Tsvetaeva, whose first collection appeared in 1910, ranks among the major twentieth-century Russian poets. Her numerous lyrics and long poems are distinguished by great vigor and passion and an astonishing technical mastery. Her language and rhythms are highly innovative. In subject, her poetry varies greatly, often diarylike but also intensely concerned with the fate of her generation, of Russia, and of Europe. Tsvetaeva did not shy away from controversial topics, often opposing received dogma, be it Soviet or Russian emigre. She frequently subsumed herself in other characters, merging dramatic and lyrical elements. Particularly striking are her long poems Poem of the Mountain, Poem of the… End, and Ratcatcher and her later collections Craft (1923) and After Russia (1928). After emigrating from the Soviet Union, Tsvetaeva also seriously turned to prose. Drawing on her past, she wrote a number of striking quasi-autobiographical pieces, deeply exploring problems of literary and artistic creation. Tsvetaeva's husband fought as an officer against the Reds in the Crimea, and she celebrates the White Army in the collection The Demesne of Swans (1957). Following the civil war, she led a difficult and isolated existence in Prague and Paris during the twenties and thirties. Her eventual return to the Soviet Union in 1939, largely for family reasons, ended in tragedy; isolated and humiliated by official Soviet literary figures, she committed suicide in 1941. Her work was first republished in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, and the current period has brought a new wave of interest and new editions. As was the case with her writing from the start, poets are a particularly attentive audience.
Susan Sontag, an influential cultural critic with a Harvard master's degree in philosophy, is noted for taking radical positions and venturing outrageous interpretations. Proclaiming a "new sensibility," she supported the cause of pop art and underground films in the 1960s. Her reputation as a formidable critic has been established by numerous reviews, essays, and articles in the New York Review of Books, the N.Y. Times, Harper's, and other periodicals. Against Interpretation (1966) includes her controversial essay "Notes on Camp," first published in Partisan Review. The title of the book introduces her argument against what she sees as the distortion of an original work by the countless… critics who bend it to their own interpretations. "The aim of all commentary on art," she writes, "should be to make works of art---and, by analogy, our own experience---more, rather than less, real to us." Sontag has a mature modernist sensibility, but manages to depict the avant-garde in language accessible to any reader. She has lectured extensively around the United States and has taught philosophy at Harvard, Sarah Lawrence, and Columbia. She is a frequent and popular television discussion personality, particularly on contemporary issues of illness or feminism, although many feminists are unhappy that she does not declare herself to be a "feminist critic." She is also, less successfully, a fiction writer.