Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Soviet poet and novelist, born July 18th, 1932 in Zima, Russia, died April 1st 2017 in Tulsa, Oklahoma - the Literary Genealogy section of my novel "Going To The Wall" includes his magnificent "Babi Yar", a part of which Shostakovitch set to music in his 13th Symphony; it also has a page in my "Private Collection" - click here.
His autobiographical novel "Wild Berries" (Yagodnyye Mesta, 1981) starts so badly you wonder if he wasn't deliberately trying to put off the average reader, or simply misleading the lazy censor. Crassly sententious pastoral with love interest, poorly written in formulaic clichés… but keep going long enough and politics takes over, all manner of dialogue and narrative for which a man could be sent to Siberia. And then, all on one page, three very particular moments of redemption:-
1.
"I stood in line all night at the Writers' Bookstore to buy the one-volume Mandelstam, but didn't get it. I found it on Nevsky for fifty, from book scalpers.”
As did I, Yevgeny; as did I. Though in my case it was 2003, Communism had fallen fifteen years ago, and Mandelstam, or at least his reputation and the publication of his books, had been rehabilitated. Mandelstam too is in "Going To The Wall", and in my "Private Collection" - click here.
2.
"Which contemporary poet do you like? Krivtsov?"
"Pushkin."
"No, you didn't understand me. I'm asking about contemporary poets."
"He is the most contemporary."
"No, I mean contemporary in the sense of being alive."
"He is the most alive."
A dialogue I have conducted many times over the years, though I usually choose Aeschylus.
3.
"What about Yevtushenko?"
"His stuff is passé."
Nice touch! Nice touch!
And then another fragment catches my attention:
"You typed the whole novel 'The Master and Margarita'!" Seryozha exclaimed. "How much time did it take?"
"Much less than it took Bulgakov to write it," Kostya joked. "What else could I do? I couldn't get the book. I don't have pull. And a book like that should always be around. So I typed it. By the way, it's very beneficial. You really come to sense the author's style, the course of his thoughts; you feel every word. I managed to get Mayakovsky and Yesenin. But I had to re-type Pasternak's one-volume collection. And then I understood with my own fingers that his early poems are denser, more complex; the later ones are more transparent, but diluted. He gained something, but he lost something too."
And concealed within this commentary on how to read properly, the continuing act of keeping banned and murdered writers alive and read, by the simple act of mentioning them, which nobody but Yevtushenko could have dared to do and get away with – an act of literary heroism which few western readers now will even recognise.
Amber pages
Gilbert White, father of British naturalists, born today in 1720
William Makepeace Thackeray, whose "Vanity Fair" is still the best tea-and-poetry house in London (click here), born today in 1811
Clifford Odets, American playwright - I feel that I need to include him, in order to investigate him, because I don't really know him, in the way that I know that I know Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller; born today in 1906
"You typed the whole novel 'The Master and Margarita'!" Seryozha exclaimed. "How much time did it take?"
"Much less than it took Bulgakov to write it," Kostya joked. "What else could I do? I couldn't get the book. I don't have pull. And a book like that should always be around. So I typed it. By the way, it's very beneficial. You really come to sense the author's style, the course of his thoughts; you feel every word. I managed to get Mayakovsky and Yesenin. But I had to re-type Pasternak's one-volume collection. And then I understood with my own fingers that his early poems are denser, more complex; the later ones are more transparent, but diluted. He gained something, but he lost something too."
And concealed within this commentary on how to read properly, the continuing act of keeping banned and murdered writers alive and read, by the simple act of mentioning them, which nobody but Yevtushenko could have dared to do and get away with – an act of literary heroism which few western readers now will even recognise.
Amber pages
Gilbert White, father of British naturalists, born today in 1720
William Makepeace Thackeray, whose "Vanity Fair" is still the best tea-and-poetry house in London (click here), born today in 1811
Clifford Odets, American playwright - I feel that I need to include him, in order to investigate him, because I don't really know him, in the way that I know that I know Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller; born today in 1906
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