I Live to the Point of Nausea

The texts reveal Marina Tsvetaeva’s rare ability to experience feelings at the very highest pitch, when “in feelings, as in children’s, there are no degrees.”

Before you is the diary prose of Marina Tsvetaeva—the poet whose gaze throughout her life was turned “inward,” not “outward”: “I have, in general, atrophy of the present; not only do I not live it—I never have, and I’ve never even been in it.” Absorbing many human voices and fates, Marina Tsvetaeva became an incomparable herald of a “living” soul. Here are diary entries and notes by a person who could not tolerate vulgarity and compromises with one’s conscience, and who gave herself wholly to life and to the experiences it gives birth to: “In my feelings, as in children’s, there are no degrees.”

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva is a great Russian poetess, whose most delicate receptiveness and insight found embodiment in an astonishing intonational-rhythmic напряженность (tension). Her prose sounds completely authentic; Joseph Brodsky linked this authenticity to spiritual strength forged through trials: “Tsvetaeva is indeed the most sincere Russian poet, but this sincerity is above all the sincerity of sound—as when they cry out from pain.”