Not many New Zealand secondary schools offered Russian as a language elective back in the 1970s. Rangitoto College, on Auckland's North Shore, was one of them. I duly studied it for five years, along with French. I wish, in retrospect, I could have learned Te Reo Māori instead, but it wasn't even on the syllabus at the time - changed days!
Here's a reminiscence from those far-off times:
•
From Russia with Love
Our Russian class went on a school trip to visit a Soviet ship in the harbour the sailors tried to show us around but we stood there dumb till I ventured a few phrases in Russian the captain was much impressed and told me I should come to study in the worker’s republic I lacked the aplomb to answer in kind a year or so later we hosted a visit from the Russian ambassador who offered to answer our questions about the Soviet Union I asked about the case of the poet Boris Pasternak he replied that the reason only some of his work was available there was because his later writings lacked objectivity Solzhenitsyn by contrast an enemy of the people had been justly deported all this was recited with a stone-cold glare our teacher congratulated me later on asking the hard questions in this case the hard questions were the easy ones
•
I've shared this poem from my new book Tesseract (due to be launched later this year, at Masterworks Gallery in the CBD) because it seems as good a way as any of introducing two Russian poets, Boris Pasternak and his friend Marina Tsvetaeva, and the various accommodations they were forced to make with Russia's turbulent post-Revolutionary history - and with the Soviet regime.
If you'd like to know more about their biographies, I'd definitely recommend Ronald Hingley's classic book Nightingale Fever: Russian Poets in Revolution. In it he outlines the web of relationships between these four exceptionally talented poets:
- Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), brutally persecuted by the Soviet Security Services from the 1930s until a few years before her death;
- Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), ordered by the state to renounce the Nobel Prize he'd received for his 1957 novel Doctor Zhivago;
- Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938), who died of malnutrition in a transit camp in Siberia after daring to write a poem mocking Stalin;
- & - perhaps the most tragic of them all - Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941):
From the moment of her arrival in Russia she was treated as a spy and a traitor. Her husband and daughter were both arrested on charges of espionage in 1941, and she herself was exiled to the distant town of Yelabuga in Tatarstan. She hanged herself there on 31st August, 1941.
She left behind a note for her son Georgy:
Forgive me, but to go on would be worse. I am gravely ill, this is not me anymore. I love you passionately. Do understand that I could not live anymore. Tell Papa and Alya, if you ever see them, that I loved them to the last moment and explain to them that I found myself in a trap.The "trap" she refers to in her note was probably (according to Wikipedia): a demand by "the local NKVD department ... to start working as their informant." Rather than do that, she chose the only honourable alternative: killing herself.
Her husband Sergei Efron was shot in September 1941; her daughter Alya served over eight years in prison. Both were exonerated after Stalin's death in 1953.
Our class outing to see the Soviet ship must have taken place sometime around the mid-seventies: maybe 1977? The ambassador's visit was a year or so later. It was definitely pre-Glasnost, and the old attitudes were still very much in place.
I've included the poem above to underline the fact that it's easy enough to strike romantic attitudes about horrid deeds and unjust acts of persecution taking place in far-off countries, but it's very difficult to imagine the pressures that can be applied by an oppressive state if you haven't experienced them first-hand.
All these four poets - all much the same age, and all well-acquainted with each other - had to find their own individual ways to survive in impossible times. This certainly wasn't helped by their joint "nightingale fever" - a phrase coined by Osip Mandelstam for his own incurable malady of poetry-writing: “there is no hope / For heart still flushed / with nightingale fever” (“What grasshopper-clocks are singing ...")
Mandelstam, the most uncompromising among them, went first. Then came Tsvetaeva, who would quite likely have died of starvation and neglect if she hadn't chosen to take her own life instead.
Pasternak maintained an uneasy balance with the authorities, due to such early Bolshevik-friendly poems as "1905" and "Lieutenant Schmidt". His 1957 novel Doctor Zhivago pushed the boat out too far, though. He was faced not just with the loss of his livelihood, but with the pitiless persecution of his nearest and dearest when he died (from lung cancer) in 1960. However his lover Olga Ivinskaya, the original of 'Lara', was imprisoned for four years after his death, "apparently to punish her for the relationship".
Akhmatova outlived them all, and even achieved a certain official status as the last survivor of the Russian Silver Age in her final years.
The fact that their collected works are now freely available (even in Putin's Russia) might lead us to suppose that it "all worked out for the best" - that "the poetry is in the pity", and that it's their joint sufferings that makes their writing interesting. I doubt that that's the best way to read them, though - as cartoon "dissidents", the value of whose work lies in the extremity of the attitudes they struck at the time.
They would have been great poets in any era, under any government. The fact that they lived through such extraordinarily difficult times certainly did have an effect on the things they ended up writing about, but that's only a small part of their distinction. I'd like to illustrate that by examining a few of their most celebrated poems below.
I've already written posts about Akhmatova and Mandelstam - as well as one about Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago. I'll be focussing here more on his poetry, along with that of his close friend Marina Tsevtaeva.
One of the strangest things about that very strange novel Doctor Zhivago is the annex of "Zhivago's poems" included at the back of the book. The point is that they weren't Yurii Zhivago's poems - they were Boris Pasternak's. Many of them had been written years before he started serious work on the book, and it was - to say the least - distinctly odd of him to introduce them as the compositions of a fictional character: albeit a kind of alter-ego.
