Tsvetaeva Marina
The Tale of Sonechka
Marina Tsvetaeva
The Tale of Sonechka
* PART ONE *
PAVLIK AND YURA
Elle ?tait p?le - et pourtant rose, Petite - avec de grands cheveux...1
No, there was no pallor in her, in nothing, everything in her was the opposite of pallor, but still she was a pourtant rose, and this will be proven and shown in due course.
It was the winter of 1918 - 1919, still winter of 1918, December. I read my play “Blizzard?” to the students of the Third Studio in some theater, on some stage. In an empty theater, on a full stage.
Blizzard? mine was dedicated to: “Yuri and Vera Z., their friendship is my love?”. Yuri and Vera were brother and sister, Vera in the last of all my gymnasiums was my classmate: not a classmate, I was a class older, and I saw her only at recess: a thin, curly girlish puppy, and I especially remember her long back with a half-developed strand of hair, and from the oncoming vision, especially - a mouth, by nature - contemptuous, with corners down, and eyes - the opposite of this mouth, by nature laughing, that is, with corners up. This divergence of lines reverberated within me with an inexplicable emotion, which I translated into her beauty, which greatly surprised others who did not find anything special in her, which greatly surprised me. I’ll say right away that I turned out to be right, that she later turned out to be a beauty - and even so much so that in 1927, in Paris, seriously ill, she was drawn to the screen from the last of her life.
With this Vera, this Vera, I never said a word, and now, nine years later, writing “Blizzard” to her at school, I thought with fear that she would not understand anything about all this, because she probably doesn’t remember me, maybe she never will. didn't notice.
(But why Vera, when Sonechka? And Vera - roots, prehistory, Sonechka’s oldest beginning. A very short story - with a very long prehistory. And posthistory.)
How did Sonechka start? Has it begun in my life, alive? It was October 1917. Yes, the same one. His very last day, that is, the first after the end (the outposts were still rumbling). I was traveling in a dark carriage from Moscow to Crimea. Overhead, on the top shelf, young male voice spoke poetry. Here they are:
And here she is, about whom the grandfathers dreamed and argued noisily over cognac, In the Gironde’s cloak, through the snow and troubles, she burst into us - with a lowered bayonet!
And the ghosts of the Decembrist guards Above the snowy, above Pushkin's Neva The regiments are led to the echo of buglers, To the loud howl of battle music. The Emperor himself in bronze boots
He called you, the Preobrazhensky Regiment, When in the bays of the streets the dashing clarinet broke and fell silent... And he remembered, the Miraculous Builder, Listening to the Peter and Paul gunfire, That madman - strange - rebellious, That memorable voice: - For you!
But what is this, and whose is it, finally?
Juncker, proud to have a poet as a comrade. A combat cadet who fought for five days. The one who recovers from defeat - in poetry. It smelled like Pushkin: those friendships. And from above - the answer:
He is very similar to Pushkin: small, nimble, curly-haired, with sideburns, even the boys in Pushkin call him Pushkin. He writes all the time. Every morning there are new poems.
Infanta, know: I am ready to climb any fire, If only I know that Your eyes will look at me...
And this is from “The Infanta Doll?”, this is his play. This is the Dwarf speaking to the Infanta. The dwarf loves the Infanta. He is a dwarf. True, he is small, but not a dwarf at all.
One - under many names...
The first, most important thing I did when I returned from Crimea was to look for Pavlik. Pavlik lived somewhere near the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and for some reason I got to him through the back door, and the meeting took place in the kitchen. Pavlik was wearing a gymnasium uniform, with buttons, which further strengthened his resemblance to Pushkin the lyceum student. Little Pushkin, only - black-eyed: Pushkin is a legend.
Neither he nor I were at all embarrassed by the kitchen; we were pushed towards each other through all the pots and cauldrons - so that we - internally - clinked, no worse than these vats and cauldrons. The meeting was like an earthquake. The way I understood who he was, he understood who I was. (I’m not talking about poetry; I don’t even know if he knew my poems then.)
After standing in a magical tetanus - I don’t know how long, we both came out - by the same back door, and burst into poetry and speeches...
In a word, Pavlik went and disappeared. He disappeared from me, in Borisoglebsky Lane, for a long time. I sat for days, sat for mornings, sat for nights... As an example of such sitting, I will give only one dialogue.
Pavlik, do you think we can call what we are doing now a thought?
Pavlik, even more timidly:
This is called sitting in the clouds and ruling the world.
