Ciepiela C. The Same Solitude. Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva

Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2006. — 303 p. — ISBN: 978-0-8014-3534-8.One 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.Note on Editorial Method.The Girl Muse.
The Boy Poet.
The Romance of Distance (1922-1925).
Lyricism and History (1926).
The End of the End (1926-1935).Appendix: Marina Tsvetaeva, “From the Sea” (“S moria,” 1926).
Notes.