Marina Tsvetayeva to Boris Pasternak, May 23, 1926

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…But there’s one thing, Boris. I don’t like the sea. Can’t bear it. A vast expanse and nothing to walk on – that’s one thing. In constant motion and I can only watch it – that’s another. Why Boris, it’s the same thing all over again, i.e., it’s my notorious, involuntary immobility. My inertness. My beastly tolerance, whether I want to be tolerant or not. And the sea at night? – cold, terrifying, invisible, unloving, filled with itself – like Rilke (itself or divinity, no matter). I pity the earth: it feels cold. The sea never feels cold, it is cold – it is all its horrible features. They are its essence. An enormous refrigerator (in the daytime). And perfectly round. A monstrous saucer. Flat, Boris. An enormous flat bottomed cradle tossing out a baby (a ship) every minute. It cannot be caressed (too wet). It cannot be worshipped (too terrible). As I would have hated Jehovah, for instance, as I hate any great power. The sea is a dictatorship, Boris. A mountain is a divinity. A mountain has may sides to it. A mountain stoops to the level of Mur (touched by him!) and rises even higher. A mountain has steams, nests, games. A mountain is first and foremost what I stand on, Boris. My exact worth. A mountain is a great dash on the printed page, Boris, to be filled in with a deep sigh.

And yet, I am not sorry I came. “One wearies of all things, never of you.” With this, for this I came. That with which and for which I came is your poetry, i.e., the metamorphosis of material things. I was a fool to hope I could see your sea with my eyes – that which is beyond eyes, above eyes, within eyes. “Farewell, free-flowing waves…”(when I was ten years old); (One wearies of all things…” (Now that I am thirsty)

This, then, is my sea.

I am not blind, Boris. I see, hear, sense, breath, all one expected do;but that is not enough for me. I haven’t stated the mail thing; only a sailor or a fisherman dares to love the sea. Only a sailor or a fisherman really knows it. Loving it on my part would be overstepping my rights ( being a “poet”, the most despicable of excuses, doesn’t hold here. Here you’ve got to come up with hard cash).

Offended pride, Boris. On a mountain I’m as good as any mountaineer, but on the sea – I’m not even a passenger. A summer boarded who loves the ocean?…A pox on the breed!

From: Letters Summer 1926 Boris Pasternak Marina Tsvetayeva Rainer Maria Rilke

Marina Tsvetayeva, 1924