Distances divide, exclude us [Extract from a poem addressed to Pasternak] by Marina Tsvetaeva

Distances divide, exclude us.

They’ve dis-weilded and dis-glued us.

Despatched, disposed of, dis-inclusion –

they never knew this meant fusion

of elbow grease and inspiration.

 

by Марина Ивановна Цветаева

(Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva)

(1925)

translated by Peter Oram

Interesting addition: Throughout much of 1926 Tsvetaeva kept up and intense correspondence with Rainer Maria Rilke and Boris Pasternak. The above poem was sent to Pasternak while Tsvetaeva was in exile and had moved from Prague to Paris thus increasing her distance from her homeland. She grew increasingly isolated amongst the other emigre community as she had praised the works of Mayakovsky which got her mistakenly branded as endorsing the Soviet system which eventually led the editors of the important journal The Latest News to stop publishing her works which, via her literary earnings, had allowed her to support her family through her contributions.

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To Osip Mandelstam by Marina Tsvetaeva

Nothing’s been taken away!

We’re apart – I’m delighted by this!

Across the hundreds of miles

that divide us, I send you my kiss.

 

Our gifts, I know, are unequal.

For the first time my voice is still.

What, my young Derzhavin, do

you make of my doggrel?

 

For your terrible flight I baptized you –

young eagle, it’s time to take wing!

You endured the sun without blinking,

but my gaze – that’s a different thing!

 

None ever watched your departure

more tenderly than this

or more finally. Across hundreds

of summers, I send you my kiss.

 

by Марина Ивановна Цветаева (Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva)

(1916)

translated by Peter Oram

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Fun fact: Her referring to Mandelstam as ‘my young Derzhavin’ references Gavriil (Gavrila) Romanovich Derzhavin (Гавриил (Гаврила) Романович Державин), who was one of the most highly esteemed Russian poets before Alexander Pushkin, as well as a statesman. Although his works are traditionally considered literary classicism, his best verse is rich with antitheses and conflicting sounds in a way reminiscent of John Donne and other metaphysical poets.