Ah, the Man Who was Read Aloud at My Wedding...

A profile of one of my favourite poets, Yevgeny Yevtushenko. (I wish I had some dude penetrating the masses with my poems.)



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Yevgeny Yevtushenko.
I love Russian poets with Osip Mandelstam being a big influence. But, Yevgeny Yevtushenko is a pretentious poet who is treated as a minor and somewhat dubious character in Russia. He was the parties poet masquerading as the peoples poet. His poetry is as flimsy as the French poet Jacque Prevert, but not nearly as entertaining.

Good thing THAT doesn't sound like received wisdom, just so much

Talk

You're a brave man they tell me.
                                 I'm not.
Courage has never been my quality.
Only I thought it disproportionate
so to degrade myself as others did.
No foundations trembled. My voice
no more than laughed at pompous falsity;
I did no more than write, never denounced,
I left out nothing I had thought about,
defended who deserved it, put a brand
on the untalented, the ersatz writers
(doing what had anyhow to be done).
And now they press to tell me that I'm brave.
How sharply our children will be ashamed
taking at last their vengeance for these horrors
remembering how in so strange a time
common integrity could look like courage.




Hey Ninja, who's the best translator of YY?

Edited by author 12-14-2003 10:32 PM
Yevgeny Profiled, but Not by the KGB - the Times, They Are a Changin...

A birthday present from the NYT.**



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