The body code in Marina Tsvetaeva’s poem “A sad day will come, they say!”
A sad day will come, they say!
They will reign, they will repay, they will burn out,
– Cooled off by other people’s dimes –
My eyes, moving like a flame.
And - the double who groped for the double -
A face will appear through the light face.
Oh, finally I will be worthy of you,
The beauty is a wonderful belt!
And from afar – do I envy you too? –
He stretches out, crossing himself in confusion,
Pilgrimage along the black path
To my hand, which I will not withdraw,
To my hand, from which the ban has been lifted,
To my hand that is no longer there.
To your kisses, O living ones,
I won't object to anything - for the first time.
I was enveloped from head to toe
The beauty is a wonderful board.
Nothing will make me blush anymore,
Today is Holy Easter for me.
Along the streets of abandoned Moscow
I will go, and you will wander.
And not one will be left behind on the way,
And the first lump will crash on the coffin lid, -
And finally it will be resolved
A selfish, lonely dream.
And from now on nothing is needed
To the newly deceased boyar Marina.
The body and the corporeal are a significant sphere of culture and, accordingly, a special element of the poetics of an artistic text: the corporeal can mean different meanings, it is not asemantic, and is not equal to itself. The body and its organs play an extremely important role in the poetics of the so-called “historical avant-garde,” to which the work of M. Tsvetaeva belongs. At first glance, the semantics of the body in the analyzed poem by Tsvetaeva is traditional for the Christian tradition; it can be described in the same words with which E. Faryn described the interpretation of the body in Tsvetaeva’s poetic cycle “Insomnia”: “<…>“I” gradually loses its corporeality and approaches the status of an angel-like disembodied being (“like a seraphim,” “I am a heavenly guest”).” Individually, Tsvetaeva’s invariant motives are not such alienation from one’s own body, but the absorption of the world into oneself (“shell nature” of the “I”) and the interpretation of the sensory principle as an integral property inherent in the mythological nature of the “I”.
Indeed, in the poem “A sad day will come, they say!” the previous state of passion, indicated by the “flame” of hot (now "cooled down) eyes and the “belt” (“the belt” is associated with inaccessibility, chastity or virginity - cf. the symbolism of untying the belt in ancient poetry), contrasts the current dispassion, “pretty” achieved in death. The dispassionate goodness acquired by the heroine can be interpreted as a variant of “the most essential semantics of renunciation of gender in Tsvetaeva’s poetic system.” Endowing the hand of the lyrical heroine with a sign of non-existence (“to my hand, which no longer exists”) is a means of designating precisely such an alienation of the “I” from my own body, which has become insensitive and therefore unreal, at least in comparison with the previous, pre-death state . The body, transformed by death, acquires signs of holiness. First of all, this property is expressed in the opposition “face - face”: Church Slavonicism “face” in this context, in the description of the burial and next to the mention of Easter, is endowed with sacred connotations; “face” is an image, an icon and the face of a saint illuminated by the divine spirit. The synonym for the word “icon” – “image” – is encrypted in the lexeme “grace,” perceived as an occasional derivative of the image-icon: “Oh, finally I will be honored with you, / A beautiful belt of prettiness!”; “I was enveloped from head to toe / A beautiful cloth of beauty.” The use of the word “face” in Tsvetaeva’s poetry and in other cases is associated with the semantics of transformation, “thinning” of the flesh, detachment from the earthly world and its passions: “Lips gently brighten, and the shadow is golden / Near the sunken eyes. It was the night that lit / This brightest face, - and from the dark night / Only one thing darkens in us - our eyes” (“After a sleepless night, the body weakens...” from the cycle “Insomnia”). Kissing the hand of the deceased is obviously endowed with signs of application to the relics of the saint: it is no coincidence that those who see off the deceased lyrical heroine are named pilgrims: “Pilgrimage along the black path.”
Such body code semantics may seem trivial; The only thing that is not trivial in it is the self-definition of the lyrical heroine as a saint. However, in fact, the mechanism of meaning generation in a poem is much more complex, and the meanings conveyed through the bodily code are internally contradictory and ambivalent.
