“Attempt at Jealousy” by Tsvetaeva - analysis of the work

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Marina Tsvetaeva is one of the most popular poets today. A person with an unusually difficult fate, she raised many deep themes and questions in her poems. The style of Marina Tsvetaeva was admired by many of her contemporary poets, since she wrote exclusively truthfully about what disturbed the heart of every person. And Tsvetaeva's "Attempt at Jealousy" is just one of these works.

A few words about the poetess

Marina Tsvetaeva was the daughter of art critic and philologist Ivan Tsvetaev and pianist Maria Mein. Parents carefully engaged in the education of the girl, her mother already saw her as a musician in the future, but literature fascinated her daughter much more. Marina began to write poetry at school, however, mainly in French. The girl was fluent in three languages from an early age.

Tsvetaeva published her first poems in her youth, and at her own expense. But over time, the circle of the Moscow literary elite recognized the poetess as an incredibly gifted and talented person. Alas, this did not save her from the hardships of fate - the death of two children, emigration, a long journeya woman was broken into her homeland and led to suicide.

Most famous works

Most of Marina Tsvetaeva's poems have become almost a textbook - they are studied in schools, universities, theater schools. Yes, and there is no such person who has not read her poems at least once.

The theme of parting and loneliness is often traced in the works of the poetess. As an example, one can cite such works as “Yesterday I looked into my eyes …”, “I left - I don’t eat”, “You who loved me falsely” and others. Tsvetaeva's poem "An Attempt at Jealousy" refers to the same topic. The analysis below confirms this.

But, of course, there are other topics among the poems of the poetess. The war, the picture of life, love for the Motherland and much more were covered by Marina Tsvetaeva.

The theme of the poem and the essence of the title

When analyzing Tsvetaeva's Attempted Jealousy, the question immediately arises: why an attempt? After all, jealousy is a blind and cruel feeling, why make such an attempt?

The bottom line is the state of the heroine. She does not compare herself with the new chosen one of her lover, but puts her much higher. This is indicated by quotations, among which: “How do you live with a simple woman? Without deities? The heroine is unable to compare herself with another, but forces her former lover to do so. Realize that now next to him is an ordinary, ordinary woman.

Here, the character of the heroine is also clearly read. She is a spectacular and stormy nature, she is not homely, not ordinary. The heroine is perplexed because her man turned out to be completely different, that he was looking for happiness in such a “home” woman. Her monologue is a bewilderment, a throw in the face.

Compositional analysis of Tsvetaeva's Attempted Jealousy

The poem consists of 12 stanzas, each of which opens up a new facet of the heroine's state. At first, she asks somewhat restrainedly, by the middle of the work, the intensity rises and leads to a completely logical ending.

Analyzing Tsvetaeva's Attempted Jealousy, we notice that some phrases are regularly repeated here. So, several times the question is asked: “How do you live?”. In the first stanzas, he sounds neutral, the heroine asks her first question. In the fourth stanza, we are already seeing an aggravation of the conflict. It is achieved by repeating the word "how". The indignation of the heroine is increasingly manifested precisely with this question.

Notable is also the variety of epithets used by the heroine to describe her rival. “Alien”, “any”, “simple”, “local”, “hundred-thousandth”, “earthly” - all this she says about the new woman. He calls it a "market product", "likeness", "gypsum dust". All these words paint us a very accurate image of this very nameless chosen one. At the same time, the heroine compares herself with the highest images, inhuman. She compares herself with Lilith, with Carrara marble, with a deity, calls herself a woman with a sixth sense. And he never says it openly, but only after comparing with his follower. This is how maximum contrast is achieved.between these images.

Also, Tsvetaeva, as it were, quotes in the poem the words of that very “chosen one”: “There will be enough convulsions and interruptions - I’ll rent a house for myself!”. So she emphasizes the variability and impetuosity of the main character's lifestyle. And, of course, your own fatigue.

The theme of jealousy in the works of other authors

Analysis of Tsvetaeva's Attempted Jealousy will be more complete when compared, for example, with Anna Akhmatova's poem Jealousy. The poetess presents the same theme in a slightly different way - she seems to have resigned herself to parting and is only saying the last words to her chosen one. But if you think about these lines, it will become clear why the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva are “An Attempt of Jealousy”, and Akhmatova is precisely “Jealousy”. The last of them is jealous with cold fury, foreseeing that her lover will one day try to return to her again, that she will not forgive his betrayal. And the heroine Tsvetaeva tries to be jealous of a “simple” woman, but cannot because of the same simplicity. And, finally, the conclusion and bitter point in her work is that her heroine is now with another, earthly person.