1. Tsvetaeva left the Soviet Union in 1922; she spent a short time in Berlin, then three years in Prague. She lived in Paris and its suburbs from 1925 until 1939, the year she returned to the Soviet Union.

2. Tsvetaeva, Marina to Teskova, Anna, 18 February 1935, in Marina Tsvetaeva, Spasibo za dolguiu pamiat’ Hubvi…: Pis'ma k Anne Teskovoi 1922-1939 (Moscow, 2009), 254.Google Scholar All translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own.

3. The correspondence between Tsvetaeva and Gronskii, as well as related poems and essays, has been published as Tsvetaeva, Marina and Gronskii, Nikolai, Neskol'ko udarov serdtsa: Pis'ma 1928-1933 godov, ed. Brodovskaia, Iu. I. and Korkina, E. B. (Moscow, 2004).Google Scholar

4. Tsvetaeva to Teskova, 21 November 1934, in Tsvetaeva, Spasibo za dolguiu pamiat' liubvi…. 248.

5. See Crone, Anna Lisa and Smith, Alexandra, “Cheating Death: Derzhavin and Tsvetaeva on the Immortality of the Poet,” Slavic Almanac: The South African Year Book for Slavic, Central and East European Studies 3, nos. 3-4 (1995): 1–30;Google Scholar Fokht, Tamara, “Derzhavinskaia perefraza v poezii M. Tsvetaevoi,” Studia Russica Budapesdnensia 2–3 (1995): 231-36;Google Scholar Lotman, Iuri, “M. I. Tsvetaeva. ‘Naprasno glazom kak gvozdem … , ‘ “ O poetakh i poezii: Analiz poeticheskogo tektsa (St. Petersburg, 1996);Google Scholar Alyssa Dinega, .A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind of Marina Tsvetaeva (Madison, 2001).Google Scholar

6. On the relationship between text and image in these works, see Barzilai, Maya, “On Exposure: Photography and Uncanny Memory in W.G. Sebald's Die Ausgewanderten and Austerlitz,” in Denham, Scott and McCulloh, Mark, eds., W. G. Sebald: History, Memory, Trauma (New York, 2006), 205-18;Google Scholar Petit, Laurence, “Speak, Photographs?: Visual Transparency and Verbal Opacity in Nabokov's Speak, Memory,” Nabokov Online Journal 3 (2009):Google Scholar n.p.; Warehime, Marja, “Photography, Time and the Surrealist Sensibility,” in Bryant, Marsha, ed., Photo-Textualities: Reading Photographs and Literature (Newark 1996), 43–56.Google Scholar

7. Beliakova, I.Iu. et al., eds., Slovar’ poeticheskogo iazyka Mariny Tsvetaevoi, 4 volumes (Moscow, 1996-2004).Google Scholar

8. See Newhall, Beaumont, The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present (New York, 1982), 129.Google Scholar

9. The notion that poetry and photography represent spaces that “provide respite from plot's pull” was articulated by Melissa S. Feuerstein in her course syllabus for “Poems and Photographs,” a freshman seminar at Harvard in 2008. See also Feuerstein, Melissa S., “Object Poems” (PhD diss, Harvard University, 2006).Google Scholar On the concept of the “poetry of witness,” see Milosz, Czesław, The Witness of Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1983);Google Scholar Forché, Carolyn, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (New York, 1993).Google Scholar

10. On postmortem photography and its legacy, see Ruby, Jay, Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in America (Cambridge, Mass., 1995)Google Scholar; Linkman, Audrey, Photography and Death (London, 2011).Google Scholar

11. Barthes, Roland, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Howard, Richard (New York, 1981), 97.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., 96. Emphasis in the original.

13. Sontag, Susan, On Photography (New York, 1977), 15.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., 154.

15. See Bazin, André, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” in Trachtenberg, Alan, ed., Classic Essays on Photography, (New Haven, Conn., 1980), 237-44.Google Scholar In addition, Jean-Luc Nancy's musings on the connections between photography and the ancient practice of making death masks are explored in Louis Kaplan, “Photograph/Death Mask: Jean-Luc Nancy's Recasting of the Photographic Image,” Journal of Visual Culture 9, no. 1 (2010): 45-62.

