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lauren_endnotes's review
LETTERS: SUMMER 1926 by Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva, Rainer Maria Rilke, tr. from the Russian & German by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, and Jamey Gambrell, 1926/2001 @nyrbooks edition
#ReadtheWorld21
#RedOctoberRussianReads
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In the Introduction to this 2001 edition, essayist Susan Sontag describes what we are about to read as "a portrait of sacred delirium of art. There are three participants: a god and two worshipers, who are also worshipers of each other... These three-way love letters - and they are that - are an incomparable dramatization of ardour and poetry and about the life of the spirit."
Through archival correpondence - of which has an interesting story in itself - readers see the inner lives of three major European 20th-century writers. #Pasternak and Tsvetayeva both claim #Rilke as one of their key influences in writing, and the opportunity arises to correspond with the poet, in what is (unbeknownst to them...) his last months of life as he is dying of leukemia.
A flurry of letters between the three - passionate expressions of love and veneration over a matter of months in 1926.
Reading these letters was extremely intimate. It felt like reading someone's diary, or rummaging through personal belongings. I can only imagine how that felt for the translators in the archives. There is a thrill, yes, but there's also a slight discomfort that comes from the soul-bearing declarations, especially in light of the tragedies all three of the writers will face.
There is a fiery romance happening here with deep ramificiations, but is this played up by the distance between and the inability to act upon the impulses? Perhaps.
Urgency - there are so many passionate and spontaneous declarations... But due to letter delivery and censorship, days and weeks go by, emotions shift. Letters compound one after another, and sometimes arrive out of order to the recipient leading to miscommunications.
This book was SO rich in detail, and this post doesn't even scratch the surface of this spiritual/literary love triangle. There's an innate tragedy of secrets kept - particularly Rilke hiding his mortal illness from Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, while wasting away... Finally, unable to answer letters in his last days, leading to all sorts of emotional outcries before the correspondents learn of his passing and are grief-stricken and wounded by words left unsaid.
Rilke's death, as well as a few other circumstances, place a wedge between Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, as their love was enriched by the German poet, and passions cooled.
Hard to describe fully - It was captivating and ecstatic, but always with this undercurrent of impetuousness and brimming jealousy. Perhaps best enjoyed by readers familiar with the poets/writers work already, but still an amazing moment crystallized in time of a passionate summer epistemolary love affair that ended abruptly and in tragedy.
#ReadtheWorld21
#RedOctoberRussianReads
.
In the Introduction to this 2001 edition, essayist Susan Sontag describes what we are about to read as "a portrait of sacred delirium of art. There are three participants: a god and two worshipers, who are also worshipers of each other... These three-way love letters - and they are that - are an incomparable dramatization of ardour and poetry and about the life of the spirit."
Through archival correpondence - of which has an interesting story in itself - readers see the inner lives of three major European 20th-century writers. #Pasternak and Tsvetayeva both claim #Rilke as one of their key influences in writing, and the opportunity arises to correspond with the poet, in what is (unbeknownst to them...) his last months of life as he is dying of leukemia.
A flurry of letters between the three - passionate expressions of love and veneration over a matter of months in 1926.
Reading these letters was extremely intimate. It felt like reading someone's diary, or rummaging through personal belongings. I can only imagine how that felt for the translators in the archives. There is a thrill, yes, but there's also a slight discomfort that comes from the soul-bearing declarations, especially in light of the tragedies all three of the writers will face.
There is a fiery romance happening here with deep ramificiations, but is this played up by the distance between and the inability to act upon the impulses? Perhaps.
Urgency - there are so many passionate and spontaneous declarations... But due to letter delivery and censorship, days and weeks go by, emotions shift. Letters compound one after another, and sometimes arrive out of order to the recipient leading to miscommunications.
This book was SO rich in detail, and this post doesn't even scratch the surface of this spiritual/literary love triangle. There's an innate tragedy of secrets kept - particularly Rilke hiding his mortal illness from Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, while wasting away... Finally, unable to answer letters in his last days, leading to all sorts of emotional outcries before the correspondents learn of his passing and are grief-stricken and wounded by words left unsaid.
Rilke's death, as well as a few other circumstances, place a wedge between Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, as their love was enriched by the German poet, and passions cooled.
Hard to describe fully - It was captivating and ecstatic, but always with this undercurrent of impetuousness and brimming jealousy. Perhaps best enjoyed by readers familiar with the poets/writers work already, but still an amazing moment crystallized in time of a passionate summer epistemolary love affair that ended abruptly and in tragedy.
_cristina's review
4.0
Toți cei apropiați mie — și ei au fost puțini la număr — s-au dovedit a fi nemăsurat mai blânzi decât mine, chiar și Rilke mi-a zis: Du hast recht, doch Du bist hart — și asta m-a amărât, pentru că eu altfel nu puteam fi. Acum, făcând bilanțul, constat: aparenta mea cruzime a fost doar — formă, un contur al esenței, o frontieră necesară autoapărării — față de blândețea voastră, a lui Rilke, Marcel Proust și Boris Pasternak. Căci, în ultima clipă — voi ați luat mâna și m-ați lăsat pe mine, care părăsisem de mult familia oamenilor, față în față cu propria mea omenie. Printre voi, ne-oamenii, eu sunt doar om.
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