An Attempt at Jealousy
‘‘An Attempt at Jealousy,’’ by Marina Tsvetaeva
(sometimes spelled Tsvetayeva or Cvetaeva), is a
poem about disappointment in love. Tsvetaeva, a
celebrated Russian poet writing in the early twen-
tieth century, was known for her poems about
love, loneliness, and alienation. This poem is usu-
ally said to have been inspired by one or more of
her actual failed romances, of which she had many,
and it is notable for its nostalgic contrast of an ideal
mythologized love in the past with a present full of
commonness, vulgarity, and ill health.
‘‘An Attempt at Jealousy’’ was first pub-
lished in Russian under the title ‘‘Popytka
revnosti’’ in 1928 in a collection of Tsvetaeva’s
poems calledPosle Rossii. The collection was
translated into English in a 1992 edition as
After Russia. The book was published in Paris,
as Tsvetaeva was living there in exile at the time,
having left her native Russia in 1922 after the
Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent civil war.
The poem is available in a number of Eng-
lish editions, including a selection of Tsvetaeva’s
poems translated by Elaine Feinstein under the
titleSelected Poems(first published in 1971 and
revised in 1999).Author Biography
Born in Moscow on October 9, 1892, Marina
Tsvetaeva was the child of a pianist mother and22
MARINA TSVETAEVA
1928