New Year Letter by Marina Tsvetayeva

First published: 1928, as “Novogodnee” in Versty III; English translation collected in Selected Poems, 1987

Type of poem: Epistle/letter in verse

The Poem

One of the greatest friendships in the life of the Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva was conducted wholly by letter during a few months of 1926 with the Austrian writer Rainer Maria Rilke. Rilke, one of the most important German-language poets of the twentieth century, represented for Tsvetayeva the ideal poet. After Rilke died unexpectedly on December 29, 1926, Tsvetayeva’s shock and grief took the form of several works in prose and verse that reacted to his death. “New Year Letter,” written in February, 1927, is an attempt to come to terms with Rilke’s death. It also represents one side of a companionable conversation between two poets about their craft and constitutes a statement about Tsvetayeva’s philosophy of poetry.

The poem, written in the first person and addressed to Rilke, opens with the traditional Russian New Year’s greeting, S novym godom, “Happy New Year.” Tsvetayeva calls the poem “my first epistle to you in your new/…place”—that is, in the afterworld—thus implying that the poem is a continuation of their previous correspondence and denying the power of death. The poem then describes how Tsvetayeva learned of Rilke’s death when an acquaintance dropped by to ask if she would write a memorial piece about him for a newspaper. Tsvetayeva, who cannot conceive that the great poet is dead, and who regards an acknowledgment of his death as a kind of betrayal, refuses; most of the remaining part of the poem is concerned with her ideas about writing as an act of immortality, and about the life of the poet as both eternal and full of sacrifice. It is couched in the form of a letter to Rilke, who, as a newcomer in heaven, is still getting accustomed to the working conditions there.

The poem alludes to a number of things that appear in the two poets’ letters to each another (such as Rilke’s questions about specific Russian words) or in Rilke’s poetry (such as the famous Orlov trotting horses, which appear in his poem “Nächtliche Fahrt. St. Petersburg” [1908, Night Ride, St. Petersburg]). Throughout the poem, Tsvetayeva asks Rilke questions about his new state of being, assuming almost the role of an interviewer. She wants to know what the journey was like, and asks about his first impressions of the universe and his last ones of the planet Earth. Tsvetayeva implicitly compares the human world to a sad farce when she portrays Rilke leaning over the “scarlet rim” of his theater box and looking down on humanity from his position beyond death.

In the next section, the focus shifts from Rilke’s new situation to Tsvetayeva’s, as she recalls that New Year’s Eve is almost upon her, and wonders with whom and to what she can drink a toast. Rilke’s death has made her pensive, and she does not wish to celebrate in the usual boisterous fashion. Instead, she says, she will drink a quiet toast with Rilke to his new, third state of being, which is neither life nor death, but, she implies, a kind of place outside time where poetry is created. Tsvetayeva ponders the many obstacles that life throws in the path of a poet and concludes that Rilke has achieved this new state, where he will create with a “new sound,” “new echo,” “new hand-position.”

The last section presents Tsvetayeva’s wishful vision of the afterlife: a succession of Heavens ascending like terraces; a succession of growing, mutable Gods (referring to a central image in Rilke’s works); and finally, a ladder rising into the sky above Rarogne, the Swiss village where Rilke is buried. The poem ends with the poet’s hopes of someday meeting Rilke after all, and with the image of Tsvetayeva herself climbing up the ladder, her hands filled with gifts for him—the gifts of her poems.

Forms and Devices

“New Year Letter” is a poem of some 195 lines of varying length that uses a variety of metrical patterns. Rather than being organized into regular stanzas, the poem is divided into sections, ranging from four to thirty-two lines long, according to subject matter and to the rhythm of the poet’s thought processes. Sections sometimes contrast with the sections that precede them in tone or lexical level, as, for example, when an emotionally charged passage is followed by a laconic, colloquial one. One device that serves as a kind of structural leitmotif is the formula “Happy . . .,” which is used in the first line to wish Rilke a happy New Year. This phrase, with other objects substituted for “New Year”—such as “Happy break of day,” “Happy whole me,” “Happy new world”—appears throughout the poem. The phrase underscores the sense of new beginnings associated both with the day and with Tsvetayeva’s conception of the “third state” in which Rilke now finds himself. It also bears with it the theme of generosity and giving, which was important to both poets and figured in their correspondence.

It is difficult to explain the linguistic innovations of a poem written in one language to an audience who will read it in another. This is especially true of Tsvetayeva, whose uniqueness lies at least in part in her bold, fresh treatment of Russian. Her poetry is technically challenging even for a Russian reader. She is known for her strong, rapidly changing rhythms, which can resemble anything from jazz to a religious chant.

Equally characteristic is her unusual approach to rhyme. “New Year Letter” is a good example of this, and the David McDuff translation does a good job of reproducing the effect, though the specific rhymes cannot be carried over. Except for one short section, the poem is written in rhymed couplets. Tsvetayeva uses a variety of rhyme types, from true rhyme, sometimes several syllables deep, to mere assonance (repetition of vowel sounds) or consonance (repetition of consonant sounds). The fact that many of these rhymes are only approximate makes the overall effect subtle and unobtrusive. It is only on second reading that one realizes the unusual juxtapositions. The pattern of rhymed couplets is sustained except for a four-line section in which Tsvetayeva, realizing that Rilke has been freed by death to devote himself totally to poetry, reverts to the formula of the New Year’s greeting and wishes him a “Happy new sound,” a “Happy new echo.” Here Tsvetayeva uses an alternating rhyme in an abab pattern, and rhymes the words drug and zvuk (friend and sound). In life, she says, everything was a hindrance to Rilke’s work, even passion and friendship. Now he will be able to work unhindered, and his words will harmonize with his world, as sound and friend are now allowed to harmonize in rhyme.

Another peculiarity of Tsvetayeva is her habit of inserting foreign words into the Russian line, even in the rhyming position. There are several examples of macaronic (multilingual) rhyming in this poem, such as krajnyj (extreme) and Rainer, Rilke’s first name, or ladon’ju (with my palm) with Rarogn’a, the site of Rilke’s grave. Tsvetayeva was fluent in German and French, and as she made clear in numerous poems, essays, and letters, she felt a profound kinship with Germanic culture. Acutely aware of language, she apologizes to her friend for writing to him in her native Russian instead of German, the tongue in which she had written to him in life. She seems to feel that using Russian creates a greater distance between them than has Rilke’s death itself. Then, however, Tsvetayeva makes a point that she had already made in her letters to Rilke and elsewhere: The specific language in which one writes is immaterial, since all poets write in the same “angelic” language that transcends nationality. Her mixing of languages is a symbol of her belief that the boundaries between languages, between nations, are evanescent.