First of all, new ( sacred) the body acquired by the lyrical heroine is not fully hers, does not belong to her: the hand “is no longer there,” which means that in an existential sense, her body is now gone. The iconographic face of a saint is thought of as an expression of the unchangeable, eternal, divine, that is, the essential. And in Tsvetaev’s text, the “face” is called the “double” of the “face” of the living heroine - duality does not mean essential identity, but only a repetition of the similar or the same thing, and is associated with usurpation and substitution. M. Tsvetaeva endows “face” with the epithet “light”, which has undoubted positive connotations, associated with freedom from matter, from carnal heaviness; traditional expectation would rather require that such a feature be inherent in the “face.” Deprived of the epithet “light,” in relation to “face,” “face” is perceived as its antonym, as something heavy. The heavy face evokes associations with a mask, including a death mask. The mask is foreign in relation to the face and to the “I”. However, the text also contains indications of the possibility of a traditional interpretation of the relationship between earthly flesh and transfigured flesh. “Light” can also have pejorative connotations, like lightweight. A bleed through The “face” through the “face” allows us to interpret the mortal flesh of the “I” only as a shell for the true essence. The “light face” is the flesh thinning in death, through which the unchanging, eternal face appears. However, it seems somewhat unexpected that the flesh/face serves as a shell for another flesh/face, and not for the soul, as would be the traditional case. Tsvetaevskaya’s heroine seems to be endowed with a double body – before and after death.
The lexeme “groped” when applied to “face” also feels unexpected. This word, denoting tactile sensations, is associated with blindness: a blind person, one who is deprived of sight, gropes for something. And indeed, the “face” in Tsvetaeva’s poem is blind: after all, he does not have eyes that have “burnt off”; they are replaced by cold and “foreign” nickels. The transformation of the body of a saint, its incorruption in the Christian tradition is associated with enlightenment. Meanwhile, in the poem “A sad day will come, they say!” The “face” is more dark than light. The semantics of darkness, non-light and pejorative connotations associated with the death and burial of the heroine are obvious in the epithet “black” from the following stanza: “He stretches out, crossing himself in confusion, / Pilgrimage along the black path.”
Light, which in the poetry of M. Tsvetaeva has a high value meaning, sacred in its own way, is presented as an attribute of the lyrical “I” with a luminous gaze; example: I am the eye of light in the poem "Trying a Room". According to the observations of E. Faryno, M. Tsvetaeva is characterized by the oppositions “eye - eye” and “eye - pupil”, in which the first element receives the connotation “sacred”, and the second – “demonic”.
However, in Tsvetaeva’s poetry, blindness and blindness can also acquire a positive meaning of detachment from the external, superficial, vain; it expresses the “I”’s gaze inward: “On a bed of lies / For those who have folded the great lie of contemplation, / For those who see inside - a date with the knife” (“ Eurydice to Orpheus” [Tsvetaeva II; 183]; blindness is the metaphorical equivalent of the poet’s higher vision: “What should I do, blind man and stepson, / In a world where everyone is both father and sighted” (“What should I do, blind man and stepson ..." from the series "Poets").
Death in the poem by M. Tsvetaeva “A sad day will come, they say!” endowed with dual, ambivalent semantics. It can be interpreted as the liberation of the spiritual principle. Physical, carnal death itself is paradoxically associated with resurrection; it is called Easter: “Today is my holy Easter.” The writing of the poem was indeed timed to coincide with Easter 1916, and this event is not a purely biographical circumstance, but a textual factor: the date of writing was deliberately indicated by the author. This metaphorical “Easter” of the lyrical heroine evokes associations with the true Easter - the Resurrection of Christ and therefore acquires connotations of defeated, overcome, non-absolute death. “The beauty of the beautiful board”, endowed with such shades of meaning as a new, transformed body, alien to passions, in the light of this Christological parallel, correlates with the funeral shroud of Christ: this is the cloth in which the body is wrapped (“from head to toe”). In addition, it is probably associated with the veil of the Mother of God, just as the belt is associated with the vestments of the Ever-Virgin Mary. Plath in the poem “A sad day will come, they say!” also a metaphor for the body, as in the poem “I will not torture you about your ways” from the “Magdalene” cycle, the heroine’s body is likened to the shroud in which the body of Jesus Christ taken from the cross was wrapped: “I was naked, and you waved me / Body - like surrounded by a wall” (II; 222). Implicitly, this image also contains a parallel with the symbol of the Mother of God - the Unbreakable Wall. (In other contexts, Tsvetaeva’s “veil” can mean a person’s body - rejected, discarded in death: “For those who have married the last shreds / of the Veil (no lips, no cheeks!..)” - “Eurydice to Orpheus.”)
