GC: The ending is as unusual as the rest of the poem. One expects more... but it's kind of a puzzle-poem anyway. One take-away is, "I'm myself, sui generis. Like Gretta Garbo in the movies--"I want to be alone!" But, more fundamentally, I think it's a poem about a lack of "solidity," a sense of floating in a strange, no-longer familiar world. I think that's a universal in our modern world--with accelerated change, "future shock" everywhere.
VP: Yes, "alienation." It was written in 1939, after Tsvetaeva returned from exile in Paris, Prague and Berlin (where she lived in increasing poverty) to Russia, with glowing expectations. But she found only the Stalinist regime and the same humiliation as in the West. Her husband was arrested (and later shot by the NKVD), and everyone, including her "friends," left her for fear of persecution. Russia remained for her only as the bushes of rowan.
GC: Your note can add much to the appreciation of this poem. Didn't Akhmatova have a similar fate--husband killed, son imprisoned?
VP: Yes.
GC: I like the poem. It's whimsical, tight. I don't think it's a "great" poem--as I feel about Jeffers' poem--but I'm now curious about Tsvetaeva's work, and I want to read more. When I was 14, I read an anthology of English and American poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer, called "Great Poems." There was much biographical content about the poets, and that material enhanced the poems for me. Later, when I was a grad student in English, I learned about the so-called "New Critics" of the 20th Century--who were adamantly against any kind of biographical references or insights into the nature of the work. As a young Instructor and Prof, I briefly held to that view, but I soon began to develop my present stance: All insights are valid, no matter where derived--biographical, historical, and, of course, what we get from "close reading." I wouldn't over-emphasize any kind of input--biographical or otherwise. I think the important thing is to converse with the work, bring all we can to it and, then, listen to it!
VP: Yes! Empathy matters, especially if you are a translator. It's hard to articulate my reverence for Marina Tsvetaeva. All the ardor of pain, history, Russia is contained in her beautiful verse. To me, she's the greatest Russian poetess. An heir to Blok and Mayakovsky. After she returned from exile to Stalin's Russia, her life went from bad to worse. She committed suicide on a summer day in 1941. You can look her up on Wikipedia.
GC: I just looked her up. She looks delicate, almost pixieish, and sad. "Still waters run deep."
VP: Generally, "historical" accounts of poets and artists, or philosophers, have an educative and enobling effect on the public. And carry more truths than the "straight" history of an era. My father wrote a fascinating account of this era (1920s - 1990) through the eyes of scientists and poets. (Not historians and politicians.) I have edited a Russian edition and published his (and my) memoirs in 2006, in a centenary book. BTW, you can see more translations of Tsvetaeva's work at http://www.stihi.ru/avtor/transpoetry, or her original poems in Russian at http://www.klassika.ru/stihi/cvetaeva/. (I hold the copyright for my translations.)
GC: I think we've made a good beginning for "Prologues #3." If you keep making good beginnings, eventually, you wind up at your goal! (At least that's the hope!) I think we have convergent views, and we're focusing on things worth saying--covering a broad spectrum of politics and the arts, and marking how they intertwine. Our "prologues"are difficult to compose... but I think they are well worth it! It is something new! A new approach to criticism: Instead of one guy pontificating, there are two cerebral chaps engaged in hermeneutics! And various truths may be told this way!
VP: Hermeneutics postulate that the meaning/understanding is being exposed, or attained, only through dialogue (or "multi-logue," I'd say). For the last few days I've been reading and translating some interesting stuff on hermeneutics in Gadamer's "Truth and Method," and particularly its liaison with language, culture and history. I found many supporting ideas in this exciting book. For example, it explained how a single line of a poem can convey the meaning better than the whole text.
GC: I've been re-reading Rilke recently--one of my favorite poets--and that's certainly true of his work in "Duino Elegies" and elsewhere. There are lines-- with spectacular images, concepts, wording and other features--that seem to actually detract from the totality of the long composition.
VP: And, more generally, the totality of poetry is such that some old poets can speak through the ages, while others have only a fleeting, immediate effect. As Gadamer writes, understanding occurs through interpreting, and every translator is an interpreter par excellence. For me, as a translator, it became clear: we can understand others through the totality of language. And language is equal to a dialogue, and dialogue is equal to Being. You see, all life is a dialogue. Thus, all wars can be seen as a failed dialogue.
GC: I agree! War as "failed dialogue." Let's continue with these themes in our next "Prologue."
VP: We haven't said much about Emily Dickinson, though. We must talk more about her, too! I have thought that she and Marina are like sisters.
GC: She's such a strange, wonderful person! A major intellect in 19th Century America. We'll have to come back to her! This is one of my favorite quotes from her: "Tell all the truth/but tell it slant." Roughly interpreted, that could mean: "Be honest and be interesting!" Most people can't take the truth when it comes at them straight-on, in their face. That's where the artist can work his or her magic. Telling the truth, but telling it slant.
VP: There are lots of reasons why Tsvetaeva appeals to me. Not least, that she wrote socially-minded verse full of bitter irony and force, the verse that we need today. She wrote some stunning "dark" verse. Dickinson did the same. Generally, poetry is dark. Because truth is dark. As Jeffers said: "Consider what an explosion would rock the bones of men into white fragments and unsky the world if any mind for a moment touch the truth." Any great poet feels this danger of "touching the truth." Therefore, too many great poets have been killed or committed suicide.
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