Pavlik had a friend about whom he always told me: Yura Z.? Yura and I... When I read this to Yura... Yura keeps asking me... Yesterday Yura and I kissed loudly on purpose so that they would think that Yura finally fell in love... And think: the studio people jump out, and instead of the young lady - me!!!?
One fine evening he told me? Yura? - brought.
But this, Marina, is my friend - Yura Z. - with the same pressure on every word, with the same overflowing of it.
Looking up - it took a long time, because Yura did not end - I discovered Vera’s eyes and mouth.
Lord, aren’t you a brother... Yes, of course, you are a brother... You can’t help but have a sister, Vera!
He loves her more than anything in the world!
Yuri and I started talking. Yuri and I were talking, Pavlik was silent and silently swallowed us - together and us separately - with his huge, heavy, hot eyes.
On the same evening that was - deep night, which was - early morning, parting with them under my poplars, I wrote poems to them, to them together:
They sleep without separating their hands With a brother - a brother, with a friend - a friend, Together, on the same bed... They drank together, sang together...
I wrapped them in a blanket, I loved them forever, I read strange news through closed eyelids: Rainbow: double glory, Glow: double death.
I will not divorce these hands! I'd rather be, I'd rather be burning in hell!
But instead of a fire, it turned out - “Blizzard?”.
In order to keep my word - not to separate these hands - I needed to bring other hands together in my love: brother and sister. Even simpler: in order not to love Yuri alone and thereby not deprive Pavlik, with whom I could only “rule the world together?”, I had to love Yuri plus something else, but this something could not be Pavlik, because Yuri is plus Pavlik were already a given - I had to love Yuri plus Vera, by this Yuri seemed to dissipate, but in fact strengthened, concentrated, for everything that is not in a brother, we find in a sister, and everything that is not in a sister, we find in brother I have been dealt a terribly full, unbearably complete love. (The fact that Vera, who is sick, is in Crimea and knows nothing about anything, did not change matters.)
The attitude from the very beginning became.
It was silently agreed and established that they would always come together - and leave together. But since no relationship can become immediately, one fine morning the phone:
Is it possible for me to come to you someday without Pavlik?
Today.
(But where is Sonechka? Sonechka is already close, almost outside the door, although in time it’s still a year.)
But the crime was immediately punished: Z. and I were simply bored alone, because we didn’t dare talk about the main thing, that is, me and him, him and me, us (we still behave better alone with him than with Pavlik!), but everything else failed. He touched some small things on my table, asked about portraits, and I didn’t even dare to tell him about Vera, before that Vera was his. So they sat there, sitting through who knows what, sitting through the only minute of farewell, when I, leading him out the back door along the spiral staircase and stopping at the last step, and he still remained taller than me by a whole head, - nothing, just a look: - Yes? - no - maybe yes? - not yet - and a double smile: his of enthusiastic amazement, mine of difficult triumph. (One more such victory - and we are defeated.)
This went on for a year.
Your own?Blizzard? I didn’t read it to him then, in January 1918. You can only give a gift to a very rich person, and since he didn’t seem like that to me during our long sittings, Pavlik did, so I gave it to Pavlik - in gratitude for the “Infanta?”, also dedicated not to me - I chose it for Yuri, waited for the most difficult (and for myself - poor) reading of the thing to him in front of the entire Third Studio (all of them were Vakhtangov’s studio students, and Yuri, and Pavlik, and the one who read “Freedom” in a dark carriage and then was immediately killed in Army) and, most importantly, in the face of Vakhtangov, all of them - God and father-commander.
After all, my goal was to give him as much as possible, more - for an actor - when there are more people, more ears, more eyes...
And now, more than a year after meeting the hero, and a year after writing?Blizzard? - the same full stage and empty hall.
(My precision is boring, I know. The reader doesn’t care about the dates, and I will undermine the artistry of the thing with them. For me, they are vital and even sacred, for me every year and even every season of those years is revealed - by the face of: 1917 - Pavlik A. , winter 1918 - Yuri Z., spring 1919 - Sonechka... I just don’t see her outside of this nine, double one and double nine, alternating ones and nines... My accuracy is my last, posthumous fidelity.)
Marina Tsvetaeva
The Tale of Sonechka
Part one
Pavlik and Yura
Elle etait pâle – et pourtant rose,
Petite – avec de grands cheveux...
No, there was no pallor in her, not in anything, everything in her was the opposite of pallor, but still she was pourtant rose, and this will be proven and shown in due course.
