Marina Tsvetaeva

              Extract From Poems to Czechoslovakia 

              

                                                        GERMANY

O, rosiest virgin
among the green hills—
Germany!
Germany!
Germany!
Shame!

The astral soul
pocketed half the cards!
Those fairy tales—from old times, dimmed,
the day—the tanks arrived.

Before the Czech peasant woman—
you don’t lower your eyes,
as you roll on your tanks
through her rye, her hopes?

Before the huge grief
of this small country,
what is it you feel, German,
Germany’s sons??

O mania! O mummy
of greatness!
You’ll burn,
Germany!
Madness,
madness
you make!

With the embrace of a constrictor
the athlete will end you!
To your health, Moravia!
Slovakia, slovak!

In the crystal underground,
having retreated—prepare the blow:
Bohemia!
Bohemia!
Bohemia!
Hello!

(April 9-10, 1939)

 I first came across the work of Marina Tsvetavena/Tsevtajeva ( 1892- 1941) from reading 'Poetry of the Second World War edited by Desmond Graham'. And her life is an absolutely harrowing read. Born in Moscow into quite a cultured family- her father was a professor and founder of the Museum of Fine Art, opened by Tsar Nicholas II in 1912. Her mother, a Polish-German pianist who died from tuberculosis when Marina was fourteen. Marina was educated at different international schools, including The Sorbonne and had her first collection of poems 'Evening Album' published when she was eighteen. In 1912 Marina married Sergie/Sergej Efron,a devotee of poetry, though not clear if he was a published a poet himself. 

And the turbulence of the 20th century descended. I can't find a record of Efron's war service in World War One but after the 1917 Revolution, Efron was fighting in the White Army during the Russian Civil War. The couple were separated and Marina began a short affair with the poet Odip Mandelstan, and then later had a relationship with Sofia Parnock, a fellow poet. Marina's sympathies were with the Whites and she wrote a poem titled  'The Demense of Swans',in support of the anti-revolutionary cause, not published until 1957.

Famine struck Moscow  in 1919 where the family were living, and Marina placed her two daughters in a state run children's home. Her younger daughter, Irina died there. Sergei , Marina and their surviving daughter Alja (Ariadna) moved to Berlin in 1922, then Prague, and finally to Paris in 1925. Sergei Efron began working as a Soviet spy, which of course meant that they were shunned by the White Russian/ Tsarist emmigrés. It is not completely clear why Sergei changed sides.Marina corresponded with famous poets and had some work published in exile, trying to write plays and literary criticism. 

In 1938 and 1939 Marina wrote a cycle of poems about the post Munich Treaty dismantling of the land of  Czechoslovakia ,titled 'Poems To Czechoslovakia'.  The German speaking 'Sudetenland' had already been ceded to The Third Reich in 1938 via international agreement.  The Third Reich had seized the largely Czech speaking provinces of Bohemia and Moravia on  15th March 1939 and turned them into a Protecterate. Slovakia became independent and allied to the Germans.  The poems in this cycle connect to dates during the demise of the country. As in the example cited above, they are concise, direct, and sharp, and no word is wasted. 

Also in June 1939 Marina,Sergei  Erfon and their son Georgij, known as Mur , relocated to the Soviet Union.Sources appear to conflict, I have read that Sergei Erfon was facing attempted murder charges in France, thought it is equally plausible that the Soviet authorities-still controlling him- ordered Sergei back. Alja had already returned but was soon banished to Siberia, then later to a labour camp there.  In October 1939 Sergei Efron was arrested for spying and attempting to undermine the Soviet Military. In June 1941 he was condemned to death, and executed at Lubjanka Prison in October 1941. However there are claims that Sergei Erfon  was amongst some 157 intellectuals who were executed on 11th September 1941 as part of the Soviet State's Medvedev Forest massacre as the Germans were approaching the region. 

