Letters: Summer 1926

Author: Boris Pasternak
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 9780940322714
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Book Description
Edited by Yevgeny Pasternak, Yelena Pasternak, and Konstantin M. Azadovsky The summer of 1926 was a time of trouble and uncertainty for each of the three poets whose correspondence is collected in this moving volume. Marina Tsvetayeva was living in exile in France and struggling to get by. Boris Pasternak was in Moscow, trying to come to terms with the new Bolshevik regime. Rainer Maria Rilke, in Switzerland, was dying. Though hardly known to each other, they began to correspond, exchanging a series of searching letters in which every aspect of life and work is discussed with extraordinary intensity and passion. Letters: Summer 1926 takes the reader into the hearts and minds of three of the twentieth century's greatest poets at a moment of maximum emotional and creative pressure.

Letters to a Young Poet

Author: Rainer Maria Rilke
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393310396
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 90

Book Description
Letters written to F.X. Kappus during the years 1903-1908. Chronicle of Rilkes's life for the years 1903-1908 (p. 81-123).

Marina Tsvetaeva

Author: Simon Karlinsky
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521275743
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Book Description
This book is a major critical biography of the poet Maria Tsvetaeva by one of the foremost authorities on her work. It draws on a profusion of recent documentation and research, some of it hitherto unpublished, and encompasses the whole course of her life. Professor Karlinsky is careful to supply the reader with the necessary context for understanding the work by setting out the historical, political and literary background against which Tsvetaeva's life and literary development evolved. A particular feature of the book is a discussion of Tsvetaeva's relationships with her literary contemporaries, especially Mandelstam, Rilke, Akhmatova, Pasternak, and Mayakovsky, and of her emotional involvement with various men and women that are reflected in her poetry, plays and prose. Interest in Tsvetaeva's work has grown considerably and this important book will be essential reading both to scholars of twentieth-century Russian literature and cultural studies and to all serious students of modern literature.

The Same Solitude

Author: Catherine Ciepiela
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501727001
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Book Description
"Still, we have the same solitude, the same journeys and searching, and the same favorite turns in the labyrinth of literature and history."—Boris Pasternak to Marina TsvetaevaOne of the most compelling episodes of twentieth-century Russian literature involves the epistolary romance that blossomed between the modernist poets Marina Tsvetaeva and Boris Pasternak in the 1920s. Only weeks after Tsvetaeva emigrated from Russia in 1922, Pasternak discovered her poetry and sent her a letter of praise and admiration. Tsvetaeva's enthusiastic response began a decade-long affair, conducted entirely through letters. This correspondence-written across the widening divide separating Soviet Russia from Russian émigrés in continental Europe-offers a view into the overlapping worlds of literary creativity, sexual identity, and political affiliation. Following both sides of their conversation, Catherine Ciepiela charts the poets' changing relations to each other, to the extraordinary political events of the period, and to literature itself. The Same Solitude presents the first full account of this affair of letters and poems from its beginning in the summer of 1922 to its denouement in the 1930s.Drawing on many previously untranslated letters and poems, Ciepiela describes the poets' mutual influence, both in the course of their lives and the development of their art. Neither poet saw any separation between a poet's life and work, and Ciepiela treats each poet's letters and poems as a single text. She discusses the poets' famous triangular correspondence with Rainer Maria Rilke in 1926, and she addresses the profound significance of Tsvetaeva for Pasternak, who is often perceived (mistakenly, Ciepiela asserts) as the more detached partner. Further, this book expands our understanding of poetic modernism by showing how the poets worked through ideas about gender and writing in the context of what they themselves called a literary "marriage."

Earthly Signs

Author: Marina Tsvetaeva
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681371634
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
A moving collection of autobiographical essays from a Russian poet and refugee of the Bolshevik Revolution. Marina 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. Includes black and white photographs.

Witness to My Life

Author: Jean-Paul Sartre
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743244052
Category : Authors, French
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Book Description

Letters to Sartre

Author: Simone de Beauvoir
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 1611454980
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Book Description
In these letters, de Beauvoir tells Sartre everything, tracing the extraordinary complications of their triangular love life; they reveal her not only as manipulative and dependent, but also as vulnerable, passionate, jealous, and...

A Ringing Glass

Author: Donald A. Prater
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 9780198158912
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Book Description
A celebrated biography of probably the greatest lyric poet of this century. Prater draws on recent documentary evidence to provide a compelling account of this most complex of lives.

Letters of the Century

Author: Lisa Grunwald
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
ISBN: 0385315937
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 754

Book Description
"Immediate and evocative, letters witness and fasten history, catching events as they happen," write Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler in their introduction to this remarkable book. In more than 400 letters from both famous figures and ordinary citizens, Letters of the Century encapsulates the people and places, events and trends that shaped our nation during the last 100 years. Here is Mark Twain's hilarious letter of complaint to the head of Western Union, an ecstatic letter from a young Charlie Chaplin upon receiving his first movie contract, Einstein's letter to Franklin Roosevelt warning about atomic warfare, Mark Rudd's "generation gap" letter to the president of Columbia University during the student riots of the 60s, and a letter from young Bill Gates imploring hobbyists not to share software so that innovators can make some money... In these pages, our century's most celebrated figures become everyday people and everyday people become part of history. Here is a veteran's wrenching letter left at the Vietnam Wall, a poignant correspondence between two women trying to become mothers, a heart-breaking letter from an AIDS sufferer telling his parents how he wants to be buried, an indignant e-mail from a PC user to his on-line server... "Letters," write Grunwald and Adler, "give history a voice." Arranged chronologically by decade, illustrated with over 100 photographs, Letters of the Century creates an extraordinary chronicle of our history, through the voices of the men and women who have lived its greatest moments.

Letters to a Young Poet

Author: Rainer Maria Rilke
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
ISBN: 0834843676
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 118

Book Description
A fresh perspective on a beloved classic by acclaimed translators Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. German poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s (1875–1926) Letters to a Young Poet has been treasured by readers for nearly a century. Rilke’s personal reflections on the vocation of writing and the experience of living urge an aspiring poet to look inward, while also offering sage wisdom on further issues including gender, solitude, and romantic love. Barrows and Macy’s translation extends this compilation of timeless advice and wisdom to a fresh generation of readers. With a new introduction and commentary, this edition places the letters in the context of today’s world and the unique challenges we face when seeking authenticity.