Passed away April 1, 2017 outstanding poet, novelist, screenwriter, publicist Evgeniy Yevtushenko. He died in an American clinic in Tulsa (Oklahoma). His wife, Maria Vladimirovna, reported his death. Associated with the name of Evgeniy Yevtushenko an entire era in literature, he was a youth idol in the 1950s and 1960s. and became a symbol of Russian poetry in the mid-twentieth century.
He inherited his poetic talent from his father, geologist and amateur poet Alexander Gangnus. And how could one not become a poet, having been born at a station called Winter ( Irkutsk region), to whom he later dedicated a collection of poems. Already at the age of 5, Yevgeny Yevtushenko began writing poetry. He also owed his broad outlook to his father: “He could spend hours telling me, still a foolish child, about the fall of Babylon, and about the Spanish Inquisition, and about the War of the Scarlet and White Roses, and about William of Orange... Thanks to my father, I am already in It took him 6 years to learn to read and write; he read indiscriminately Dumas, Flaubert, Boccaccio, Cervantes and Wells. There was an unimaginable vinaigrette in my head. I lived in an illusory world, I didn’t notice anyone or anything around...”
After moving to Moscow, Evgeniy studied at poetry studio Pioneer houses. In 1949, when the poet was only 16 years old, his poems were first published in the Soviet Sport newspaper. In 1951, Yevtushenko entered the Literary Institute. M. Gorky, but did not study there for long - he was soon expelled because he defended V. Dudintsev’s novel “Not by Bread Alone.” At the age of 20, Yevtushenko became the youngest member of the USSR Writers' Union.
All-Union fame came to him after the publication of the poetry collections “The Third Snow” and “Highway of Enthusiasts” in the mid-1950s. And in the 1960s. Yevtushenko became one of the most popular and cited authors in the country. The phrase “A poet in Russia is more than a poet” from the poem “ Bratsk hydroelectric power station"was known to every schoolchild and became an aphorism.
In the 1960s Yevtushenko, together with Rozhdestvensky, Akhmadulina and Okudzhava, took part in poetry evenings at the Polytechnic Museum, which became a symbol of the “thaw”. They were called the “sixties,” and Yevtushenko was one of those who provoked the beginning of a real “poetry boom” in the USSR.
In 1991, the poet was offered to teach Russian literature at one of the universities in Oklahoma. Yevtushenko went to the USA and spent last years his life, although he often came to Russia. Inspiration never left him until last days: in 2011 he released a collection of poems “You Can Still Save”, in 2012 - a collection of “Happiness and Retribution”, in 2013 - a collection of “I Can’t Say Goodbye”, and in the last two years he has been dictating to his wife new novel.
In recent years, the poet has been plagued by health problems: in 2013, his leg was amputated due to a developing inflammatory process; in 2015, a pacemaker was installed to normalize his heart rhythm. On March 31, 2017, the poet was hospitalized in serious condition. Details were not known; his wife stated only that it was not a routine examination. On April 1 at about 19:30 Moscow time, Yevgeny Yevtushenko died of cardiac arrest.
I have been surrounded by poetry since childhood. Despite the fact that his father was a geologist, he wrote poetry all his life. And he instilled this love in me. The decision to become a poet came unexpectedly. We lived in Moscow during the war. When the Germans were approaching the capital, my mother sent me into evacuation to Siberia. I rode the train for four months, starving.
I had to beg. At the stations, you had to read poetry for a piece of bread. And during one of the stops, some woman, hearing me, burst into tears and broke off half a loaf of bread. And when she read more, she broke off half of her remaining half, and licked the crumbs that were left from her palm with her tongue. That's when I realized what I should do in life.
I was taught to confess for those who do not write poetry themselves.
– Many years ago, an event happened that changed my life: my first poem was published in the newspaper “Soviet Sport”. At that time I was not yet 16 years old, I didn’t even have a passport.
