921).

52. This matrioshka-like structure recalls Tsvetaeva's vision of a terraced paradise and divinity in her 1927 poem “Novogodnee” (ibid., IV: 276-77).

53. Ibid., Ill: 67.

54. The urge to escape from present reality is elegantly described in leva Vitins’ article, “Escape from Earth: A Study of Tsvetaeva's Elsewheres,” Slavic Review 36 (1977): 644-57.

55. As Barbara Heldt says (in “Men Who Give Birth: A Feminist Perspective on Russian Literature,” Discontinuous Discourses in Modern Russian Literature, ed. C. Kelly et al. [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989], 162-64), death in childbirth in 19th and early 20th century Russia was more than a convenient way of disposing of a literary heroine. Given Tsvetaeva's own family mythology, death in childbirth is the extreme case of a child abandoned by her mother.