It was winter 1918 -1919, still winter 1918, December. I read my play “Blizzard” to the students of the Third Studio in some theater, on some stage. In an empty theater, on a full stage.
My “Blizzard” was dedicated to: – Yuri and Vera Z., their friendship is my love. Yuri and Vera were brother and sister, Vera in the last of all my gymnasiums was my classmate: not a classmate, I was a class older, and I saw her only at recess: a thin, curly girlish puppy, and I especially remember her long back with a half-developed strand of hair , and from the oncoming vision, especially - the mouth, by nature - contemptuous, with the corners down, and the eyes - the opposite of this mouth, by nature laughing, that is, with the corners up. This divergence of lines resonated within me with an inexplicable emotion, which I translated into her beauty, which greatly surprised others who found nothing special in her, which greatly surprised me. I’ll say right away that I turned out to be right, that she later turned out to be a beauty - and even so much so that in 1927, in Paris, seriously ill, she was drawn to the screen from the last of her life.
I never said a word to this Vera, this Vera, and now, nine years later at school, writing “Blizzard” to her, I thought with fear that she wouldn’t understand anything about all this, because she probably doesn’t remember me, maybe she never will. didn't notice.
(But why Vera, when Sonechka? And Vera - roots, prehistory, Sonechka’s oldest beginning. A very short story - with a very long prehistory. And posthistory.)
How did Sonechka start? Has it begun in my life, alive?
It was October 1917. Yes, the same one. His very last day, that is, the first after the end (the outposts were still rumbling). I was traveling in a dark carriage from Moscow to Crimea. Overhead, on the top shelf, a young male voice spoke poetry. Here they are:
And here she is, about whom the grandfathers dreamed
And they argued noisily over cognac,
In the Gironde's cloak, through snow and troubles,
She burst into us - with her bayonet lowered!
And the ghosts of the Decembrist guards
Above the snowy, above Pushkin's Neva
They lead the regiments to the sound of buglers,
To the loud howl of battle music.
The emperor himself in bronze boots
I called you, Preobrazhensky Regiment,
When in the bays of the prostrate streets
The dashing clarinet broke down and fell silent...
And he remembered, the Wonderworking Builder,
Listening to the gunfire from Peter and Paul -
That crazy - strange - rebellious -
That voice is memorable: “For you!”
- But what is this, and whose is it, finally?
Junker, proud to have a comrade who is a poet. Combat cadet who fought for five days. The one who recovers from defeat - in poetry. Smelled like Pushkin: those friendships. And from above - the answer:
– He is very similar to Pushkin: small, nimble, curly-haired, with sideburns, even the boys in Pushkin call him Pushkin. He writes all the time. Every morning - new poems.
Infanta, know: I am ready to climb any fire,
If only I knew that they would look at me
Your eyes...
– And this one is from “The Infanta’s Doll”, this is his play. This is the Dwarf speaking to the Infanta. The dwarf loves the Infanta. He is a dwarf. True, he is small, but not a dwarf at all.
One under many names...
The first, most important thing I did when I returned from Crimea was to look for Pavlik. Pavlik lived somewhere near the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and for some reason I got to him through the back door, and the meeting took place in the kitchen. Pavlik was wearing a gymnasium uniform, with buttons, which further strengthened his resemblance to Pushkin the lyceum student. Little Pushkin, only black-eyed: Pushkin is a legend.
Neither he nor I were at all embarrassed by the kitchen; we were pushed towards each other through all the pots and cauldrons - so that we - internally - clinked, no worse than these vats and cauldrons. The meeting was like an earthquake. The way I understood who he was, he understood who I was. (I’m not talking about poetry; I don’t even know if he knew my poems then.)
After standing in a magical tetanus - I don’t know how long, we both went out - by the same back door, and burst into poetry and speeches...
In a word, Pavlik went and disappeared. He disappeared from me, in Borisoglebsky Lane, for a long time. I sat for days, sat for mornings, sat for nights... As an example of such sitting, I will give only one dialogue.
Me, timidly: “Pavlik, do you think we can call what we are doing now a thought?”
Pavlik, even more timidly: “It’s called sitting in the clouds and ruling the world.”
Pavlik had a friend about whom he always told me: Yura Z. - “Yura and I... When I read this to Yura... Yura keeps asking me... Yesterday Yura and I kissed loudly on purpose so that they would think that Yura has finally fallen in love... And think: the studio people jump out, and instead of the young lady, it’s me!!!”
