Word: svetlana
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...Svetlana's hostility was viewed a shade differently by her new brother-in- law, S.I. Hayakawa, who is married to Wes Peters' sister. "She and Mrs. Wright were like two empresses in the same empire," the semanticist and former U.S. Senator recollects. Overpowered, Svetlana tried to persuade Peters to leave Taliesin West, where he had worked since 1932 as Wright's disciple and chosen successor. Peters temporized, and after 20 months of marriage, Svetlana stormed out, cursing Mrs. Wright and all that she represented with a wrath that recalled Stalin's. Taliesin West, "with all its horrible modern architecture," Svetlana...
...Svetlana often walked away from places with a malediction on her lips. Thus had she left the Soviet Union and thus would she eventually depart the West. Men and women who got to know her felt the lash of her leave-takings. Said one former friend: "If you didn't stop your life and devote yourself completely to hers, she would cast you out into utter darkness...
...decade after Svetlana left Taliesin West, she tried to make a fresh start in several towns in California and New Jersey, only to rebuff the welcome she found. After deciding to break up a friendship with a distinguished intellectual, she wrote to him, "You are deaf, stupid. You are doomed. You are a failure. I pity you. I despise you." In other letters she wished people dead. Of an elderly lady who, Svetlana thought, had crossed her, she wrote, "I hope she will not be with us too long." To British Author Malcolm Muggeridge, a deeply religious...
...everyday dealings Svetlana behaved more reasonably, frequently disarming new acquaintances with a charm that was undeniably genuine. She touched people by the evident sincerity of her religious belief. "She could be warm, lovely and simple," says Margedant Hayakawa, Wes Peters' sister, who remained a supportive friend...
...Svetlana certainly needed friends. When she left her husband, she took with her a new daughter, Olga Margedant Peters, born May 21, 1971. Svetlana, who would be granted U.S. citizenship only in 1978, felt alone in a strange country and seemed particularly vulnerable to the stresses of late motherhood. Having gained custody of Olga by the terms of her 1973 divorce from Peters, she refused to allow the child to visit her father at Taliesin West. Thus thwarted, the busy architect rarely went to see Olga and, though he corresponded with her, remained a more remote figure than Olga...