The first, and most famous of them, is "Hamlet":
Гамлет Гул затих. Я вышел на подмостки. Прислонясь к дверному косяку, Я ловлю в далёком отголоске, Что случится на моем веку. На меня наставлен сумрак ночи Тысячью биноклей на оси. Если только можно, Авва Отче, Чашу эту мимо пронеси. Я люблю твой замысел упрямый И играть согласен эту роль. Но сейчас идёт другая драма, И на этот раз меня уволь. Но продуман распорядок действий, И неотвратим конец пути. Я один, всё тонет в фарисействе. Жизнь прожить — не поле перейти. - Борис Пастернак (1946)• Crowd's roar subsides I enter stage left leaning against a doorpost I sense in the echoing emptiness what's coming for me at last darkness comes to bear on me through the sights of opera glasses if only it were possible Father to let this bitter cup pass? I admire your stubborn design and agreed to play this role but another drama's unfolding can't I too choose denial? the sequence of acts is planned Your Will will be fulfilled I'm alone with their smug hypocrisy life's not like crossing a field
- trans. JR (22-24/9/2026)
Pasternak's celebrated translation of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" first appeared in 1941. Perhaps that was what inspired him to write this poem, conflating his own role as an unwilling tragic hero with Hamlet's predestined part in the play. The double-focus is ingeniously maintained throughout. It had to be, really.
Like all of his later work, it was meant to convey a clear meaning to poetry lovers, while still presenting an acceptable official mask for censors and bureaucrats. It's not that Pasternak was entirely successful in this - the switch to verse translation in the latter part of his career was not accidental - but it seems to have worked just well enough to keep him alive.
The simultaneous weariness and defiance this relentless scrutiny provoked in him is wonderfully evoked in the poem, which has been a favourite among English translators since Pasternak's novel was first published.
The point is perhaps best made by contrasting this 1946 poem with an even more celebrated one, first published in his book My Sister, Life in 1922:
Сестра моя — жизнь ... Сестра моя — жизнь и сегодня в разливе Расшиблась весенним дождем обо всех, Но люди в брелоках высоко брюзгливы И вежливо жалят, как змеи в овсе. У старших на это свои есть резоны. Бесспорно, бесспорно смешон твой резон, Что в грозу лиловы глаза и газоны И пахнет сырой резедой горизонт. Что в мае, когда поездов расписанье Камышинской веткой читаешь в купе, Оно грандиозней святого писанья И черных от пыли и бурь канапе. Что только нарвется, разлаявшись, тормоз На мирных сельчан в захолустном вине, С матрацев глядят, не моя ли платформа, И солнце, садясь, соболезнует мне. И в третий плеснув, уплывает звоночек Сплошным извиненьем: жалею, не здесь. Под шторку несет обгорающей ночью И рушится степь со ступенек к звезде. Мигая, моргая, но спят где-то сладко, И фата-морганой любимая спит Тем часом, как сердце, плеща по площадкам, Вагонными дверцами сыплет в степи. - Борис Пастернак (1917)• My sister life’s in full flood today breaking like spring rain-squalls all over us people dangle like fluffy dice garish and sour arching their fangs like vipers in the grass oldies may have their own reasons for this but your excuse is at least original during a thunderstorm lilac eyes turn grey and the horizon reeks of deep purple in May when you read the train timetable for the city rail link in your cubicle it seems far wiser than the Bible or banquettes burdened by random people and whenever the brakes screech and bark at harmless simps in some village backwater they look up from their seats is this my stop? and the setting sun ceases to matter then third time lucky the signal drifts off like a long apology sorry not here breezes waft through the blinds in the hot night and the headlands stare upstairs at a star buzzing and blinking somewhere folks are still sleeping and my girlfriend lies prone like a meteor just as my heart splashing past the threshold topples downhill through the carriage door
- trans. JR (22/9-1/10/26)
Pasternak had two younger sisters: Lydia and Josephine. Lydia Pasternak Slater published a number of English translations of her brother's work, and was a poet in her own right. Josephine also published verse.
But of course the poem isn't about either of them: the real "sister" here is life itself - though the "girlfriend" he mentions towards the end is presumably Elena Vinogradova, whom he was courting assiduously in the months leading up to the October Revolution.
The poems he wrote during this period had a huge effect on Russian poetry. Pasternak never abandoned the rhyming quatrains and regular metres of traditional verse - he was no Mayakovskian Futurist, no Khlebnikovian experimentalist - but the extraordinary flights of language of which he alone was capable still seemed to burst through the confines of the page.
These effects can not really be reproduced in English, but I've done my best to convey a little of his immense exuberance at this moment when (in Wordsworth's words about the French Revolution):
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive- before the immense disillusionment of the famine and the brutal Civil War.
But to be young was very heaven!
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.- Wordsworth, "Resolution and Independence" (1802)
Marina Tsvetaeva, too, had her golden time - in the years leading up to the First World War. After studying abroad, she began to publish verse in 1910, and quickly earned a reputation as an up-and-coming poet. But, just as Anna Akhmatova was the muse of St. Petersburg, so Tsvetaeva was strongly identified with the culture of Russia's older capital, Moscow. Pasternak too was born in Moscow, which may explain some of the closeness they always felt: in their lives as well as their work.
