Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)
Translation of a poem by Vazha-Pshavela. 1940
Autograph manuscript signed (‘perevela [translated by] Marina Tsvetaeva’), a translation of the poem ‘Gogotur and Apshina’ by Vazha-Pshavela, [Moscow, early 1940].

In Russian. 14 pages, 221 x 171mm, on a singleton and three bifolia, a few minor cancellations and emendations, stanzas divisions marked in red pencil and section divisions in blue pencil, presumably by the printer, pencil annotation at upper left of p.1.

A translation from the Georgian, in Tsvetaeva’s desperate last years. This translation dates from the last and most desperate period of Tsvetaeva’s life. She had returned to the Soviet Union in June 1939, settling initially in the family dacha in Novy Byt. In August, her daughter was arrested, and in October her husband, and with no means of support Tsvetaeva and her son moved to Moscow, where they spent the winter in desperate poverty. It was at this point, in January 1940, that the journalist Viktor Alexandrovich Goltsev, an enthusiast for Georgian culture, suggested she embark on translations of the great Georgian poet Vazha-Pshavela (pen-name of Luka Razikashvili, 1861-1915), as a means of earning money: not speaking Georgian, she worked from interlinear translations. As she recounted in a letter to P.A. Pavlenko on 27 August 1940: ‘I’ve been translating all winter. I translated two English ballads about Robin Hood, three poems by Vazha-Pshavela (more than 2000 lines), a number of Lermontov’s poems from Russian into French … I worked tirelessly – not a day of rest’. Tsvetaeva’s plight worsened after her evacuation to Tatarstan in 1941, and on 31 August 1941 she hanged herself. ‘Gogotur and Apshina’ is one of three translations by Tsvetaeva from Vazha-Pshavela, her only known translations from Georgian. Autograph manuscripts by Tsvetaeva are unknown at international auction: ABPC and RBH record only three lots of autograph letters.

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