Title of the article:

“THE TWO INSEPARABLES”: CREATIVE JUNCTION AND SPIRITUAL AFFINITY BETWEEN THE TSVETAEVA SISTERS

Author(s):

TatyanaYe. Smykovskaya

Information about the author/authors

Tatyana Ye. Smykovskaya — PhD in Philology, Associate Professor, Blagoveshchensk State Pedagogical University, Lenina St. 104, 675000 Blagoveshchensk, Russia. E-mail: tarkatova@yahoo.com

Section

Philological sciences

Year

2019

Volume

Vol. 52

Pages

pp. 177–187

Received

April 24, 2018

Date of publication

June 28, 2019

Index UDK

821.161.1

Index BBK

83.3(2Рос=Рус)

Abstract

The paper examines of the works of Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaeva, with a focus on the body of texts in which the two sisters’ creative priorities intersected on a single plane of spiritual and artistic meaning. As a result of traumatic historical upheavals of the first half of the 20th century, Marina and Anastasia Tsvetaeva`s life paths diverged. Yet despite the tragic cataclysms that befell Russia during this period, the inner connection between Musya and Asya, as two sisters called themselves, remained intact (they last met in France in 1927). The authors address poems by the Tsvetaeva sisters dedicated to each other to highlight poetic and prose productions that express biographical and literary affinity between them. For the first time, several of Anastasia Tsvetaeva’s lyrical poems are considered in the context of her elder sister’s life and art. The first interactions date back to the sisters’ childhood years soundly evoked by the younger of the two, Anastasia, in her book Reminiscences, which she wrote during the second half of the twentieth century. Her impressions and feelings of her period of adolescence and youth found expression not only in memoir prose, but also in the verse form, which is, first of all, true of Marina Tsvetaeva’s early lyrical poetry. The image of Anastasia is memorized in several of Marina’s poems, including “You are a princess from a kingdom of modesty…”, “Forest Kingdom”, “Look closely and, if you may, more tenderly…”. The texts dedicated to Asya (Anastasia) frequently feature the topos of a train station, which signposts the theme of leave-taking, as in “At the Train Station” and “To My Inseparable One As She Departs”. The Tsvetaeva sisters’ lyrical discourse allows for direct biographical resonances, rendered more intricate via a sisterly dialogue of images (Marina’s “Ice-skaters” vs. Anastasia’s “We”). Anastasia Tsvetaeva’s camp verse is suffused with direct or oblique lyrical references to her elder sister.

Keywords

Marina Tsvetaeva, Anastasia Tsvetaeva, poetry, artistic world, the Tsvetaevian we, creative friction, lyrical heroine.

References

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