From a Diary

1917

The complete concurrence of souls requires the concurrence of the breath, for what is the breath, if not the rhythm of the soul?

And thus, for people to understand one another, they must walk or lie side by side.

*

The nobility of the heart—of the organ. Unremitting caution. It is always first to sound the alarm. I could say: it is not love that makes my heart pound, but my pounding heart — that makes love.

*

The heart: it is a musical, rather than a physical organ.

*

The heart: sounding line, plummet, log, dynamometer, Reaumur — everything, but the timepiece of love.

*

"You love two people, therefore you don't love anyone!" Forgive me, but if in addition to N., I also love Heinrich Heine, you wouldn't say that I don't love die first person. Therefore, to love a living and a dead person simultaneously—is all right. But imagine that Heinrich Heine came to life and could walk into the room any minute. I am die same, Heinrich Heine is the same, the only difference is that he could walk into the room.

Thus: love for two individuals, either of whom could enter the room at any minute isn't love. In order for my simultaneous love for two individuals to be love, one of these individuals has to have been born a hundred years before me or not born at all (a portrait, a poem). A condition that cannot always be met!

And still, Isolde loving someone else in addition to Tristan is unthinkable, and the cry—"O, l'Amour! l'Amour!" — of Sarah (Marguerite Gautier) with regard to someone other than her young friend is ridiculous.1

*

I would propose another formula: a woman who doesn't forget about Heinrich Heine the moment her beloved enters, loves only Heinrich Heine.

*

"Beloved" is theatrical, "lover" is frank, "friend" is vague. We are not a loving country!

*

Old men and old women. A shaved, slender old man is always a little bit antique, always a little bit the marquis. And his attention is more nattering to me, stirs me more than the love of any twenty-year-old. To exaggerate: there's the feeling that an entire century loves me. There's nostalgia for his twenties, and joy for one's own, and the opportunity of being generous — and the utter inopportuneness of it. Beranger has a little song:

. . . Your glance is keen

But you're twelve

And I'm twice eighteen.

Sixteen and sixty is not monstrous, and most important —it's not at all ridiculous. At any rate, it's less ridiculous than most so-called "equal" marriages. The possibility of a genuine pathos.

But an old woman in love with a young man is, at best —touching. The exception: actresses. And old actress — is the mummy of a rose.

*

. . . "And they had a game they played. He sings to her, 'Marusya, Marusya, close your eyes,' and her name really was Marusya —and she would lie down on the bed and cover herself with a sheet — like she were a corpse. He says to her: 'Marusya! Don't go and die on me all the way! Marusya! Don't die on me for real!' He cried tears every time. They worked at the same factory, she was fifteen, he was sixteen . . ."

(Nanny's story.)

*

"What a husband I had, my dears!!! Just looked human. Didn't eat anything, just drank. Drunk up my pillow, went and spent my blanket on the girls. Everything bored him, girls: work was boring, and drinking tea with me was boring. A handsome devil: curly hair, straight eyebrows, dark blue eyes . . . Gone five years now!"

(Nanny — to her girlfriends.)

*

The first sight of love is that very shortest distance between two points, that divine straight line, of which there's no second.

*

From a letter:

"If you were to enter the room now and say: 'I am leaving for a long time, forever" — or: 'I don't think I love you any more' — I would not, I believe, feel anything new: each time you leave, each hour that you are not here—you are not here forever and you do not love me."

*

In my feelings, as in a child's, there are no degrees.

*

A woman's first victory over a man is the man's tale of his love for another. But her final victory is the tale of the other woman about her love for him and his love for her. What was secret has become manifest, your love becomes mine. And until that happens, you can't sleep peacefully.

*

Everything that is untold is unbroken. Thus, an unrepented murder, for instance — endures. The same goes for love.

*

You don't want people to know that you love a certain person? Then say: "I adore him!" But some people know what this means.

*

A story.

