Ahead of Her Time

Visionary artists are often misunderstood and persecuted by their contemporaries. Such was Pushkin’s fate, and such was the fate of his admirer and self-proclaimed heir, Marina Tsvetaeva. Although the lives of these two poets are separated by a century, they share an unusual vitality and directness, along with the circumstances of their tragic lives.

Tsvetaeva’s 49 years (1892-1941) were consistently shadowed by revolution. Her husband, Sergei Efron, was executed for “anti-Soviet activities.” Her daughter Ariadna spent a decade in the gulag. For a large part of her life – in Russia, then abroad, then once again in Russia – Tsvetaeva, like many other great artists before and since, experienced poverty and the neglect of her peers.

Marina Tsvetaeva was born on October 8, 1892. Her father, Ivan Tsvetaev (1847-1913), was a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, as well as a professor of ancient art and history at Moscow University. In 1911, the Museum of Fine Arts (the present-day Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, located near the newly restored Church of Christ the Savior in Moscow) was founded on his initiative.

From her earliest years, the young Marina moved in intellectual circles, rubbing shoulders with some of the most prominent figures in Russian culture – philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, poet Pavel Antokolsky and writer Maxim Gorky. As a child, she visited Italy, Switzerland and Germany with her family, as well as the Crimea, which she fell in love with. Her early education took place at home and included music and language lessons She later attended Moscow’s prestigious Pototskaya and Bryukhnenko schools.

Tsvetaeva began writing poetry practically from the time she learned to talk. In 1910, she published her first collection of poems, Vecherny Albom (Evening Album), which is filled with all the romanticism and idealism of her upbringing. In comparison, Juvenila (1916), is a calmer collection, more pacifist in tone, showing the effects of the First World War on the young poet. Tsvetaeva’s poetry – through all its transmutations – is characterized by high energy and vividness and expresses her free, non-conformist spirit.

Throughout her life, Tsvetaeva was fascinated and inspired by Pushkin and saw herself as his literary heir. In her prose work, My Pushkin, Tsvetaeva wrote, rather immodestly: “I emerged from Pushkin. I am his heir, he is the God and inspiration of my poetry. In him lies the immortality of my poetry because we are both poets from God.”

After her adolescence, Tsvetaeva’s idyllic existence abruptly came to an end. Her husband, Sergei, supported the White Army, which opposed the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. He was forced to emigrate from Russia, and in 1922, Marina joined him abroad. She would spend the next 17 years of her life in self-imposed exile, living in near-poverty in Paris. During her stay in France, she published what is widely considered to be her finest work – After Russia (1928). At the time, this eclectic collection, which contains elements of everything from Russian byliny (epic songs) to the Bible, was poorly reviewed by her peers, who considered it too avant-garde. Tsvetaeva’s last collection – Poems to Czechoslovakia – was published in 1939.

It was during this same year that Tsvetaeva finally returned to the Soviet Union – again following her ailing husband. The couple, along with their children, moved to the town of Bolshevo, where they came under surveillance by the NKVD (the Soviet Union’s infamous secret police). Like so many intellectuals who had lived abroad during the Stalin years, Sergei, and then Ariadna, were arrested and accused of anti-Soviet activities – basically of being foreign spies. Sergei was shot, and Ariadna was sent to a prison camp in Komi. Interestingly, recent evidence from Soviet archives suggests that Sergei, and possibly Ariadna, were also linked with the NKVD, making the accusations levelled against them doubly ironic.

Tsvetaeva was evacuated from Moscow to Yelabuga (in present-day Tatarstan) during the first months of the Second World War. In despair over the loss of her family and possibly torn by ambivalence over her sexuality (many scholars believe that Tsvetaeva was a lesbian), Marina sank deeper and deeper into depression. In that remote town, it was impossible to find either bread or work, and in the end, Tsvetaeva hanged herself. To this day, the question remains as to whether or not her suicide was “assisted” by the Soviet authorities.

After her death, Tsvetaeva as an author was “brushed under the rug” and semi-forbidden, to be rediscovered only during perestroika. Now, however, like her famous predecessor, Pushkin, Tsvetaeva has gained her deserved place among the pantheon of great Russian poets. The town of Yelabuga, where she died, has opened a Tsvetaeva museum and her works are well-loved, and often quoted, in Russia.

Nota bene: A masterful biography of the poet, Marina Tsvetaeva, The Double Beat of Heaven and Hell, by Lily Feiler, has been published by Duke University Press.

Brief Items

October’s calendar is rich in anniversaries to suit every taste.

On October 2, Russia celebrates the 80th anniversary of the sculptor Mikhail Anikushkin, who was awarded the title of People’s Artist of the USSR – the highest recognition bestowed in the former Soviet Union. The sculptor owes his fame primarily to his monument to Pushkin in St. Petersburg, for which he received the State Prize in 1958. As the sculptor himself described this work: “I  did not want to emphasize his decorative side or the romantic character of his clothing, which wrapped him beautifully, but rather to depict his civil qualities ... I wanted to depict on the pedestal a person as if he were alive ... a young, earthly human being.”

Pushkin was to dominate Anikushkin’s work throughout his life. He executed statues of Pushkin to decorate the Pushkinskaya metro station in St. Petersburg and the foyer of the Moscow University building. Anikushkin also designed a monument to Pushkin in Canada in collaboration with the sculptor T. Shevchenko.

October 4 marks 125 years since the death of the Russian writer, ethnographer and linguist Vladimir Dal (1801-1872), author of the famous Dal dictionary, which remains an invaluable source of sayings and old dialects to Russian linguists even today. Among his other achievements, Dal, a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, wrote essays under the pen name of Kazak Lugansky and compiled a collection of Proverbs of the Russian People.

October  6 marks another literary anniversary – but rather a low-profile one. On this date 125 years ago, the Silver Age poet Mikhail Kuzmin (1872-1936) was born. Sadly, Kuzmin has been largely overlooked to this day, not because of the quality of his poetry, but rather due to the specter of Soviet censorship. As the eminent Russian literary critic Sergei Shumikhin wrote: “Mikhail Kuzmin wrote beautiful prose and poetry, music and drama, and also excelled at translating classical works, along with the works of French and Italian authors  ... he  has always been highly valued by connoisseurs of Russian literature. As to the so-called “general reader,” he has yet to discover the work of this master who deserves a place next to the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century.” Kuzmin’s most prominent poems include the cycle of verses Alexandrian Songs (1921) and The Trout Breaks the Ice (1925-1928).

This month Russians will also recall two of Kuzmin’s more famous colleagues  – Marina Tsvetaeva and Ilya Ilf. Even though the former was a lyric poet and the latter a satirical writer, both shared the tragic fate so typical of literary talents in Soviet Russia. The stature of these two literary figures (born 105 and 100 years ago, respectively) prompted us to dedicate separate pages to each.

On October 14, Russia pays homage to one of her most famous, Admiral Fyodor Ushakov (1744-1817), on the 180th anniversary of his death. This great admiral went down in history thanks to his victories over the Turkish fleet at the Battle of Kerch (1790), the island of Tendr (1790) and the Cape of Kaliakry (1791). Ushakov was one of the founders of the Russian Black Sea fleet, which he commanded beginning in 1790. He held progressive views on naval military strategy, was a quick learner and borrowed the best  in contemporary experience from both his allies and enemies. He developed new maneuvering tactics which he would later implement during the war with the Turks. In 1944, a medal and an order of Ushakov were introduced in the Soviet navy. A bay in the southeastern Barents Sea, as well as a cape on the northern coast of the Barents Sea, bear the name of this great admiral.

– Valentina Kolesnikova