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Tsvetaeva's Onomastic Verse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Olga Peters Hasty
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Extract

In her artistic philosophy Marina Tsvetaeva insists on the precedence of the word over what it stands for. “Slovo ved' bol'she veshch', chem veshch': ono samo veshch', kotoraia tol'ko znak.” The signifier comes first and the signified trails after it, for the acoustic properties of the word expand its capability beyond mere denotation to poetic creation. The proper name too, far from being a mere representation in Tsvetaeva's view, draws its bearer into a broad range of associations and creates a complex personal universe that can be discovered by means of the poet's “khozhdenie po slukhu.”

From general observations on the importance Tsvetaeva ascribed to names in a variety of works, this paper will proceed to an examination of her 1916 dedication to Aleksandr Blok, “Imia tvoe—ptitsa v ruke.” Analysis of this remarkable poem demonstrates vividly Tsvetaeva's realization of the creative potential of Blok's name. This specific example will provide the basis for a discussion of the broader implications of naming in Tsvetaeva's art.

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Type
Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , Summer 1986 , pp. 245 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1986

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References

1. Tsvetaeva to Pasternak, Boris, 25 May 1926, Neizdannye pis'ma, ed. Struve, Gleb and NikitaStruve, (Paris: YMCA, 1972, p. 296 Google Scholar.

2. Alexander, Sumerkin, ed., Marina Tsvetaeva: Izbrannaia proza v dvukh tomakh 1917–1937 (2 vols.; New York: Russica, 1979), 1: 396 Google Scholar. All quotations of Tsvetaeva's prose are taken from thisedition. In subsequent references, the volume and page numbers will appear in parenthesis withinthe text.

3. Alexander, Sumerkin, ed., Marina Tsvetaeva: Stikhotvoreniia ipoemy vpiati tomakh (5 vols.;New York: Russica, 1980), II: 288 Google Scholar. All quotations of Tsvetaeva's poetry are taken from this edition;the volume and page numbers will hereafter appear parenthetically within the text.

4. Concerning Tsvetaeva's naming of her son see, for example, her letters to O. E. Chernova-Kolbasina dated 3 December 1924, 27 December 1924, 8 February 1925, and 14 February 1925, Neizdannye pis'ma, pp. 98, 106, 129, 132.

5. Tsvetaeva to Rainer Maria Rilke, 9 May 1926, in Pasternak, Evgenii, Pasternak, Elena, and Asadovskii, Konstantin, eds., Rainer Maria Rilke, Marina Zwetajewa, Boris Pasternak: Briefwechsel (Frankfurt, a.M.: Anton Kippenberg, 1983), p. 105 Google Scholar.

6. Tsvetaeva was not aware that Rilke had adopted the name Rainer (in place of René) at the suggestion of Lou Andreas-Salomé.

7. For a detailed discussion of the acoustic characteristics of this poem from a different approach see L. V. Zubova's insightful article, “Semantika khudozhestvennogo obraza i zvuka v stikhotvorenii M. Tsvetaevoi iz tsikla‘Stikhi k Bloku'” in Vestnik leningradskogo universiteta, no. 2 (1980), pp. 55–61.

8. Blok's poem “Golos iz khora” was originally published in Liubov’ k trem apel'sinam, no. 1 (1916). Tsvetaeva doubtless read this journal during her visit to St. Petersburg in the winter of 1915—1916.

9. I am grateful to Antonina Gove for her suggestion that Tsvetaeva was referring to the CastalianFountain in this line.

10. “Moi liubimyi vid obshchenia—potustoronnii: son: videt’ vo sne.” Tsvetaeva to Boris Pasternak, 19 November 1922, Neizdannye pis'ma, p. 271.

11. Tsvetaeva to Boris Pasternak, 25 May 1926, Neizdannye pis'ma, p. 296.

12. Ibid., p. 293.

13. Letter to Boris Pasternak, 10 July 1926, Neizdannye pis'ma, p. 293.

14. Tsvetaeva concludes her cycle to Akhmatova with the following poem (1: 237):

It is interesting to observe that in the cycle Stikhi k Pushkinu (1931) there is no hint of reticence on Tsvetaeva's part in naming the poet she had loved since childhood. Far from suggesting any irreverence, this can be seen as a reflection of her regard for her fellow-poet as an equal rather than adeity or an adversary, an attitude clearly stated in the third poem of the cycle in the lines, “Pushkinskuiuruku/Zhmu, a ne lizhu” (3: 52). Indeed, the cycle is not so much a superfluous glorificationof Pushkin as it is a defense of the poet and an invective against both his and Tsvetaeva's uncomprehending contemporaries. It is to this purpose that in the seventy-three lines of the opening poemof this cycle Pushkin's name is invoked twenty-four times. The point of the exaggerated repetitionof the name, particularly in the last four-line stanza in which it occurs seven times, is scornfully tomimic those who have made Pushkin a household word. In the coarse realm of byt, where poetry isperceived only in terms of banal clichees, the name is of no consequence.

15. Cassirer, Ernst, Language and Myth, trans. Langer, Susanne K. (New York: Dover, 1946 Google Scholar, provides a penetrating examination of the origin and significance of this interpenetration, which heconvincingly depicts as the essence of lyric poetry. His discussion is particularly illuminating in regardto Tsvetaeva's frequently noted yet insufficiently explained mythologization.

16. Letter to A. Bakhrakh, 25 November 1923, “Pis'ma Mariny Tsvetaevoi,” Mosty 5 (1960): 313.