In the penultimate stanza of the poem, thanks to the grammatical construction of the sentence, the funeral procession, in which the dead body is an object, and not the subject of action, appears as the journey of a living heroine: “Through the streets of abandoned Moscow / I will go, and you will wander.” A neutral, normative construction would be different: they'll take me. The motive of the heroine’s involvement in the world of the living, and not the dead, is also created thanks to the grammatical parallelism of constructions describing the buried heroine and the living people seeing her off. The expression “selfish, lonely dream” in the verses “And finally will be resolved / Selfish, lonely dream” is a variation of the traditional metaphor “life is a dream, death is an awakening,” which also indicates the relativity of death and its possible perception as some kind of good , liberating from the illusory claims of the egoistic earthly “I”.
But at the same time, the death spoken of in this poem can also be interpreted as the destruction of the “I.” This is indicated not only by the mention of faded eyes ( mirror of the soul), the gap between the “face” of the living and the “face” of the dead heroine and the alienation from one’s own body, metonymically designated by the “hand that no longer exists.” Eternal peace and dispassion can be interpreted not only as the spiritual state of the saint, but also as the insensibility of the deceased, the dead body. The posthumous body of the lyrical heroine, her “I,” does not belong to her. It is no coincidence that only the body is spoken of, but not the soul of the deceased: the implied soul is either already outside the body or has ceased to exist. At the very least, the heroine’s “I”—passionate and therefore unthinkable outside the body—was destroyed. If the remaining body is endowed with certain features of holiness, otherworldliness, eternity/incorruptibility, then in an existential sense it is not her body. Death is both transformation and destruction of the body. Separating the soul and body, it leads to destruction, erasure of the “I” and to the emergence disembodied body, disembodied flesh. Initially, the heroine seems to be striving for liberation from passions: “Oh, finally I will be worthy of you, / A beautiful belt of beauty!” But the state she has acquired turns out to be either unconditional death, or the peace and insensibility of a new, different body, to which another “I” corresponds: through the duality of bodies, two different “I” are designated.
This bodily and mental/spiritual duality corresponds to the dual nature of the temporal structure of the text. Death/transformation is then presented as an event in an imaginary future: “The day will come”; "They will reign<…>my eyes"; “a face will appear”; "It will stretch<…>pilgrimage"; “I won’t mind”; “won’t make you blush”; “I’ll go”; “And the first lump will crash on the lid of the coffin”; “And finally the selfish, lonely dream will be resolved,” then like an event that took place in the recent past: “I was enveloped from head to toe / A beautiful cloth of beauty.” The grammatical forms of the present tense in the lines “To my hand, from which the ban has been lifted, / To my hand, which is no more,” have a perfect meaning, indicating death as having recently occurred. The perception of one's demise as having happened in the past seems to reflect the point of view of the “I” who has passed into eternity; the earthly “I” thinks of this death as belonging to the future. In the present tense of the final verses “And from now on / The newly deceased boyar Marina needs nothing,” the opposition “past - future” is removed, respectively, the earthly and otherworldly, posthumous “I” here acquire a certain conditional unity, being designated by the proper name of the heroine and the author. It is significant that the semantically highlighted part of the poem - the last stanza, ending with the final pointe - is a description not of liberation, not of the transformation of the heroine’s body, but of its burial: “And the first lump will crash on the coffin lid, - / And finally it will be resolved / Self-loving, lonely dream. / And from now on / the newly deceased boyarina Marina does not need anything.” Easter the lyrical heroine is not resurrection, but insurmountable death. The parallel with Christ, but not resurrected, but led to crucifixion, can be traced in the last line of the poem: just as the disciples turned away from the Savior, so those who accompany the heroine on her final journey do not all reach the grave: “And not one will be left behind along the way.” In contrast to Christ, Tsvetaeva’s heroine does not and will not resurrect: her Easter - this is her death.
