'Send me a Garden'

Biography and poetry of Marina Tsvetayeva (1892-1941)

by Michael David Coffey

Moscow 1912

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetayeva was born in Moscow in 1892, the daughter of a Professor of Art History and her mother, a classical pianist. Her poetry is like an intimate personal diary reflecting the intensity and passion of her desires and experiences. Tsvetayeva's poetry is imbued with the magic of Old Russia: a mystical, magical place of fairy tales and folk music. In its original Russian her poetry is a musical paradise, in its beautiful rhythms and dramatic statements. Marina Tsvetayeva strove to write in an 'ageless' style, constantly inventing new ways to express herself in poetry. Many years after her death her verses are still fresh and vibrant. In fact her styles might best be described as postmodern. She was a major innovator of new poetry and prose forms. A naturally gifted artist, her poems arose from her soul uninhibited and with a dramatic flourish.

Moscow 1913

Ever paler grows the azure island: childhood.
On the deck we stand alone.
That, oh Mama, was your legacy to us:
Sadness.

Marina Tsvetayeva was born in the comparative comfort of a middle class environment where intellectualism and artistic sensibilities prevailed. Her father founded an art museum that later became the world renowned Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Her mother, a concert pianist provided the musical ambience that played such a powerful role in her poetic styles. But most of all it was her love of Old Russia: the birch forests , folklore and gypsy music. Her childhood in Tarusa among the peasants and the simple life left an indelible impression. Her desire to be buried in Tarusa reflected the deep love she sustained all her life for that time and place. Unfortunately, like many other artists historical events of an enormity still difficult to fully comprehend took over. In her early adulthood there was the revolution and the Bolsheviks. She lost a daughter to starvation in those troubled days. There was the civil war and the subsequent demise of the White Russian forces. There was the life of her class as an emigre in Paris. And the conflict, the heart searing pain of a Russian in exile, someone who loved Russia to the depths of its mystical origins.

Perhaps he pounced round corners
like a sinuous cat.
I wonder suddenly: did
he even play the violin?

You having loved me (1923)

Moscow 1939

For this hell,

For this gibberish
Send me a garden
In my old age.

In my old age,
In my old misfortunes:
Working - years,
Backbreaking - years . . .

In my old age
Dog's reward - a bone,
Burning years -
A cool garden . . .

It was the time of the great purges in Russia. Millions perished under Stalin's cruel fist. Her husband was arrested and executed. Her daughter was sent to a labor camp and only released many years later. In 1941 in desperate attempt to return to her beloved Tarusa and on the edge of starvation, penniless and with no hope of finding work, Marina Tsvetayeva hanged herself. She was buried in the cemetery at Yelabuga, though her grave is not marked. But her soul lives on in the intensely spiritual poetry that reflects the pain and suffering of so many lost in the dramatic events of Russian history in this millennium. Her soul journeyed through half a century of torment and untold trials searching always for that ultimate love and understanding of life. She never found it but in her poetry is an everlasting epitaph to her brave endeavors, her journey into life's deepest caverns where only the very brave dare venture.

I refuse   to howl.
Among the sharks of the plain
I refuse to swim   down
where moving backs make a current.