Soul and Passion: Marina Tsvetaeva’s Classical Plays

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) is recognized as one of the foremost Russian poets of the twentieth century. Yet while much of her poetry and prose have been translated into English, her poetic dramatic works have, until now, been unavailable to an anglophone readership. In this volume her two classical dramas, Ariadne (1927) and Phaedra (1928), are translated with an introduction and notes. In Tsvetaeva’s unusual retellings of these well-known myths, Theseus’s abandonment of Ariadne is the most heroic of deeds and Phaedra is innocent of both incest and malice. These tragedies explore in distinctive ways the nature of the heroic, the difference of feminine language, and the implacability of fate. Simon Karlinsky, biographer and leading scholar of Tsvetaeva, called the two sister plays not only a magnificent poetic accomplishment but an impressive philosophical conception as well. This edition does not contain the original Russian text. Otherwise it is unchanged from the first edition.