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Evtuşenco Evghenii (poet rus) | ||
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Yevtushenko Yevgeny (Russian poet) | |
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Евтушенко Евгений (русский поэт) |
| Yevtushenko Yevgeny - Russian poet | ||
 Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933-) - name also spelled Jevgeni Jevtusenko; Evgenii Evtushenko Internationally the best- known of the post-Stalin generation of Russian poets. His early poems show the influence of Mayakovsky and loyalty to communism, but with such work as The Third Snow (1955), Yevtushenko became a spokesman for the young generation. Throughout the Khrushchev and the Brezhnev periods he travelled widely abroad, giving readings as a symbol of a new freedom in the Soviet Union. The 6-foot-3-inch Siberian poet received a great deal of attention especially in the United States. "Why is it that in folk songs of all nations and all ages people express the desire to become birds? Because birds know no borders. People are mortally envious of animals for their freedom, and probably that is why we try to deprive them of it by forcing borders on them - be they the barriers of zoo, the bars of a circus cage, or the transparent but still prison-like walls of an aquarium. People insult their one God-given planet with impassable fences (which Robert Frost described with such a bitter irony) - with barbed wire, with iron or newspaper curtain. The division, the separation of the earth's surface, turns into mutual verbal and physical cannibalism. Our lack of knowledge of each other is like that of a blind sculptor, dangerous in his aggressive naiveté, who creates figures of so-called enemies." (from Divided Twins, 1988) Yevgeny Yevtushenko was born in Zima in Irkutsk, as a fourth-generation descendant of Ukrainians exiled to Siberia. He moved in 1944 with his mother to Moscow, where he studied at the Gorky Institute of Literature from 1951 to 1954. In 1948 he accompanied his father on geological expeditions to Kazakhstan and to Altai in 1950. His first important narrative poem Zima Junction was published in 1956 but he gained international fame with Babi Yar, in which he denounced the Nazis and at the same time clumsily criticized his own country for forgetting the message of the "Internationale". "But those with unclean hands / have often made a jingle of your purest name. / I know the goodness of my land. / How vile these anti-Semites - without a qualm / they pompously called themselves / the Union of the Russian People." Babi Yar is one of a number of literary treatments of a massacre of Jews in occupied Kiev on 29 September 1941. Composer Dimitri Shostakovich set the words to music as part of his Thirteenth Symphony. The poem was not published in Russia until 1984, although it was frequently recited in both Russia and abroad. The Heirs of Stalin (1961), published presumably with Party approval in Pravda, was not republished until 1987. The poem contained the warning that Stalin did not die. "And I appeal / to our government with a plea: / to double, / and treble, the guard at this slab, / so that Stalin will not rise again, / and with Stalin - the past." Yevtushenko dealt with burning topics of the day with a strong rhetorical note. He demanded greater artistic freedom, and his attacks on Stalinism and bureaucracy in the late 1950s and 60s made him a leader of Soviet youth. However, he was allowed to travel widely in the West until 1963. He then published A Precocious Autobiography in English, and his privileges and favors were withdrawn, but restored two years later. In 1968 he denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in the poem 'Russian Tanks in Prague'. In 1972 Yevtushenko gained a huge success with his play Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty, which was produced in Moscow. Since the 1970s he has been active in many fields