In retrospect it seemed unlikely that Sergei Erfon would have ever been accepted by the Stalinist regime and his usefulness to them had simply expired. It is possible that the Secret Service cajoled Sergei and Alja to incriminate each other. KUDROVA, Another source suggests that Alja's boyfriend at the time turned out to be a police agent and informed on her and Sergei. CARCANET

Marina and Mur left Moscow in July 1941, moving to Yelabuga,Tatarstan. They were isolated from any contemporary literary life, and desperately short of money.  Marina hanged herself on 31st August 1941. 

Mur returned to Moscow, was called up for military service in 1943, and killed in action fighting for the Soviet regime in the Summer of 1944, most likely in what is now Belaraus. 

In the wake of Stalin's death, the banning order against Alja was lifted in 1955 and she was released.Sergei Erfon was posthumously rehabilitated. Alja survived until 1975 and dedicated her life to reviving her mother's work.  In 1965 an anthology of Marina's work was published in the Soviet Union.Leading post-war Soviet poet Yvengy Yevtushenko wrote a poem about her death and cited Marina as an influence.  In 1973, Shostakovich set six of Marina's poems to music, whilst on holiday in Estonia, titled 'Six Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva Opus 143A'. They were performed by the English Touring Opera in January 2024.

Marina Tsvetaeva has now been recognised as a leading 20th century Russian language poet, along with Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky. There is a memorial Museum dedicated to her work 

Anna Akhmatova wrote a poem in 1940 'Late Answer'  dedicated to Marina Tsvetaeva, which seems a fitting tribute: 

" I returned home today,
look on in wonder,my native field,
at what happened to me after this.
The deep has swallowed up my loved ones,
the father's house is pillaged,
You and I today, Marina,
are walking through the midnight capital,
and millions like us are following behind us,
There is no more silent procession,
and round about the funeral bells ring, 
and wild Moscow wails as the the blizzard covers our tracks." 

(from 'Selected Poems' by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Richard McKane, Bloodaxe Books, 1969)

Picture 

Photo courtesy of 'Wikipedia'. Hitler's visit to Prague Castle 15th/16th March 1939 

Sources 

CARCANET Marina Tsvetaeva biog webpage with list of  her poetry collections translated into English. 

Poetry Foundation biography  Web page on Marina Tsvetaeva

Full Text   'Poems to Czechoslovakia'  translated by Margaret Little.

Death of a Poet The Last Days of Marina Tsvetaeva' Irma KUDROVA ( book publicity page) 

South Magazine   Issue 31, April 2005 : Article 'Marina Tsvetaeva - Poet of Extreme' by Belinda Cooke

Coppice -Gate Webpage about  Shostakvoich's interpretation of Marina Tsvetaeva's poems 

The Memorial House Museum dedicated to Marina Tsvetaeva in Bolshevo, Russia

Related Post 

Anna Akhmatova  Post from this blog about Anna Akhmatova from 2018 

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Louis MacNeice (1907-1963) 'The News-reel'

                                               Since Munich, What? 

                                   "Since Munich,what? A tangle of black film
                                   Squirming like bait upon the floor of my mind
                                   And Scissors clicking daily. I am inclined.
                                   To pick these pictures now but will hold back.
                                   Till memory has elicited from the blind
                                   Drama its threads of vision, the intrusions
                                   Of value upon fact, the sudden unconfined
                                    Wind of understanding that blew out
                                    From people's hands and faces undesigned
                                    Evidence of design, that change of climate
                                    Which did not last but happens often enough
                                    To give us hope that fact is a facade
                                    And that there is an organism behind
                                    Its brittle littleness, a rhythm and a meaning
                                    Something half-conjectured and half divined
                                    Something to give way to and so find."

                                    

                                   -The News-reel  ( first published in Louis Macneice's  The Springboard, collection from 1944).

                 Louis MacNeice's poem News-reel is generally not anthologised in collections of World War 2 poetry. And the poem is omitted from  Louis MacNeice's Selected Poems (edited with an introduction by Michael Longley) from 1988. Just happened to find the poem  by chance in a copy of Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice edited by Professor E.R. Dodds. 

Next to the rise of  radio, one of the great changes in media between the two World Wars was the legendary Pathe Newsreels, which were screened before major feature films at the cinema up to 1970 in Britain.