Despite her early marriage with the young cadet Sergei Efron, Tsvetaeva continued to have affairs with women as well as men - including the young Osip Mandelstam. Her pre-war verse was already more doom-laden than the love poems Akhmatova was writing at the same time, however.
Here's an example of her early manner:
Осипу Мандельштаму Приключилась с ним странная хворь, И сладчайшая на него нашла оторопь. Всё стоит и смотрит ввысь, И не видит ни звёзд, ни зорь Зорким оком своим — отрок. А задремлет — к нему орлы Шумнокрылые слетаются с клёкотом, И ведут о нём дивный спор. И один — властелин скалы — Клювом кудри ему треплет. Но дремучие очи сомкнув, Но уста полураскрыв — спит себе. И не слышит ночных гостей, И не видит, как зоркий клюв Златоокая вострит птица. - Марина Цветаева (20/3/1916)• A strange illness comes over him a sweet stupor possesses him he stands staring upwards seeing nothing not stars nor the dawn despite the sharp eyes of youth as he nods off stiff-pinioned eagles swoop down with raucous cries squabbling over his liver till one the lord of the wings pecks nonchalantly at his curls heavy-lidded with lips slightly parted he sleeps on oblivious to his nightly guests unaware that that golden-eyed bird is sharpening its cruel beak
- trans. JR (22/9-1/10/2026)
This "illness" she diagnoses in her lover - soon to become, instead, a lifelong friend - is clearly an early bout of the dreaded Nightingale Fever. And the "golden-eyed bird" sharpening its beak can presumably be seen as the oncoming menace of history.
When the second Russian Revolution broke out in October 1917, Efron immediately joined the anti-Bolshevik White Guard. Tsvetaeva was left behind to endure the terrible Moscow famine with their two young children:
With no immediate family to turn to, she had no way to support herself or her daughters. In 1919, she placed both her daughters in a state orphanage, mistakenly believing that they would be better fed there. Alya became ill, and Tsvetaeva removed her, but Irina died there of starvation in 1920. The child's death caused Tsvetaeva great grief and regret. In one letter, she wrote, "God punished me."Tsvetaeva felt that their only way to survive was to leave the country:
In May 1922, Tsvetaeva and Ariadna left Soviet Russia and were reunited in Berlin with Efron, who she had thought had been killed by the Bolsheviks.
Бессонница, 3 В огромном городе моём — ночь. Из дома сонного иду — прочь. И люди думают: жена, дочь, —А я запомнила одно: ночь. Июльский ветер мне метёт — путь, И где-то музыка в окне — чуть. Ах, нынче ветру до зари — дуть Сквозь стенки тонкие груди́ — в грудь. Есть чёрный тополь, и в окне — свет, И звон на башне, и в руке — цвет, И шаг вот этот — никому — вслед, И тень вот эта, а меня — нет. Огни — как нити золотых бус, Ночного листика во рту — вкус. Освободите от дневных уз, Друзья, поймите, что я вам — снюсь. - Марина Цветаева (17/7/1916)• Falling on my vast echoing city night walking out from my quiet house late a woman all alone no common sight drawn by one thing the night the summer winds sweep a path for me music wafts from a window faintly yes that wind will blow until dawn steadily straight to this aching heart cruelly black poplar there from the window light bells ring in the tower my hand grasps a flower tight not following anyone down this street shadows back there but I’m out of sight streetlights like a beaded necklace gleaming fallen leaf lights on my tongue tart-tasting breaking free at last from the day’s false seeming friends I’m just a dream you’re dreaming
- trans. JR (22-1/10/2026)
Like Pasternak, Tsvetaeva was a devotee of traditional verse forms. Unlike him, though, she took great pleasure in playing with intricate patterns of abrupt, inlaid lines - telegraphese, or nursery rhyme-style. She, too, was a revolutionary in her use of language, but this devotion to form as a way of unmasking deeper truths makes her effects even harder to convey in an uninflected language such as English.
One thing's for certain, though: all the energy and vitality of her earlier work can't disguise the deeper sense of anxiety lurking beneath it. This feeling would, if anything, grow even greater during her years of exile in Central and Western Europe.
From Berlin the family moved to Prague, but things weren't much easier there:
"We are devoured by coal, gas, the milkman, the baker... the only meat we eat is horsemeat." When offered an opportunity to earn money by reading her poetry, she had to beg a simple dress from a friend to replace the one she had been living in.In 1925, like so many other Russian émigrés, they settled in Paris, where they would stay until 1939:
Tsvetaeva did not feel at all at home in Paris's predominantly ex-bourgeois circle of Russian émigré writers. Although she had written passionately pro-'White' poems during the Revolution, her fellow émigrés thought that she was insufficiently anti-Soviet, and that her criticism of the Soviet régime was altogether too nebulous.Her husband Sergei Efron had meanwhile started to work for the NKVD, the Soviet Security Services. Both he and her daughter Alya, who shared his views, returned to the USSR in 1937:
Tsvetaeva does not seem to have known that her husband was a spy, nor the extent to which he was compromised. However, she was held responsible for his actions and was ostracised in Paris because of the implication that he was involved with the NKVD. World War II had made Europe as unsafe and hostile as the USSR.This bald chronicle of distress shouldn't, however, blind us to her immense productivity during these years. She wrote a series of long poems, including Poem of the End (1924) and Poem of the Air (1927); plays, including Ariadne (1924) and Phaedra (1927); and much of her most important prose, including the major autobiographical pieces of the late 1930s.