of culture: writing novels, acting, film directing, and photography. He directed the film Kindergarten and acted in it, and in 1990 he directed the film Stalin's Funeral. He has also remained politically outspoken and in 1974 supported Solzhenitsyn when the Nobel Prize Winner was arrested and exiled. He sent an immediate telegram of protest to Brezhnev, in which he said that while he disagreed with Solzhenitsyn on many points, the author's explosive study Gulag contained "terrible documented pages about the bloody crimes of the Stalinist past." In the West Yevtushenko was often criticized for being too soft, but the KGB records have shown him to have been working behind the scenes in support of Solzhenitsyn. He wrote to KGB chief Yuri Andropov, the future general secretary of the Communist Party: "There is only one way out of this situation, but nobody will dare choose it: recognize Solzhenitsyn, restore his membership in the Writers' Union, and afterward, just declare suddenly that Cancer Ward is to be published." Later he also suggested that Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize for Literature, which the author had rejected under pressure of the Soviet Government, should be posthumously restored. "He earned it with his entire life and work," Yevtushenko wrote in an article. His own speeches were constantly censored in magazines. In 1985, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev had just risen to power, Literaturnaya Gazeta, published by the Soviet Writers' Union, left out several major sections of Yevtushenko's remarks about Stalin's purges, the evils of collectivization, and the privileges of the elite. Yevtushenko himself declined to criticize the editing. Yevtushenko's first novel Wild Berries (1981), was attacked by critics but it became a huge success among readers. In the story, which fused the past and the future, history and fantasy, Yevtushenko dealt among other things with the Stalinist collectivization of agriculture and the elimination of the kulaks, land-owning peasants. The author was advised to stick to poetry. In 1989 Yevtushenko became a member of the Congress of People's Deputies and next year he was appointed vice president of Russian PEN. When Yevtushenko was appointed in 1987 honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Russian-born poet Joseph Brodsky resigned in protest - he considered his colleague a party yes man. Brodsky has bitterly stated: "He throws stones only in directions that are officially sanctioned and approved." Yevtushenko's readers, however, have defended the poet faithfully, stating that "you can't blame him that he survived." In 1993 Yevtushenko received a medal as 'Defender of Free Russia,' which was given to those who took part in resisting the hard-line Communist coup in August 1991. After the accession of Gorbachev to power, Yevtushenko introduced to Soviet readers many poets repressed by Stalin in the journal Ogonek. He aroused public awareness of the pollution of Lake Baikal, and when communism collapsed he supported the plan to erect a monument to the victims of Stalinist repression opposite Lubianka, headquarters of the KGB. In Don't Die Before You're Dead (1995) Yevtushenko gave his satirical account of the August 1991 coup, which eventually lifted Boris Yeltsin to power. In one scene the slain Grand Duchess Olga whispers her last poems into Yeltsin's ear. - Yevtushenko has been married four times: in 1954 he married Bella Akhmadulina, who published her first collection of lyrics in 1962. After divorce he married Galina Semenova. Yevtushenko's third wife was Jan Butler (married in 1978), and fourth Maria Novika (married in 1986). For further reading: Soviet Russian Literature: Writers and Problems by M. Slonim (1967); 'The Politics of Poetry: The Sad Case of Yevgeny Yevtushenko' by Robert Conquest, in New York Times Magazine (30 September, 1973); Soviet Russian Literature Since Stalin by Deming Brown (1978); Evgenii Evtushenko by E. Sidorov (1987); Soviet Literature in the 1980s by N.N. Shneidman (1989); Refernce Guide to Russian Literature, ed. by Neil Cornwell (1998) - Suom.: Suomennoksia kokoelmissa Olen vaiti ja huudan, Kyllä ja ei, Laulava pato, Runoni, Valittua. Novelli Kananjumala samannimisessä antologiassa. - Translations: Yevtushenko's poems have been translated into English by such authors as James Dickey, Stanley Kunitz, John Updike, Richard Wilbur, and Ted Hughes Selected works: RAZVEDCHIKI GRIADUSHCHEGO, 1952 TRETI SNEG, 1955 - The Third Snow SHOSSE ENTUZIASTOV, 1956 STANTSIYA ZIMA, 1956 - Zima Junction / Winter Station OBESHCHANIE, 1957 DVE LIUBIMYKH, 1958 LUK I LIRA, 1959 STIKHI RAZNYKH LET, 1959 CHETVERTAIA MESHCHANSKAIA, 1959 IABLOKO, 1960 Red Cats, 1961 BABY YAR, 1961 - suom. translation: The Milky Way by D. Ulzytuev, 1961 translation: A Network of Stars by T. Chiladze, 1961 translation: Don't Fall to Your Knees! by G. Dzagorov, 1961 POSLE STALINA, 1962 VZMACH RUKI, 1962 Selected Poems, 1962 The Heirs of Stalin, 1962 NEZHNOST': NOVYE STIKNI, 1962 AUTOBIOGRAFIA, 1963 - A Precocious Autobiography Selected Poetry, 1963 The Poetry of Yevgeny Yevtusenko, 1964 KHOCHU IA STAT' NEMNOZHKO STRAROMODYM, 1964 BRATSKAYA GES, 1965 - The Bratsk Station KHOTIAT LI RUSSKIE VOINY?, 1965 Poems, 1966 Yevtusenko Poems, 1966 Yevtusenko's Reader, 1966 KATER ZVIAZI, 1966 KACHKA, 1966 The Execution of Stepan Razin, op. 119, score by Dinitri Shostakovich, 1966 Poems Chosen by the Author, 1966 The City of the Yes and the City of the No and Other Poems, 1966 SO MNOIU VOT CHTO PROISKHODIT, 1966 New Works, 1966 STIKHI, 1967 New Poems, 1968 TRAMVAI POEZII, 1968 TIAGA VAL'DSHNEPOV, 1968 BRATSKAIA GES, 1968 IDUT BELYE SNEGI, 1969 Flowers and Bullets, and Freedom to Kill, 1970 KAZANSKII UNIVERSITET, 1971 - Kazan University and Other New Poems IA SIBIRSKOI PORODY, 1971 DOROKA NOMEN ODIN, 1972 Stolen Apples, 1972, translated by James Dickey et al. IZBRANNYE PROIZVEDENIIA, 1975 (2 vols.) POIUSHCHAIA DAMBA, 1972 Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty, 1982 (play) POET V ROSSII - BOL'SHE, CHEM POET, 1973 INTIMNAIA LIRIKA, 1973 OTTSOVSKII SLUKH, 1975 IZBRANNYE PROIZVEDENIIA, 1975 (2 vols.) PROSEKA, 1976 SPASIBO, 1976 From Desire to Desire / Love Poems, 1976 V POLNYI ROST, 1977 ZAKLINANIE, 1977 UTRENNYI NAROD, 1978 PRISIAGA PROSTORU, 1978 KOMPROMISS KOMPROMISSOVICH, 1978 The Face Behind the Face, 1979 Ivan the Terrible and Ivan the Fool, 1979 translation: Heavy Earth, 1979 TIAZHELEE ZEMLI, 1979 KOGDA MUZHCHINE SOROK LET, 1979 DOROKA, UKHODIASHCHAIA VDAL', 1979 SVARKA VZRYVOM, 1980 TALENT EST CHUDO NESLUCHAINOE, 1980 TOCHKA OPORY, 1980 TRET'IA OAMIAT', 1980 POSLUSHAITE MENIA, 1980 ARDABIOLA, 1981 - trans. - suom. YAGODNYYE MESTA, 1981 - Wild Berries - Mansikkamaat Invisible threads, 1981 IA SIBIRIAK, 1981 SOBRANIE SOCINENIY, 1982 A Dove in Santiago, 1982 DVE PARY LYZH, 1982 BELYE SNEGI, 1982 MAMA I NEITRONAIIA BOMBA I DRUGIE POEMY, 1983 OTKUDA RODOM IA, 1983 VOINA - ETO ANTIKULTURA, 1983 SOBRANIE SOCHINENII, 1983-84 (3 vols.) KINDERGARTEN, 1984 (screenplay) FUKU, 1985 - suom. POCHTI NAPOSLEDOK, 1985 - Almost at the End DVA GORODA, 1985 MORE, 1985 POLTRAVINOCHKI, 1986 STIKHI, 1986 ZAVRTRASHNII VETER, 1987 STIKHOTVORENIIA I POEMY 1951-1986, 1987 (3 vols.) POSLEDNIAIA POPYTKA, 1988 POCHTI V POSLEDNII MIG, 1988 NEZHNOST, 1988 Divided Twins - Razdel'ennye bliznetsy, 1988 POEMY O MIRE, 1989 DETSKII SAD MOSCOW, 1989 (screenplay) STIKHI, 1989 GRAZHDANE, POSLUSHAITE MENIA..., 1989 LIUBIMAIA, SPI..., 1989 DETSKII SAD, 1989 POMOZHEM SVOBODE, 1990 POLITIKA PRIVILEGIIA VSEKH, 1990 PROPAST - V DVA PSYZHKA?, 1990 Fatal Half Measures, 1991 The Collected Poems 1952-1990, 1991 NE UMIRAI PREZHDE SMERTI, 1993 - Don't Die Before You're Dead MOE SAMOE-SAMOE, 1995 PRE-MORNING. PREDUTRO, 1995 See: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jevtusen.htm |
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