«Word Unusual – an Old Woman...»: About One Mythologeme in
M. Tsvetaeva’s Lyrics

The article is devoted to the reflexion of the problem of presence
or absence of the dynamics in Tsvetaeva’s personal myth, in accordance with the typology of poets, denoted by author herself: «the poets with a history» and
«the poets without history». Tsvetaeva’s predilection for several crosscutting
mythologemes and plots is well known. One of these mythologemes is the «earseashell
». The logic of the development of her personal myth it is possible to
clarify, having followed to the manifestations of this mythologeme in different
periods of Tsvetaeva’s creatity.
For starting point of research the early poem «An old woman» (Starukha) is
taken. This poem stands out from the general atmosphere of juvenescence, pervading
in «Evening Album» (Vechernii Al'bom). Listening to the words «old
woman», Tsvetaeva reveals its poetic «inner form»: an ear is a shell. Tsvetaeva
does not represent the image of an old woman (obviously opposed to «young
grandmothers»); she listens to the glum sound of the word itself. The image of
the seashell correlates with the labyrinth-snail of the ear. The modernists interpreted
the ear as a «supercommunication» channel. In Tsvetaeva’s poem, the old
woman's ear hears not an underground roar, but the sound of the ocean, so the
auricle associates with the seashell. The self-mythology of the Tsvetaeva’s «marine
» name echoes with Vrubel’s picture «Pearl» (1904), where the shapes of
the seashell and the ear are similar.
Later, Tsvetaeva’s heroine will begin to associate herself with the shell –
an aquatic femininity symbol. The image of the shell becomes a resource of
self-identification of Tsvetaeva’s heroine (the cycle «Insomnia» (Bessonitsa),
poems «Slope» (Naklon) and «Seashell» (Rakovina)). However, in later verses
(«Bush» (Kust), «Garden» (Sad)) she expressed a desire to give up both words
and ear-shell. In the cycle «Bush» (1934) again there is a theme of the ear as
«supercommunication» organ, a thirst for that «noise of the ear», in which «everything
is connected». This noise becomes evident in moments between silence
and speech; and called as the birthplace of «the fog of our poems». The shell
sounds only when it is empty, i.e. is dead. In the «Poem of the Air» in the Chapter
VII, the final «loss of the body through the ear» takes place. The poetic essence
disembarks, releasing the spirit-sound from the body-letters. At the same
time, the archetypal scheme of rebirth through death has a very specific relationship
with the real historical era which breaks down the lives of poets. Turning to
the cycle «Tombstone» (1935) allows us to conclude that after death poet, according
to Tsvetaeva, is not underaround, and not at above-world height, he
continues to live in poetry readers – not the newspapers readers, but those who
are capable of hearing in the word-shell the sound of the ocean.