Which brings us to her last, desperate months back in Russia:
In Stalin's USSR, anyone who had lived abroad was suspect, as was anyone who had been among the intelligentsia before the Revolution ... Tsvetaeva found that all doors had closed to her. She got bits of work translating poetry, but otherwise the established Soviet writers refused to help her, and chose to ignore her plight.The last fragments of verse she composed make sad reading:
Ушёл — не ем ... Ушёл — не ем: Пуст — хлеба вкус. Всё — мел. За чем ни потянусь. …Мне хлебом был, И снегом был. И снег не бел, И хлеб не мил. - Марина Цветаева (23/1/1940)• Gone can't eat bread gone stale chalky white all round me you were my bread you were the snow soiled snow loveless bread
- trans. JR (22-30/9/2026)
•
Годы твои — гора ... — Годы твои — гора, Время твоё — 'царей.' Дура! любить — стара. — Други! любовь — старей: Чудищ старей, корней, Каменных алтарей Критских старей, старей Старших богатырей - Марина Цветаева (24/1/1940)• Your years the mountains your times cold Tsars fool too old for love? love’s older still older than the Minotaur than roots older than Cretan stone altars older than the oldest gods and heroes
- trans. JR (22/9-1/10/2026)
It's a terribly sad story, and - presented like this - it might have the effect of inclining us to pity rather than admire Marina Tsvetaeva. But the sheer volume and mastery of the work she produced both in her early years in Russia, and during her two decades in Europe, tell a very different story.
Writing poetry is in itself translating, from the mother tongue into another, whether French or German should make no difference. No language is the mother tongue. Writing poetry is rewriting it.- Marina Tsvetaeva to Rainer Maria Rilke (July 6th, 1926)
Perhaps the most luminous testimonial to her achievements in those years abroad is the three-way correspondence between her, Boris Pasternak, and the dying Rainer Maria Rilke. She more than held her own with her fellow-poets, moving as easily from Russian to German to French as the other two cosmopolitan writers. And the words quoted above should give heart to any translator foolhardy enough to try to follow in their footsteps ...
It might still be thought, however, that Pasternak doesn't show up particularly well in any account of Tsvetaeva's last years. The two were, after all, friends, and he doesn't appear to have done much to help her on her return to Russia. Given the state of communications in the Soviet Union in wartime, however - especially after Hitler's surprise invasion in June 1941 - it's hard to see exactly what he could have done.
He never forgave himself for his inaction, though, viewing her death as "one of the greatest sorrows of his life."
He had helped pack her suitcase for her fateful return to Russia in 1939, reportedly giving her rope to tie it — a coincidence that later haunted him with unbearable guilt.Certainly it's not for us to judge him: he seems to have castigated himself more than anyone else could already. His final poetic tribute to her is perhaps the only possible conclusion to this very sad story - one great poet's farewell to another.
Life, after all, is not like crossing a field:
Памяти Марины Цветаевой Хмуро тянется день непогожий. Безутешно струятся ручьи По крыльцу перед дверью прихожей И в открытые окна мои. За оградою вдоль по дороге Затопляет общественный сад. Развалившись, как звери в берлоге, Облака в безпорядке лежат. Мне в ненастьи мерещится книга О земле и её красоте. Я рисую лесную шишигу Для тебя на заглавном листе. Ах, Марина, давно уже время, Да и труд не такой уж ахти, Твой заброшенный прах в реквие́ме Из Елабуги перенести. Торжество твоего переноса Я задумывал в прошлом году На снегами пустынного плеса, Где зимуют баркасы во льду. * * * Мне так же трудно до сих пор Вообразить тебя уме́ршей, Как скопидомкой мильонершей Средь голодающих сестёр. Что сделать мне тебе в угоду? Дай как-нибудь об этом весть. В молчаньи твоего ухода Упрёк невысказанный есть. Всегда загадочны утраты. В безплодных розысках в ответ Я мучаюсь без результата: У смерти очертаний нет. Тут всё — полуслова и тени, Обмолвки и самообман, И только верой в воскресенье Какой-то указатель дан. Зима — как пышные поминки: Наружу выйти из жилья, Прибавить к сумеркам коринки, Облить вином — вот и кутья. Пред домом яблоня в сугробе. И город в снежной пелене — Твоё огромное надгробье, Как целый год казалось мне. Лицом повернутая к Богу, Ты тянешься к Нему с земли, Как в дни, когда тебе итога Ещё на ней не подвели. - Борис Пастернак (1943)• Dank blustery day drags on inconsolably runnels flow over the porch by the hall door down past my open window beyond the fence along the road the water overflows our local park clouds sprawl like vermin conspiring in the dark in this foul weather I try to picture our black earth bound up into a book I sketch a forest-green dryad for you but the cover stays blank Ah Marina it’s not