If nothing else, the poem highlights MacNeice's skill as a social observer but delves deeper. There is a great tension between the individual and the current events. The idea of the  newsreel as being an accurate record is questionable and prone to be being tampered with, whilst the narrator's is selecting and possibly censoring their own inner pictures. Reminds one of how George Orwell's war work in the Ministry of Information led to the fictional Ministry of Truth in  the novel 1984. The poem is quite short, and doesn't need to be pulled apart line by line, but raise thorough questions concerning how 'News' is constructed. 

         Louis MacNeice was born in Belfast, 1907, his father was an Anglican minister, his mother died when he was aged six. MacNeice was educated in English public schools from the age of 10, and then attended Oxford University, and became a classics lecturer in Birmingham,then at Bedford College,University of London. He visited Spain with Anthony Blunt in early 1936 on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. Later the same year, MacNeice visited Iceland with W H Auden. 

 MacNeice was living in London as from 1938. In 1939- 1940 he was in the USA for months at a time.  In 1941 MacNeice returned to London and  worked for the BBC, both as a broadcaster and radio producer, dying in 1963 from pneumonia contracted whilst out working with BBC sound engineers, exploring potholes to use for special effects for his play 'Person from Porlock'. LONGLEY Among his successes on radio must be the plays Columbus from 1944 (with music by Sir William Walton) and The Dark Tower from 1946, (with a score by Benjamin Britten).

His first poetry collection Blind  Fireworks appeared  in 1929, but really it was Poems 1935, published by Faber & Faber, which established MacNeice's reputation as a poet . Around a dozen more collections, were to follow, along with books of literary criticism. His one and only novel, Roundabout Way, published              in  1932, using the name Louis Malone, has been rather neglected.  

Philip Larkin praised MacNeice's work as follows:

"...his poetry of our everyday life, of shop-windows, traffic policemen, ice-cream soda, lawn-mowers, and an uneasy awareness of what the newsboy were shouting. In addition he displayed a sophisticated sentimentality about falling leaves and lipsticked cigarette ends...."  LONGLEY 

Macneice's 'Autumn Journal' ,written between August and December 1938, first published in 1939, must rate alongside George Orwell's  novel 'Coming up for Air' as a  superb literary depiction of the incredible tensions generated by the progress to World War 2. Autumn Journal approaches 3,000 line so poetry anthologies tend to just take a few lines samples from it. But the range of subjects it covers is far reaching :  The Spanish Civil War, religious divide in Ulster, Ancient Greece, the author's own sexual frustration after the breakdown of his marriage and next love affair, everyday life in Britain as the 1930's stagger to a close, are woven into a griping narrative. There is this great sense of individual helplessness in the face of World events as preparations are made for war.

"If the puzzle has an answer. Hitler yells on the wireless,

The night is damp and still.

And I hear the dull blows on wood outside my window;

They are cutting down trees on Primrose Hill.

The wood is white like the roast flesh of roast chicken'

Every tree falling like a closing fan.

No more looking at the view from seats beneath the branches,

Everything is going to plan;

They want the crest of the hill for anti-aircraft,

The guns will take the view

And searchlights probe the heavens for bacilli "  (part VII Autumn Journal)  LONGLEY

MacNeice visited Barcelona in December 1938, and experienced bombing raids, though did not appear to have seen armed fighting there. MacNeice was exempt from military service during World War 2 on health grounds. His work certainly deserves to be recognised in any study of World War 2 poetry.  

 In 2023 a  Louis MacNeice Society was launched. 

Weblinks 

In the Dark Tower  BBC Archive on Four 'Louis MacNeice at the BBC' 

Pathe newsreels Archive

Poetry Foundation  Page on Louise MacNeice 

Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice online  Faber & Faber collection edited by Peter McDonald, 2007

Books 

Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice Edited by Professor E.R. Dodds, Faber & Faber, 1966 

The Myth of the Blitz, Angus CALDER, Jonathan Cape, London, 1991 

Louis MacNeice's Selected Poems (edited by Michael LONGLEY)

Image 

In the Public Domain courtesy of Wikipedia Britain. 'People in London look at a map illustrating how the RAF is striking back at Germany during 1940'. Interesting to see the uniformed airman amongst the civilians looking at the map. 

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Second World War Poems -Chosen by Hugh Haughton -Revised Edition

                                                               Review 

                                                     Mass destruction,mass disease;

                                                     We thank thee, Lord, upon our knees

                                                     That we were born in times like these

                                                     Louis Macneice 'Bar-room Matins'

                                            Originally appeared in 2004, and great to see that a new edition was published by Faber & Feber Ltd in 2023. As with any such collections there is the question of who is deemed qualified to write World War 2 poetry? And how does an editor select a poem to be included in this anthology? Hugh Haughton has adopted a similar but not identical approach to that taken by Desmond Graham whose Poetry of the Second World War -An International Anthology appeared in 1997 : Whilst Desmond Graham would only consider the poetry written by those lived through World War 2 as adults, Hugh Haughton has extended this remit to allow a few poets who were children during when war broke out, such as Tony Harrison ( born 1937) and Derek Mahon (born 1941). In other words, the contributors had to have a memory of the War.  

The vexed question of whether or not poetry can be a fitting medium for dealing with something so vast and devastating as World War 2 looms.  Certainly Dylan Thomas had his doubts of the effectiveness of poetry in his harrowing 'Refusal to Mourn the Death by Fire, of a Child in London' ,declining to 'blaspheme down the stations of the breath, With any further, Elegy of innocence and youth.  And at the start of the War , Stevie Smith in her poem 'The Poets are Silent' declared And I say it is to the poets' merit/ To be silent about the war. 

Yet this collection shows how poetry was used as a powerful channel of expression during this conflict. World War 2 Poets are not really as  important in shaping our views of the conflict in the same way that the Soldier Poets of the Great War achieved. But their work can hit home. For example, Keith Douglas's poem 'Vergissmeinnicht', ('forget me not') where the poet, fighting in the North African campaign, discovers amongst the debris in a shell hit German tank, the body of a dead soldier and his scattered possessions : the dishonoured picture of his girl/who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht/ in a copybook gothic script. Or Tadeus Rozewicz's poem 'Pigtail'. about the discarded hair of women and girls having their head shaved before being gassed at Auschwitz, and finding a faded plait/ a pigtail with a ribbon/pulled at school/by naughty boys. The poems depict images which sum up the pathos of War. 

And sometimes the poems develop beyond witness accounts. To take Leon Zdzislaw Stroinski's poem 'Warsaw',setting a scene which nearly becomes a slice of magic realism. 

In its shade at dawn caretakers come out with huge frayed brooms to sweep up the tears which have collected during the night and lie thickly in the streets. 

Or World War 1 serving soldier Herbert Read's 'To a Conscript of 1940' 

A soldier passed me in the freshly fallen snow

His footsteps muffled,his face unearthly grey';

And my heart gave a sudden leap

As I gazed on a ghost of -five-and twenty years ago. 

 Three poems are included Nelly Sachs, a Jewish poet living in Germany who was already listed for deportation to the Camps. who managed to obtain Swedish citizenship and leave on the last plane to Stockholm in 1943, but wrestled with survivors's guilt. More famous poets who were in exile during World War 2 such as W.H.Auden and Bertold Brecht get their place. Poems by Primo Levi and Paul Celan who saw the Camps, were freed, but took their lives afterwards, also appear. The nationalities represented include Japan, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Russia, USA, France, Italy and Scottish Gaelic speakers. 

Personally I would like to have seen Vera Brittain's 'Lament to Cologne' -her protest against saturation bombing- included, and more than one poem by Alan Ross. Also hard to envisage a World War 2 poetry anthology without Vernon Scannell, a serving soldier who saw the North African and Normandy campaigns, who absconded a few times when in uniform. But these are simply my own preferences.

Due to the huge amount of work included in this anthology, it is hard to draw any generic conclusions about World War 2 poetry contained therein. There is little triumphalism or romantic heroism, neither are there pleas for negotiations to end the War. Moreover, German poets such as Huchel and Bobrowski from the Eastern Front, who both became Soviet Prisoners of War, and rehabilitated into becoming DDR citizens, have poems featured here.There is a sense of shared human experience. And certainly this anthology shows that World War 2 poetry still holds great potential. Doesn't fade with age. The final word should go to Scottish poet Donald Bane in his poem 'War Poet'

We in our haste only see the small components of the scene

We cannot tell what incidents will focus on the final screen

A barrage of disruptive sound, a petal on a sleeping face,

Both must be noted, both have their place    

Note : All poems quoted in this post are published within the above anthology 

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'The Bombing of the Cafe de Paris, 1941'

                                Poem by  Vernon Scannell 

                           

                              

 

                    On 8th March 1941 bandleader  Kenrick 'Snakehips' Johnson and his orchestra were due to perform at the Cafe de Paris, Coventry Street, quite an exclusive club it seems BAIRD. Strangely enough its interior was modelled on the ballroom of 'The Titanic'.COLLINS, BURCHETT & DANIEL  Snakehips Johnson was born in British Giuiana - now Guyana- in 1914, and his parents sent him to Britain in 1929 to study medicine.Though Snakehips Johnson spent time at school in Buckinghamshire, and attended the University of Edinburgh, it's not clear whether he formally graduated. He became a renowned dancer, spending time in the USA including a stay in Harlem during 1934 VENTRE. On returning to Britain, he  can be seen dancing in the film 'Oh Daddy' (1935) , and in 1936 Snakehips Johnson helped form an all black  swing orchestra which eventually became the West Indian Dance Orchestra. Performing in London and broadcasting on the BBC, they took up regular residency at the prestigious Cafe de Paris, which also had recording facilities. BAIRD When war broke out, members of the Orchestra were exempt from conscription.

The Cafe de Paris was exempt from many war time restrictions,as considered to be underground and therefore not admitting any light during the blackout.The trouble is that the venue was located under the Rialto cinema with its glass domed roof. The previous two months were relatively free of air raids but  on 8th March 1941 a major air attack began on the West End. 'Snakehips'  Johnson went for a drink in the Embassy Club before his own show was due to start. It is not clear if an air raid had begun, or expected when he hurried over to the Cafe de Paris, but he reached the club in time for 10 pm, and the West Indian Dance Orchestra began the show with 'Oh Johnny Oh' BAIRD. The Rialto cinema incurred a direct hit by a 50kg  bomb NATIONAL ARCHIVES and the impact was enough to bring down the ceiling of the Cafe de Paris. Some sources state that there were two bombs, most likely one bomb fell but did not explode GARDINER A musician who survived-guitarist Joe Deniz- recounted that shrapnel had hit his guitar case DENIZ Kendrick 'Snakehips' Johnson,aged 26, was amongst the 34 people who died, with at least eighty wounded. The club was about half full, and casualties could well have been a great deal higher if the bomb had struck later. The Club did not re-open until 1948. 

 

Vernon Scannell (John Vernon Bain 1922-2007) ,was  arguably one of the most important post war British poets of the 20th century. Also a novelist, boxer, radio broadcaster,author of children's books. Scannell's poetry covered military during World War 2, love affairs, family relationships, observations of provincial life. His own army record during World War 2 included spells of going AWOL, deserting whilst the enemy was retreating during the North African campaign at Wadi-Akarit in 1943, which led to a spell in a military prison. Released in time serve in Normandy in 1944, where Scanell was wounded and sent to a military hospital in England, where he went AWOL yet again and returned. When VE Day was announced Scannell left the army without waiting to be demobbed, and went on the run for two years.TAYLOR If there really is such a being as a 'War Poet', Scannell must rate as one of the most interesting. 

Vernon Scannell's poem 'The Bombing of the Cafe de Paris, 1941' first appeared in an educational work titled 'Mastering the Craft' in 1970. To the best of my knowledge, the first time that this poem appeared in a collection was 'Winterlude-Poems by Vernon Scannell' from 1982, and appeared in subsequent collections. The poem introduces 'Snakehips, the bandleader, and the boys' in stanza (i) . 

