(8.10.1892 – 31.8.1941)
“Words of mine, like precious wines, I know, will have their turn.” The prophecy of one of Russia’s most extraordinary women poets, Marina Tsvetaeva, has come true. Today, her work is recognized throughout the world, and even an asteroid bears her name. Her earthly life, however, was marked by hardship and disappointment.
Born into the family of a concert pianist and Ivan Tsvetaev, founder of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Marina began writing poetry at the age of six. When she was only 18, her first collection of poetry, Evening Album, was published. Over the following years, many more works appeared in which the young poet expressed her love for her homeland (Poems about Moscow, Stenka Razin, Snowdrifts, Trees) and for all that is human (Insomnia, Good Tidings).
But fate took her far away from Russia. In 1922, she emigrated to Berlin to join her husband, Sergei Efron, an officer of the White Army. She later lived in Prague and Paris. In exile, she continued to write – her only means of surviving in an unfamiliar world – confessing: “Here I am unnecessary, while there [in my homeland] I am impossible.” Her collection After Russia gives voice to the painful experiences of a person who has lost the foundations of her life.
Her return home in 1938, where her daughter and Sergei were already living, brought new suffering. Accused of espionage, her daughter Alya was sent to a labour camp, while her husband was later executed on similar charges. Marina was left alone with her son Mur and could no longer find meaning in life. In her farewell letter to Mur, she confessed her love for him, his father, and his sister, but asked him, if he ever saw them again, to explain that she had “reached a dead end.”
To this day, the exact location of her grave remains unknown. Yet through her words she is still alive: “And if at last – solemn and austere – I wish to cross into that other world, it will be only so that I may ring out in verse – and blossom into flower.” (Bulgarian translation by Ivan Nikolov)
The bust monument to Marina Tsvetaeva is the work of the young Russian sculptor Evgenia Dubrovina. She graduated from the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V. I. Surikov, where she studied under Academician M. V. Pereyaslavets, and since 2004 has regularly participated in national and international exhibitions. She was awarded a Gold Medal by the Russian Academy of Arts for her work “The Mower.” Her works are held in private collections in Russia and around the world. She works as an independent artist.
