Letters: Summer 1926 (New York Review Books Classics)

404 Pages·2001·15.893 MB·English

by  Marina Tsvetayeva, Rainer Maria Rilke, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Susan Sontag

NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS
CLASSICS
LETTERS
SUMMER 1926
BORIS PASTERNAK (1890-1960), the son of a distinguished
painter, was born in Moscow and made his reputation as a
poet with his first collection, My Sister, Life, written in 1917.
Silenced by the Soviet authorities for much of his career, in 1957
Pasternak permitted the publication abroad of his novel Doctor
Zhivago. He was forced by his government to decline the 1958
Nobel Prize for Literature.
MARINA TSVETAYEVA (1892-1941), whose father was a
classicist and whose mother was a pianist, was born in Moscow
and published her first book of poems at seventeen. Tsvetayeva
left Russia in 1922 with her two children and her husband, Sergei
Efron, who fought against the Red Army in the 1918-1921 Civil
War but was later to become a Soviet spy. Often living from hand
to mouth, the family remained abroad until 1939. Two years later,
after the execution of her husband and the arrest of her daughter,
Tsvetayeva committed suicide. Along with numerous lyrics, her
works include several extraordinary long poems, among them The
Poem of the End, The Poem of the Mountain, and The Ratcatcher.
RAINER MARIA RILKE (1875-1926) was born in Prague, the
child of a military officer who worked for the railways. His major
books include The Book of Hours, inspired by a trip to Russia,
the two volumes of New Poems, The Duino Elegies, and Sonnets
to Orpheus.
SUSAN SONTAG has written novels, stories, essays, and plays;
written and directed films; and worked as a theater director in the
United States and Europe. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem
Prize. Her most recent book is In America, a novel which won the
National Book Award for Fiction in 2000.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/letterssummer1920000past_p9a3
ErIEBERS
SUMMER 1926
BORIS PASTERNAK
MARINA TSVETAYEVA
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Edited by
YEVGENY PASTERNAK
YELENA PASTERNAK
KONSTANTIN M. AZADOVSKY
Translated by
MARGARET WETTLIN
WALTER ARNDT
JAMEY GAMBRELL
Preface by
SUSAN SONTAG
NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS
New York
This is aNew York Review Book
Published by The New York Review of Books
1755 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
Copyright © 2001 by New York Review Books
Copyright © 1983 by Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main
Preface copyright © 2001 by Susan Sontag
Translation copyright © 1985 by Margaret Wettlin and Walter Arndt
Epilogue and Appendix translation copyright © 2001 by Jamey Gambrell
Unpublished Russian language manuscript copyright © 1985 by Yevgeny
Pasternak, Yelena Pasternak, Konstantin M. Azadovsky, and Mikhail Baltsvinik
English translation copyright © 1985 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich, 1890-1960.
[Correspondence. English. Selections]
Letters, summer 1926 : Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva,
Rainer Maria Rilke / translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey
Gambrell ; edited by Yegevny Pasternak, Yelena Pasternak, Konstantin M.
Azadovsky ; preface by Susan Sontag.
p. cm.
Previously published in German in 1983 under the title: Rainer Maria
Rilke, Marina Zwetajewa, Boris Pasternak.
ISBN 0-940322-71-4 (alk. paper)
1. Pasternak, Boris Leonidovich, 1890-1960—Correspondence. 2.
TSvetaeva, Marina, 1892-1941—Correspondence. 3. Rilke, Rainer Maria,
1875-1926—Correspondence. 4. Authors, German—20th
century—Correspondence. 5. Authors, Russian—20th
century—Correspondence. I. TSvetaeva, Marina, 1892-1941. II. Rilke,
Rainer Maria, 1875-1926. III. Pasternak, E. B. (Evgenii Borisovich),
1923- IV. Pasternak, E. V. V. Azadovskii, K. (Konstantin) VI. Title.
PG3476.P27 Z48 2001
891.71'42—dc21 2001001874
ISBN 0-940322-71-4
Book design by Lizzie Scott
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
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CONTENTS
Preface : ix
Foreword to the Second Edition XV
A Note on the English Edition NODK
Introduction - 3
Letters - 45
Epilogue - 261
Marina Tsvetayeva: Two Essays >19
Notes .- 361
Index : 369
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