The Story of Sonechka by Marina Tsvetaeva. Translated by I. B.Fishbeyn and C. D. C.Reeve. Brookline: Cherry Orchard Books, 2025. 192 pp. $150.00. ISBN 9798887198040

In the summer of 1937 in Lacanau-Ocan, not far from the shores of the Atlantic, Marina Tsvetaeva begins writing down her memories of the few years that preceded her exile in The Story of Sonechka.Her family was already on their way "back" to Soviet Russia, and Tsvetaeva would follow them within two years.During this point in time, the poet remembers her friendship with and love for Sonechka, an actress by the name of Sofia Holliday, who played in the Third Studio of MKhAT under the famous director Evgenyi Bagrationovich Vakhtangov (not "Bagartionovich," as it is unfortunately misspelled).Tsvetaeva paints for us vivid memories in which Sonechka plays the lead character along with several male actors from the studio who also played significant roles in the life of the poet, especially during the most dire years of 1917-19.During this time, Marina Tsvetaeva was living with her two children, Ariadna and Irina, in their house in Moscow, while her husband had joined the White Army.The house was not so far away from Vakhtangov's studio, and Tsvetaeva reflects on the many different relations she had with the actors at the studio, although not with Vakhtangov himself, who did not appreciate her readings.The Story of Sonechka is fascinating in several different respects, not only for us "Lovers of Tsvetaeva" to whom the translation is dedicated.The translation is indeed a most welcome and wonderful event and testifies to impressive work on the part of the translators.It reads very well, even when translating how Tsvetaeva in the manner of her poetic writing explores word stems, connotations, and associations while hearing and bringing out unexpected meanings that sometimes are very hard to grasp.At times I cannot help but wonder if the translation may read too well, and that something of the magical otherly luster of the words of the poetic language in which Tsvetaeva wrote (more perhaps than in Russian) may have receded for the sake of clarity.And just to mention a little detail, because it concerns the very heart of the story-the first appearance of Sonechka.The story begins with an epigraph with a quote from a poem by Victor Hugo, and the first line reads in French: "Elle tait ple-et pourtant rose."Tsvetaeva quotes the strophe as following (in the English translation) in the opening line of the story: "No, there wasn't any paleness in her, not in anything of hers, everything of her was the opposite of paleness, but nonetheless she was 'somehow rosy pink,' which is going to be shown and proven in due course."In the Russian original, Tsvetaeva keeps the French: "et pourtant rose," which rather means "still, nevertheless, despite."This is crucial for the story.Sonechka incorporates a force of life that still (against all odds) is rosy pink, that still blushes, still is life and love, in spite of or regardless of the paleness or lack of paleness in postrevolutionary reality, and really in any reality that Tsvetaeva inhabited after her meeting with Sonechka.