CRITICISMSheldon Goldfarb
Goldfarb has a PhD in English, specializing in the
literature of Victorian England. In this essay, he
seeks out the underlying dynamic beneath the sur-
face jealousy, pain, and fantasizing in ‘‘An
Attempt at Jealousy.’’
At the end of her analysis of ‘‘An Attempt at
Jealousy’’ inModern Language Review, Barbara
Heldt seeks to explain the poem’s odd title by
saying that the attempt at jealousy fails at the
end because the other woman does not really
exist for the speaker. This is an odd conclusion
to reach, for if Tsvetaeva’s poem expresses any-
thing, it expresses jealousy.
Over and over again, Tsvetaeva’s speaker
attacks the other woman and imagines a horrible
plight for her ex-lover. The other woman is ordi-
nary, says the speaker, and like plaster of Paris,
not fine Carrara marble or a deity or a queen like
the speaker. The ex-lover must be suffering
ulcers or wounds and paying a high price in
living with this other woman, the speaker says.
She wonders if he can be happy; he must be sick
of the other woman’s cooking, and his forehead
must be lashed by the reins of Zeus.
All this speaks of a jealous mind, and indeed
the historical record suggests that Tsvetaeva was
an extremely jealous person, sensitive to the
slightest slight, so it would not be surprising if
her poetry reflected this attitude. Indeed, in
Marina Tsvetaeva: The Woman, Her World and
Her Poetry, Simon Karlinsky goes so far as to
suggest that Tsvetaeva almost deliberately set
herself up to be slighted and rejected so as to
produce material for her poetry. She would fre-
quently idealize men she was interested in (and
women too), attributing to them qualities they
did not have. According to Karlinsky, her hus-
band understood the pattern well, calling Tsve-
taeva ‘‘a creature of passions’’ who liked to
‘‘plunge headlong into a self-created hurricane’’
of attraction for almost anyone. The passion
would then end, and Tsvetaeva would plunge
into ‘‘an equally hurricane-like despair,’’ fol-
lowed by ridicule of the former object of desire.
The one twist on this pattern that is seen in
‘‘An Attempt at Jealousy’’ is that the ridicule in
this poem is directed less at the former lover than
at the rival woman. In the failed romance
described in this poem, the focus is less on the
wrongdoing of the departed lover than on the
shortcomings of the romantic rival. It is in fact a
poem all about jealousy, making the title highly
ironic.
Taken literally, the title would suggest that
the speaker feels no jealousy and is having to
make an attempt to display some—pretendingWHAT
DO I READ
NEXT? Other poems by Tsvetaeva can be found in
Selected Poems(1999), translated by Elaine
Feinstein. The volume provides a compre-
hensive overview of Tsvetaeva’s work.
Tsvetaeva’s writings on poetry have been
collected and translated under the titleArt
in the Light of Conscience: Eight Essays on
Poetry(1992). The essays are translated by
Angela Livingstone.
For a much older poetic treatment of a rela-
tionship’s end, see Michael Drayton’s poem
‘‘Since There’s No Help, Come Let Us Kiss
and Part’’ (1619). The poem’s speaker seeks
to be calm and not jealous or resentful.
For an eighteenth-century novel about dis-
appointment in love, see Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe’sThe Sorrows of Young Werther
(1774).
For William Shakespeare’s classic work on
jealousy, seeOthello, written around 1604
and published in quarto form in 1622.
For a fictionalized account of the Russian
Revolution by one of Tsvetaeva’s friends,
see Boris Pasternak’s, Doctor Zhivago
(1957).
For an enthusiastic account of the Russian
Revolution by an American sympathizer,
see John Reed’sTen Days That Shook the
World(1919).
For a highly critical account of the Russian
Revolution written on the eve of the collapse
of the Soviet Union, see Richard Pipe’sThe
Russian Revolution(1991).AnAttemptatJealousy