Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries, 1917-1922 by Marina Tsvetaeva
Edited, translated and with an introduction by Jamey Gambrell
Despite having had at least two books by Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva lurking on the shelves for well over 30 years, it’s only recently that I’ve actually started to properly pay attention to her writing – and what an author she’s turning out to be. Her poems are monumentally good, and some of them are regularly haunting me at the moment. I have a lovely collection of her prose put out by Virago back in the day; but this book was one I picked up more recently. It’s just been republished by NYRB, but my edition is an old Yale University Press edition from 2002; and it seemed a perfect choice not only to take on my recent travels with me, but also to fit in with WITmonth.
The book contains in effect a number of essays, drawing from diaries Tsvetaeva kept while living through some of the most dramatic times her country had seen.Tsvetaeva was from a bourgeois background, so was never going to be sympathetic to the Revolution; however, her diaries provide a fascinating insight into just how harsh the conditions were and how difficult it was to survive through them. She left Russia, tried some time in exile, and finally followed her husband Sergei Efron back to the Soviet Union in 1939. Efron and their daughter were arrested in 1941; the former was executed and Tsvetaeva took her own life the same year.
I rose on a carousel for the first time when I was 11, in Lausanne; the second time three days ago, on Sparrow Hills, on White Monday with six-year old Alya. Between those two carousels – lies a whole lifetime.
“Earthy Signs” is a remarkably diverse read, however; there are sections that deal with a train journey taken out into the country to try to find food; her attempts to find and keep jobs; poetry readings and the emerging Soviet arts; her thoughts on love and Germany; and so much more. Some extracts are no more than a sentence; others long meditations on life and art. And all of Tsvetaeva’s writing is fascinating.
Much of the success of the book is obviously down to Gambrell, who presumably made numerous editorial choices to structure the book as it is. “Earthly Signs” certainly brings alive Tsvetaeva, who was nothing if not a complex and intense woman. She’s capable of caprice, choosing a particular job simply because the building in which she would work is the one on which the Rostovs’ house in “War and Peace” was based. She’s also a woman of extreme and fluctuating emotions; in the introduction, Gambrell quotes at length a passage by Tsvetaeva’s husband, where he explains her constant cycle of obsession and infatuation with someone new, and in all honesty she must have been quite hard work to live with at times. That temperament is perfectly illustrated at several points in the book, in particular with her encounter with a young peasant soldier she nicknames Stenka Razin (after a historical Cossack hero) and also in her constant attraction to beautiful young men. (That tendency, I’ve noticed, seems to turn up in her poetry quite a lot too…)
Of all the temptations he offers me, I would single out the three most important: the temptation of weakness, the temptation of impassivity – and the temptation of what is Other.
The world in which Tsvetaeva was trying to survive was grim, to say the least; she struggled for food and one of her children actually starved to death. The immediacy of the prose in diary form really brings alive how it was to be in Moscow through revolution and civil war, and the narrative is shocking in many places; one instance which stuck in my mind was Tsvetaeva having to tie her youngest to a chair while going out with her other child to find food. Her naivety is always on show, and she speaks her mind at times when she should have been a little more circumspect, but somehow gets away with it. And it cannot have been easy for an impractical woman to cope with absence from her husband, about whom she had no idea whether he wa alive or dead, living from day-to-day and attempting to scrape the barest of provisions. Even when things got a little more back to normal, Tsvetaeva continued to be a woman who refused to play the game, averse to change her beliefs for anyone.
I’ve taken the year 1919 in somewhat exaggerated terms – the way people will understand it a hundred years from now: not a speck of flour, not a speck of salt (clinker and clutter enough and to spare!), not a speck, not a mote, not a shred of soap! – I clean the flue myself, my boots are two sizes too big – this is the way some novelist, using imagination to the detriment of taste, will describe the year 1919.
“Earthly Signs” was a salutary read, some of which I was involved in during a particularly unpleasant train journey; however, my discomfort for an hour or so was nothing compared with the privations Tsvetaeva undertook to try and track down food supplies. The later section of the book includes an extended meditation on poetry in the section “A Hero of Labor” when she considers the life, death and legacy of the poet, Valery Bruisov, a writer who embraced the Bolshevik revolution. In this piece she draws comparisons (and not for the first time) with the French Revolution, something of a touchstone for many who lived through the Russian equivalent; and on both sides, as both monarchists and revolutionaries can find much to interest them in the earlier conflict. Tsvetaeva also ponders the future of poetry under the Soviets, and it’s fair to say that the poet here who followed their heart will be remembered more than the one who followed the Soviet line.
My comments, of course, apply to the Yale version, although I imagine the NYRB new edition will be much the same in content. I did have minor issues with the book and I do wonder if these will be repeated in the reprint. The notation was problematic as it wasn’t indicated in the text at all, which necessitated constant random flipping back and forwards to see if there *were* any notes. The system employed in the letters of Catherine the Great from OUP, which I turned to after this book, was much more successful; a simple asterisk on the page indicated a note and then I could choose whether to follow it up or not. Also, in “Earthly Signs” there was no translation of phrases in French and German; and I really wonder why they were left in their original language, as if I can’t read Russian (which is why I’m reading this translation) there’s no guarantee I can read French or German either. A simple note could have been added that a particular phrase was originally in either of those languages which would have made it much easier for me than having to keep resorting to the erratic nature of Google Translate…Marina Tsvetaeva does not mince her words at any point in the diaries; she’s frank about what she thinks about people and events, and there are some perhaps unexpected comments on race that had me hesitating. What is bizarre about this is that several appeared to be aimed at the Jewish race – and yet as the introduction reveals, Tsvetaeva was of Jewish heritage and Efron himself was a Jew. I was going to say that was perhaps strange, but then as a Scot I imagine I would feel quite comfortable being rude about my own race, so maybe I shouldn’t be sensitive about this. And Tsvetaeva is such a good writer, capable of nailing a person in a few lines; for example, her description of the woman in charge at one of her jobs:
The directress is a short-legged, ungainly, forty-year-old cuttlefish in a corset and in spectacles – terrifying. I smell a former inspectress and a current prison guard. With caustic frankness, she’s astounded at my slowness…
I ended “Earthly Signs” emotionally drained; the melancholic Tsvetaeva is never a light read, and the experiences she lived through would have broken stronger people. What emerges from the book, however, is a portrait of an intense, mercurial, emotional and brilliant woman whose tenacity kept her going for longer than you might have expected. That she took her leave when she did is not surprising; but at least she left us her words.
