SOURCE: "Poet of Sacrifice," in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XXIX, No. 6, April 15, 1982, pp. 6, 8-9.

In this review of Selected Poems of Marina Tsvetayeva, McDuff surveys Tsvetaeva's life and works and reviews Elaine Feinstein 's translations into English of select poems by Tsvetaeva.

"Der Weg von der Innigkeit zur Grösse geht durch das Opfer" ("The way from intense inwardness to greatness leads through sacrifice" [translated by Michael Hamburger, in An Unofficial Rilke, 1981]). These words of the essayist Rudolf Kassner form the epigraph to Rainer Maria Rilke's fateful poem "Wendung" (Turning Point) of 1914, in which the poet acknowledged that his shortcomings, his inability to love and to form lasting personal relationships were the source and sustenance of his life's work:

 Werk des Gesichts ist getan,
tue nun Herz-Werk
an den Bildern in dir, jenen gefangenen; denn du
überwältigtest sie: aber nun kennst du sie nicht...