that I forgot I’ve lived through an ocean of time since you laid down your ashes there Yelabuga I’ve owed you this requiem I want it to share the blind beauty of the new grave they dug you last year in a snow-bound reach of the river where barges lie frozen all winter * it’s still just as hard for me to work out how to picture you dead while their sisters are dying of hunger richniks lie tucked up in bed please tell me what to say to you anything farewell? would that do? the way you left us in silence still aches like a bitter blow a reproach even loss is a mystery I search everywhere to comprehend blaming myself blaming others death deals with an open hand all that’s left here is shadows the detritus of my self-regard not the slightest faith in rebirth just an obstinate debt that's still owed winter has laid us a banquet your wake is a blanket of snow iced wine the berries of twilight add up to a meagre show our apple tree’s buried deep in drifts the village is shrouded in white your cinderblock gravestone oppresses us a surfeit of love chokes the light but your face has turned away now as you stretch out your arms in the earth as it was then in the beginning when you saw the immutable truth
- trans. JR (22-1/10/2026)
Books I own are marked in bold:
-
Poetry:
- Близнец в тучах [Twin in the Clouds] (1914)
- Поверх барьеров: Вторая книга стихов [Over the Barriers] (1916)
- Сестра моя жизнь: Стихи. Лето 1917 года [My Sister, Life] (1922)
- Темы и варьяции: Четвёртая книга стихов [Themes and Variations] (1923)
- Избранные стихи [Selected Poems] (1926)
- 1905 год. Девятьсот пятый год [1905] (1927)
- Две книги: Стихи [Two Books] (1927)
- Поверх барьеров: Стихи разных лет [Over the Barriers: Early Poems] (1929)
- Спекторский [Spektorsky] (1931)
- Второе рождение: Стихи [Second Birth] (1932)
- Грузинские лирики [Selected Lyrics] (1935)
- На ранних поездах [On Early Trains] (1943)
- Когда разгуляется, цикл стихотворений [When the Weather Clears] (1959)
- Poems 1955-1959 (1959)
- Poems 1955-1959. 1959. Trans. Michael Harari. London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1960.
- Стихотворения и поэмы [Verses & Poems] (1961)
- Стихотворения и Поэмы. 1976. Библиотека Поэта. Ленинград: Ленинградское отделение, 1977.
- In the Interlude: Poems 1945–1960 (1962)
- In the Interlude: Poems 1945-1960. Trans. Henry Kamen. Foreword by Sir Maurice Bowra. Notes by George Katkov. Oxford Paperbacks. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
- Poems (1963)
- Poems. Trans. Lydia Pasternak Slater. 1963. Unwin Paperbacks. London: George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd., 1984.
- The Poems of Doctor Zhivago (1971)
- The Poems of Doctor Zhivago. 1957. Trans Eugene M. Kayden. Introduction by James Morgan. Illustrated by Bill Greer. Hallmark Crown Editions. Kansas City, Missouri: Hallmark Cards, Inc., 1971.
- Selected Poems (1983)
- Selected Poems. Trans. Jon Stallworthy & Peter France. 1983. The Penguin Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
- Поэзия: Стихотворения / Поэмы / Переводы (2003)
- Поэзия: Стихотворения / Поэмы / Переводы. Екатеринбург: У-Фактория, 2003.
- Рассказы [Stories] (1925)
- Апеллесова черта [Il Tratto di Apelle] (1915)
- Детство Люверс [The Childhood of Luvers] (1918)
- Письма из Тулы [Letters from Tula] (1918)
- Воздушные пути [Aerial Ways] (1924)
- Included in: The Collected Prose Works. Ed. Stefan Schimanski. Russian Literature Library. London: Lindsay Drummond Ltd., 1945.
- Included in: Safe Conduct: An Early Autobiography and Other Works. Trans. Alec Brown / Five Lyric Poems. Trans. Lydia Pasternak-Slater. 1958. London: Elek Books Limited / Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1959.
- Included in: Prose & Poems. Revised Edition. Ed. Stefan Schimanski. Trans. Beatrice Scott, Robert Payne & J. M. Cohen. Introduction by J. M. Cohen. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1959.
- Охранная грамота [Safe Conduct] (1931)
- Included in: The Collected Prose Works. Ed. Stefan Schimanski. Russian Literature Library. London: Lindsay Drummond Ltd., 1945.
- Included in: Safe Conduct: An Early Autobiography and Other Works. Trans. Alec Brown / Five Lyric Poems. Trans. Lydia Pasternak-Slater. 1958. London: Elek Books Limited / Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1959.
- Included in: Prose & Poems. Revised Edition. Ed. Stefan Schimanski. Trans. Beatrice Scott, Robert Payne & J. M. Cohen. Introduction by J. M. Cohen. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1959.
- Included in: The Voice of Prose. Volume One: Early Prose and Autobiography. Ed. Christopher Barnes. Polygon Russian Series. Edinburgh: Polygon Books, 1986.
- Повесть [The Last Summer] (1934)
- The Last Summer. 1934. Trans. George Reavey. London: Peter Owen Limited, 1959.
- The Last Summer. 1934. Trans. George Reavey. 1959. Introduction by Lydia Slater. 1960. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961.