"When I was eighteen, a banker, a Jew, was madly in love with me. I was married, he was too. He was fat, but amazingly sweet. We were almost never alone, but when we happened to be, he would say only one word to me: 'Live, live!' And he never kissed my hands. Once he arranged an evening specially for me, he brought in wonderful dancers -I just loved to dance at the time! He himself couldn't dance because he was too fat. Usually he played cards at such gatherings. That evening he didn't play."

(The teller is thirty-six years old, charming.)

*

"Just live!" I dropped my hands. 2

On my hands I dropped a burning brow . . .

Thus the young Tempest listens to God

Somewhere in the field, at some dark hour.

And on the high crest of my breath, sudden,

Mighty, hands descend — as though from heaven.

And someone's lips descend on my lips.

Thus God—listens to the young Tempest.

(Nachhall, echo.)

*

The parlor is the field, yesterday's Smolny student—the Tempest, the fat banker — God.3 What survived ? That one word, which the banker said to the student and God said to everything on the first day: "Live!"

"Be" — is the only word of love, human and divine. The rest: parlor, field, banker, school girl, are details.

What survived? Everything.

*

It's better to lose someone with your entire self than to hold on to him with just a fraction of yourself.

Where does the commander go after victory, the poet after the poem — to a woman. Passion is man's last chance to express himself, just as the sky is the tempest's only chance of being.

A person is a tempest, passion is the sky, which dissolves it.

*

O, poets, poets! The only true lovers of women!

*

The desire to go deep: to the depths of the night, the depths of love. Love: a gap in time.

*

In "one's own name" is love through life, "in your name" — through death.

*

"An old lady . . . What am I going to do with an old lady?!" The delightful — in its frankness — formula of the masculine.

*

"Why do old ladies dress up? It's pointless! I would order identical 'uniforms' for all of them, and since they're all rich, I would create a fund from which I'd dress —dress quite well, mind you! —all the young, beautiful women."

"Don't keep me from writing poems about you!"

"Keep me from writing poems about myself!"

In between is the entire gamut of the poet's love.

*

A third person is always a diversion. At the beginning of love — from wealth, at the end of love — from poverty.

*

The story of several encounters. A tightrope walk of feelings.

*

A Junker's tale: . . . "I declare my love to her, and of course I start singing . . ."

*

Sensual love and motherhood almost exclude each other. Genuine motherhood is manly.

*

How many motherly kisses fall on unchildlike heads —and how many unmotherly ones — on children's heads!

*

Passionate motherly love — misdirected.

There, where I should think (because of others) about an action, compose it, it is always incomplete — begun and not finished —unexplained—it isn't mine. I remembered A precisely and don't remember B — and right away, instead of B — my holy hieroglyphs!

*

A conversation:

I, about a novel I would like to write: "You see, in the son I love the father, in the father —the son ... If God grants me a century, I'll definitely write it!"

He, calmly: "If God grants you a century, you'll definitely do it."

*

On the Song of Songs:

The Song of Songs affects me like an elephant: it's both frightening and ridiculous.

*

The Song of Songs was written in a country where grapes are the size of cobblestones.

*

The Song of Songs: the flora and fauna of all five parts of the world in one single woman. (Including undiscovered America.)

*

The best thing in the Song of Songs is Akhmatova's poem:

And a red maple leaf was placed4

In the Bible at the Song of Songs

"I could never love a dancer," he says; "I would always feel like a bird was fluttering in my arms."

*

A widow who remarries. For a long time I sought the formula for this legitimation, which repulses me. And suddenly—in a French book, obviously a woman's (the author of Amitie amoureuse — ) my formula:

"Le remariage est un adultere posthume." — I breathed a sigh of relief!

Previously, everything that I loved was called —I, now it's —You. But it's the same thing.

There are lots of wives, few mistresses. A true wife results from a shortage (of love), a true mistress from an excess. I love neither wives nor mistresses — but "amoureuses." Like a musician —less music! And like a lover — less love!

*

(NB! "Lover" both here and further on in the general, medieval sense of "amant." Avoiding the vernacular, I return to the word its original meaning. A lover: he who loves, he through whom love is manifested, the conductor of the element of Love. Perhaps in one bed, but perhaps —from thousands of versts away. Love not as a "bond," but as an element.)

