“On a Red Steed” (Na krasnom kone) first appeared in Tsvetaeva’s Remeslo (Craft) in 1923. In this poem, the female speaker traces the development of a woman poet, explores her source of inspiration, and identifies the sacrifices she has to make for the sake of her calling.

The poem is a subversion of traditional poetic and sexual images. It starts with the words “No Muse, no Muse.” For the woman poet, the traditional image of a beautiful female source of inspiration is inaccessible. Rather than reject the sexually charged concept of personal inspiration, Tsvetaeva makes it her own by replacing the gentle muse with an imperious knight on a red stallion who demands that she renounce all she has and become his.

“On a Red Steed” is an example of Tsvetaeva’s mature style. She combines stanzas of different lengths and various meters as well as ellipses and dashes to render palpable the raw energy of the events, such as the poet’s struggle with the elements and her ride with the knight. The poem epitomizes Tsvetaeva’s poetic self-image, identifying the poet as someone who must leave worldly attachments behind.

It is possible, roughly, to identify a prologue, a bipartite epilogue, and three episodes in between in which the budding poet rids herself of three elements of everyday life that stand between her and poetry: love, religion, and her own pride.

In the first episode, a house is on fire. Something is collapsing, but it is not the pillars of the house that cave in: what makes a cracking noise is the girl’s doll, symbolizing love and domesticity. Suddenly the knight appears, rescuing the doll from the flames only to demand that the girl smash it to pieces herself. To her own surprise, the girl finds the experience not devastating, but liberating.

The second episode begins with a blizzard and ends by destroying a part of the girl’s old world. This time the target is religion. Again, it is the knight who comes to the girl’s aid, crashing into the altar of a church and revealing the void behind it.

The third and hardest struggle the girl faces is the one against her own pride. Heaven, the unearthly place from which the knight comes, is obtainable to her only “through the law of the grain—into the earth” and requires the aspiring poet to die to the world. Having secured victory, the bruised woman is discovered by the knight. He signals his appreciation of her sacrifice with the words “this is how I wanted you,” and the young poet pledges to be his forever, thus accepting the fate of an artist who is no longer at home on Earth.

The reward for her sacrifice is two large wings and the “terrible” company of the knight, whose identity is revealed in the last stanza as “My Genius.” The last words of the poem are thus an answer to the first line, “No Muse, no Muse.”

Bibliography
Tsvetaeva, Marina. Poem of the End: Selected Narrative and Lyrical Poetry with Facing Russian Text. Translated by Nina Kossman with Andrew Newcomb. Dana Point, Calif.: Ardis, 1998.

Categories: Literature, Russian Formalism, World Literature

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