Significant is the replacement in the last line of the personal pronoun of the first person “I” and the forms derived from it “mine”, “mine” with the expression “Bolyarynya Marina”: this replacement simultaneously means the alienation of “I” from itself (looking at oneself from the outside) and non- existence, disappearance of "I".
So, death in M. Tsvetaeva’s poem is presented, on the one hand, as a transformation, on the other, as a transition into oblivion. In the first interpretation of metaphysical or existential irony, signs of death and destruction are exposed, which turn out to be false and untenable. In the second interpretation, tragic irony envelops the images of resurrection (Easter) and transfiguration. Such ambivalence is inherent in Tsvetaeva’s text in another case: the kissing of hands is endowed with dual semantics. This is an erotic kiss, a kiss on the hand of a fan (“You” as He, the only one, kisses that would have embarrassed the heroine in life), and kissing relics/icons.
The transformation/destruction of the lyrical heroine in death, presented in the poem “A sad day will come, they say!” as if in a compressed form, it combines several options for the relationship between “I,” soul and body, characteristic of Tsvetaeva’s poetry. The interpretation of death as the separation of soul and body, leading to non-existence, to disembodiment, is presented in the first and second poems from the “Tombstone” cycle. Neither the body (bone) buried in the earth, nor the soul ascended to the heavenly spheres embody or preserve the deceased “I”: “No, neither of the two: / The bone is too bone, the spirit is too spirit”; “Not you - not you - not you - not you. / Wha? no matter what the priests sing to us, / That death is life and life is death, - / God is too God, a worm is too worm”; “Indivisible between corpse and ghost!” (II; 325–326). M. Tsvetaeva, polemicizing with Derzhavin’s spiritual ode “God,” where a person is thought of at the same time as God(that is, the spiritual principle) and worm(bodily principle, weakness, mortality), argues that “God” and “worm”, spirit and dead flesh in their separation are in no way involved in the “I” of man. At the same time, we are talking not about denying the immortality of the soul, but precisely about the fact that it is not the “I” of the deceased.
However, along with the interpretation of death as the transition of the “I” into absolute non-existence, Tsvetaeva’s lyrics contain an interpretation of the true life of the “I” as non-participation in the material, “corporeal” world: death in this case is thought of as liberation: “Or maybe the best victory / Over time and by gravity - / Walk so as not to leave a trace, / Walk so as not to leave a shadow // On the walls... /<…>/ Disintegrate without leaving ashes // On the urn...” (“Sneak through...”). Not leaving a trace in the material world, including after death, is thought of not as non-existence, but as true being. Death, then, must be the quintessence of liberation.
A similar interpretation of death as liberation, as a desired disincarnation, is given in the cycle of poems “Jairus’s Daughter,” which polemically “rewrites” the Gospel story about the resurrection of a dead girl by Christ. For Tsvetaeva, resurrection is not a good thing, but an evil or a rash and inappropriate act (cf. a similar transformation in her work of the myth about the arrival of Orpheus in Hades to bring Eurydice out of the kingdom of death): “In the vastness of the cut - / Loss of the body, / Posthumous through . // Girl, you can’t hide / That the bone wanted / From the bone apart” (II; 96). Death is conceived here as liberation, the loss of the body, which the flesh strives for and craves ( bone). Death is interpreted and described as a transformation of the flesh, its transformation into a thin, permeable matter (“through” here is occasionalism, noun). Dead flesh is endowed with a sign of special intense vitality - a tan: “It will not move from the road / Sheer. – / That of Eternity / Immortal tan” (II; 97). The same image of a mortal-immortal tan is found in the poem “On a maiden’s fluff, tender...”, written at the same time as “The Daughter of Jairus”: “On a girl’s fluff, tender - / Death with a silver tan” (II; 97). The paradoxical convergence of death and tanning is motivated by the interpretation of death as burning and self-immolation (cf. in the lyrics of M. Tsvetaeva, the self-identification of “I” with Joan of Arc, burned at the stake).