*

"There are two kinds of jealousy. One" (an attacking gesture) "—from the self; the other" (a blow to the chest)" — into the self. What is base about thrusting a knife into oneself?"

(Balmont)

*

I should be drinking you from a mug, but I'm drinking you in drops, which make me cough.

*

How slowly those people make friends with you! They advance millimeters where I advance — miles!

*

A nighttime conversation.

Pavel Antokolsky: "The Lord had Judas.5 But who is the Devil's Judas?"

*

I: "It would be a woman, of course. The Devil would fall in love with her, and she would want to return him to God — and she would."

Antokolsky: "And then she would shoot herself. But I maintain that it would be a man."

I: "A man? How could a man betray the Devil? He doesn't have any access to the Devil, the Devil doesn't need him, what does the Devil need from men? The Devil is a man himself. The Devil is manliness itself. The Devil can only be tempted by love, that is, by a woman."

Antokolsky: "And then a man would turn up who would attribute the honor of this victory to himself."

I: "And do you know how it would happen? The woman would fall in love with the Devil, and a man would fall in love with her. He would come to her and say: 'You love him, don't you feel sorry for him? After all, he's in a bad way, return him to God.'And she would return him."

Antokolsky: "And fall out of love with him."

I: "No, she won't fall out of love. He will stop loving her, because now he has God, and he doesn't need her any more. She wouldn't stop loving, but would run to the other one."

Antokolsky: "And gazing into his eyes, she'd see that they are the very same eyes, and that she herself has been conquered — by the Devil."

I: "But there was a moment when the Devil was conquered —the moment when he returned to God."

Antokolsky: "And he was betrayed — by a man."

I: "But I'm talking about a love drama!"

Antokolsky: "And I'm talking about the name that will be inscribed on the tablets."

*

I: "Woman is possessed. Woman goes along the path of inhalation" (I breathe deeply). "Like that. And Heine missed it with his horizontals Handwerk! It's actually on the vertical!"

Antokolsky: "And man wants it to be like that." (The thrust of an arm. A jump.)

I: "Men don't do that, tigers do. By the way, if instead of 'man' the word were 'tiger,' I might love men. What an absurd word — muzhchina! It's so much better in German, Mann, and in French: Homme. Man, homo . . . No, all the other languages are better . . .

"But to go on. Thus, woman follows the path of breath . . . Woman is breath. Man is gesture. (The breath is always first, you don't breathe while you're jumping.) Men are never the first to desire. If a man desires, then a woman already desires."

Antokolsky: "And what will we do with tragic love? When a woman — really—doesn't desire?"

I: "That means that it wasn't she who desired, but another woman nearby. He mistook the door."

*

I, timidly: "Antokolsky, can what we're doing now be called thought?"

Antokolsky, even more timidly: "It's a cosmic affair: like sitting on the clouds and ruling the world."

*

I: "Two attitudes toward the world: a lover's and a mother's." Antokolsky: "We have two also: a lover's and a son's. But there's no such thing as a father's. What is fatherhood?"

I: "Fatherhood doesn't exist. There is motherhood: Mary—Mother-a large M."

Antokolsky: "But fatherhood is a big O, that is, nought, zero."6

I, conciliatorily: "But we don't have daughterliness."

We talk about love.

Antokolsky: "To love the Madonna is insurance against creditors.

(The creditors are women.)"

We talk about Joan of Arc, and Antokolsky suddenly bursts out: "But the king doesn't need his kingdom at all, he wants what is more than a kingdom — Joan herself. And you . . . And she doesn't need him:

'No, you should be King! Go to your kingdom!' —the way they say:

'Go to school!'"

*

A saturated solution. Water can't dissolve more. Such is the law. You are a solution saturated with me. I am not a bottomless vat.

I must learn to approach a person's loving present the same as his loving past, that is —with the complete aloofness and passion of creativity.

The rival is always —either God (you pray!)—or a fool (you can't even despise).

*

Betrayal already points to love. You can't betray an acquaintance.

*

1918

The trial of Admiral Shchastny.7 The verdict is pronounced. The convicted man is led away. And, on leaving, half turning, into the crowd: "Will you come?"