Aug 18, 2018 @ 11:21:08
Tsvetaeva is fantastic! Does that collection have her Magdalene poems? She, Rilke, and Pasternak engaged in a three-way epistolary love affair that resulted in all 3 producing related poems on the theme of Mary Magdalene.
Aug 18, 2018 @ 17:30:08
She really is! I shall have to check about the poems – I have the Virago collection, at least one poetry collection, and the collection of letters with Rilke and Pasternak. I love her poetry, and I may end up searching out other collections too….
Aug 18, 2018 @ 11:27:45
Sounds like an incredible and affecting read and somewhat appropriate that you had to suffer a bit while reading, as life imitates art. I hope your next read is a little more uplifting.
Aug 18, 2018 @ 17:28:06
It was indeed an emotional experience to read, although it certainly made me realise that having to stand for an hour and a half was nothing compared to what she had to go through. Next up is Catherine the Great, who suffers a little less that MT!
Aug 18, 2018 @ 11:43:32
This sounds like an extraordinary book. These historical personal accounts are so important for us today we can learn so much from history. I can see why you were emotionally drained by these stories of hardship – the tragedy of her child starving to death! I have read books where phrases and whole sentences have been left in the original language with no translation beneath (often novels) it is so frustrating because Google translate is as you say erratic.
Aug 18, 2018 @ 17:26:58
You’re quite right – that immediacy of the narrative voice, the eye-witness to history, really brings the situation to life in a way no retrospective work really can (though having said that, China Mieville’s October *did* capture the Russian Revolution really well). It’s sometimes hard to really grasp how difficult it must have been to live through these times and the emotional effects on survivors.
And yes, the translation thing is annoying – my French never progressed past O level and is very rusty now, so I need all the help I can get! 🙂
Aug 18, 2018 @ 11:47:42
This sounds extraordinary. She may not always be likeable but she sounds compelling nonetheless.
Aug 18, 2018 @ 17:24:21
No, I can imagine she wasn’t easy at times, but her story is so poignant and her writing so beautiful that you end up overlooking that. I just wish I hadn’t left it so long to properly read her.
Aug 18, 2018 @ 19:11:07
This looks so good! I have the NYRB version and can’t wait to read it!
Aug 19, 2018 @ 07:30:45
I’ll be interested in your thoughts and also to hear whether the notation and translation gaps are the same! 😁
Aug 18, 2018 @ 20:28:51
Thanks for sharing this, I know a little about Tsvetaeva’s life from reading Moscow in the 1930s, a novel from the archives, by Natalia Gromova, (translated by Christopher Culver) but this book sounds like a good introduction to her writing.
Aug 19, 2018 @ 07:28:26
She’s a wonderfully unique writer. I just don’t know why it’s taken me so long!
Aug 19, 2018 @ 10:00:12
I really love personal accounts like diaries and letters, and often take them to work with me as there’s no plot that requires unbroken concentration, but I fear this would have me sobbing on a teabreak. Going out to find food for hungry children is such an urgent, basic, human reality, and there’s me annoyed that Tesco have sold out of baby spinach.
Aug 19, 2018 @ 13:48:13
This is certainly not your average light weight collection of reminiscences, that’s for sure. I still find myself amazed that Tsvetaeva, who was to some extent away with the fairies, managed to survive it all. And yes – it makes our woes seem very petty!
Aug 19, 2018 @ 15:19:46
A powerful review of a powerful book. Goodness me. I did laugh wryly at this: “however, my discomfort for an hour or so was nothing compared with the privations Tsvetaeva undertook to try and track down food supplies.” – at one point in my sufferings in my 19 mile race last weekend I muttered to myself “It’s not as if you’re Anne Frank, you know”. It did help!
Aug 19, 2018 @ 16:30:53
Yes, I think we often moan about what my Offspring dub as “first world problems” without really appreciating how lucky you are. I should always remind myself of MT (or indeed Anne Frank) if I’m getting a bit moany…..
Aug 19, 2018 @ 23:02:13
I’m currently reading this – and yes, that passage about tying Irina to the chair, mostly to keep her from eating the little bit of cabbage that they might have in the house… The translation and intro is exactly the same, so yes, alas, the notes are at the back (I just ignore them while reading the text and read them all at the end). And so are the words/phrases in different languages. I had to go and check, as I have to admit I hadn’t noticed while reading. (I often forget what language I read a book in, unless it’s something that I have to struggle painfully with, such as Japanese). Sorry, that sounds boastful – I didn’t mean it at all like that. I can see why it’s a nuisance (like those passages in French in Tolstoy, which I didn’t understand at all as a child).
Aug 20, 2018 @ 08:19:12
I know – I kept thinking about poor Irina…I had imagined that the NYRB edition *would* be the same and I pretty much ended up doing the same as you with the notes! As for the untranslated bits, that *is* slightly odd – unless the original translator imagined it would only be read by multilingual intellectuals! 🤣🤣🤣😉😉😉