16. Most readers will recall Benjamin's writing on the problems arising from modern mechanical reproduction and its stripping of the aura from a work of visual art. In fact, his writing on photography is quite nuanced, and he allows for the presence of aura in photography, especially in its early forms such as the daguerreotype. For a full discussion of some of the paradoxes present in Benjamin's definition of the aura vis-à-vis photography, see Duttlinger, Carolin, “Imaginary Encounters: Walter Benjamin and the Aura of Photography,” Poetics Today 29, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 79-101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Benjamin first defined the aura this way in his “Little History of Photography,” in Benjamin, Walter, Selected Writings, ed. Jennings, Michael W., 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1999), 2:518.Google Scholar

18. Benjamin, Walter, “A Short History of Photography,” in Trachtenberg, ed., Classic Essays on Photography, 202.Google Scholar See also Cadava's, Eduardo Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History (Princeton, 1997)Google Scholar, a scholarly exploration of the way Benjamin employs the language of photography to formulate his conception of history.

19. For more on the exigency of the photographic image, see Agamben's, Giorgio essay “Judgment Day,” in Giorgio Agamben, Profinations, trans. Jeff Fort (New York, 2007), 23–28.Google Scholar Agamben concentrates primarily on the relationship between gesture and photography, invoking Louis Daguerre's famous early photograph Boulevard du Temple (1838) as an ideal visualization of the Last Judgment: an ordinary gesture captured by the camera becomes a touchstone that “collects and condenses in itself the meaning of an entire existence.“ Agamben, 24. For Agamben, photography engenders a cycle of loss and return in that it “grasps the real that is always in the process of being lost, in order to render it possible once again.” Ibid., 27.

20. Tsvetaeva, Marina to Bakhrakh, Aleksandr, 30 June 1923, in Aleksandr Bakhrakh, “Pis'ma Mariny Tvetaevoi,” Mosty 5 (1960): 306.Google Scholar Emphasis in the original. Quoted in Hasty, Olga Peters, Tsvetaeva's Orphic journeys in the Worlds of the Word (Evanston, 1996), 108.Google Scholar Translation by Hasty.

21. Tsvetaeva, Marina to Shakhovskoi, D. A., 30 December 1925, in Tsvetaeva, Marina, Neizdannyepis'ma, ed. Struve, G. P. and Struve, N. A. (Paris, 1972), 350.Google Scholar In Hasty, , Tsvetaeva's Orphic Journeys, 108.Google Scholar Translation by Hasty.

22. Hasty, 108-9.

23. Ibid., 109.

24. Tsvetaeva, to Teskova, , February 1918, in Tsvetaeva, Spasibo za dolguiu pamiat' liubvi…. 109.Google Scholar

25. Stephanie Sandler makes a similar argument about the importance of visual perception in Tsvetaeva's essays on Aleksandr Pushkin and especially in “Natal'ia Goncharova.“ See Sandler, Stephanie, Commemorating Pushkin: Russia's Myth of a National Poet (Stanford, 2004), 214-65.Google Scholar

26. Tsvetaeva, Marina, Sobranie sochinenii v semi tomakh, 7 vols. (Moscow, 2007; hereafter SS), 5:248.Google Scholar The essay “Poet o kritike” was first published in Blagonamerennyi, no. 2 (Brussels, 1926).

27. Chernova-Sosinskaia, Ariadna, “V odnom dome ‘na Smikhove,“’ in Mnukhin, L. and Turchinskii, L., eds., Marina Tsvetaeva v vospommaniiakh sovremennikov, vol. 2, Gody emigratsii (Moscow, 2002), 82.Google Scholar

28. Tsvetaeva, Marina, Neizdannoe: Svodnye tetradi, comp. and ed. Korkina, E. B. and Shevelenko, I. D. (Moscow, 1997), 34.Google Scholar

29. Tsvetaeva, Anastasiia, Vospominaniia v dvukh tomakh, 2 vols. (Moscow, 2008), 1:41–42.Google Scholar

30. SS 1:215.

31. Another example of a family photograph finding its way into poetry is layered intertexually in Tsvetaeva's first long poem Charodei (The Enchanter, 1914) about the literary critic and family friend Ellis (L. L. Kobylinskii). Anna Saakiants details how the photograph of Tsvetaeva's mother in her casket which hung in Ivan Tsvetaev's office in the Three Ponds Lane house is figured in Ellis's 1914 book of poems Argo in the poem “V rai“ (In Heaven); the image is in turn referenced in Tsvetaeva's long poem to Ellis. See Saakiants, Anna, Zhizri Tsvetaevoi: Bessmertnaia ptitsa—feniks (Moscow, 2000), 62–64.Google Scholar