- The Collected Prose Works (1945)
- The Collected Prose Works. Ed. Stefan Schimanski. Russian Literature Library. London: Lindsay Drummond Ltd., 1945.
- An Essay in Autobiography (1956)
- An Essay in Autobiography. 1956. Trans. Manya Harari. Introduction by Edward Crankshaw. London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1959.
- Доктор Живаго [Doctor Zhivago] (1957)
- Доктор Живаго. 1957. Milano: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, 1961.
- Doctor Zhivago. 1957. Trans. Max Hayward & Manya Harari. 1958. London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1959.
- Doctor Zhivago. 1957. Trans. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky. Introduction by Richard Pevear. 2010. Vintage Classics. London: Random House, 2011.
- Doctor Zhivago. 1957. Trans. Nicolas Pasternak Slater. Illustrated by Leonid Pasternak. Introduction by Ann Pasternak Slater. 2019. 2 vols. London: The Folio Society, 2020.
- Safe Conduct: An Early Autobiography and Other Works / Five Lyric Poems (1958)
- Safe Conduct: An Early Autobiography and Other Works. Trans. Alec Brown / Five Lyric Poems. Trans. Lydia Pasternak-Slater. 1958. London: Elek Books Limited / Toronto: The Ryerson Press, 1959.
- Prose & Poems: Revised Edition (1959)
- Prose & Poems. Revised Edition. Ed. Stefan Schimanski. Trans. Beatrice Scott, Robert Payne & J. M. Cohen. Introduction by J. M. Cohen. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1959.
- The Voice of Prose. Volume One: Early Prose and Autobiography (1986)
- Safe Conduct (1931)
- The Apelles Mark (1915)
- Suboctave Story (1916-17)
- Zhenya Luvers' Childhood (1918)
- Letters from Tula (1918)
- Without Love (1918)
- Three Dramatic Fragments (1917)
- The Quintessence (1922)
- The Voice of Prose. Volume One: Early Prose and Autobiography. Ed. Christopher Barnes. Polygon Russian Series. Edinburgh: Polygon Books, 1986.
- Слепая красавица (1960 / 1969)
- The Blind Beauty: A Play. 1960. Trans. Max Hayward & Manya Harari. Foreword by Max Hayward. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1969.
- [Shakespeare] / Уильям Шекспир:
- Ромео и Джульетта
- Гамлет
- Отелло
- Король Лир
- Макбет
- Антоний и Клеопатра
- Генрих IV, часть 1
- Генрих IV, часть 2
- [Goethe] / Иоганн Вольфганг фон Гёте:
- Фауст (2 части)
- [Schiller] / Фридрих Шиллер:
- Мария Стюарт
- [Calderon] / Педро Кальдерон:
- Стойкий принц
- [Jonson] / Бен Джонсон:
- Алхимик
- [Kleist] / Генрих фон Клейст:
- Роберт Гискар
- Разбитый кувшин
- Принц Фридрих Гомбургский
- [Verlaine] / Поль Верлен
- [Shakespeare] / Уильям Шекспир
- [Byron] / Джордж Гордон Байрон
- [Shelley] / Перси Биши Шелли
- [Keats] / Джон Китс
- [Swinburne] / Алджернон Чарльз Суинбёрн
- [Rilke] / Райнер Мария Рильке
- [Goethe] / Иоганн Вольфганг фон Гёте
- [Sachs] / Ганс Сакс
- [Jonson] / Георг Гейм
- [Becher] / Иоганнес Роберт Бехер
- [Petyofi] / Шандор Петёфи
- [Tagore] / Рабиндранат Тагор
- [Alberti] / Рафаэль Альберти
- [Slovatski] / Юлиуш Словацкий
- [Lessman] / Болеслав Лесьмян
- [Nezval] / Витезслав Незвал
- [Baratashvili] / Николоз Бараташвили
- [Grishashvili] / Иосиф Гришашвили
- [Vazha-Shavela] / Важа-Пшавела
- [Tabidze] / Тициан Табидзе
- [Yashvili] / Паоло Яшвили
- [Leonidze] / Георгий Леонидзе
- [Shevchenko] / Тарас Шевченко
- Letters to Georgian Friends (1967)
- Letters to Georgian Friends. 1967. Trans. David Magarshack. 1968. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971.
- The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak with Olga Freidenberg (1981)
- The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak with Olga Freidenberg. Ed. Elliott Mossman. 1981. Trans. Elliott Mossman & Margaret Wettlin. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book. New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, Inc. 1982.
- [with Marina Tsvetayeva & Rainer Maria Rilke] Letters Summer 1926 (1983)
- [with Marina Tsvetayeva & Rainer Maria Rilke] Letters Summer 1926. 1983. Ed. Evgeny Pasternak, Elena Pasternak & Konstantin M. Azadovsky. Trans. Margaret Wettlin & Walter Arndt. 1985. Oxford Letters & Memoirs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
- Conquest, Robert. Courage of Genius. The Pasternak Affair: A Documentary Report on its Literary and Political Significance. London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1961.
- Payne, Robert. The Three Worlds of Boris Pasternak. 1961. London: Robert Hale Limited, 1962.
- Bolt, Robert. Doctor Zhivago: The Screenplay. Based on the Novel by Boris Pasternak. 1958. London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1965.
