TEHRAN (IBNA) --
Biographical book ‘The Death of A Poet: the Last Days of Marina ‎Tsvetaeva’(2004), by Irma Kudrova, a passionate account of the eminent Russian ‎poetess Marina Tsvetaeva’s and tragic death has been published in Persian. ‎
Drawing on interviews, diaries and recently available KGB records, the book has been translated into Persian by Sahar Hadiqeh. Aftabkaran Publishing has released ‘The Death of A Poet’ in 340 pages.
The Death of a Poet is the harrowing narrative account of how the forces of history and fate combined to destroy the life of one of twentieth-century Russian literature’s most talented and esteemed poets during the bloodiest period of Stalin’s regime.
In 1937, at the height of her creative powers and living in exile in Paris, where rumors of Stalin’s purges had been circulating in the emigre community, Marina Tsvetaeva made the fateful decision to follow her husband, Sergei Efron, who had been forced to flee from French authorities, back to Moscow.
Soon after their reunion, both Alya, their daughter, and Efron were arrested for “anti-Soviet activity.” Cast onto the street and living in fear that her own arrest was imminent, the poet who once stood at the pinnacle of Russian letters descended into a living hell, compounded by official persecution, the indifference of peers and friends and finally, the beginning of World War II and Nazi air raids over Moscow.
Incorporating unprecedented access to KGB records, Irma Kudrova has uncovered both the depth of Efron’s complicity in Soviet espionage, including the assassination that forced him to flee France, and the nobility and stoicism with which he endured the brutal interrogations.
She also re-creates the final days of the poet, examining several theories of the events that culminated in Tsvetaeva’s suicide at the age of forty-nine. The Death of a Poet is both a tribute and an indictment, and above all a moving chronicle of the struggle of a great mind to endure.