M. Tsvetaeva and B. Pasternak

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva was born on 26 September 1892 in Moscow into an educated family. Her father Ivan Vladimirovich was a professor at Moscow University, a philologist and art historian, later director of the Rumyantsev Museum and founder of the Museum of Fine Arts. Marina began writing poems at the age of six; she wrote in three languages: Russian, French and German. At eighteen she published her first collection «Вечерний альбом» (1910), containing poems written at her school desk; in 1912–1913 two more followed: «Волшебный фонарь» and «Из двух книг». Among her contemporaries her poems did not win great fame. According to the book, she lived 17 years abroad, returned to her homeland in 1939, worked on translations, prepared her books for publication, and died on 31 August 1941. In «Моим стихам…» (1913) the young poet foretells the fate of her poems: they were written so early that she did not know she was a poet; they burst out like spray from a fountain and sparks from rockets, broke like little imps into a hushed sanctuary; now they lie in the dust of the shops and nobody buys them. But in the last two lines comes confidence: like precious wines, her poems will have their turn. Devices: comparisons (fountain, rocket, wine), images (little imps) and the fact that the poem is built as one long sentence.