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Marina Ivanovna Tsvetáeva
(1892 - August 31, 1941) Russia

Marina Tsvetaeva

Poet

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Born in Moscow. Aside from Tsvetáeva's youthful love affair with the poet Sophia Parnók, her self-acknowledged bisexuality, her lesbianism have all been ignored by most of her biographers.

Despite her lesbian inclinations, or perhaps in an effort to overcome it, in 1914 she married Sergei Efron, and immediately had a daughter and years later a son. Then, in the same year, she met Sophia Parnók and fell in love at first sight and began a passionate affair. She wrote mythic, romantic, frenetic verse, including The Demesne of the Swans.

Tsvetáeva was deeply traumatized by the break-up of her relationship with Parnók in 1916. She returned to her husband and became immediately pregnant with her second daughter. In Moscow she had a passionate attachment to the actress Sonya Holliday. After living several years in Paris (from 1922 to 1930), she went back to Soviet Russia with her family. Here, her daughter was arrested and sent to a concentration camp; then her husband was arrested and shot as an enemy of the people.

Despite her sad situation in Moscow, she became involved in a love relationship with Tatyana Kvanian, the wife of a minor writer. After the German offensive, Tsvetaeva and her teenage son were evacuated to Yelabuga in the Tatar Autonomous Republic. There she found no work nor assistance. Desperate and alone, she hanged herself from a beam in the ceiling of her house. She was buried in an unmarked grave in Yelabuga Cemetery.

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