One fine evening he brought me “Yura”. - And this, Marina, is my friend - Yura Z. - with the same pressure on every word, with the same overflowing of it.
Looking up - it took a lot of time, because Yura did not end - I discovered Vera’s eyes and mouth.
- Lord, aren’t you a brother... Yes, of course, you are a brother... You can’t help but have a sister, Vera!
- He loves her more than anything in the world!
Yuri and I started talking. Yuri and I were talking, Pavlik was silent and silently swallowed us - together and us separately - with his huge, heavy, hot eyes.
That same evening, which was - deep night, which was - early morning, parting with them under my poplars, I wrote poems to them, to them together:
They sleep without separating their hands -
With a brother - a brother, with a friend - a friend.
Together, on the same bed...
We drank together, sang together...
I wrapped them in a blanket
Loved them forever
Me through closed eyelids
I read strange news:
Rainbow: double glory,
Glow: double death.
I will not divorce these hands!
I'd better be, I'd be better off
Let's burn in hell!
But instead of a fire, it turned out to be a blizzard.
To keep your word - not to cheat these hands - I needed to bring together in my love - other hands: brother and sister. Even simpler: in order not to love one Yuri and this could not deprive Pavlik, with whom I could only “rule the world together,” I needed to love Yuri plus something else, but this something could not be Pavlik, because Yuri plus Pavlik was already given to me I had to love Yuri plus Vera, thereby seemingly dispersing Yuri, but in fact strengthening, concentrating, for everything that is not in a brother, we find in a sister, and everything that is not in a sister, we find in a brother. I have been given the lot of terribly complete, unbearably complete love. (The fact that Vera, who is sick, is in Crimea and knows nothing about anything, did not change matters.)
No, there was no pallor in her, not in anything, everything in her was the opposite of pallor, but still she was pourtant rose, and this will be proven and shown in due course.
It was winter 1918 -1919, still winter 1918, December. I read my play “Blizzard” to the students of the Third Studio in some theater, on some stage. In an empty theater, on a full stage.
My “Blizzard” was dedicated to: – Yuri and Vera Z., their friendship is my love. Yuri and Vera were brother and sister, Vera in the last of all my gymnasiums was my classmate: not a classmate, I was a class older, and I saw her only at recess: a thin, curly girlish puppy, and I especially remember her long back with a half-developed strand of hair , and from the oncoming vision, especially - the mouth, by nature - contemptuous, with the corners down, and the eyes - the opposite of this mouth, by nature laughing, that is, with the corners up. This divergence of lines resonated within me with an inexplicable emotion, which I translated into her beauty, which greatly surprised others who found nothing special in her, which greatly surprised me. I’ll say right away that I turned out to be right, that she later turned out to be a beauty - and even so much so that in 1927, in Paris, seriously ill, she was drawn to the screen from the last of her life.
I never said a word to this Vera, this Vera, and now, nine years later at school, writing “Blizzard” to her, I thought with fear that she wouldn’t understand anything about all this, because she probably doesn’t remember me, maybe she never will. didn't notice.
(But why Vera, when Sonechka? And Vera - roots, prehistory, Sonechka’s oldest beginning. A very short story - with a very long prehistory. And posthistory.)
How did Sonechka start? Has it begun in my life, alive?
It was October 1917. Yes, the same one. His very last day, that is, the first after the end (the outposts were still rumbling). I was traveling in a dark carriage from Moscow to Crimea. Overhead, on the top shelf, a young male voice spoke poetry. Here they are:
And here she is, about whom the grandfathers dreamed
And they argued noisily over cognac,
In the Gironde's cloak, through snow and troubles,
She burst into us - with her bayonet lowered!
And the ghosts of the Decembrist guards
Above the snowy, above Pushkin's Neva
They lead the regiments to the sound of buglers,
To the loud howl of battle music.
The emperor himself in bronze boots
I called you, Preobrazhensky Regiment,
When in the bays of the prostrate streets
The dashing clarinet broke down and fell silent...
And he remembered, the Wonderworking Builder,
Listening to the gunfire from Peter and Paul -
That crazy - strange - rebellious -
- But what is this, and whose is it, finally?
Junker, proud to have a comrade who is a poet. Combat cadet who fought for five days. The one who recovers from defeat - in poetry. Smelled like Pushkin: those friendships. And from above - the answer:
– He is very similar to Pushkin: small, nimble, curly-haired, with sideburns, even the boys in Pushkin call him Pushkin. He writes all the time. Every morning - new poems.
