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" .. .1 have no love for life as such; for me it begins to have
significance, i.e., to acquire meaning and weight, only when it is
transformed, i.e., in art. If I were taken beyond the sea into
paradise-and forbidden to write, I would refuse the sea and
paradise. I don't need life as a thing in itself." This, written by
Tsvetayeva in a letter to her Czech friend, Teskova, in 1925, could
stand as an inscription to her life. Marina Tsvetayeva was born in
Moscow on September 26, 1892. Her fathel a well-known art historian
and philolo gist, founded the Moscow Museum of the Fine Arts, now
known as the Pushkin Museum; her mother, a pianist, died young, in
1906. Marina began writing poetry at the age of six. Her first
book, Evening Album, contained poems she had writ ten before she
turned seventeen, and enjoyed reviews by the poet, painter, and
mentor of young writers, Max Voloshin, the poet Gumilyov, and the
Symbolist critic and poet, Valerii Bryusov. Voloshin and Gumilyov
welcomed the seventeen year-old poet as their equal; Bryusov was
more critical of her, though he too, in his own belligerent way,
acknowledged her talent."
" .. .1 have no love for life as such; for me it begins to have
significance, i.e., to acquire meaning and weight, only when it is
transformed, i.e., in art. If I were taken beyond the sea into
paradise-and forbidden to write, I would refuse the sea and
paradise. I don't need life as a thing in itself." This, written by
Tsvetayeva in a letter to her Czech friend, Teskova, in 1925, could
stand as an inscription to her life. Marina Tsvetayeva was born in
Moscow on September 26, 1892. Her fathel a well-known art historian
and philolo gist, founded the Moscow Museum of the Fine Arts, now
known as the Pushkin Museum; her mother, a pianist, died young, in
1906. Marina began writing poetry at the age of six. Her first
book, Evening Album, contained poems she had writ ten before she
turned seventeen, and enjoyed reviews by the poet, painter, and
mentor of young writers, Max Voloshin, the poet Gumilyov, and the
Symbolist critic and poet, Valerii Bryusov. Voloshin and Gumilyov
welcomed the seventeen year-old poet as their equal; Bryusov was
more critical of her, though he too, in his own belligerent way,
acknowledged her talent."
Marina Tsvetaeva is acknowledged today as one of the twentieth
century's greatest poets, a masterful innovator who produced a
remarkable body of work before her untimely death in 1941. This
bilingual collection contains six of her acclaimed narrative poems,
most translated into English for the first time. Tsvetaeva always
regarded the narrative poem as her true challenge, and she created
powerful and intensely original works in this genre. They can be
seen as markers of various stages in her poetic development,
ranging from the early, folk-accented 'On a Red Steed' to the
lyrical-confessional 'Poem of the Mountain' and 'Poem of the End'
to the more metaphysical later poems, 'An Attempt at a Room,' a
beautiful requiem for Rainer Maria Rilke, 'New Year's Greetings,'
and 'Poem of the Air,' a stirring celebration of Lindbergh's
transatlantic flight and the quest for the soul's freedom. "There
has been no more passionate voice in twentieth-century Russian
literature." -Joseph Brodsky
For centuries, poets have looked into the mirror of classical myth to show us the many ways our emotional lives are still reflected in the ancient stories of heroism, hubris, transformation, and loss that myths so eloquently tell. Now, in Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths, we have the first anthology to gather the great 20th century myth-inspired poems from around the world. "Perhaps it is because the myths echo the structure of our unconscious that every new generation of poets finds them a source of inspiration and self-recognition," says Nina Kossman in her introduction to this marvelous collection. Indeed, from Valery, Yeats, Lawrence, Rilke, Akhmatova, and Auden writing in the first half of the century to such contemporary poets as Lucille Clifton, Derek Walcott, Rita Dove, Wislawa Szymborska, and Mark Strand, the material of Greek myth has elicited a poetry of remarkably high achievement. And by organizing the poems first into broad categories such as "Heroes," "Lovers," "Trespassers," and secondly around particular mythological figures such as Persephone, Orpheus, or Narcissus, readers are treated to a fascinating spectrum of poems on the same subject. For example, the section on Odysseus includes poems by Cavafy, W. S. Merwin, Gregory Corso, Gabriel Zaid, Louise Gluck, Wallace Stevens, and many others. Thus we are allowed to see the familiar Greek hero refracted through the eyes, and sharply varying stylistic approaches, of a wide range of poets from around the world. Here, then, is a collection of extraordinary poems that testifies to--and amply rewards--our ongoing fascination with classical myth.
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