“I am – for the free”: Marina Cvetaeva as a Translator in the Soviet Cultural Context

The present article discusses Tsvetaevaʼs views on translation and her own translations in the Soviet cultural context. It highlights Tsvetaevaʼs uncompromising insistence on a highly individual poetic standard. Unlike many Soviet poets of the 1930s, Tsvetaeva chooses to remain outside the debates on translation. For Tsvetaeva, the ultimate goal of the poet-translator is to follow the “spirit and the sound” of the original and be independent from established conventions and ideological considerations.