I was just this evening thinking about Yevgeny
Yevtushenko. The collaboration with Dmitri Shostakovich which, I think, will
come to be seen as the defining moment of his career, happened early in his
life. His poem Babi Yar, about the
massacre of tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews by the Nazis in 1941, piqued
the interest of the Russian composer, who selected a few more of
Yevtushenko’s
poems and set them in his 13th Symphony. The 1962 premiere was beset
with problems. First, the great conductor and frequent Shostakovich
collaborator, Yevgeny Mravinsky, withdrew his cooperation and refused to
perform the work’s premiere. Then, Shostakovich and replacement conductor Kirill
Kondrashin had to contend with their first choice of bass soloist being removed
from the performance by the authorities, and the premiere only went ahead because
the understudy happened to have turned up unexpectedly at the final rehersal. Yevtushenko,
whose reputation was made by Babi Yar,
demonstrated tremendous bravery by refusing to be cowed by Nikita Khrushchev at
a meeting the night before the premiere. Khrushchev angrily stated that the
poem had no place in the Soviet Union; Yevtushenko retorted that challenging
anti-Semitism could only “enhance the authority of our country”.
I was thinking about all of this because, as those who
know me must be tiring of hearing, I’ve been working on a fictionalised version
of this period of Shostakovich’s life, and it just so happened that I had been
mulling over the scene in which Yevtushenko arrives at Shostakovich’s apartment
to hear a run-through of the 13th Symphony. For both men, the moment
of their collaboration marked their most overt acts of political dissention.
Shostakovich had always toyed with dissent but, to the frustration of some
contemporaries, often retreated from a principled anti-authority sentiment, or
submerged it in irony and double meaning. Yevtushenko seemed to be the most
courageous of a younger generation of brave Soviet artists, but the trajectory of
his career frustrated many when he too moved away from outspoken criticism of
the regime. The first signs of this came when Yevtushenko acquiesced to
official demands by removing references to Judaism and the Jewish victims of
Babi Yar in the poem, instead emphasising Russian suffering.
 |
| Shostakovich, Kondrashin and Yevtushenko, in 1962 |
For some, including the Russia soprano Galina
Vishnevskaya, this was the beginning of the end of Yevtushenko’s dissident
credentials. In her autobiography, she reacted to the revision of Babi Yar by saying:
“He quickly learned
how to pander to any taste, how to keep his nose in the wind, how to know when
to bow and when to straighten up. Thus he swung from side to side, from Babi
Yar to the Bratsk GES or, even more exaggeratedly, to Kamaz, in which the toadyism is enough to make
one nauseous.”
Bratsk GES and Kamaz were, respectively, poems in celebration
of a hydroelectric power station and a car factory. Vishnevskaya goes on:
“And when no one
expected anything good from him any longer, he suddenly appeared on the speaker’s
platform at a meeting of the Komsomol aktiv in the Halls of the Columns of the
Palace of Unions – a meeting dedicated to the memory of the poet Esenin – and flattened
everyone with his remarkable poem:
“…Dear Enenin, old
Russia has changed…
…When the ruddy
Komosomol chief
Thundered at us poets
with his fist
“The meeting was
televised live and nationwide. Judging from how soon afterward the government
sent him off to some construction project, he must have taken quite a drubbing.”
Vishnevskaya then describes Yevkushenko visiting the
Paris apartment of her and her husband Rostropovich, after their defection.
Vishnevskaya had by this time built up quite a head of steam over what she saw
as the poet’s double standards, which she unleashed on him over dinner. How
could he write what he did while ordinary people suffered in the Soviet Union?
Yevtushenko seems to have been amused by her moral indignation, offering no
real defence. Vishnevskaya was, ultaimtely, torn between her own outrage and an
understanding of the powerlessness of the individual against the forces of
ideology. She ends her account with this incredible passage:
“In this vast,
monstrous theatre, with our faces twisted by underground jargon, we Soviets wriggle
and squirm for one another. We are actors by compulsion, not by calling, in an
amateur theatre run by no one. And all our lives, we perform our endless,
pathetic comedy. There are no spectators, only participants. Nor is there a
script, only improvisation. And knowing neither plot nor denouement, we act.”
There’s a long and fascinating biography to be written
about Yevtushenko that would take in his film career and election to public
office in 1989, but two final thoughts relate to education. Yevtushenko’s last
years were spent teaching literature at the University of Tulsa and I wonder if
some of his students really understood the magnitude of his achievements and
the import of the events through which he lived. I stumbled across some reviews
of his teaching on ratemyprofessors.com, which are amusing and unexpectedly revealing
of a great man freed from previous strictures:
“YY's classes are
probably the easiest classes you can take at TU. That said, he is very
difficult to listen to. He goes off on tangents the majority of the class that
don't seem related to the subject material. Also, he doesn't have a syllabus
because he believes they are "too constraining" for his class. Easy
class, but take with a grain of salt.”
And…
“yevtushenko is the
most hilarious man in Oklahoma and slightly subtracts from the redneck nature
of this two-bit town. go see him on stage... history at your fingertips.
Funniest thing is when he handed out a biography of himself before the class
started, what a trip!!”
And…
“If you can't get
an A in this guy's class you are a total moron. furthermore he is a good guy
and passionate about his work. One warning...if he likes your paper, you have
to read in front of the whole class. Keep that in mind when you write your
papers.”
And…
“insane. likes to
make fun of people, i.e. me every night. however, he is fun and a breath of
fresh air at this odd school-- just take the class you will get an A and you
will have stories to tell your grankiddies! He once turned on a projector with
an umbrella he spent 19 minutes looking for in his car. whacko poet.”
And so on.
Lastly, as a teacher, I have taken genuine inspiration
from this poem, called Lies.
Telling lies to
young people is wrong.
Proving to them
that lies are true is wrong.
Telling them that
God’s in his heaven
and that all’s well
with the world is wrong.
The young know what
you mean. The young are people.
Tell them that the
difficulties can’t be counted
and let them see
not only what will be
but see with
clarity these present times.
Say obstacles exist
they must encounter
sorrow happens,
hardship happens.
To hell with it.
Who never knew
the price of
happiness will not be happy.
Forgive no error
you recognise,
It will repeat
itself, increase,
and afterwards our
pupils
will not forgive in
us what we forgave.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1932-2017
1 comment:
I loved his poetry!
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