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Reading Suicide: Tsvetaeva on Esenin and Maiakovskii

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Olga Peters Hasty
Olga Peters Hasty*
Affiliation:
Slavic Department, University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

Мне кажется, смерть художника не следует выключать из цепи еґо творческих достижений, а рассматривать как последнее заключительное звено.

Osip Mandel’ shtam

The death of a poet is a theme Marina Tsvetaeva addressed frequently both in poetry and in prose. The list of poets whose deaths underwent Tsvetaeva’s artistic scrutiny is varied and includes Aleksandr Pushkin, Aleksandr Blok, Sergei Esenin, Rainer Maria Rilke, Vladimir Maiakovskii, Maksimilian Voloshin, Andrei Belyi, and Nikolai Gronskii. A number of notable lyric cycles and some of Tsvetaeva’s finest prose essays emerged as homage to deceased poets. The function of these works extends beyond commemoration and entails the elaboration of Tsvetaeva’s definition of lyric poetry and her exploration of poetic responsibility.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , Winter 1991 , pp. 836 - 846
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Inc. 1991

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References

1. Tsvetaeva, Marina, Izbrannaia proza, 2 vols. (New York: Russica, 1979) 2:27 Google Scholar. Tsvetaeva’s prose will be cited according to this edition.

2. I have dealt with this definition in “Poema vs. Cycle in Tsvetaeva’s Definition of Lyric Verse,” Slavic and East European Journal 32, no. 3 (1988), and “Time and Process in Marina Tsvetaeva’s Definition of Lyric Verse,” in Time and Process (The Study of Time VII) (International Universities Press, forthcoming). Each poem is understood to evolve out of those preceding it and to shape those that follow.

3. Tsvetaeva, Marina, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, 5 vols. (New York: Russica, 1983) 3:136.Google Scholar Tsvetaeva’s poetry will be cited according to this edition.

4. The association of blood, sacrifice, and poetry is an important one in Tsvetaeva’s explorations of the role of the poet. Thus, for example, in “Tvoia smert”‘ (1927) she describes Rilke’s death: “Istek khoroshei krov’iu dlia spaseniia nashei, durnoi. Prosto—perelil v nas svoiu krov’” (1:266). In the poem “Vskryla zhily: neostanovimo” (1934) Tsvetaeva equates life, gushing blood, and poetry.

5. Maiakovskii, Vladimir, Polnoe sobrante sochinenii, 13 vols. (Moscow: Oosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1959) 12:95–96 Google Scholar. AU citations of Maiakovskii’s works are from this edition.

6. This phrase appears in connection with Maiakovskii’s death in the essay “Epos i lirika sovremennoi Rossii,” where Tsvetaeva writes, “mog pokonchiť s soboi iz za chastnoi liubvi tak zhe prosto, kak togda rezalsia v karty” (2:22).

7. Slovar, ’ russkogo iazyka, 4 vols. (Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1959) 3:573–574 Google Scholar. This work is the source of cited definitions.

8. The correct version is in Belyi, Andrei, Peterburg (Moscow: Nauka, 1981), 218 Google Scholar:

Краски огненного цвета
Брошу на ладонь,
Чтоб предстал он в бездне света
Красный как огонь.