Tsvetaeva, Marina ___ 1892-1941 ___ Russian ___ poet

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow. Her father was a professor of art history at the University, and her mother was both literary and musical. She had one sister and two half-siblings, the children of her father's first wife (who had died). In 1902, Tsvetaeva's mother contracted TB, and this led the family to seek a healthier climate. They lived abroad - partly at Nervi, near Genoa where there were many Russian emigre revolutionaries - until shortly before her mother's death in 1906. Tsvetaeva studied in Lausanne and at the Sorbonne. In 1911, a first collection of her poems appeared, but then, for some years her verses circulated in manuscript form because of the shortage of printing paper. The poet and critic Maximilian Voloshin befriended her, and it was at his home in the Black Sea resort of Koktebel that she met a cadet in the Officers' Academy, Sergei Efron. They married in 1912 and lived in the Crimea, and had two daughters, Ariadna and Irina. After the 1917 Revolution Marina returned to Moscow hoping to be reunited with her husband, but she was trapped there during the famine and Irina died. In 1922, Tsvetaeva and Alya left the Soviet Union and were reunited with Efron in Berlin. They also moved to Prague, but finally settled in Paris. Tsvetaeva's writing, during this period, in praise of the Tsarist forces was not published in Russia until much later. In 1939, still a patriot, she returned to Russia, but was then evacuated from Moscow during the war, and committed suicide soon after. Tsvetaeva wrote several plays as well as narrative verse. One cycle of poems in the style of a diary begins on the day of Tsar Nicholas II's abdication in 1917, and ends in 1920, when the anti-communist White Army was finally defeated.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio
The Diary Review - The heart is musical

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1917-1920 ___ literary military

WEB TEXT LINKS
some pages
a bit about

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
 

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
The Demesne of the Swans
Living in Fire: Confessions
Earthly Signs

December 2005, August 2008, October 2011, April 2013
Please email if you have any corrections, additions or comments, or if you've found the site useful. Thank you.

IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.