Bücher von Marina Tsvetaeva

"This collection is valuable for its steady faithfulness to the original, its breadth of poems, and in particular for so many of the pre-revolutionary poems." Emily Lygo, Modern Poetry in Translation 2009

The poems in Youthful Verses cover the years between 1913 and 1915, a period of unparalleled freedom in Tsvetaeva's life. Recently married and with a baby daughter, she chronicles in a sequence of astonishing honesty and frankness her love for a slightly older woman poet.

After Russia is Marina Tsvetaeva's last collection, published in Paris 13 years before she died. Containing many poems addressed to Pasternak, the book also, towards the end, contains many references to Russia-studiously avoided in earlier poems - making the final obeisance to a Russian peasant woman and to Pasternak in Moscow a fitting close.

After Russia is considered to mark the high point in Tsvetaeva's output of shorter poems. She told Pasternak that all that mattered in the book was its anguish. Technical mastery and experimentation are underpinned by suicidal thoughts, a sense of exclusion from human love and companionship, and an increasing alienation from life itself.