32. Efron, Ariadna, O Marine Tsvetaevoi: Vospominaniia docheri (Moscow, 1989), 107.Google Scholar Emphasis added.

33. In the introduction to Saakiants, Anna and Mnukhin, Lev, eds., Marina Tsvetaeva: Fotoletopis’ zhizni poeta (Moscow, 2000)Google Scholar, Saakiants and Mnukhin describe the surviving Tsvetaeva iconography as “unfortunately, scant.” Saakiants and Mnukhin, 4. Many family photos were lost or destroyed following Anastasiia Tsvetaeva's 1937 arrest, and very few originals remain. The Rilke photos are part of the Pasternak Family Archive, and the Gronskii photos are housed at the RGALI.

34. Paloff, Benjamin, review of Letters: Summer 1926, 2nd ed., by Pasternak, Boris, Tsvetaeva, Marina, and Rilke, Rainer Maria, ed. Pasternak, Yevgeny, Pasternak, Yelena, and Azadovsky, Konstantin M., trans. Margaret Wettlin, Arndt, Walter, and Gambrell, Jamey, The Slavic and East European Journal 47, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. On the theme of meetings in dreams, see in particular Catherine Ciepiela's thorough analysis of Tsvetaeva's poema “S moria” (From the Sea, May 1926), which features an imagined mutual dreamscape meeting with Pasternak. Catherine Ciepiela, The Same Solitude: Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva (Ithaca, 2006), 178-87. The poema concludes with a transformation of facial features into ecstatic imagery that moves beyond the world of visual encounters:

36. See, for example, Hasty, Tsvetaeva's Orphic Journeys, 134-223; Dinega, A Russian Psyche, 129-177; Shevelenko, Irina, Literaturnyi put’ Tsvetaevoi (Moscow, 2002), 339-47;Google Scholar Boym, Svetlana, Death in Quotation Marks: Cultural Myths of the Modern Poet (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 224-29;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Ciepiela, The Same Solitude, 143-48, 158-60, 191-93; and the texts and commentaries to the English and Russian volumes Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva, Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters: Summer 1926, ed. Yevgeny Pasternak, Yelena Pasternak, and Konstantin M. Azadovsky, trans. Margaret Wettlin and Walter Arndt (San Diego, Calif., 1985) and Ril'ke, Rainer Mariia, Pasternak, Boris, Tsvetaeva, Marina, Pis'ma 1926 goda (Moscow, 1990).Google Scholar For information on Rilke's experiences and travels in Russia, see Tavis, Anna A., Rilke's Russia: A Cultural Encounter (Evanston, 1994).Google Scholar

37. As Ciepiela has noted, this word was coined by Tsvetaeva to describe instances of missed meetings. See Ciepiela, 82.

38. Rilke, Rainer Maria to Tsvetaeva, Marina, 3 May 1926, in Pasternak, , Tsvetaeva, , Rilke, , Letters, 80.Google Scholar

39. See Shumov, Petr Ivanovich, Russkii parizhanin: Fotografii Petra Shumova, comp. Pierre Serge Choumoff (Moscow, 2000).Google Scholar

40. Tsvetaeva, to Rilke, , dated “Ascension Day 1926,” in Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Rilke, Letters, 95.Google Scholar Rilke was close to Rodin and wrote a monograph on the sculptor (Auguste Rodin, 1903) that was illustrated with Shumov's photographs.

41. It is important to note that Tsvetaeva bends the truth somewhat in the letter to Rilke quoted above. While she had several portraits taken at Shumov's studio in Paris in 1925, Shumov himself was not present at the time; the photos were taken by her friend Vladimir Sosinskii, who was working for Shumov. What is important here—and this is evidenced by Tsvetaeva's exuberant letters of thanks to Shumov for the portraits—is not that Shumov took the photo but that her portrait was taken by Shumov's camera. Tsvetaeva's letters of thanks to Shumov are reproduced in Shumov, Russkii parizhanin, 6-7. Further evidence of Tsvetaeva's lack of direct familiarity with Shumov is the fact that the postcard she sent him from London on 24 March 1926 is addressed in error to “Aleksandre“ rather than “Pierre” (Petr Ivanovich) Chumoff, and begins “Dorogoi Aleksandr Ivanovich!“

