Article

Name: “Everything will be printed”: text and paratext in Marina Tsvetaeva’s “Czech Notebook”

Authors: Svetlana Yu. Kornienko

Novosibirsk State Pedagogical University, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

Abstract:

This article examines the interaction between textual and paratextual elements in Marina Tsvetaeva’s creative notebook from 1922–1923, published in 2024. New archival materials not only shed light on the history of Tsvetaeva’s lyrical masterpieces but also provide a key to understanding the modernist artist’s creative strategies. An examination of the notebook’s paratextual structures, as well as other elements of the textual boundary (J. Genette, S. Zenkin), allows us to see how the notebook implements both a reading framework (Tsvetaeva’s metacommentary on her own works) and a writing program (a set of authorial tasks). The article’s three sections contain observations related to Tsvetaeva’s annotations. The first section, “NB! About Orpheus and Eurydice,” addresses Tsvetaeva’s various notes related to the Orphic theme. The presence of a corresponding note allows us to identify texts that do not directly invoke the mythological tale of Orpheus and Eurydice (the poem “No, do not dispute the truth…”) as belonging to Tsvetaeva’s Orphic style. A note related to the parameters of the human voice reveals references to the opera “Orpheus and Eurydice” by the Cavalier Gluck in Tsvetaeva’s mythopoetic quest. Another note, “NB! The old believer’s race,” on the border of the autographs of two poems, “Fugitives? — Messengers?..” and “Beggars and turtledoves…,” emphasizes the connection between these texts, which Tsvetaeva would later separate into a book of poetry. In “After Russia,” the first poem will be included in the “Trees” cycle, the second in the “God” cycle. The final note, “NB! The distance has risen into milestones,” appears in the margins of the poem “Dawn on the rails.” The reader of the draft autographs can see how Tsvetaeva uses the elongation of the milepost to create the effect of “growing distance,” turning the horizontal into the vertical. In the final draft autographs and then in the final autographs, the mileposts are also replaced by barriers, which are imbued with the corresponding semantics. By transforming mileposts into barriers, Tsvetaeva appropriates the semantics of these images from classical (A. Pushkin) and symbolist (A. Bely, A. Blok) poetry.

Keywords: Tsvetaeva, metapoetics, text and paratext, textual criticism, Russian modernism

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