Hostname: page-component-54dcc4c588-ff9ft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-22T06:27:08.422Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Demanding Woman Poet: On Resisting Marina Tsvetaeva

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Catherine Ciepiela
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Marina Tsvetaeva's poetry, like Sylvia Plath's, dramatizes issues of primary psychological and sexual experience, issues that many critics have taken to be purely biographical. The openly apostrophic character of Tsvetaeva's writing has generated critical judgments about her character. Tsvetaeva's address, in both her lyrics and her letters, is embarrassing—not, as Jonathan Culler maintains, because apostrophe never fulfills its claims but, as Barbara Johnson argues, because it is a naked expression of need. Johnson's Lacanian conception of apostrophe as the child's demand illuminates Tsvetaeva's writing and helps to explain why Tsvetaeva has been charged with being a bad mother. However, Tsvetaeva's practice suggests that far from being contradictory impulses, demanding and giving can hardly be distinguished—a confusion that is reflected in the ambivalent responses her work has inspired.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 111 , Issue 3 , May 1996 , pp. 421 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Works Cited

Bethea, David M Joseph Brodsky and the Creation of Exile. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994.Google Scholar
Boym, Svetlana Death in Quotation Marks: Cultural Myths of the Modern Poet. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Brown, Clarence “On Not Liking Tsvetaeva.” London Review of Books 8 Sept. 1994: 13–14.Google Scholar
Chester, Pamela “Engaging Sexual Demons in Marina Tsvetaeva's ‘Devil’: The Body and the Genesis of the Woman Poet.” Slavic Review 53 (1994): 1025–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ciepiela, Catherine “Leading the Revolution: Tsvetaeva's ‘The Pied Piper’ and Blok's ‘The Twelve.‘” Marina Tsvetaeva: One Hundred Years. Ed. Schweitzer, Viktoria et al. Oakland: Berkeley Slavic Specialties, 1994. 111–11.Google Scholar
Cixous, Hélène Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva. Ed. and trans. Conley, Verena Andermatt. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1991.Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan “Apostrophe.” Diacritics 7.4 (1977): 59–69.Google Scholar
Cvetaeva, Marina Art in the Light of Conscience. Trans. Livingstone, Angela. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Cvetaeva, Marina A Captive Spirit: Selected Prose. Ed. and trans. King, J. Martin. London: Virago, 1983.Google Scholar
Cvetaeva, Marina [Selected Prose in Two Volumes]. Vol. 1. New York: Russica, 1979.Google Scholar
Cvetaeva, Marina [Selected Works]. Ed. Ariadna Efron and Anna Saakjants. Moscow: Sovetskij Pisatel', 1965.Google Scholar
Cvetaeva, Marina Letters, Summer 1926: Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva, Rainer Maria Rilke. Ed. Pasternak, Yevgeny, Pasternak, Yelena, and Azadovsky, Konstantin. Trans. Wettlin, Margaret and Arndt, Walter. New York: Harcourt, 1985.Google Scholar
Cvetaeva, Marina [Unpublished Letters]. Paris: YMCA, 1972.Google Scholar
Cvetaeva, Marina “” [Letters to Anatolij Štejger]. [Experiments] 7 (1956): 8–18.Google Scholar
Cvetaeva, Marina [Letters to A. Teskova]. Jerusalem: Versty, 1982.Google Scholar
Cvetaeva, Marina “” [Marina Cvetaeva's Letters to A. Baxrax]. [Bridges] 5 (1960): 304–30.; 6 (1961): 319–41.Google Scholar
Cvetaeva, Marina [Letters of 1926: Rainer Maria Rilke, Boris Pasternak, Marina Cvetaeva]. Ed. Konstantin Azadovskij, Evgenij Pasternak, and Elena Pasternak. Moscow: Kniga, 1990.Google Scholar
Cvetaeva, Marina Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva. Trans. Feinstein, Elaine. New York: Dutton, 1987.Google Scholar
Cvetaeva, Marina [Lyrics and Poems in Five Volumes]. 5 vols. Ed. Alexander Sumerkin. New York: Russica, 1980-90.Google Scholar
Efron, Georgij [Letters]. Kaliningrad: Luch-1, 1995.Google Scholar
Forrester, Sibelan “Bells and Cupolas: The Formative Role of the Female Body in Marina Tsvetaeva's Poetry.” Slavic Review 51 (1992): 232–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heldt, Barbara Terrible Perfection: Women and Russian Literature. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Homans, Margaret Bearing the Word: Language and Experience in Nineteenth-Century Women's Writing. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.Google Scholar
Huston, Nancy “Novels and Navels.” Critical Inquiry 21 (1995): 708–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Barbara “Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion.” Feminisms. Ed. Warhol, Robyn and Herndl, Diane Price. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1991. 630–63.Google Scholar
Keats, John Complete Poems. Ed. Stillinger, Jack. Cambridge: Belknap-Harvard UP, 1982.Google Scholar
Kelly, Catriona A History of Russian Women's Writing, 1820-1992. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.Google Scholar
Korkina, Elena B “” [On Marina Cvetaeva's Archive]. [Encounters with the Past]. Vol. 4. Moscow: Sovetskaja Rossija, 1987. 397–428.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia “A New Type of Intellectual: The Dissident.” The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril, Moi. New York: Columbia UP, 1986. 292–300.Google Scholar
Lacan, Jacques Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the Ecole Freudienne. Ed. Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose. New York: Norton, 1982.Google Scholar
Losskaja, Veronika [Marina Cvetaeva in Life]. Tenafly: Hermitage, 1989.Google Scholar
Malcolm, Janet The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. New York: Random, 1994.Google Scholar
Rose, Jacqueline The Haunting of Sylvia Plath. London: Virago, 1991.Google Scholar
Rose, Jacqueline Introduction. Lacan 27–57.Google Scholar
Sandler, Stephanie “Embodied Words: Gender in Cvetaeva's Reading of Pushkin.” Slavic and East European Journal 34 (1990): 139–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schweitzer, Viktoria “” [Pages in Marina Cvetaeva's Biography]. Russian Literature 9 (1981): 323–32.Google Scholar
Schweitzer, Viktoria Tsvetaeva. Trans. Chandler, R. and Willetts, H. T. Ed. Livingstone, Angela. New York: Farrar, 1993.Google Scholar
Taubman, Jane A Life through Poetry: Marina Tsvetaeva's Lyric Diary. Columbus: Slavica, 1989.Google Scholar
Taubman, Jane “Marina Tsvetaeva.” Russian Women Writers. Ed. Christine Tomei. New York: Garland, forthcoming.Google Scholar
[Memoirs about Marina Cvetaeva], Ed. Lev Mnuxin and Lev Turčinskij. Moscow: Sovetskij Pisatel', 1992.Google Scholar