- Davie, Donald, & Angela Livingstone, ed. Pasternak. With Verse Translations by Donald Davie. Modern Judgements. Ed. P. N. Furbank. London: Macmillan and Co Ltd, 1969.
- The Memoirs of Leonid Pasternak. 1975. Trans. Jennifer Bradshaw. Introduction by Josephine Pasternak. London: Quartet Books Limited, 1982.
- Gladkov, Alexander. Meetings with Pasternak: A Memoir. 1973. Trans. & ed. Max Hayward. London: Collins and Harvill Press, 1977.
- Gifford, Henry. Pasternak: A Critical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
- Ivinskaya, Olga. A Captive of Time: My Years with Pasternak. The Memoirs of Olga Ivinskaya. 1978. Trans. Max Hayward. 1978. Fontana / Collins. London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1979.
- De Mallac, Guy. Boris Pasternak: His Life and Art. 1981. London: Souvenir Press, 1983.
- Hingley, Ronald. Pasternak: A Biography. London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd., 1983.
- Pasternak, Evgeny. Boris Pasternak: The Tragic Years, 1930-60. Trans. Michael Duncan. Poetry trans. Craig Raine & Ann Pasternak Slater. 1990. London: Collins Harvill, 1991.
- Finn, Peter, & Petra Couvée. The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book. 2014. Harvill Secker. London: Random House, 2014.
Prose
Plays:
Translations:
Playwrights
Poets
Letters:
Secondary:
•
Petra Shumova: Marina Tsvetaeva (Paris, 1925)Мари́на Ива́новна Цвета́ева
[Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva]
(1892-1941)
Books I own are marked in bold:
-
Poetry collections:
- Вечерний альбом [Evening Album] (1910)
- Волшебный фонарь [Magic Lantern] (1912)
- Из двух книг [from two books] (1913)
- Юношеские стихи, 1913—1915 [Youthful Verses] (1915)
- Youthful Verses. Trans. Christopher Whyte (2021)
- Стихи к Блоку (1916—1921) [Verses to Blok] (1922)
- Конец Казановы [The End of Casanova] (1922)
- Царь-девица [Tsar-Maiden] (1920)
- Вёрсты [Versts] (1921)
- "Starry Sky to Starry Sky (Miles)". Trans. Mary Jane White (1988)
- Milestones (1922). Trans. Christopher Whyte (2015)
- Лебединый стан [The Swans' Camp] (1921)
- The Demesne of the Swans: Bilingual Edition. Trans. Robin Kemball (1980)
- Разлука [Parting] (1922)
- Переулочки [Alleys] (1922)
- Ремесло [Craft] (1923)
- Психея. Романтика [Psyche: A Romance] (1923)
- Молодец [Well done] (1924)
- После России [After Russia] (1928)
- After Russia. Trans. Michael Nayden (1992)
- After Russia: The First Notebook. Trans. Christopher Whyte (2017)
- After Russia: The Second Notebook. Trans. Christopher Whyte (2018)
- сборник 1940 года [1940 Collection] (1940)
- Чародей [The Sorcerer] (1914)
- На Красном Коне [On the Red Horse] (1921)
- Included in: Poem of the End: Six Narrative Poems. Trans. Nina Kossman (2021)
- Поэма Горы [Poem of the Mountain] (1924)
- Included in: Poem of the End: Six Narrative Poems. Trans. Nina Kossman (2021)
- Поэма Конца [Poem of the End] (1924)
- Included in: Poem of the End: Six Narrative Poems. Trans. Nina Kossman (2021)
- Крысолов [The Pied Piper] (1925)
- The Ratcatcher: A Lyrical Satire. Trans. Angela Livingstone (2000)
- С моря [From the Sea] (1926)
- Попытка комнаты [An Attempt at a Room] (1926)
- Included in: Poem of the End: Six Narrative Poems. Trans. Nina Kossman (2021)
- Поэма Лестницы [Poem of the Stairs] (1926)
- Новогоднее [New Year's Greetings] (1927)
- Included in: Poem of the End: Six Narrative Poems. Trans. Nina Kossman (2021)
- Поэма Воздуха [Poem of the Air] (1927)
- Included in: Poem of the End: Six Narrative Poems. Trans. Nina Kossman (2021)
- Красный бычок [Red Bull] (1928)
- Перекоп [Perekop] (1929)
- Сибирь [Siberia] (1930)
- Егорушка [Egorushka]
- Несбывшаяся поэма [Unfinished Poem]
- Певица [The Singer]
- Автобус [Bus]
- Поэма о Царской Семье [Poem about the Tsar's Family]
- Selected Poems. Trans. Elaine Feinstein (1971)
- Selected Poems. Trans. Elaine Feinstein. Foreword by Max Hayward. 1971. Penguin Modern European Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
- Selected Poems. Trans. Elaine Feinstein. 1971. Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
- Selected Poems. Trans. David McDuff (1987)
- Selected Poems. Trans. David McDuff. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Books Ltd., 1987.