Infanta, know: I am ready to climb any fire,
If only I knew that they would look at me
Your eyes...
– And this one is from “The Infanta’s Doll”, this is his play. This is the Dwarf speaking to the Infanta. The dwarf loves the Infanta. He is a dwarf. True, he is small, but not a dwarf at all.
One under many names...
The first, most important thing I did when I returned from Crimea was to look for Pavlik. Pavlik lived somewhere near the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and for some reason I got to him through the back door, and the meeting took place in the kitchen. Pavlik was wearing a gymnasium uniform, with buttons, which further strengthened his resemblance to Pushkin the lyceum student. Little Pushkin, only black-eyed: Pushkin is a legend.
Neither he nor I were at all embarrassed by the kitchen; we were pushed towards each other through all the pots and cauldrons - so that we - internally - clinked, no worse than these vats and cauldrons. The meeting was like an earthquake. The way I understood who he was, he understood who I was. (I’m not talking about poetry; I don’t even know if he knew my poems then.)
After standing in a magical tetanus - I don’t know how long, we both went out - by the same back door, and burst into poetry and speeches...
In a word, Pavlik went and disappeared. He disappeared from me, in Borisoglebsky Lane, for a long time. I sat for days, sat for mornings, sat for nights... As an example of such sitting, I will give only one dialogue.
Me, timidly: “Pavlik, do you think we can call what we are doing now a thought?”
Pavlik, even more timidly: “It’s called sitting in the clouds and ruling the world.”
Pavlik had a friend about whom he always told me: Yura Z. - “Yura and I... When I read this to Yura... Yura keeps asking me... Yesterday Yura and I kissed loudly on purpose so that they would think that Yura has finally fallen in love... And think: the studio people jump out, and instead of the young lady, it’s me!!!”
One fine evening he brought me “Yura”. - And this, Marina, is my friend - Yura Z. - with the same pressure on every word, with the same overflowing of it.
Looking up - it took a lot of time, because Yura did not end - I discovered Vera’s eyes and mouth.
- Lord, aren’t you a brother... Yes, of course, you are a brother... You can’t help but have a sister, Vera!
- He loves her more than anything in the world!
Yuri and I started talking. Yuri and I were talking, Pavlik was silent and silently swallowed us - together and us separately - with his huge, heavy, hot eyes.
There is no consistent plot in The Tale of Sonechka. In it, Marina Tsvetaeva recalls the events of the Moscow period of her life, which occurred in 1919–1920. Marina suffered many hardships: she is alone in Moscow with two small daughters who are severely suffering from hunger. The husband is a White Guard officer, from whom there has been no news for a long time. Marina does not try to hide this fact, defiantly opposing herself to the existing authorities.
But, despite hunger and difficulties, youth takes its toll. An era of great change is coming. Tsvetaeva finds young people close to her in spirit, the same poor romantics. These are actors from the Vakhtangov studio. Their minds are excited by the French Revolution, mysticism, and the Middle Ages.
One day, Marina meets Sonechka Golliday in the studio, who admires Tsvetaeva and her work. This miniature woman-child becomes Tsvetaeva's friend and confidante.
Sonechka is childish and unpredictable. Either she is attacked by unbridled joy, or by black blues. She is flirtatious and capricious. Sonechka combines narcissism and sentimentality, impetuosity and wisdom. She is unhappy in love, and unbearable in everyday life.
And five-year-old Irina is dying of hunger in the shelter. Tsvetaeva is gnawed by guilt - she didn’t save her.
Among the characters in the story we see Pavel Antokolsky, a famous Moscow poet of that time, the dandy and “man of success” Yuri Zavadsky.
This story is about young, gifted, but premature people. They are aware of their untimeliness. But they write poetry, act in plays, fall in love, support each other.
This book teaches that it is worth living fully, creating, loving, no matter what time you have. There will be no other.
You can use this text for reader's diary
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- The Tale of Sonechka
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Good evening, dear friends! We continue the program “One Hundred Years – One Hundred Lectures.” We reached 1937. It so happens that today we must take for analysis a work written outside the Soviet Union, but which, of course, belongs to Russian literature, the century of which we are retelling.