The traditional concept of the body as the opposite of spirit and soul, apparently dating back to the Platonic and Neoplatonic and related Gnostic philosophical systems, is presented in the poem “Alive, not dead...”: “In the body as in a hold, / In itself like in prison. // The world is walls. / The way out is an axe. /<…>(Only poets / In bones - like in lies!) // No, we can’t go for a walk, / Singing brothers, / In a body like in a cotton robe / Father’s robe. // We stand for the best. / We languish in the warmth. / In the body - like in a stall. / In yourself - like in a cauldron. // We don’t accumulate mortal things / Splendors. / In the body – as in a swamp, / In the body – as in a crypt, // In the body – as in an extreme / Exile. - Wasted away! / In the body – as if in a secret, / In the temples – as in a vice // An iron mask” (II; 254).
Living flesh is endowed with the signs of remains, a skeleton: “Only poets / In bones - as in lies!” This is the prison of the “I” (at least the sublime “I” of the poets), and the “I” in this case is apparently identical with the soul. The idea of some kind of unity, fusion of body and soul is not simply rejected. Such an idea is presented as a common, everyday (=philistine) and, probably, as a false (=actor’s) understanding: “(“The world is a stage,” / The actor babbles.) // And he was not lying, / A lame-legged jester. / In the body – as in glory, / In the body – as in a toga” (II: 254). Moreover, such an understanding is interpreted as demonic, diabolical: the actor is called “bumpy”, lame; and according to mythological beliefs, a lame-legged devil. In the medieval popular consciousness, the actor was involved in the devilish, “shadow” world, and the word “jester” in colloquial speech can still be used as a euphemism replacing the lexeme “devil”. Wed. examples from V.I. Dalya: “A jester and a thief, a joker, a devil.” Fool take him! Well, screw it! || all kinds of undead, brownie, goblin, water<…>. || Jester, horse paralysis, attributed to an unfriendly brownie, if the horse is not suitable for the yard (cf. the jester’s spiny legs in the poem by M. Tsvetaeva. - A.R., A.B.). He's already drunk to the point of jokes, to hell. It was not a buffoon (not a devil) who poked (planted, pushed, dug), he got himself in! Jester (demon), fool, play and give it back again! (sentenced after losing something).”
A close interpretation of the body and “I” is expressed in the poem “- She sang like arrows and like moraines...”: “- She sang! – and the whole mattress wall / The world couldn’t stop me. / For she snatched one / Gift from the gods... run! // Sang like arrows. / Body? / I don’t care” (II; 241). Here the opposition “body – soul (I)” is replaced by the oppositions “body – singing (song)” and “body – running”, and singing and running are attributes of the “I” in its non- and non-corporeality. Singing and running are thought of as “overcoming” physicality.
A different version of the relationship between body and soul is contained in the poem “Quite: I’m eaten up by you...”, which completes the “Table” cycle. Body and soul are co-natural, isomorphic to each other. A soul endowed with rough vital corporeality is the soul of a tradesman, a layman. The death of the average person is presented in the traditional cultural code, subjected to Tsvetaeva’s individual transformation. This separation of soul and body, however, is illusory. The soul of the average person is “hypercorporeal”: “A capon instead of a dove / Flipping! - soul at autopsy” (II; 314). The body of a tradesman is a kind of shell in which an equally carnal “soul”—a capon—is hidden. His body is like a pie from which live birds flew out at Trimalchio’s feast in Petronius’ Satyricon. The opposition of the concept is significant pigeon, endowed with spiritual and sacred connotations (symbol of the Holy Spirit), capon, deprived of them. With the help of the supposedly spiritual (“soul”), the bodily or, more precisely, the non- and extra-spiritual is encoded here. On the contrary, in the case of the death of the lyrical heroine, the “I” - the creator, the poet, the isomorphism of soul and body is expressed in the fact that the body is endowed with the metaphorical attributes of the soul and angel as an incorporeal being ( wings). Similarly, in the poem “Soul,” the poet’s soul is endowed with the attribute of “six-wingedness” inherent in the seraphim (here the allusion to Pushkin’s poem “The Prophet” is obvious): “Six-winged, welcoming, / Prostrate among the imaginary! – existing, / Not strangled by your carcasses / Du – sha” (II; 164). In the poem “Quite: I’m eaten up by you...” the body denotes the soul, bodily nudity does not indicate itself, but the opening, “exposure” of the soul in the body: “And they will lay me naked: / Two wings as a cover” (II; 314) .
