Today I’d like to share a translation of Tsvetaeva’s #1 of “The Disciple” cycle. This is a passionate and energetic lyric poem with quite interesting similes. Right from the start Marina describes her fervent wish to be as close to her spiritual leader as young St. John, Christ’s favorite disciple, was to Jesus. However, at the end of a poem a heretic motive appears with a bonfire prepared for her master.

There are also two other interesting things about the verse. Thus, some lines...

Prince Sergey Volkonski about his home and well-known poets of his youth:

"Very often poets came to our place to recite their poetry. Alexey K. Tolstoy recited his best verses, as well as Yakov P. Polonski* – both were worst possible reciters. Apollon N. Maykov recited his “Three deaths”, “The two worlds” and many other poems. He was a quite brilliant reciter, with clear logical and strikingly artistic declamation."

*Yakov P. Polonski - Russian poet and prosaist....

Natalia L. Trauberg, translator of prose and poetry (English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese - Russian).

"A translator devotes his energies to an author, as if dissolving completely in a book. Figuratively speaking, if a translator doesn't kill himself in himself, just as an icon painter kills the artist in himself, he wouldn't be able to work. Few manage doing this; when I translate something, I do more writing than translating. There are several kinds of translators....

Natalia S. Mavlevich, translator of prose and poetry (French – Russian).

“It seems to me that translation is an image thinking process. Once Averintsev* (Sergey S. Averintsev, famous Russian philologist) noticed: our profession is based on a similar triangles principle, i.e. we must provide the adequacy of associations. The most important thing in translation - its very core - is a degree of freedom and accuracy.
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Present-day translators live in a world without...

It was the first poem from "The Disciple" cycle (yet it's #6 there) I decided to translate, as it caught my everything – attention, mind, imagination and breath. Marina managed to unite two things, quite difficult to be united within one place – macro- and microcosmos. As for her spiritual leader, he is addressed as You (capital letter), as if he was portrayed as God the Father. All objects given in plural are to emphasize his glory, though it is put implicitly by belittling...