Diary Prose by M. Tsvetaeva: The Author’s Concept and Genre Peculiarities

This article analyses the key features of prose written by a poet from the point of view of correlation between the traditions of the genre and the individual features of the author’s style typical of Marina Tsvetaeva’s diaries. The article refers to key works on literature and linguistics devoted to the poet’s heritage. The material of the analysis is M. Tsvetaeva’s diary prose written between 1917 and 1920 in Moscow (including About Love, About Germany, Attic Writings, Excerpts from the Book Earthly Signs, About Gratitude). The article defines traditional features typical of Tsvetaeva’s diary prose such as the dating (references to specific dates important to Tsvetaeva), the primacy of the author’s subjectivity, which dictates the choice of the material; the citing of other people’s speech and recreation of dialogues, and, ultimately, the fragmentariness of the narrative. Moreover, the author singles out features inherent only in Tsvetaeva’s diary prose. They are the aphoristic character of statements (the use of overly artistic forms of expression of the author’s ideas, which are due to the implicit presence of the reader), graphic elements, such as lines that separate one thought from another, thematic divisions of diary entries (titles), the category of the “essential” and the correlation between the “essence” and “realisation”. The analysis demonstrates that in most cases, M. Tsvetaeva’s diary prose has the status of an artistically finished statement, which is not characteristic of the genre and which made it possible for the works to be published during the poet’s life. The author consciously creates a text intended for public reading and publication.