Abstract: The author starts his article from the Internet discussion during which some people accused Marina Tsvetaeva of her bad behavior towards her daughters and others supported her saying that she was a great poet. The author of this article discusses all the ‘pro’ and ‘contra’ argument represented on the forum. The author himself makes a hypothesis that Tsvetaeva had a very versatile personality. One part of her was an esoteric poet and the other part of her was marginal. The author uses this hypothesis to explain Tsvetaeva’s strange behavior as well as her maniac passion for diaries. At the end of the article the author touches upon the issue of interpretation of creative writing in a situation when various reconstructions of the poet’s life and personality are being created.

Keywords: philology, personality, consciousness, duality, text, diary, interpretation, understanding, illness, splitting apart.