The publishing house was located at Lubyanka Square, and I brought my poems there. The editor read them carefully and told me: “Your poems, boy, are very bad! You yourself will laugh at them someday. But you are very capable, and I believe in you. We must be filled with intelligence and understanding that poetry is not just dumbbells with which we now play. A verse is a confession. And you yourself must confess to others and confess for those people who do not write poetry themselves - who would like to speak out, but God did not give them this gift. And you have it. And in order to understand that these poems are bad, you need to publish them.”
And they were published. What a delight I felt at this! I bought all the newspapers that I came across and gave them to all passers-by! My poems were really terribly funny. And as that editor told me then, “you just have to write all the best things,” and that’s how it happened.
I dress the way I want and love to eat delicious food
- I know some people are annoyed by my extravagant clothes, but I dress the way I want. I grew up in Siberia surrounded by prison quilted jackets and soldier’s camouflage, so I love bright colors. I love to eat delicious food, I love lard, but I can’t have it - I’m taking care of my health.
I remember during the war years, when the only hot food available was empty boiling water, I ate such wonderful potatoes in vegetable oil with cabbage leaves from speculators at the station. They shouted to me: “Thief!” I took it without asking. But I’m not a thief, I even had money, but when I saw this bulb, I couldn’t restrain myself. I haven't smoked for 24 years. I like to play ping-pong, travel, I would like to strum the guitar, but my hearing is bad...
I only need two things: work and love
In fact, only a madman can stay at the level of sacred fever. It is replaced by tenderness, which I call reasonable passion. These feelings have always been the engines of my creativity. My wife says that I only need two things in life: work and love. Couldn't have said it better! It is important for me to have paper at hand where I can express my thoughts, and next to the woman I adore. My love can be poured out on other things: I can’t live without reading books, watching good movies, going to the theater. I love football!
If you love a person and he gets carried away, you need to tell him this to his face
– Robert (Rozhdestvensky – ed.) wrote wonderful poems just before his death. At one time he fell into the clutches of our nascent pop song. What he wrote was not always good. They even tried to quarrel with him because of this.
I wrote him a very personal letter, in which I expressed everything I thought about him. There was nothing offensive there. But if you love a person and see that he is a little carried away, you need to tell him this to his face. This is what we did when we studied at the Literary Institute. We tested each other on our knowledge of poets' poems, especially those that were banned. God knows what was exaggerated from my letter to Robert.
Fortunately, he youngest daughter Ksenia saved it. It was hard for him to read this, but we did not quarrel.
The Motherland is you and me, and we must be responsible for everything
- You see, so is the homeland. Living being. It consists of women, children, people we have met in life. Homeland is not a set of political slogans and phrases. Love for one's homeland is not love for political system. This is not even a love of nature (although nature is also a living being), but first of all it is people. I have these lines about my homeland, I hope they will be very important for many, I will even quote:
Do not make an idol from your homeland
But don’t rush to be her guide.
Thank you for feeding you
But don't thank me on my knees.
She herself is largely to blame
And we are all to blame together with her
Deifying Russia is vulgar
But it’s even more vulgar to despise her.Of course, some hypocrite will say: “How is this possible: the homeland is also largely to blame?” But the homeland is you and me! And we must be responsible for everything, both for what happened in the past and for what is now. And only then will we have responsibility for the future.
For a long time I could not read poetry in an Orthodox church
– I read poetry in churches of all faiths. Simply - everyone. I even once read poetry on a minaret in Turkey, for which the mullah was removed, just as the editor was removed in 1962.” Literary newspaper“Valery Kosolapov for the publication of my “Babi Yar”.
But read the poems in Orthodox church to me for a long time it didn't work out. I even made this request to Patriarch Alexy II during a personal meeting. I knew that he liked my poems, he often went to my performances. But he did not agree to give permission. For example, he said that in the Orthodox church there are no benches for listeners. Nothing, I read in the Washington Cathedral, the entire American government stood there. No, he said, we don’t have such a tradition. But you sing chants in churches. Why can't my poems be read? My poems are read by priests, even quoted in sermons.
The curse of the century is haste,
And the man, wiping off his sweat,
He rushes through life like a pawn,
I accidentally got into time trouble.