The contradiction between the interpretation of death as a transition into oblivion in the “Tombstone” cycle and its interpretation in a number of other poems by M. Tsvetaeva as liberation is probably imaginary. In the “Tombstone” cycle and, above all, in the poem “In vain with an eye like a nail...” death is seen from an external point of view, in its significance for the one who remains to live. From this point of view, the departure of a person (another) from this world is perceived as complete destruction. But from the internal point of view (the deceased, the passing), dying is not the complete erasure of the “I”, but its release, the acquisition of higher freedom and peace.
The ambivalent semantics of the body (as an element, a contrast to the “I”, and as the quintessence of the “I”) in Tsvetaeva’s poetry is associated with the fact that the body can be endowed with both a sign of anti-spirituality and spiritual content. Actually, we can talk about the existence of two different concepts in Tsvetaeva’s texts body. The peculiarity of the poem “The day will come - sad, they say!” is the opposition of two tel“I”, while none of them is endowed with unambiguous evaluative meanings. The heroine’s loss of passion in death is also devoid of an unambiguous assessment, unlike cases where passion and sensuality are either assessed positively, as a spiritual principle (for example, in “Magdalene”), or negatively, as a kind of incompleteness and inferiority (for example, in the cycle “Praise to Aphrodite”) " and in the poem "Eurydice to Orpheus"). The semantic conflict in Tsvetaeva’s texts, as a rule, occurs between the plane of expression and the plane of content. Thus, in the poem “Eurydice to Orpheus,” “immortality,” or after death, is indicated by a metaphor associated with dying: “With immortality, with a snake bite / A woman’s passion ends” (II; 183). But for all the paradoxical nature of the life of the dead in their “ghostly house,” this posthumous existence is presented here as an undoubted reality, value-wise superior to earthly existence. In the poem “A sad day will come, they say!” There is no such unambiguity, and the content plan is engulfed in a conflict of meanings.
From the book World Art Culture. XX century Literature author Olesina E“My poems... will have their turn” (M. I. Tsvetaeva) Art in the light of conscience The development of Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) as a poet is associated primarily with the Moscow symbolists. The first poetry collection “Evening Album” with the subtitle “Childhood - Love -
From the book To the Origins of the Quiet Don author Makarov A GContemporary witnesses speak. From the huge number of testimonies about the struggle of the Cossacks during the Civil War, which can be found, for example, on the pages of Don newspapers and magazines of those years, we have selected only a few. They concern the most important for our study
From the book Literary Notes. Book 1 ("Breaking News": 1928-1931) author Adamovich Georgy ViktorovichAFTER RUSSIA (New poems by Marina Tsvetaeva) One of my friends, a fan of Pushkin, classicism and clarity “at all costs,” asked me the other day with a barely noticeable smile: - Well, how do you like Tsvetaeva’s new book? It was difficult for me answer the question. I felt in
From the book Quick Looks [New reading of Russian travelogues of the first third of the twentieth century] author Galtsova Elena DmitrievnaTravels during the Civil War: the diary prose of Marina Tsvetaeva Historically, the discourse of absence is supported by Woman: The woman is settled, The man is a hunter, a wanderer […] Roland Barthes. "Missing". Fragments of a lover's speech Love! Love! Where did you go
From the book Demons: A Novel-Warning author Saraskina Lyudmila Ivanovna From the book Selected Works [collection] author Bessonova Marina Aleksandrovna From the book Synthesis of the Whole [Towards a new poetics] author Fateeva Natalya Alexandrovna3.7. The poetics of contradictions by Marina Tsvetaeva[**] Many researchers (O. G. Revzina, L. V. Zubova, Vyach. Vs. Ivanov, M. V. Lyapon) noted paradox as a distinctive principle of the structure of M. Tsvetaeva’s texts. However, at the same time they recognized that Tsvetaeva’s
