Marina Tsvetaeva born - October 8, 1892

On this day in 1892, Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva was born in Moscow. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio Greetings, I'm Eves and welcome to This Day
in History Class, a show that believes no day in
history is a slow day. Today is October eighteen. The

(00:23):
day was October eight Russian poet Marina Spadaieva was born
in Moscow. Spatieva was a prolific writer and one of
the most notable Russian language poets of the twentieth century.
On the Julian calendar, which Russia used at the time,
Spatiova's birthday was September. Her mother, Maria Alexandrovna, was a

(00:48):
concert pianist. Her father, Ivan Vladimirovitch Speziav, was a professor
of art history at the University of Moscow. He later
founded the Pushkin Museum of Fine Art. Marina, her siblings,
and her parents lived a comfortable life. They had servants
and spent summers in a cottage in Tadusa, Russia. That said,

(01:10):
her family wasn't perfect. There was tension in her mother
and father's marriage as they still had feelings for previous loves,
and her mother wanted her to be a pianist rather
than pursuing poetry. After Marina's mother got to berculosis in
nineteen o two. The family moved around Europe in search
of warmer climates. They lived in Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany

(01:35):
and Crimea to help with her mother's health, but her
mother died of tuberculosis in nineteen oh six in Tadusa.
Marina read a lot and learned several languages, and she
studied literary history at the Sorbonne when she was a teenager.
In nineteen ten, she self published her first collection of poems,

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called Evening Album. Other poets and critic like Maximilian Volition
and Nikolay Gomolyov recognized her work, and soon she began
to mingle with other artists. She married her husband, Sergey
Yakovlovich Fron in nineteen twelve, and they had three children together.

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Over the course of their relationship, though she was devoted
to her husband, she had affairs, including ones with poets
Sophia Parnak and Osip mandel Stam. Marina's affairs and friendships
inspired many of her poems. But a period of turbulence
in Russia and in Marina's life was on the horizon.

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The Russian Revolution broke out in nineteen seventeen and her
husband joined the Stars counter revolutionary White Army. She rejected
the revolution, and many of her poems reflect her support
of the anti Bolshevik resistance. The Domain of the Swan,
a poem about the Civil War, was one of the
works she wrote during this time, though it wasn't published

(03:01):
until decades later. Marina lost touch with her husband while
he was in the army, and she stayed with her
children in Moscow, where they lived in poverty. During the
famine that took place while she was in Moscow, she
put her two daughters in a state orphanage, hoping they
would be better taken care of there, but her youngest

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died in the orphanage of malnutrition in nineteen twenty. In
nineteen two, Marina and her daughter set out for Berlin
to reunite with Serge, who was in exile. They later
moved to Prague and then in nineteen to Paris, a
major center for Russian immigration. That same year, their son

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Georgi was born. Even though she lived in poverty, she
continued to put out poetry, essays and play. Many Russian
emigrate writers in Paris criticized Marina for not being anti
Soviet enough though she did form connections with writers like Ryter,
Maria Rolca and in A Tescova, she was isolated from

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those immigration circles and Russia. On top of that, her
husband's politics shifted. She became homestick for Russia and developed
Soviet sympathies. Eventually he joined the n k v D,
or the Soviet secret police. In nineteen thirty nine, Marina
and her son returned to the Soviet Union to meet

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her husband and daughter, who had also gained Soviet sympathies.
Marina struggled in Soviet Russia and found it hard to
get work as a writer. Her husband and daughter were
soon arrested on espionage charges. Her husband was shot and
killed in nineteen forty one, and her daughter was sent
to a labor camp. When the Nazis began bombing Moscow,

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Marina and her son were evacuated to Yellabuga, a remote
town in the Tatar Soviet Socialist Republic, where she had
no money or support. She died by suicide in nineteen
forty one. Marinaz Fadila's work is remembered for being lyrical,
direct and experimental, and having distinct rhythms. It's also noted

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for its portrayal of women's experiences during those turbulent years
in Russian history. I'm Eve Jeff Code, and hopefully you
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.
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