MARINA
TSVETAEVA
507
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People, when they do visit, only irritate me: "You can't live like
this. This is horrible . You need to sell everything and move."
Sell! - Easy to say! - I liked all my things too much when I
bought them-and therefore no one buys them.
The year 1919 has taught me nothing about practical matters:
neither thrift nor abstinence.
I take - eat - and give away bread as easily as if it cost 2
kopecks (now it's 200 rubles). And I have always drunk coffee and
tea without sugar.
•
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•
Is there presently in Russia - Rozanov is dead - a genuine
thinker and observer who could write a genuine book about hunger:
a person who wants to eat - a person who wants to smoke - a person
who's cold - about a person who has but does not give, about a per–
son who has nothing and gives; about the formerly generous - turned
stingy, about the formerly miserly-turned generous, and, finally,
about me: a poet and a woman, alone, alone, alone-like a lone oak
- a lone wolf-like God - amid the many plagues of Moscow in the
year 1919.
I would write it - if it weren't for the romantic flourish in me–
my nearsightedness - all of my idiosyncrasies - which at times pre–
vent me from seeing things as they are.
• • •
- Oh, if I were rich!-
Dear 1919, it is you who has taught me this cry! Before, when
everyone had plenty, I still managed to give; and now, when no one
has anything, I can't give anything, except my soul-a smile-some–
times a bit of kindling (out of frivolity)-and that's too little .
Oh, what a field of action exists for me now, for my insatiable–
ness for love. Everyone bites at this bait-even the most complex–
even I! At the moment I for one definitely love only those who give
to me - who promise and don't give - it doesn't matter! - just as long
as they sincerely (and maybe
not
sincerely-who cares!) wanted to
give for a minute.
On a whim of hand and heart this sentence, and therefore the
whole meaning, could have turned out differently and it would also
have been true:
