Letters: Summer 1926

by Pasternak, Boris; Tsvetayeva, Marina; Rilke, Rainer Maria; Sontag, Susan

• ISBN13: 9780940322714
• ISBN10: 0940322714
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-10-31
• Publisher: NYRB Classics

Summary

Edited by Yevgeny Pasternak, Yelena Pasternak, and Konstantin M. Azadovsky The summer of 1926 was a time of trouble and uncertainty for each of the three poets whose correspondence is collected in this moving volume. Marina Tsvetayeva was living in exile in France and struggling to get by. Boris Pasternak was in Moscow, trying to come to terms with the new Bolshevik regime. Rainer Maria Rilke, in Switzerland, was dying. Though hardly known to each other, they began to correspond, exchanging a series of searching letters in which every aspect of life and work is discussed with extraordinary intensity and passion. Letters: Summer 1926takes the reader into the hearts and minds of three of the twentieth century's greatest poets at a moment of maximum emotional and creative pressure.

Author Biography

Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), the poet and author of Doctor Zhivago, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958.

Marina Tsvetayeva (1892-1941) was a Russian poet and memoirist.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) achieved fame with his Duino Elegies and Letters to a Young Poet.

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) was a novelist, playwright, filmmaker, and one of the most influential critics of her generation. Her books include Against Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, and The Volcano Lover.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Foreword to the Second Edition	xv
A Note on the English Edition	xix
Introduction	3	(42)
Letters	45	(216)
Epilogue	261	(58)
Marina Tsvetayeva: Two Essays	319	(42)
Notes	361	(8)
Index	369