Title:A CAPTIVE SPIRIT : Collected Prose
Author: Marina Tsvetaeva
Introduction by Susan Sontag
Translated and edited by J. Marin King
ISBN: 0-88233-353-4
Binding: Paper
Publisher:Ardis
Number of Pages: 491
Price:$ 16.95
Captive Spirit shows Marina Tsvetaeva's genius at the peak of its power. The selections are from her mature period, the 1930s, and include almost all of her autobiographical writings, her major literary portraits, and her literary criticism.
Exiled in Paris and isolated in the emigre community during this period, Tsvetaeva became increasingly aware of the importance of biography, history, and myth. Her famous portraits of Maximilian Voloshin and Andrei Bely reveal her remarkable capacities as an eyewitness, while her moving accounts of her father and mother, sisters and brother, seen through a child's eyes, comprise the most lyrical of family chronicles. The final section of the book, juxtaposing two works of literary criticism, demostrates her formidable critical and analytical intelligence.
Tsvetaeva composed her prose to be read aloud, and these essays, full of extraordinary vitality, reflect the urgency of one who writes to discover the essential truths hidden in the past. A Captive Spirit is a remarkable collection of work from, as Vladimir Nabokov described her, "a writer of genius."
"The Russianness of Tsvetaeva's poetry and prose-singularly direct and forceful are they are—consists in an obvious authenticity of the emotions. Everything is felt instantly and strongly; everything is strashny and vesely—terrible and joyful—and yet about this directness there is nothing histrionic, sloppy, or self-indulgent." —JOHN BAYLEY, The New York Review of Books
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