A woman's: "Yes!"

*

I'm not a romantic heroine, I'll never merge with a lover, always — with love.

*

"Life can be divided into three periods: the intimation of love, the action of love, and the memory of love."

I: "And the middle lasts from the age of 5 to 75 — right?"

*

A letter:

Dear Friend! When I, in desperation from the destitution of days, suffocated by the everyday grind of my life and other people's stupidity, finally enter your house, all my being has the right to you. A person's right to bread may be disputed (the grandfather didn't work —so the grandson won't eat!) — but one can't dispute a person's right to air. My air — with people — is elation. Whence my hurt feelings.

You are hot, you're irritated, you're "worn out," someone calls, you approach (pick up the phone) lazily: "Oh, so it's you?" And the complaints about the heat, about your exhaustion, the admiration of your own laziness — "admire me, I'm so good!"

You're not interested in me, my soul, three days — an infinity (not for me — without you, for me — with myself), I must have dreamed a thousand and one dreams in three nights, but I dream them during the day as well!

*

You say: "How can I love you? I don't even love myself." Love for me is included in your love for yourself. That which you call love, I call a favorable disposition of the soul (body). As soon as the least little thing goes wrong for you (problems at home, the heat, the Bolsheviks) — I no longer exist for you.

Home is all "problems," the heat —comes every summer, and the Bolsheviks are only beginning!

Dear friend, I don't want it that way, I don't breathe that way. I just want a humble, murderously simple thing: that a person be glad when I walk into the room.

*

At this point, my friend, I fell asleep with pencil in hand. I had horrible dreams — I flew off high New York buildings. I woke up: the light is burning. The cat on my chest is arching like a camel. (When she was two, Alya would say: camhill.)8

*

To love — is to see a person as God intended him and his parents failed to make him.

To not love — is to see a person as his parents made him.

To fall out of love: is to see, instead of him, a table, a chair.

*

Family . . . Yes, it's boring, yes, insufficient, yes, the heart doesn't pound. Wouldn't it be better to have a friend, a lover? But, on quarreling with my brother, I still have the right to say: "You must help me, because you're my brother . . . (son, father . . .)." And you can't say that to a lover — not for anything — you'd sooner cut out your tongue.

The right of intonation nesting in blood.

*

Kinship by blood is coarse and strong, kinship by choice —is fine. And what is fine can tear.

*

My soul is hideously jealous: it wouldn't be able to abide me if I were beautiful.

To speak of outward appearances in my case —doesn't make sense: it's so obviously and entirely not the point!

"How do you like her looks?"

"But does she want her looks to be liked? I simply don't grant the right — to such a value judgment!"

I am me: my hair is me, and my masculine hand with square fingers is me, and my hook nose is me. And, more precisely: neither my hair, nor my hand, nor my nose are me. I am me: invisible.

Honor the shell, made happy by God's breath.

And go: to love — other bodies!

*

(If I were to publish these notes, they would inevitably say: par depit}.

A letter about Lauzun:*9

You want me to give you a short summary of my last love. I say "love," because I don't know, I don't bother to know . . . (Perhaps: anything at all — but not love! But — any and everything!)

Thus: first of all —divinely handsome, secondly —a divine voice. Both of these divinities — an acquired taste. But people with such tastes are many: all men who don't love women, and all women who don't love men.

He is receptive, both mentally and epidermally, this is his main, undoubtable essence. From chills to exaltation — a single step. He easily becomes chilled. There is no other interlocutor and partner like him in this world. He knows what you didn't say, and maybe wouldn't have said ... if he didn't already know it! Honoring only his own laziness, without wanting to, he forces you to be whatever is convenient to him. ("The way he wants" doesn't apply—he wants nothing.)

*The hero of my play, Fortuna.

Kind? No. Affectionate? Yes.

For kindness is a primary feeling, and he lives exclusively by the secondary, the reflected. So, instead of goodness —affection, instead of love —disposition, instead of hate —retreat, instead of exaltation —admiration, instead of participation — sympathy. Instead of the presence of passion — the absence of impassivity (instead of the partiality of presence — the impassivity of absence).

