The image of the warrior maid in the fairy-tale poem “The Tsar-Maiden: toward the characterology of Marina Tsvetaeva. Article 1

The paper analyzes the fairy-tale poem “The Tsar-Maidenˮ in the aspect of Marina Tsvetaeva’s characterology. It focuses on the crucial character of Tsvetaeva’s poetical system, female warrior, which appears with various names in her many works (an Amazon, Penthesilea, Brunhild, Tsar-Maiden, Marya Morevna, Jeanne d’Arc, Hippolyte, Antiope). It is shown that the main character of the poem combines two depictions of female warrior existing in her lyrics, i.e. daughter of the elements and a saint renouncing all earthly values, and largely departs from its folkloric prototype. How and to what extent it happens, what other folkloric and literary sources this image alludes to, how it fits into poetical system of Tsvetaeva - that is the range of questions explored in this paper.