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# In 1919 Marina Tsvetaeva wrote the poem "To You, in a Hundred Years", addressed to an admirer from the distant future
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/v-1919-godu-marina-tsvetaeva-napisala-stikhotvorenie-tebe-cherez-sto-let-obrashchennoe-k-svoemu-poklonniku-iz-dalekogo-budushchego-2/
- Published: 2025-09-18T19:06:30.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:28:40.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Books, Observations, Mores, People

In 1919 Marina Tsvetaeva wrote the poem ["To You, in a Hundred Years",](https://theparnassian.com/tebe-cherez-sto-let-2/?ref=theparnassian.com) addressed to an admirer from the distant future. Piercing yet lyrical, sad yet spirited. "Friend! Do not seek me! Fashions are other now. Not even the old folk remember me." In this unusual poem of address Tsvetaeva puts into the mouth of a man destined to be born many years after her a reproach and a disdain for other women, for all women but herself. Near the end come the words: "All praised her! A pink dress / Nobody gave!"

And who was supposed to give Tsvetaeva a pink dress? She is a person of the late nineteenth century, when some rules still exist. And one wonders who did the praising, who exactly these friends were. It is hardly a matter of women who admired her verse. Besides, "friends" would seem to point to persons of the male sex.

In another poem of hers there is an "apron full of roses". The symbolism of the rose is very simple, it is tedious even to discuss it. It turns out that the men who admired her verse ought to have given her a "pink dress". And the rose signified anything but marriage. It is also evident that she has no wish to receive a masterpiece of the tailor's art as a gift.

All praised her, but what did they praise? The verse, the talent. But what did nobody offer? Love, let us say. Everyone admires, but no one cares to consummate his love with the gesture of a rose.

She does not expect anyone to present her with a pink dress; she is waiting for something else. In essence, the question raised here concerns the relation between talent and intellect on the one hand and the wish to keep company with men, shall we say, in the old-fashioned way on the other. And Tsvetaeva, for all that a little fin de siècle, wants to be loved. And this "dress" is now connected with nothing else, neither with replenishing a wardrobe nor with the bestowal of some deferential gifts, but only with the desire to be loved, even a hundred years after her death.