Homeland and Exile in Marina Tsvetaeva’s Poems to Bohemia

Abstract

In her last great lyric work, Poems to Bohemia, Marina Tsvetaeva draws on many symbols of Czech culture to create a myth of Bohemia to oppose the tragic fate that befell Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s. One particular cultural symbol Tsvetaeva turns to is the text of the Czech national anthem, “Where is my home?” Tsvetaeva was familiar with this national hymn from her three-year stay in Czechoslovakia immediately following her emigration, and her initial reading of the hymn leads her to incorporate the theme of exile and exilic desire into the first poems of her cycle. As she gains familiarity with the text of the hymn, however, and as the political situation changes in Czechoslovakia, Tsvetaeva turns away from the theme of longing for a promised land, and instead focuses inward, emphasizing the strength of the Czech spirit, much in the same way the national anthem shifts from a description of the Bohemian countryside as an earthly paradise to the stalwart nature of the Czechs themselves. Tsvetaeva thus underscores the importance of spiritual dwelling over material homeland and prophesies the rebirth of Czech culture.