July 18: The birthday of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the poet who became the voice of the era
On July 18, 1932, Yevgeny Gangnus, known to everyone as Yevtushenko, a poet and writer, and a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in the Irkutsk region.
Do Russian wars want to happen?
Ask you for silence
over the expanse of arable land and fields
and birches and poplars.
You will ask those soldiers,
that under the birches lie
and let their sons tell you
do Russians want war
A family of geologists
His father was passionate about poetry, his mother about acting. Both were geologists. In 1944, after his parents' divorce, the future poet moved with his mother to Moscow. There, she changed his surname to her maiden name, Yevtushenko, to protect him from anti-German sentiment.
He studied at the poetry studio at the House of Pioneers. His father, with whom he maintained a warm relationship, took him to evenings with Akhmatova, Pasternak, and Tvardovsky.
From the burning of magazines to the Literary Institute
He was a poor student. At 15, he was expelled from school for setting fire to school magazines. He went to Kazakhstan to live with his father and worked on a geological exploration expedition. He used the money he earned to buy a typewriter.
He started out at Sovetsky Sport. In 1952, he contributed to Stalinism by publishing the collection "Scouts of the Future" and was accepted into the Literary Institute without a high school diploma, as well as into the Writers' Union, becoming its youngest member.
In 1957, he supported the novel Not by Bread Alone by the disgraced writer Vladimir Dudintsev, which criticized Soviet bureaucracy, and was expelled from the Literary Institute.
Babi Yar and the Resonance
He performed at recitals with Voznesensky, Akhmadulina, Rozhdestvensky, and Okudzhava. There, he first read his poem "Babi Yar," about the Nazi executions of Jews. The poem was published in the Literaturnaya Gazeta newspaper and caused a great stir.
I -
everyone here is an old man shot.
I -
every child shot hereJewish blood is not in my blood.
But hated by hardened malice
I am to all anti-Semites,
as a Jew,
and therefore -
I am a real Russian!
A year later, he published the poem “Stalin’s Heirs” in Pravda, timed to coincide with the removal of the leader’s body from the Mausoleum.
He had something in mind. He just took a nap to rest.
And I appeal to our government with a request:
double, triple the guard at this wall,
so that Stalin does not rise and with Stalin - the past
In his poem "Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station," he discussed the freedom of the Soviet people. It opened with the preamble, "A poet in Russia is more than just a poet."
Poems for film and the "thaw"
During the Thaw, he wrote poems that became the lyrics to songs for Soviet film hits: “The Career of Dima Gorin,” “The Irony of Fate,” and “Office Romance.”
And it snows, and it snows,
And everything around is waiting for something...This is what happens to me:
my old friend doesn't come to me
and go in the small vanity
diverse not the sameWe are chattering in crowded trams
We are tossed about by the same hustle and bustle,
The metro keeps swallowing us up,
Releasing from a smoky mouth
"Stagnation" and the protection of dissidents
During the years of stagnation, he published in the magazines Yunost, Novy Mir and Znamya.
It's worthy, the main thing is it's worthy
Meet any times,
When the era is stagnant,
It's stirred up to the bottom
He spoke out in defense of Sinyavsky, Solzhenitsyn, and Brodsky. After condemning the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the war in Afghanistan, he was banned from speaking, publishing, and traveling abroad.
Let it be over me - without crying
They'll just write, to tell the truth:
"Russian writer. Crushed
"Russian tanks in Prague"
From Perestroika to Emigration
In 1991, he supported Yeltsin and wrote the novel "Do Not Die Before You Die," about the events of the August coup. Remaining nonpartisan, he was elected as a people's deputy of the USSR from the Kharkov constituency. He responded to the collapse of the USSR with the poems "Thirteen" and "Farewell to the Red Flag."
He was a member of the human rights society "Memorial" and co-chair of the "April" writers' association in support of perestroika. When the Chechen war began, he refused to accept the Order of Friendship of Peoples from Yeltsin.
He lived and taught in the United States. He visited Russia periodically. In 2014, he wrote the poem "State, Be a Human Being!" about the events in Ukraine.
What a hate, what a rage
on both sides!
Isn't Babi Yar enough for you?
and you need war with each other?
Last years
In his final years, he suffered a leg amputation. He died in his sleep of cardiac arrest in 2017 in the United States. He was 83. He is buried in Moscow.
It didn't shake any foundations.
I just laughed at the fake, the inflated
Wrote poetry. Donosov did not write
And I tried to say everything I thought.
