41 Facts About Marina Tsvetaeva

Marina Tsvetaeva's work is considered among some of the greatest in twentieth century Russian literature.

Marina Tsvetaeva lived through and wrote of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow famine that followed it.

Marina Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow, the daughter of Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetaev, a professor of Fine Art at the University of Moscow, who later founded the Alexander III Museum of Fine Arts.

Marina Tsvetaeva's mother, Maria Alexandrovna Mein, Ivan's second wife, was a concert pianist, highly literate, with German and Polish ancestry.

Marina Tsvetaeva's father was kind, but deeply wrapped up in his studies and distant from his family.

Marina Tsvetaeva was still deeply in love with his first wife; he would never get over her.

In June 1904, Marina Tsvetaeva was sent to school in Lausanne.

Marina Tsvetaeva gave up the strict musical studies that her mother had imposed and turned to poetry.

Marina Tsvetaeva wrote "With a mother like her, I had only one choice: to become a poet".

In 1908, aged 16, Marina Tsvetaeva studied literary history at the Sorbonne.

Marina Tsvetaeva began spending time at Voloshin's home in the Black Sea resort of Koktebel, which was a well-known haven for writers, poets and artists.

Marina Tsvetaeva became enamoured of the work of Alexander Blok and Anna Akhmatova, although she never met Blok and did not meet Akhmatova until the 1940s.

Marina Tsvetaeva was 19, he 18: they fell in love and were married in 1912, the same year as her father's project, the Alexander III Museum of Fine Arts, was ceremonially opened, an event attended by Tsar Nicholas II.

Marina Tsvetaeva was a close witness of the Russian Revolution, which she rejected.

Marina Tsvetaeva was trapped in Moscow for five years, where there was a terrible famine.

Marina Tsvetaeva wrote six plays in verse and narrative poems.

Alya became ill, and Marina Tsvetaeva removed her, but Irina died there of starvation in 1920.

Marina Tsvetaeva began a passionate affair with Konstantyn Rodziewicz, a former military officer, a liaison which became widely known throughout emigre circles.

At about the same time, Marina Tsvetaeva began correspondence with poet Rainer Maria Rilke and novelist Boris Pasternak.

Marina Tsvetaeva was to be a most difficult child but Tsvetaeva loved him obsessively.

In Berlin, before settling in Paris, Marina Tsvetaeva wrote some of her greatest verse, including Remeslo and Posle Rossii.

At about this time Marina Tsvetaeva had a relapse of the tuberculosis she had previously contracted in 1902.

Marina Tsvetaeva received a small stipend from the Czechoslovak government, which gave financial support to artists and writers who had lived in Czechoslovakia.

Marina Tsvetaeva turned more and more to writing prose because she found it made more money than poetry.

Marina Tsvetaeva did not feel at all at home in Paris's predominantly ex-bourgeois circle of Russian emigre writers.

Marina Tsvetaeva does not seem to have known that her husband was a spy, nor the extent to which he was compromised.

In 1939, Marina Tsvetaeva became lonely and alarmed by the rise of fascism, which she attacked in Stikhi k Chekhii.

Marina Tsvetaeva's sister had been arrested before Marina Tsvetaeva's return; although Anastasia survived the Stalin years, the sisters never saw each other again.

Marina Tsvetaeva got bits of work translating poetry, but otherwise the established Soviet writers refused to help her, and chose to ignore her plight; Nikolai Aseev, whom she had hoped would assist, shied away, fearful for his life and position.

Marina Tsvetaeva had no means of support in Yelabuga, and on 24 August 1941 she left for Chistopol desperately seeking a job.

Marina Tsvetaeva was buried in Yelabuga cemetery on 2 September 1941, but the exact location of her grave remains unknown.

Marina Tsvetaeva's poetry was admired by poets such as Valery Bryusov, Maximilian Voloshin, Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Anna Akhmatova.

Marina Tsvetaeva was primarily a lyrical poet, and her lyrical voice remains clearly audible in her narrative poetry.

Marina Tsvetaeva is the unique case in which the paramount spiritual experience of an epoch served not as the object of expression but as its means, by which it was transformed into the material of art.

The full range of Marina Tsvetaeva's talent developed quickly, and was undoubtedly influenced by the contacts she had made at Koktebel, and was made evident in two new collections: Mileposts and Mileposts: Book One.

Marina Tsvetaeva acknowledges her sources in the titles of the very long works, The Maiden Tsar: A Fairy-tale Poem and "The Swain", subtitled "A Fairytale".

The satirist in Marina Tsvetaeva plays second fiddle only to the poet-lyricist.

The target of Marina Tsvetaeva's satire is everything petty and petty bourgeois.

Later the Russian-Tatar composer Sofia Gubaidulina wrote an Hommage a Marina Tsvetaeva Tsvetayeva featuring her poems.

The production was directed by Anne Bogart and the part of Marina Tsvetaeva was sung by Lauren Flanigan.

The poetry by Marina Tsvetaeva was set to music and frequently performed as songs by Elena Frolova, Larisa Novoseltseva, Zlata Razdolina and other Russian bards.