ABSTRACT
Tsvetayeva’s truculence, antisuggestibility, persistence in championing lost causes, and casual willingness to risk arrest as a counterrevolutionary were fully demonstrated at the poetesses’ recital of 1921. Tsvetayeva has explained that she had five distinct motives for reciting these particular works at the Poetesses’ Evening. First, she wanted to show that there was at least one woman who could declaim a string of her own lyrics without ever using the first person singular, or making any reference to love. Secondly, she wanted to test her theory that all verse is always wholly unintelligible to all audiences. Even so, she hoped (thirdly and inconsistently) that she might yet establish communication with some isolated sensitive individual. Fourthly, she regarded it as a matter of honour to champion the White cause publicly in Red Moscow. Her fifth and final motive: “Let’s see what happens.”.
