{"product_id":"9781681378329","title":"Three by Tsvetaeva","description":"\u003cb\u003eThree of the legendary Russian dissident writer's greatest poems, two autobiographical and one based on a Russian folktale, now in a new, invigorating English translation.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe three poems in this collection, \"Backstreets\", \"Poem of the  Mountain\" and \"Poem of the End,\" were all written in the few short years  spanning the period immediately preceding Tsvetaeva's move from the  Soviet Union to Prague in 1922. \"Poem of the Mountain\" and \"Poem of the  End\" are generally considered some of her finest poems and have been  translated widely; \"Backstreets,\" initially dismissed by Russian readers  as nigh unintelligible, is almost unknown in English. Andrew Davis's  translation is a first, and it reveals the poem in all in its emotional  intensity and poetic pyrotechnics as among Tsvetaeva's greatest  achievements.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Poem of the Mountain\" and \"Poem of the End\" both  concern the end of an affair. \"Backsteets,\" by contrast, is a retelling  of the Russian folk-tale of Dobrynya and Marinka. It is a very free  retelling, however. In the original story a hero (Dobrynya) is seduced  by a witch (Marinka) and turned into an aurochs, the extinct European  ancestor to modern cattle. Marinka is then forced by Dobrynya's sister,  herself possessed of magic powers, to restore Dobrynya to his original  form. This she does, though at the same time extorting from him a  promise to marry her in exchange for the restoration. He marries her,  but murders her on their wedding night. Almost none of this makes it  into \"Backstreets,\" though the poem does retain the sense of magic and  menace of the original. What is actually being described, is, beneath  everything, a remarkable description of a highly charged erotic  encounter. The poem is the clearest expression of Tsvetaeva's  understanding of love and its possibilities.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDavis's versions of Osip Mandelstam's \u003ci\u003eVoronezh Notebooks \u003c\/i\u003ehave  been widely admired. Here he brings his talents as poet and translator  to the work of a Russian poet whose achievement has loomed ever larger  with the years.","brand":"Marina Tsvetaeva","offers":[{"title":"New York Review Books |  Paperback \/ softback | Trade paperback (US) |  2024-05-07","offer_id":44663221977343,"sku":"9781681378329","price":22.0,"currency_code":"CAD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0329\/9075\/7001\/files\/BNCImageAPI_1892cb2c-ed92-488b-98eb-3a379f14bfcd.jpg?v=1704534414","url":"https:\/\/riverbookshop.com\/products\/9781681378329","provider":"River Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}