Volume 29, Number 6 · April 15, 1982
Poet of Sacrifice
By David McDuff
Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetayeva
translated by Elaine Feinstein
Oxford University Press, 108 pp., $8.95 (paper)
'Der Weg von der Innigkeit zur Grösse geht durch das Opfer' ('The way from intense inwardness to greatness leads through sacrifice').[1] These words of the essayist Rudolf Kassner form the epigraph to Rainer Maria Rilke's fateful poem 'Wendung' (Turning Point) of 1914, in which the poet acknowledged that his shortcomings, his inability to love and to form lasting personal relationships were the source and sustenance of his life's work:
Review, 2764 words
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