42. Rilke to Tsvetaeva, 17 May 1926, in Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Rilke, Letters, 100.

43. Tsvetaeva: “Versty vyshli. Potemkin chetvewstishiiami. V kontse primechaniia. Nashi portrety na odnoi stranitse. [Versts is out. A venerable Potemkin made of quatrains. Commentary at the end. Our portraits share the same page.]” Marina Tsvetaeva and Boris Pasternak, “Dushi nachinaiut videt'“: Pis'ma 1922-1936 goda, ed. E. B. Korkina and I. D. Shevelenko (Moscow, 2004), 255.

44. Dinega, 136.

45. Tsvetaeva, to Rilke, , 14 June 1926, in Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Rilke, Letters, 143.Google Scholar

46. Tsvetaeva to Pasternak, 9 February 1927, in SS 6:269. Emphasis in the original.

47. Another reference to optical connections unifying space and time comes in a letter dated 28 July 1926 in which Rilke uses the metaphor of the telescope lens to describe the circumstances of Tsvetaeva's fortuitous entrance into his life in the form of her first letter: “But you, Marina, I did not find with the free-ranging naked eye; Boris placed the telescope and focused my gaze on you… in my eyes, directed upward, first there was just space and then suddenly you appeared in my field of vision, pure and strong, in the focus of the rays of your first letter.” Rilke to Tsvetaeva, 28 July 1926, in Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Rilke, Letters, 194.

48. SS 3:134.

49. Another photograph as elegiac image-object plays a role in Tsvetaeva's farewell to Prague. In several letters to Anna Teskova in 1938 and 1939 Tsvetaeva makes impassioned pleas for Teskova to send her a photographic image of the statue of the knight Bruncvik on the Charles Bridge in Prague that she admired and wrote about when she lived there in 1922-25. She is clear that a drawing or painting will not suffice; the image must be a photograph (“fotografiiu, ne snimok s kartiny!!!“). Tsvetaeva to Teskova, 24 October 1938, in Tsvetaeva, Spasibo za dolguiu pamiat’ liubvi…, 347. It is the photograph's indexical nature, the fact that the image bears witness to a particular time and place from which it was derived, that enables the poet to connect spiritually to Prague and all that it represents. For more on the photograph of the Prague knight, see Molly Thomasy Biasing, Writing with Light: Photo-Poetic Encounters in Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, and Brodsky (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, expected 2014), chap. 1.

50. SS 2:296

51. See, e.g., Dinega, , 270n28; Datskevich, N. G. and Gasparov, M. L., “Tema doma v poezii Mariny Tsvetaevoi,” Zdes’ i teper', no. 2 (1992): 121.Google Scholar

52. SS 2:295.

53. Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Stereoscope and the Stereograph,” Atlantic Monthly, 1 June 1859, at www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1859/06/the-stereoscope-andthe- stereograph/303361/ (last accessed 11 November 2013).

54. Frank, Adam, “Emily Dickinson and Photography,” The Emily Dickinson Journal 10, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55. See also Tsvetaeva's layering of a photographic image and the natural world in her poem inspired by a photograph of Anatolii Shteiger framed by the Alps, the first text in her 1936 Stikhi sirote (Poems to an Orphan): of mountains- / Is just a frame for this fleeting face. / Today I parted the ivy / On the granite of the castle.]” SS 2:337. See also Shevelenko, 432.

56. For a description of family daguerreotypes in the Tsvetaeva home, see Tsvetaeva, A., Vospominaniia, 1:42.Google Scholar

57. Vladislav Khodasevich also makes use of the photographic double exposure trope in his Sorrentinskie fotografii (Sorrento Photographs, 1926), which juxtaposes the author's émigré present with a previous life in St. Petersburg/Petrograd. For more on this work, see Margarita Nafpaktitis, “Multiple Exposures of the Photographic Motif in Vladislav Khodasevich's ‘Sorrentinskie Fotografii,'” The Slavic and East European Journal 52, no. 3 (Fall 2008): 389-413.

58. See also Khodasevich's long blank verse poem of the same name (Dom, 1919), which also treats the image of an abandoned home, a vacant space that houses specters of the past.

