000			01776nam a22001817a 4500
999			_c343568 _d343568
003			0
005			20201204074944.0
020			_a9781681371627
082			_a891.74 TSV
100			_aTsvetaeva, Marina
245			_aEarthly Signs: Moscow Diaries, 1917-1922 _cTranslated from the Russian, edited, and with an introduction by Jamey Gambrell
260			_aNew York _bNew York Book Review _c2002
300			_a248p.
520			_aMarina Tsvetaeva ranks with Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, and Boris Pasternak as one of Russia’s greatest twentieth-century poets. Her suicide at the age of forty-eight was the tragic culmination of a life buffeted by political upheaval. The essays collected in this volume are based on diaries she kept during the turbulent years of the Revolution and Civil War. In them she records conversations of women in the markets, soldiers and peasants on the train traveling from the Crimea to Moscow in October 1917, fighting in the streets of Moscow, a frantic scramble with co-workers to dig frozen potatoes out of a cellar, and poetry readings organized by a newly minted Soviet bohemia. Alone in Moscow with two small children, no income, and a missing husband, Tsvetaeva struggled to feed her daughters (one of whom died of malnutrition in an orphanage), find employment in the Soviet bureaucracy, and keep writing poetry. Her keen and ruthless eye observes with compassion and humor—bringing the social, economic, and cultural chaos of the period to life. These autobiographical writings not only give a vivid eyewitness account of Russian history but provide vital insights into the workings of Tsvetaeva’s unique poetics.
650			_aWomen poets, Russian-10th Century
700			_aGambrell, Jamey _eTranslator and Editor
942			_cB