Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva

Born on September 26, 1892, in Moscow. Father - Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetaev - professor at Moscow University, founder and collector of the Museum of Fine Arts, an outstanding philologist. Mother - Maria Alexandrovna Mein - a passionate musician, cordially loves poetry and writes by herself. Passion for poetry is from my mother, passion for work and nature - from both parents.

First languages: German and Russian; French by the age of seven. Maternal reading aloud and music. “Ondine”, “Rustam and Zohrab”, “The Princess in the Green”; independently read “A Dog of Flanders”. Favorite knowledge from the age of four - reading, from the age of five - writing. Everything that I loved, I loved until I was seven, and I never loved nothing more. Being forty-seven years old I will say that everything that was destined to be known, I learned before the age of seven, and all the subsequent forty years I was perceiving.

Mother is the lyrical element itself. I am my mother's eldest daughter, but not the favorite. She is proud of me; but she loves the second one. My first grievance is at the lack of love. Childhood, up to ten years old, was spent in an old house in Trekhprudny Lane (Moscow) and a lonely Pesochnaya dacha, on the Oka, near the city of Tarusa, Kaluga province.

My first school was the music school named after Zograf-Plaksina in Merzlyakovsky Lane, where I entered as the youngest student, less than six years old. The next one is the 4th gymnasium, where I entered the preparatory class. In the autumn of 1902, I left with my sick mother for the Italian Riviera, to the town of Nervi near Genova, where I first became acquainted with Russian revolutionaries and the concept of Revolution. In the spring of 1902, I entered the French boarding school in Lausanne, where I stayed for a year and a half. I wrote French poetry. In the summer of 1904, I went with my mother to Germany, to the Black Forest, where in the autumn I entered a boarding school in Freiburg. I wrote German poetry. The most favorite book of those times is “Liechtenstein” by Wilhelm Hauff. In the summer of 1906, my mother and I returned to Russia. Before reaching Moscow, mother dies at Pesochnoye, near the town of Tarusa.

In the autumn of 1906, I entered the boarding school of the Moscow Fon-Derviz gymnasium. After it was the boarding school of the Alferov gymnasium, after which the 6th and 7th grades at the Brukhonenko gymnasium (as a day student). Summers were spent, in Paris and Dresden. Made friendship with the poet Ellis and the philologist Nylender. In 1910, while still at the gymnasium, I published my first book of poems – “Evening Album” - and met the poet Maximilian Voloshin, who wrote the first (if I'm not mistaken) long article about me.

In the summer of 1911, I went to see Voloshin in Koktebel and met my future husband, Sergei Èfron, who is 17 years old and with whom I no longer part. I marry him in 1912. In 1912, my second book of poems, “The Magic Lantern”, was published and my first daughter, Ariadne, was born. In 1913 - the death of my father.

From 1912 to 1922 I write continuously, but without publishing any books. As for the periodical press, I am published several times in the “Northern Notes” (“Severnye Zapiski”) magazine.

Favorite writers: Selma Lagerlöf, Sigrid Undset, Mary Webb. From 1922 to 1928, the following books of mine appear in print: “Tsar Maiden” in the State Publishing House, books of poems “Separation”, "Poems to Blok", “Craft” and “Psyche”, which are far from include all that has been written from 1912 to 1922. In Prague, in 1924, I publish the poem “Le Gars” (“Molodets”), and in Paris, in 1928, a book of poems “After Russia”. I don't have any other books.

In the periodical press abroad, I have published lyrical plays written back in Moscow: “Fortune”, “Adventure”, “The End of Casanova”, “Snowstorm”. Poems: “The Poem of the Mountain”, “The Poem of the End”, “The Staircase”, “From the Sea”, “The Attempt of the Room”, “The Poem of the Air”, two parts of the Theseus trilogy: Part I, Ariadne, Part II, Phaedra”, “New Year”, “Red Bull”, “Siberia”. Translations into French: “Le Gars” (translation of my poem "Molodets” in original size) illustrated by Natalia Goncharova, translations of a few Pushkin's poems, translations of Russian and German revolutionary, as well as Soviet songs. Already on my return to Moscow, I translated several Lermontov's poems. No more of my translations have been published.

Prose: “Hero of Labor” (meeting with Valery Bryusov), “Living about Living” (meeting with Maximilian Voloshin), “The Captive Spirit” (meeting with Andrey Bely), “Natalya Goncharova” (life and work), stories from childhood: “House at the old Pimen”, “Mother and Music”, “Devil”, etc.

Articles: “Art in the Light of Conscience”, “Erlkönig”. Stories: “Khlysts”, “Museum’s Opening”, “Ivy Tower”, “Groom”, “Chinese”, “Mother's Tale” and much more.

All my prose is autobiographical.