We are talking about “The Tale of Sonechka,” which Marina Tsvetaeva wrote in the summer of 1937 after, probably, the biggest catastrophe in her emigrant life. Soon after Ali left for his homeland in 1937, Sergei Efron became involved in a real terrorist attack. He must catch up and punish the repentant resident Ignatius Reiss. Reiss was killed. Efron didn't kill him, but different versions, he was either the driver in this operation or simply a witness. But be that as it may, Sergei Efron was tied up for the first time, took part in a bloody affair for the first time. Quite soon after this he had to flee. Following him in 1938, Tsvetaeva also had to endure absolute outcastry in exile and ultimately leave France.
“The Tale of Sonechka” began in 1937. Tsvetaeva worked on this prose for a year, finishing it in the summer of 1938, just before being sent to Russia. In “The Tale of Sonechka” there are two parts, as Anna Sahakyants said, this is the largest and the most romantic prose Marina Tsvetaeva is, one might say, a novel. Like most Soviet writers in 1936-1939, during this terrible period of great terror, they are distracted from reality, remembering their childhood, so Tsvetaeva is distracted from the nightmare of her situation, from her loneliness - she is saved by memories of her happiest time, of 1918-1920, by memories of Sonechka Golliday.
I immediately want to dismiss all these idiotic speculations about the fact that Tsvetaeva and Sophia Golliday had an erotic relationship. Tsvetaeva generally treated erotic relationships, excluding the happy physiological coincidence with Rodzevich, with a certain feeling of awkwardness. For her, it’s always this feeling: we’re in an awkward situation, we need to do this, let’s do it quickly, and then we’ll move on to what’s really interesting - conversations, kisses, romantic love.
Sophia Golliday, in my opinion, has very little connection in the mind of a normal person with physicality; she is such an elf. Tsvetaeva’s love for Sonechka is not the love of an older, experienced woman for a young and inexperienced woman, it is a person’s love for a fairy, an unearthly creature. Sonechka Golliday also has crushes, such as those of children and teenagers. They always come down to kisses, notes, exchanging glances. This is pure romanticism, absolutely devoid of any signs of materiality.
What is interesting about the youth of 1918-1919 in Moscow is that they, of course, are bookish children, they perceive the revolution as a Great French revolution, this is a living come true historical picture. She is absolutely independent of everyday life, because there is no everyday life, they do not honor it. Tsvetaeva said: “My motto is: I don’t condescend.” They do not condescend to the little things, to their own red hands, to the need to light the stove themselves and somewhere to get firewood for this stove, to frozen potatoes.
Tsvetaeva sometimes cites, it’s even scary to say, funny, tragic and farcical episodes when a young romantic girl goes to the village to buy potatoes. The woman selling potatoes did not like some of the pitiful things she was carrying for sale. She said: “You have a gold tooth, if you pick it out, I’ll give you as many potatoes as you can for it.” The girl picked out this crown and really gained so much that she could not lift it. Baba, looking at this, said to her indifferently: “Well, go to sleep.” Tsvetaeva sets out all this in her diary notes of that time, in the essay “My Services”, in huge notebooks, but all this does not constitute the essence of the era. This is ridiculous at best, worthy of ridicule.
By and large, the main content at this time is the pure life of the spirit, because everyday life died, life ceased to continue in its usual forms, it passed into purely spiritual forms. Reading, performances of some kind romantic dramas in Vakhtangov’s studio, writing poetry, falling in love with romantic old men (Volkonsky) or divinely beautiful young men (Zavadsky), composing romantic dramas that could not be staged because, as Tsvetaeva herself repeated after Heine, “a poet is unfavorable for the theater,” but nevertheless these are magnificent dramas with spoken live verse. The only more or less successful attempt to stage them was when Evgeny Simonov staged them already in the 1980s at the Vakhtangov Theater with Yuri Yakovlev in the role of the old Casanova, and then it was a performance with a huge degree of convention. Tsvetaeva is not suitable for the theater because, as she herself says, theater is a direct gaze, and she is used to either lowering her eyes or raising them to grief. But nevertheless, writing romantic dramas is at this time her favorite break from the monstrous life.
Many would even call her writing at that time and her relationship with Sonechka blasphemy. “What, your daughter Irina just died!”, the daughter she was forced to give to an orphanage, she herself wrote about it: “I snatched the eldest from the darkness, but did not save the youngest”. This, of course, is a disaster in Tsvetaeva’s life. But, firstly, she still saved Alya. Probably saving two children at that moment was beyond her capabilities.
