Marina Tsvetaeva plaque, Všenory, CZ

Click on photos to enlarge.

I come back today to some photographs that my wife Oksana Mysina took when she was recently in Prague to participate in a documentary film about Marina Tsvetaeva. The photos are wonderfully evocative. Even though there isn’t all that much left from the time when Tsvetaeva lived here in the village of Všenory with her husband Sergei Efron and her daughter Araidna, there is more than enough to trigger thoughts. Primarily what is left are the old wall on which a plaque was erected in honor of Tsvetaeva in 2012; the little green side house which stood next to the building (now gone) where the family resided; perhaps a garden gate; and the steep slope across the road from the residence. In the last photos below you can see the road leading up to and down to the Tsvetaeva site, with the slope across the way.
In a letter quoted by my brief, but honored, acquaintance Simon Karlinsky in his book Marina Tsvetaeva: The Woman, Her World, and Her Poetry, the poet wrote: “A tiny mountain village. We live on its very edge, in a simple peasant hut. The dramatis personae of our life: a church-shaped well to which I run to fetch water, mostly at night or early in the morning; a chained dog; a squeaky garden gate. Directly beyond us is a forest. To the right a high rocky crest. There are brooks all over the village. Two grocery stores, like in our provinces. A Catholic Church with a flowery churchyard. A school. Two restaurants. Music every Sunday.”
There are many confusions about this place and this time. I was all set to speak of Všenory unquestioningly, until I ran across a note on a Tsvetaeva page on LiveJournal reminding us that there were two Všenorys, Všenory I and Všenory II. It was in the latter that Tsvetaeva and family lived from November 1922 to August 1923. As the author, Ellenai, points out, one should not mistake this Všenory with the Všenory (Všenory I) that the family moved to in 1924, where Tsvetaeva gave birth to her son Georgy.
If you are to look for this location today, you must seek 521 V Chaloupkách. However, at the time Tsvetaeva lived here it was 33 Horni Mokropsy. In a letter to a friend, here is precisely how Tsvetaeva gave her address: New address: Praha P.P. Dobřichovice, Horni Mokropsy, čislo 33, u Pana Grubnera — to me, name of Efron. Dobřichovice would appear to be the train station nearby. Is Horni Mokropsy the name of the village or the name of the road? Or maybe both, since the place was so tiny. Pan Grubner’s home, where the Tsvetaevas occupied one of three rooms, was the last building on the street at that time.
In her memoirs, No Love Without Poetry: The Memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva’s Daughter, Ariadna left a description of this time and place by way of a quotation from her own diary:
“The house where we live lies in a valley. It has three rooms, one of which we occupy. The yard is small, the garden medium, and there is a dog named Lowe and some chickens. The house is painted yellow and white, and the roof is pink tile. Seven people live here, four of them children. Not far from here is a large village called Všenory. It has two stores, three-story houses and a railroad station…”

Another description of this location comes in a letter Tsvetaeva sent to Boris Pasternak on November 19, 1922, that is, almost immediately after moving in (quoted from the LiveJournal site above):
“I live in Czechia (near Prague) in Mokropsy, in a village hut. It’s the last house in the village. At the bottom of the hill is a stream from which I haul water. A third of the day is expended on stoking a huge tile stove. Life is not much different from that in Moscow, the daily chores of it – probably even more meagre! – but in addition to poetry: family and nature. I see no one for months. All morning I write and walk: there are marvelous hills here.”
Tsvetaeva wrote some important works here, including Poem of the End, and she apparently began her tragedy Theseus-Ariadne here.
The plaque was unveiled June 22, 2012. For reasons unexplained on the website that provides the information, it was made in Carrara, Italy. In addition to providing the barebones information that Marina Tsvetaeva lived here in 1923, it shows a fragment of a Tsvetaeva manuscript. It has a drawing of a lion (Efron, whose knickname was Lev/Lion) balancing on a chair while it madly prepares a meal, as a kitten (a child?) lies almost cowering under the covers in bed. The text says: “Cheese, butter, milk outside the window. Cheese and butter on the right. Don’t neglect the milk. (!!!) Don’t forget the letters. – Say goodbye!!!-”
The implication is that this text refers to Tsvetaeva’s time living here in Všenory a/k/a Horni Mokropsy, but our friends at LiveJournal once again throw shade upon this assumption.
“The commemorative plaque unveiled at house number 521 replicates a note from M. Tsvetaeva (with her drawing), which was addressed to her husband. However, this note, now kept in the Marina Tsvetaeva Museum in Bolshevo, refers not to 1923, but to a later time – probably it’s already Paris, where the family moved in November 1925.”
The author, Ellenai, suggests that the child cowering in bed is the baby boy Georgy who had been born in Všenory I, i.e., after the family had lived at Všenory II, a/k/a Horni Mokropsy…
In short, this kind of stuff is right up my alley. As my old friend Volodya Ferkelman would say, “The devil himself will break his leg” on this one.
One final note:
Take a look at the middle photo below. The pinkish house in the background behind the green structure (which, as I said, is an original from that time) is where the Tsvetaeva/Efron house was located. I cannot determine without a doubt whether the orginal house has been torn down and replaced, or whether it has just been renovated and expanded. In any case, this little view offered by Oksana’s photo is one that approximates what Tsvetaeva might have seen when coming home lugging pails of water.

 

 

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