But he is quite strong in everything secondary: pearls, the first violin.

"And in love?"

I don't know anything about this. My sharp ear tells me that the very word "love" somehow — grates on him. He is afraid of words in general, as he is generally afraid of everything —obvious. Ghosts don't like for others to incarnate them. They reserve that luxury for themselves.

*

"Love me however you like, but manifest it in a way that's convenient to me. And it's convenient to me that I know nothing.''

Ill will? None at all. The delight and danger of him is his very profound innocence. You could die, and he wouldn't ask about you for months. And then, upset: "Oh, what a shame! If only I'd known, but I was so busy ... I didn't know that one could die so quickly."

Knowing the universal, he of course doesn't know the everyday, and death on such and such a day, at such and such an hour is of course, everyday life. And the plague is everyday life.

But in place of everything he doesn't have, there is one thing: imagination. This is his heart, and soul, and mind, and gift. The root is clear: receptivity. Sensing what you see in him, he becomes that.

So: dandy, demon, spoiled child, archangel with a horn —he is everything that you like, only a thousand times more so. A toy that avenges itself. Objetde luxe etd'art— and woe to you if this objetdeluxe et d'art becomes your daily bread!

"Innocence, innocence, innocence!"

Innocence in vanity, innocence in egotism, innocence in forgetful-ness, innocence in helplessness . . .

There is, however, one vulnerable spot in this most innocent and invulnerable of criminals: a mad —only he'll never lose his mind! —love for his nanny. His entire humanity was used up once and for all with this.

The upshot — a nonentity as a human, and perfection as a being.

*

Of all the temptations he offers me, I would single out the three most important: the temptation of weakness, the temptation of impassivity — and the temptation of what is Other.

Moscow, 1918-19

"O liubvi: Iz dnevnika, 1917" was first published in the Berlin newspaper Dni, December 25,1925.

1: "O, I'Amour! I'Amour!"—of Sarah. Tsvetaeva is referring to Sarah Bernhardt in the role of Marguerite Gautier in Dumas fils' Camille.

2: "Just live!" I dropped my hands. This poem is from Verstyll, which Tsvetaeva published in Moscow in two editions (the first contained many typographical errors, which she corrected in the second). The first came out in 1921, the second in 1922.

3: The parlor is the field, yesterday's Smolny student. The Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg was a school for daughters of the nobility. Founded in 1764, it was closed after the Revolution.

4: And a red mapk leaf was placed. Tsvetaeva is quoting Anna Akhmatova's poem "Under the Frozen Roof of an Empty Dwelling" ("Pod kryshei promerzshei pustovo zhil'ia" 1915).

5: Pavel Antokolsky: "The Lord had Judas." Pavel Grigorevich Antokolsky (1896-1978). Poet, critic, actor, onetime director of the Vakhtangov Theater and recipient of the Stalin prize. See Schweitzer, Tsvetaeva, 386.

6: Antokolsky: "But fatherhood is a big 0, that is, nought, zero".The Russian word for "fatherhood," ottsovstvo, begins and ends with the letter "o," hence the association with zero.

7: The trial of Admiral Shchastny. Aleksei Mikhailovich Shchastny (1883-1918) was an admiral in the Imperial Navy and later commander of the Red Baltic Fleet. He was convicted of treason by a revolutionary tribunal for not following Trotsky's orders; his execution in June 1918 was the first official death sentence carried out after the death sentence had been abolished by the Soviet government.

8: When she was two, Alya would say: camhill. In Russian gorbliud, a compound word constructed from gora (mountain) and verbliud (camel). "Koshka na moei grudi delaet verbliuda. (Alia, dvukh let, govorila: gorbliud!)."

9: A letter about Lauzun. Through Antokolsky, Tsvetaeva came into contact with the Third Studio experimental group of the Moscow Art Theater. The description that follows relates to Yury Zavadsky, an actor of the Third Studio, with whom Tsvetaeva was infatuated, and on whom she based the character of Lauzun in her play Fortuna.