Art in the Light of Conscience: Eight Essays on Poetry
In essays Tsvetaeva wrote between 1922 and 1934 while an emigre, she airs gripes about bad criticism and shares her infectious enthusiasm for Russian poetry and poets, including her contemporaries in the Soviet Union. The translation transmits much of the pith of her idiosyncratic prose. In "The Poet on the Critic," she defines the good critic (and she is one) as a "two-faced god, looking backwards and forwards." In "Epic and Lyric of Contemporary Russia," she heaps up contrasting images of Pasternak and Mayakovsky in a tour de force that defines both and diminishes neither. Her memoir of the eccentric Osip Mandelstam is funny and warm ("History of a Dedication"). Also included are 12 of Tsvetaeva's poems that touch on her craft. This book is for poetry lovers.- Mary F. Zirin, Altadena, Cal.Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.