59. SS 2:295.

60. Tsvetaeva's habit of sending photographs of herself, her children, and her travels to friends, family, and other correspondents is, of course, extremely commonplace. Nonetheless, for Tsvetaeva there may have been particular literary antecedents associated with this practice. For instance, Tsvetaeva read each and every volume of Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time); she read the first volume, Du côté de chez Swann (Swann's Way), in 1928. Proust's work is full of photographic motifs and exchanges of photographs between characters. For a detailed examination of the theme of photography in Proust's life and works, see Brassaï, , Proust in the Power of Photography, trans. Howard, Richard (Chicago, 2001);Google Scholar Baldwin, Thomas, “Photography and Painting in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu,” in Grigorian, Natasha, Baldwin, Thomas, and Rigaud-Drayton, Margaret, eds., Text and Image in Modern European Culture (West Lafayette, 2012), 76–87;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Larkin, Aine, “Photography in Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu,“ in Grigorian, , Baldwin, , and Rigaud-Drayton, , eds., Text and Image, 88–100.Google Scholar For more on Tsvetaeva and Proust, see Shevelenko, 352-55.

61. “My companion [N. P. Gronskii] is an eighteen-year-old well-bred pup who teaches me everything he learned in high school (oh, there's so much!). And I teach him all I get from my notebook. After all, writing is not something you learn by just living your life. We trade schools. Except that I am self-taught. But both of us are excellent hikers [otlichnye khodoki].” Tsvetaeva to Teskova, 10 April 1928, in Tsvetaeva, Spasibo za dolguiu pamiat' liubvi…. 115.

62. Both Svetlana El'nitskaia and Alyssa Dinega Gillespie have analyzed the alternation of nurturing and erotic imagery in Tsvetaeva's poem to Gronskii “Iunoshe v usta“ (Into the Mouth of the Youth). See Svetlana El'nitskaia, “'Sto ikh, Igr i mod!’ Stikhi Tsvetaevoi N. Gronskomu, 1928 g. Chast’ pervaia,” Stat'i o Marine Tsvetaevoi (Moscow, 2004), 109-30; Dinega, 182-85.

63. Tsvetaeva to Gronskii, 2 April 1928, in Tsvetaeva and Gronskii, Neskolko udarov serdtsa, 10. Sergei Iakovlevich (Efron) was Tsvetaeva's husband; “Mur” was the nickname of Tsvetaeva's son, Georgii.

64. Tsvetaeva to Sergei Efron, 9 September 1928, in Tsvetaeva, Marina, Neizdannoe: Sem'ia; Istoriia vpis'makh, ed. Korkina, E. B. (Moscow, 1999), 337-38.Google Scholar

65. The photographs are located in RGALI, fond (f.) 1190-2-256. Gillespie has noted that the cycle of poems was written after the fortieth day following Gronskii's passing. See Dinega, 187. The photographs, however, were taken within the forty-day period during which, according to Orthodox belief, the soul still inhabits the earth. This fact is important because the central theme of Nadgrobie is the search for the soul of the departed among his earthly possessions.

66. Tsvetaeva, in Tsvetaeva and Gronskii, Neskolko udarov serdtsa, 206.

67. In an article on Tsvetaeva's elegiac mode in this cycle and Derzhavin's in his “Na smert’ kniazia Meshcherskogo,” Tamara Fokht sees a connection between these lines and Derzhavin's “Gde stol byl iastv, tarn grob stoit [Where a feast was once spread, there a coffin lies],” which she argues are united by the theme of an “interrupted feast” (prervannoe zastol'e), with Gronskii's as a “creative feast” (tvorcheskoezastol'e). Fokht, 234. See also Tsvetaeva's 1933 cycle of five poems Table (Stol), a paean to the writing desk:

SS 2:309. For more on Derzhavin's influence on Gronskii and Tsvetaeva, see Crone and Smith, “Cheating Death.“

68. Tsvetaeva, in Tsvetaeva and Gronskii, Neskol'ko udarov serdtsa, 206.

69. Kraski here are not simply “paints” but a reference to icons, as in the title of a work by Evgenii Trubetskoi on Russian icon painting, Umozrenie v kraskakh: Vopros o smysle zhizni v drevnerusskoi religioznoi zhivopisi (Moscow, 1916), which Tsvetaeva may very well have been familiar with. I am grateful to Irina Shevelenko for bringing this fact to my attention.