- In the Inmost Hour of the Soul: Poems by Marina Tsvetayeva. Trans. Nina Kossman (1989)
- Black Earth. Trans. Elaine Feinstein (1992)
- Poem of the End: Selected Narrative and Lyrical Poems: Bilingual Edition. Trans. Nina Kossman (1998)
- Bride of Ice: New Selected Poems. Trans. Elaine Feinstein (2009)
- "To You – in 10 Decades". Trans. by Alexander Givental & Elysee Wilson-Egolf (2012)
- Moscow in the Plague Year. [1918-1920]. Trans. Christopher Whyte (2014)
- Head on a Gleaming Plate: Poems 1917-1918. Trans. Christopher Whyte (2022)
- Three by Tsvetaeva. Trans. Andrew Davis (2024)
- Vega's Fugitive: Poems. Trans. Alyssa Gillespie (2026)
- Червонный валет [Jack of Hearts] (1918)
- Метель [The Snowstorm] (1918)
- Фортуна [Fortune] (1918)
- Приключение [Adventure] (1918—1919)
- Пьеса о Мэри [A Play about Mary] [incomplete] (1919)
- Каменный Ангел [The Stone Angel] (1919)
- Феникс [Phoenix] (1919)
- Ариадна [Ariadne] (1924)
- Федра [Phaedra] (1927)
- Phaedra: A Drama in Verse; with New Year's Letter and Other Long Poems. Trans. Angela Livingstone (2012)
- Живое о живом [A Living Word about a Living Man: Voloshin] (1933)
- Пленный дух [A Captive Spirit] (1922)
- Мой Пушкин [My Pushkin] (1937)
- Пушкин и Пугачёв [Pushkin and Pugachev] (1937)
- Искусство при свете совести [Art in the Light of Conscience] (1931)
- Поэт и время [The Poet and Time] (1932)
- Эпос и лирика современной России [Epic and lyrical poetry of modern Russia] (1932-33)
- воспоминания об Андрее Белом, Валерии Брюсове, Максимилиане Волошине, Борисе Пастернаке и др. Мемуары [memories of Andrei Bely, Valery Bryusov, Maximilian Voloshin, Boris Pasternak, and others] (1925-34)
- Мать и музыка [Mother and Music] (1934)
- Сказка матери [A Mother's Tale] (1934)
- История одного посвящения [The Story of an Initiation] (1931)
- Дом у Старого Пимена [The House at Old Pimen] (1931)
- Повесть о Сонечке [The Tale of Sonechka] (1937)
- A Captive Spirit: Selected Prose. Trans. J. Marin King (1994)
- A Captive Spirit: Selected Prose. Ed. & trans. J. Marin King. 1980. Introduction by Susan Sontag. London: Virago Press Limited, 1983.
- Избранное [Selections]. Ed. Вл. Орлова (1961)
- Вечерний альбом [Evening Album] (1988)
- Стихотворения. Поэмы [Поэтическая Россия]. [Verses and Poems]. Ed. А. М. Туркова & А. А. Саакянц (1988)
- Собрание стихотворений, поэм и драматических произведений [Collected Verses, Poems, and Dramatic Works]. 3 vols. Ed. А. Саакянц & Л.Мнухина (1990—1993)
- Сочинение: в 2 т. [Works in 2 vols] Ed. А. Саакянц (1988)
- Стихотворения, Поэмы [Verses, Poems]
- Проза [Prose]
- Стихотворения и поэмы [Б-ка поэта. Большая сер.] [Verses and Poems]. Ed. Е. Б. Коркиной (1990)
- Стихотворения; Поэмы; Драматические произведения [Классики и современники. Поэтич. б-ка]. [Verses, Poems, and Dramatic Works]. Ed. Е. Евтушенко & Т. Толстая (1990)
- Собрание cочинение: в 7 т. [Collected Works in 7 vols.]. Ed. А. Саакянц & Л. Мнухина (1994—1995)
- Стихотворения 1906—1920 [Poetry 1906-20]
- Стихотворения 1921—1941 [Poetry 1921-40]
- Поэмы. Драматические произведения [Poems, Dramatic Works]
- Воспоминания. Записи. Интервью [Memories. Records. Interviews]
- Автобиографическая проза. Эссе. Критические статьи [Autobiographical Prose, Essays, Critical articles]
- Письма 1905—1941 [Letters I]
- Письма 1905—1941 [Letters II]
- Неизданное. Сводные тетради [Unpublished Works & Notebooks]. Ed. Е. Б. Коркиной и И. Д. Шевеленко (1997)
- Стихи и Проза [Poems & Prose] (2004}
- Стихи и Проза. Москва: Издателъство «Эксмо», 2004.
- Лирика [Lyrics]. Ed. В. Мишина (2006}
- [with Boris Pasternak & Rainer Maria Rilke] Letters: Summer 1926 (2001)
- Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries, 1917–1922. Ed. & trans. Jamey Gambrell (2002)
- Feinstein, Elaine. A Captive Lion: The Life of Marina Tsvetayeva. London: Century Hutchinson Ltd., 1987.
- Schweitzer, Viktoria. Tsvetaeva. 1988. Trans. Robert Chandler and H. T. Willetts. Poetry translated by Peter Norman. Ed. Angela Livingstone. 1992. London: The Harvill Press, 1995.
Longer poems:
Unfinished poems:
Poetry in Translation:
Plays:
Prose:
Works:
Letters & Journals:
Secondary:
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