Secondly, children, life, salvation, services, money - all this is the background that exists in addition to. Tsvetaeva’s main life at that time was the crazy, inspired final romance of the Soviet revolution. No matter how much we talk about the fact that all these children, the last Silver Age, the Russian revolution killed, let's not forget that before that it created them after all. She created this entire generation to a great extent. This is what in St. Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad was the last generation of Gumilev’s “Sounding Shell”, people like, say, Korney’s son Nikolai Chukovsky, or Nina Berberova, or the wonderfully stupid and endlessly touching Neldichen. And in Moscow this is Pavlik Antokolsky, a young poet who became Tsvetaeva’s student and her favorite interlocutor, this is Volodya Alekseev, in whom there is no creativity, but there is endless sensitivity, attention and love for someone else’s gift.
And there is Sonechka Golliday. This is probably the most captivating female image at Tsvetaeva's. What is Sonechka? We are left with three or four photographs of her, one large. We know that she is very sweet - it’s somehow difficult to call her beautiful - a small, very infantile girl with an irregular nervous face, a heroine similar to Dostoevsky’s beloved nervous teenagers like Netochka Nezvanova. She mainly did what she read at White Nights concerts. In general, early Dostoevsky and his quotes permeate “The Tale of Sonechka.”
She is not God knows what kind of actress, she is as good as a reader, she has been a reader all her life, because she does not know how to act, she does not know how to be different, to transform. She is who she is. An amazing thing: in this story you can see not only Sonechka’s charming and attractive features, but also her certain bad manners, acting bad taste, acting falseness, constant acting, and without this acting there is no way to survive, because this is her eternal self-defense. One can see not only her courage and love for Marina, but also her coquetry, cowardice, and complete inability to live - not only in the everyday sense. She doesn't know how to get along with people, she's self-centered. Infantilism is pleasant in a child, but in an adult (Sonya is already 24 years old at this point) it is often annoying.
Tsvetaeva, portraying all this, is absolutely honest. We understand that this girl is not of the best taste. Yes, a circus girl from a French circus show, who, perhaps, takes hobbies and connections too easily, who knows nothing except her craft, who does not deign to think about people, because she is never interested in them. Yes, she is insanely self-centered, of course. And this wild love for cakes that don’t exist, for jewelry, beads - all this is also childish. It should be noted that of the two extremes - excessive rootedness in everyday life and a somewhat infantile flight above it - of course, the flight is much prettier. In this sense, Tsvetaeva is absolutely the same incorrigible infantile.
The eternal question of how Tsvetaeva treated Soviet power, is not as meaningless as it seems, because after all, this attitude determines a lot in the appearance of Russian writers. Tsvetaeva’s attitude towards this government was mixed, frankly speaking. Already in “The Tale of Sonechka,” twenty years after the events described, she says: “We could not have contacts with proletarian youth and Red Army soldiers, maybe wonderful people, but there is no contact between the winner and the vanquished.” It's true, they felt defeated.
Tsvetaeva never had hatred for the people and even for that part of this people that can quite legally be called cattle, that is, for those who gloated over the vanquished. She understands a lot. Here’s the amazing thing: Tsvetaeva always had a lot of nostalgia for Soviet Moscow, to which she later returned and which killed her. She had never been as happy as in 1919-1920, when her husband went missing (she only later learned about his emigration), when her friends were cut off, when there was nothing to feed her children.
Therefore, the attitude towards the revolution is very simple - it treats Soviet ideology with disgust, does not accept any Marxism, all theoretical part revolution is deeply disgusting to her, but the storm that this revolution raised, but the state that the revolution caused, is beautiful for her. She loves the revolution not because it is reprisal against the oppressed, but because it is a great challenge for the young, this is their chance to feel like inhabitants of heaven. As Pavlik Antokolsky says, “what we do is sit in the clouds and rule the world, that’s what it’s called.” They really sit in the clouds and rule the world. This would not have happened without the revolution, the revolution destroyed a lot of superficial things, it revealed people.
It’s surprising that Tsvetaeva’s poems are liked by the Red Army. For some reason it is believed that these poems are about the red officer:
And so my heart is over Re-se-fe-sir
It's grinding - feed it, don't feed it! —
It was as if I was an officer myself
On the October death days.
This refers, of course, to a white officer, but the red cadets perceive this as poetry about a red officer. “Every semi-literate cadet,” writes Tsvetaeva, “died from the poem “Lane Streets.” I wouldn't say that "Lane Streets" is best poem Tsvetaeva. It seems to me that there are really too many interjections in it, the plot is dark, and despite all the wonderful energy of this piece, it is still, perhaps, a little dark. But it was not dark in the author's reading for the residents of Moscow in 1919.