From the book Roll Call Kamen [Philological Studies] author Ranchin Andrey Mikhailovich“The Bush” by Marina Tsvetaeva and Christian symbolism “The Bush” is an example of double poems, which Tsvetaeva often writes. The two parts are related according to the principle of mirror symmetry: the first talks about the gravitation of the bush towards the lyrical “I”, about the movement of the bush into the poet’s “I”, and
From the book Literature 5th grade. A textbook-reader for schools with in-depth study of literature. Part 2 author Team of authorsReading laboratory What do the “voices” of characters in a work tell us? You already know that in literature characters very often talk to each other. You can find direct speech in literary texts: monologues and dialogues of characters. But we remember that
From the book From a Women's Circle: Poems, Essays author Gertsyk Adelaida Kazimirovna“A sad beginning, a sad day...” A sad beginning, a sad day, How will I carry you through the faded meadows? How can I return the blush to your cheeks? Will I erase the mournful shadow from them? You have been robbed by my unbelief in the morning. And here you wander, withered, a bent old man and tired, having not yet been
From the book Interlocutors at the Feast [Literary works] by Venclova Thomas“The Poem of the Mountain” and “The Poem of the End” by Marina Tsvetaeva as the Old Testament and the New Testament. Tsvetaeva’s two Prague poems are perhaps the culmination point of her work. They belong to the highest achievements in the genre of Russian poem of the 20th century - a genre marked by such milestones as
From the author's bookAlmost a hundred years later: To compare Karolina Pavlova and Marina Tsvetaeva[**] Highly I carry my high rank - Interlocutor and Heiress! M. Tsvetaeva, 1918. There are no new love boats under the moon. M. Tsvetaeva, 1930. Carolina Pavlova and Marina Tsvetaeva - however, in
Even after decades of prohibition and oblivion, this sad day - August 31 - began to be celebrated in Yelabuga as the day of remembrance of the poet. It begins with a memorial service in the Church of the Intercession, where prayers are offered for the repose of the souls of God's servant Marina and her loved ones.
From the temple the path lies to the Peter and Paul Cemetery, where tall pines rustle and the first yellow leaves fall into the still lush green grass. This year August 31st was cool. A gusty wind carried clouds across the sky, among which the sun alternated between hiding and peeking out. There was no rain, but at some point large drops suddenly fell from the sky. Like tears that came and went.
Thoughts about death never left Marina Tsvetaeva either at a young age or in adulthood. They poured out into poems that sounded more appropriately than anywhere else at her grave. Poetic dedications by local poets were also read. A student of the Yelabuga Institute of KFU, Maria Prokhorova, read her poems, written two years ago under the influence of the day of memory of Marina Tsvetaeva, during which a concert of the Kazan Chamber Orchestra “La Primavera” and a performance by singer Yulia Ziganshina was performed near the poet’s monument.
On the last summer day, naive and playful, moths flew, The valley was warmed by the sun. But many years ago, Marina Tsvetaeva, interrupting her earthly path, headed headlong into the dawn. Both sad and bright... Our temple shone with candles, Prayers flew upward for happiness without end. At the monument to her, melodies sounded - The orchestra played for everyone, pouring pain into the hearts. About creative fire, About a beloved mother, About the joy of love And the time of adversity, The wanderings of the soul, The irresistible melancholy He spoke like a sharp edge Piercing the firmament. Now crying, now mourning, now filling with light, The melody drew Invisibly along with it. In romances and poems, Rebellious, dear, Marina, you are alive - We hear your voice.
On this day, fresh flowers were laid at the poet’s grave and monument. Their bouquets also stood near the portraits of Marina Tsvetaeva, installed on easels along the path leading to the Literary Pavilion.
No one represented anyone, and therefore many of the speakers, having brought their gift to the altar of Tsvetaev’s poetry, remained nameless. But some were famous people, such as the Chelny poet Nikolai Aleshkov or the Elabuga poetess Svetlana Savina. Last year, Svetlana Nikolaevna published a small collection called “Dedication to Marina.” It contains poems from different years, including the early 90s, one of which she read on Memorial Day.
