Marina Tsvetaeva - Karolina Pavlova. The dialogue on secrets of the craft

The article provides a comparative analysis of creative work of two Russian poets - Marina Tsvetae-va and Karolina Pavlova, with a special emphasis on the affinity between their conceptions of a poet's destiny and creativity, characterizing their poetry. The analysis reveals numerous explicit and implicit echoes of Pavlova's writings in Tsvetaeva's poems and essays: treatment of poetry as a serious "masculine" business, craft; representation of a poet as the chosen one, as a creature who does not belong to "this world"; view of the earthly world as vulgar and banal, as a prison for a poetic soul. Both poets see poetic gift as a special kind of sensitivity, ability to hear voices, to divine, and consequently, as a tribulation - since it makes a poet an outcast. Both Tsvetaeva and Pavlova use motifs of dream as a special creative state; night as a special time for creativity; flight and having wings as a special characteristic of a poet's soul.