Puskin come totem e come spingarda: Marina Cvetaeva (e Boris Pasternak)

In 1931, during her French exile, Marina Tsvetaeva writes a poetic cycle devoted to Alexander Pushkin. Her original treatment of the subject includes the demolition of the stereotypes associated with the nineteenth-century poet and the claim for an exclusive possession of the knowledge of the “authentic” Pushkin. Her text is inscribed in the frame of a persisting personal interest towards this author, an interest shared with many contemporaries, including Boris Pasternak, who focused on Pushkin his own poetic collection entitled Themes and Variations (1923). The cycle turns into being a part of their intense long-distance exchange and a moment of Tsvetaevas' struggle for self-affirmation as a Russian poet, against isolation and frustration experienced outside the homeland.