70. There are two versions of the legend of the Acheiropoieton, the image of the Savior “not made by hand.” In Eastern Orthodox Christianity this figure is called the Mandylion, and its origin is considered to be the Image of Edessa, a holy relic sent in a letter from Jesus to King Abgar of Edessa. In Roman Catholicism, the icon's origin is traced to the Veil of Veronica, which was imprinted while Jesus was on the road to Calvary. Lidov, A. M., “Sviatoi mandilion: Istoriia relikvii,” in Evseeva, L. M., Lidov, A., and Chugreeva, N., eds., Spas nerukotvornyi v russkoi ikone (Moscow, 2005), 12–39.Google Scholar

71. Tsvetaeva, in Tsvetaeva and Gronskii, Neskol'ko udarov serdtsa, 206.

72. Ibid.

73. Tsvetaeva, to Teskova, , 23 April 1935, in Tsvetaeva, Spasibo za dolguiu pamiat' liubvi…, 265 Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.

74. Bazin, , “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” in Trachtenberg, ed., Classic Essays on Photography, 244.Google Scholar

75. Carter, Sarah Anne, “Picturing Rooms: Interior Photography 1870-1900,” History of Photography 34, no. 3 (August 2010): 255.Google Scholar

76. Bachelard, Gaston, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston, Mass., 1969), 17, quoted in Carter, “Picturing Rooms,” 255.Google Scholar

77. Tsvetaeva, A., Vospominaniia, 1:733-34.Google Scholar

78. For more on the practice of spirit photography, see Chéroux, Clément et al., eds., The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult (New Haven, 2005).Google Scholar

79. Tsvetaeva, in Tsvetaeva and Gronskii, Neskol'ko udarov serdtsa, 207.

80. Brodskii, Iosef, Brodskii o Tsvetaevoi (Moscow, 1997), 78.Google Scholar

81. The photographs were preserved and given to RGALI by Anastasiia Tsvetaeva, who included a handwritten note detailing precisely when and where they were taken.

82. See, for example, Krauss, Rosalind, Livingston, Jane, and Ades, Dawn, eds., L'Amour Fou: Photography and Surrealism (New York, 1985)Google Scholar and Birgus, Vladimir, ed., Czech Photographic Avant-Garde, 1918-1948 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).Google Scholar

83. Sergei Efron's father, Iakov Konstantinovich Efron, died from illness in Paris emigration in 1909. Shortly thereafter, in 1910, his youngest son Konstantin committed suicide. When his mother, Elizaveta Durnovo-Efron, discovered her son had killed himself, she hanged herself the same day.

84. The nameplate was salvaged by German Tsvetaeva scholar Marie-Louise Bott just before the grave was apparently scheduled to be dismantled due to the expiration of funds for the plot. It is now housed in the Tsvetaeva House Museum in Moscow. The inscription reads:

For more on the history and dramatic fate of this nameplate, see M. L. Bott, “Pamiati Mikhaila Leonidovicha Gasparova: Peredacha nadgrobnoi plity Efronov v Dom-muzei Mariny Tsvetaevoi,” in Beliakova, I. Iu., ed., Liki Mariny Tsvetaevoi: XIII mezhdunarodnaia nauchno-tematicheskaia konferenstiia (9-12 oktiabria 2005 goda); Sbornik dokladov (Moscow, 2006), 581-90.Google Scholar

85. Marina Tsvetaeva to Vladimir Sosinskii, 15 June 1938, in SS 7:91.

86. See, for example, Tsvetaeva's letter to Sergei Efron's sister, Elizaveta Iakovlevna Efron, dated 7 February 1939, in which she comments on the grave and the enclosed images. Tsvetaeva, Neizdannoe: Sem'ia, 384.

87. Tsvetaeva wrote a number of early poems in which she meditates on her own death and imagines encounters with her alter ego in a posthumous time and place. These include “Idesh’ na menia pokhozhii…” (1913), “Nastanet den'—pechal'nyi govoriat!…“ (1916), and “Tebe—cherez sto let” (1919). While we should not assume that thoughts of death were necessarily at the forefront of Tsvetaeva's mind at this time, readers who are not familiar with her biography should be aware that the poet committed suicide in 1941.

88. Agamben, , “Judgment Day,” in Profinations, 24.Google Scholar