                                "Tapped natty polished toes to keep the time
                                Of tango, quickstep, foxtrot, blues and swing;
                                The basement of the place was deep and safe,
                                No other-ranks or bombs would be let in. "

The impact of the bomb is depicted in stanza (iv) as a:

                             "Huge knuckle-dustered fist that struck and crushed" 

Then stanza (v) hits home with some almost grotesque imagery of the effects of war. And the emphasis moves away from 'Snakehips' Johnson to unknown victims. 

                             "                   and from the ceiling came

                                 Floating down a fine cosmetic dust

                                 That settled softly on the hair and skin

                                 Of the sailor's girl, who, wholly without shame,

                                 Sprawled in ripped clothes, one precious stocking gone

                                 and with it half her leg....."

The combination of 'cosmetic dust', a stocking being 'precious' ( presumably due to rationing ), how the bomb blast has destroyed both the dignity and a limb of the 'sailor's girl' is a chaotic mixture of images.After an awkward start, the poem starts to progress well. And stanza (viii) is certainly controversial.

                              "While, down below, a woman lay and saw

                               A man approaching through the powdery gloom;

                              She could not move trapped limbs.'Rescue! she thought

                              As by her side he knelt upon the floor,

                              Reached out to finger at her neck and take

                              Her string of pearls in one triumphant paw."                       

                              

The lines just speak for themselves in running contrary to the whole popular view of the spirit of The Blitz.

Possessions from bodies of those who died at the Cafe de Paris were indeed looted GARDINER. Most likely by thieves known as 'bombchasers' looking for pickings in bombed properties, or items that were simply blasted out into the streets. Sometimes emergency workers themselves committed thefts CALDER.  So far, I have not come across any record of possessions being stolen from the living bomb survivors unless Scannell is trying to suggest that the thief thought that the woman in question was dead. 

AFTERWORD

'Snakehips' was gay and lived with his partner, the music critic Gerald Hamilton in Bray, Berkshire. In the 21st century interest in the life and tragic death of Snakehips is growing: The music of the West Indian Dance Orchestra has been made available on line via Youtube, whilst research into the lives of both Black and LGBT individuals during World  War 2 has led to a greater focus on the contribution made by 'Snakehips' Johnson to the rise of British Jazz-Swing. VENTRE

Books 

'The People's War Britain 1939-45', Angus CALDER, Jonathan Cape, 1969

'The Blitz-The British Under Attack' Juliet GARDINER, Harper Press 2010

'Winterlude- Poems by Vernon Scannell', Robson Books, 1982

'Walking Wounded- The Life & Poetry of Vernon Scannell', James Andrew TAYLOR, Oxford University Press, 2013 

Stephen Bourne's 'Fighting Proud,The Untold Story of the Gay Men who fought in Two World Wars', Bloomsbury, 2017 is often cited by researchers looking at the life  of 'Snakehips' Johnson. 

Image 

'Bomb Damage in London during the Second World War' . (HU36157) Imperial War Museum, in the public domain courtesy of IWM and 'Wikipedia'. 

Online

National Archives webpage on the Cafe de Paris bombing of 8th March 1941. 

Black History is our History Web article 'The Story of Buckinghamshire swing king Ken Johnson  who died in the Blitz by Liam RYDER.

Uncovered  University of Edinburgh webpage about 'Snakehips' Johnson by Lea VENTRE

The West End at War (1)  web article by Grace BAIRD about 'Snakehips' Johnson and the Cafe de Paris Bombing

The West End at War (2) web article by Patrick COLLINS, Raquel BURCHETT & Peter DANIEL '8 March 1941 Cafe de Paris' 

Poetry Foundation webpage about Vernon Scannell

Youtube

Oh Daddy Snakehips scene 'Snakehips' Johnson dancing in 1935 film 'Oh Daddy'.

Guitarist Joe Deniz interview 1980  Survivor Joe DENIZ's recollections with surviving footage of Snakehips. 

Other Blogs by this writer. 

Bleak Chesney Wold    19th century history & literature

A Burnt Ship  17th century war & literature