With the revolution, the elements invade Tsvetaeva’s speech vernacular, the element of folklore, something that didn’t exist before. And in “Swan Camp,” a book of poems about the White Army, and in “Perekop,” a poem written about the White Army, and in general in the romantic poems of 1919-1920, this element of street speech is amazing. This allowed Tsvetaeva to grow head and shoulders as a poet. Therefore, in “The Tale of Sonechka” there is no hatred for this time, there is admiration for the greatness of the moment and understanding of it, because with all the abominations of this era, there was also greatness in it, that greatness that neither Gippius nor Bunin saw, but that Tsvetaeva and Blok saw.
“The Tale of Sonechka”, on top of everything else, is superbly written. It’s a sin that I consider Tsvetaeva as a poet, although she is an outstanding phenomenon, but still it seems to me that she is inferior to herself as a prose writer, her prose is higher than her poetry. I am pleased that in this I have such an ally as Novella Matveeva. It is very important to me that “The Tale of Sonechka” is truly Tsvetaeva’s most ambitious, accurate and infectious prose. It’s good to re-read it when you’re depressed, because in the complete hopelessness of that life, it suddenly somehow fills you with strength. Not because you are better off than they were, this is a rather base emotion, but because the energy comes from this text.
Of course, you can’t reread its ending without tears, when Marina learns about Sonechka’s death, when she learns from Ali’s letter that Sonechka Golliday died just a few years before Ali moved to Moscow, before receiving news from Marina from Paris. Sonya all her life remembered Tsvetaeva as the brightest spot, as the most joyful thing she had seen. As Tsvetaeva said about Sonechka, “the most delicious thing they fed me.” She died very young from liver cancer, she was just over forty. She was married, played in the provinces, and was considered a wonderful reader. Of course, she could not have confessed, because in Soviet Russia she was terribly lonely and completely out of place.
When you read this ending: “Sonya died when the Chelyuskinites arrived,” it sounds like “when the swallows arrived,” it sounds like a natural phenomenon. This is also a later Tsvetaevsky not only reconciliation with Soviet Union, no, this is a recognition of some kind of naturalness of what is happening. Naturalness is not a compliment, there is nothing good in it, but man exists for this purpose, to be different from nature, to be better than it. This story is about how several disastrous and amazing flowers bloomed among a wild natural disaster.
“The Tale of Sonechka” is Marina Tsvetaeva’s last great prose, after which there was only a return to Russia and then silence. But it is surprising that in all transitional eras this Soviet miracle repeats itself, repeats the magical disastrous flowers growing on the ruins, repeats the beautiful generation that exists in spite of everything. Therefore, “The Tale of Sonechka” is an eternal, favorite reading of young people who will certainly reproduce this collision in their lives. I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about this, but in Soviet and post-Soviet history such cataclysms always happen, and new Sonechkas appear continuously, this is both the horror and the happiness of the inexhaustible Russian nature.
To what extent was Tsvetaeva aware of her husband’s activities?
After Efron fled, Tsvetaeva was interrogated. She gave the police the impression of being completely insane, she read them poetry, talked about Efron’s noble romantic past and generally behaved inappropriately. ordinary person. It is quite obvious that this behavior was not a mask. Tsvetaeva sincerely tried to explain to them that Efron is a noble man. In her letter to Beria, she sincerely tried to explain that she had lived with him for thirty years and better man I didn’t meet you.
I don't think she knew the extent of his involvement in the Homecoming Alliance. She was absolutely aware of his beliefs, his Smenovekhovism, Eurasianism, his confidence that the Red Empire was built under Stalin and everyone who loves Russia should return. But the fact that he participated in secret operations of Soviet intelligence was a secret to her.
They may ask: “Did she know about the sources of money that appeared in the house?” There was no money at home. Efron worked unselfishly in many ways, and if he received, it was negligible. This, by the way, is another proof of his absolute selflessness. And Alya earned money by knitting hats, drawing and writing essays for newspapers, including French ones, and Tsvetaeva gave evenings where charitable subscriptions collected some amounts.
Efron didn't earn a penny, so to think that she really represented his work is extremely naive. The greater the tragedy for her was her stay in Bolshevo in 1939, after her return, when she understood the full scale of both his work on the organs and his degeneration. Pretty soon both Alya and he were captured. She no longer had any doubts that she had come to die. Therefore, “The Tale of Sonechka” is also a testament.
