The Rebel with a Forehead and Belly. Memoirs, Diary Entries, Aphorisms, Letters

Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) was one of the first, if not the very first, to persistently and consistently call herself not a poetess, but a poet. In her view, poetesses, with rare exceptions, are mannered, as the very word suggests, elusively feminine and focused on trifles, while she felt herself a rootstock, a concentration of creative energy and masculine will - precisely a poet: authoritative, powerful, explosive, ruthless to herself, deeply tragic. But with the years, at the peak of her poetic rise, Tsvetaeva fully revealed herself as a memoirist, essayist, novelist, and critic, and as the author of extensive diaries and numerous letters - in short, an incomparable prose writer. There are literary connoisseurs who even rank her prose above her poetry. Paradoxically, in her piercing confessional verses, she primarily reveals to us - ourselves, while in her intense prose - she primarily gives herself away completely.
The book is intended for a wide audience of interested readers.