What difference does it make to me if I walked here, Where I lived, and who I loved, What I talked about this, about whether this house or the one next to it, Under this hook, or perhaps on that one, Is this the grave where my heart froze? I just strive to the place where I sighed, Where I shook off my life as if it were dust, and said to the world: “Forgive me and let me go. Life pours out like sand from a handful. Multiply by your untruth and live. Will you be happy with this blood?” There is no mausoleum, there is no need for one. There is a chain in the cemetery, not a fence. I would really like to touch the ground. These remains, or maybe those? No matter how many signs you write now, the Slavic soul has only one truth.
Professor of the Elabuga Institute of KFU Daniya Salimova stated that interest in the work of Marina Tsvetaeva continues to grow. According to her, this year alone, 22 thousand scientific papers have been written on its basis and this phenomenon is certainly phenomenal. As well as the fact that Tsvetaeva “gathers” around herself very talented researchers: linguists, literary scholars, philosophers, historians, cultural experts...
“I couldn’t write like Tsvetaeva,” says Professor D. Salimova, “I couldn’t, can’t, and probably no one can.”
On this day, not only Elabuga residents, Chelny residents and members of the literary association “Danko” from the city of Nizhnekamsk, but also Muscovites gathered to honor the memory of the great Russian poet. Oksana Biketova arrived from the capital with her son Vladimir just for a day. We asked her a few questions.
- To pray for her soul on this very day when she tragically passed away, to visit the grave, to ask for forgiveness...
“Such a personal attitude doesn’t happen very often.” Apparently, something connects your life with Tsvetaeva, since you treat her as a very close person?
— Actually, I’ve been familiar with her poetry for a long time. But at some point - it was like a miracle for me - while reading, I received revelation answers to what worried me. And then through her creativity she became very close to me. I started praying for her...
— Sometimes, usually in connection with some dates, there are interesting creative meetings and performances on this day. This time everything was very simple. What impressions will you have from Tsvetaevskaya Yelabuga?
“I will answer with the words of St. Ambrose of Optina: “Where it’s simple, there are about a hundred angels.”
So many of them fell into this abyss,
I'll open up in the distance!
The day will come when I too will disappear
From the surface of the earth.
Everything that sang and fought will freeze,
It shone and burst:
And the green of my eyes and my gentle voice,
And gold hair
And there will be life with its daily bread,
With the forgetfulness of the day.
And everything will be as if under the sky
And I wasn’t there!
Changeable, like children, in every mine
And so angry for a short time,
Loved the hour when the firewood is in the fireplace
They turn to ash
Cello and cavalcades in the thicket,
And the bell in the village...
- Me, so alive and real
On the gentle earth!
To all of you - nothing to me, nothing
who knew no limits,
Strangers and our own?!
I make a demand for faith
And asking for love.
And day and night, and in writing and orally:
For the truth, yes and no,
Because I feel too sad so often
And only twenty years
For the fact that it is a direct inevitability for me -
Forgiveness of grievances
For all my unbridled tenderness,
And look too proud
For the speed of rapid events,
For the truth, for the game...
- Listen! - You still love me
Because I'm going to die.
December 8, 1913 How many of them fell into the abyss,
Yawning away!
There will come a day when I"m gone
On the surface of the earth.
Freezes all that singing and fought,
Shining and torn:
And my green eyes and a soft voice,
And golden hair
And life will be with her daily bread,
With forgetfulness day.
And everything will be - as if under the sky
And it was not me!
Changeable , as children, in each mine
And so long angry,
Who loved the hour, when the wood in a fireplace
Become ash
Cello and cavalcade in a thicket
The bell in the village...
- Me, so alive and present
On gentle earth!
To all of you - that me anything
never known measures
Aliens and theirs?
I appeal to the requirements of the faith
And asking for love.
Both day and night, and written and oral:
For the truth is yes and no,
For what I so often - too sad
Only twenty years
For what I - direct inevitability -
Forgiveness of injuries,
For all my unbridled affection,
And too proud look,
For the speed of rapid events
For the truth, for the game...
- Look! - More love me
For that I will die.
December 8, 1913