Marina Tsvetaeva

Marina Tsvetaeva was a Russian poet, prose writer, and translator.

She was born on October 8, 1892, in Moscow. Her father, Ivan Vladimirovich, was a professor at Moscow University, a well-known philologist and art historian; he later became director of the Rumyantsev Museum and founder of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her mother, Maria Mein (by origin from a Russified Polish-German family), was a pianist and a pupil of Anton Rubinstein. Marina Tsvetaeva’s maternal grandmother was the Pole Maria Lukinichna Bernatskaya.

Marina began writing poetry—not only in Russian, but also in French and German—at the age of six. Her mother had a huge influence on Marina and on the formation of her character. She dreamed of seeing her daughter become a musician. After her mother died of tuberculosis in 1906, Marina and her sister Anastasia remained in their father’s care.

She received her early education in Moscow, at the private girls’ gymnasium of M. T. Bryukhonenko; she continued it at boarding schools in Lausanne (Switzerland) and Freiburg (Germany). At sixteen, she traveled to Paris to attend a short course of lectures on Old French literature at the Sorbonne.

In 1910 Marina published, at her own expense (at the printing house of A. A. Levenson), her first collection of poems, Evening Album. Her work attracted the attention of famous poets—Valery Bryusov, Maximilian Voloshin, and Nikolai Gumilev. That same year Tsvetaeva wrote her first critical article, “Magic in Bryusov’s Poems.” Evening Album was followed two years later by her second collection, Magic Lantern.

The beginning of Tsvetaeva’s creative career was connected with the circle of Moscow Symbolists. After meeting Bryusov and the poet Ellis (real name: Lev Kobylinsky), Tsvetaeva took part in the activities of circles and studios at the Musaget publishing house.

In 1911 Tsvetaeva met her future husband, Sergei Efron; in January 1912 she married him. In the same year Marina and Sergei had a daughter, Ariadna (A