“I want to fall in love with this city; and for that, I need leisure.” (1926)
Whatever one may think of poet Marina Tsvetaeva’s imperfect record as a mother, a woman can relate to her anxiety as a poor single parent struggling to maintain her creative life:
“By 15 September I will be returning to Prague for two months to live on half of my stipend, 500 crowns instead of 1,000. Neither Bulgakov nor Zavadsky, nor anyone else who tried to intercede on my behalf, succeeded in securing more. I hope the original stipend will be restored upon my arrival, for I simply cannot live with the children on 500 crowns. This should be settled by 15 August.
“Now — assuming 1,000 a month — may I hope, dear Anna Antonovna, to manage in Prague on that sum? How I long to live near you! The neighborhood should be a good one, with a park for walks close by (I am thinking of the children; I personally love factories and railway stations, the saddest of places). I want to live in Prague itself, not outside the city, in order to feel human again for a little while, not merely a ghost and a laborer. Yet I am bound hand and foot by the children and by money. Is it useless to even consider a flat? A flat means freedom, but is it too expensive?
( Read more...Collapse )In an earlier letter, a month before baby Mur (George) is born, she admits: “Sometimes, when I catch myself dreaming of a nanny, I suddenly fear: what if he loves her more than me? And I go: no nannies! And then, just as quickly, a vision of dreadful mornings — without poetry, with nappies — and once more the cri du cœur: a nanny! There will be no nanny, of course, and there will be poetry, of course. Otherwise my life would not be my own, and I would not be myself.” (January 1925)
