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This one was taken in 1925.

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In 1920-es.

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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....

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...

Yesterday, when I was working (again) on Tsvetaeva’s cycle of poems called “The disciple”, a sudden idea crossed my mind, that the addressee of the cycle was a complete mystery to me. It was quite interesting, because of personal spirit of the poems.

According to the cycle, Marina is someone’s devoted disciple, an eager follower, even an apostle. She deeply admires her spiritual leader and worships this unknown person as a god. There are motives of self-denial and self-sacrifice,...

When someone among her close friends noticed, that her son was difficult to deal with, Akhmatova promptly replied: “Don’t forget, he hasn’t been subscribed to any library since his nine years old as a son of a public enemy executed by shooting.”