They drink hastily, they love hastily,
And then the soul repents,
They hastily beat, hastily destroy,
And then they repent in a hurry...And yet I am. He largely owed his salvation and rebirth to my nanny Nyura. He is in Tula region, close to Yasnaya Polyana, near the village of Tyoploye.
Nyura was born and lived there. At one time she was a nanny in our family in Moscow. Then in Moscow there were many housekeepers, girls from the provinces. During the war years, she returned to Tyoploe to her sick sister and actually saved the St. Iveron Church there. When the Germans were there, they kept their motorcycles in the temple.
When our people returned, they set up a potato storage facility there.
And Nyura hid church icons in her place, even married men and women who kept Orthodox faith, although no one gave her permission to do so. The people called this church “Nyurin Temple”. And so its rector, Father Valentin, one of the dispossessed, decided to take a risk and invited me to read poetry in the church of my nanny, my Arina Rodionovna. It was May 24th.
They showed me five darkened icons that my nanny saved. And I began my speech with poems about her: “Beyond the buckwheat field, audible to me even in New York, in a not lush cemetery in a thinned out forest, a fresh cross, not dejected, above my nanny Nyura stands on brown clay, not complaining to Moscow...”
The Metropolitan and Archimandrite were not at this meeting of mine, but they conveyed their blessing.
It is wrong that I am treated only as a political poet
– It’s wrong that I’m treated only as political poet. I have published big volume poems about love “No Years”. My first poem, thanks to which I became famous, is “This is what happens to me.” Is there anyone in Russia who doesn’t know him? It was copied by hand. And my first song was also about love, now it is performed as a folk song, which is the highest compliment - “Ah, I have enough gentlemen, but I have no good love.”
But I could publish a volume of civilian poems. I don't like the word “political”. Still, “civil poetry” sounds better. Real civic poems can touch upon political topics, but they are higher than current policy, although they may be based on current moments. For example, I am very happy that I captured some historical moments in his poems, and from them, in general, one can study history.
Look for the national idea in classical literature
- It’s bad if people don’t have ideals. But even if good ideas become an ideology, they turn into a cage where they are locked human souls. A national idea cannot be artificially “created” - it must be born on its own...
Read the classics more often! IN classical literature, in Russian and Ukrainian, and are contained national ideas! If young people do not know all our historical tragedies by heart, they will unwittingly repeat them. But idealizing history is just as criminal as spitting on it. There is no need to invent any new “isms,” but rather there should be as many decent people in Ukraine and Russia as possible.
A poet should try to change the world
– A poet must come into this world with the belief that he is able to change it. It seems to me that anyone should experience this feeling, especially when they are young. If you look through the entire history of mankind, it turns out that we have preserved our conscience only thanks to great art.
Even the Bible is, on the one hand, a religious book, but, on the other hand, it is a poetic text. IN literary form it expresses a number of thoughts uttered for the first time. The first poetry in the world is lullabies our mothers. Therefore, in art there is always something close and dear, maternal.
Humanity should have the same attitude towards art, similar to the gratitude of children to their spiritual parents. But this, in my opinion, is still lacking today. People have become lazy and avoid difficult things.
Evgeny Yevtushenko. After death there remains something greater than us...
Humiliation and fear
They force us to be dust,
The light of God is extinguished in souls.
If we forget our pride,
We'll just be gray dust
Under the wheels of carriages.
You can throw a body into a cage,
So that it doesn't fly away
High above the clouds
And the soul through the cage to God
It will still find its way,
Light as a feather.
Life and death are the two main things.
Who is there in vain slandering death?
Death is often more tender than life.
Teach me, Almighty,
If death comes in silently,
Smile quietly at her.
Help me, Lord,
Overcome everything
Don't hide the stars in the window,
Grant, Lord,
A loaf of bread - for crumbs for the pigeons.
The body is cold and sick,
It burns and smolders on the fires,
Decays in the darkness.
But the soul still doesn’t give up.
After death remains
Something bigger than us.
We remain in bits and pieces:
Some with a book, some with a sigh,
Some with a song, some with a child,
But even in these crumbs,
Somewhere further in the future,
By dying we live.
What, soul, will you tell God,
What will you bring to his doorstep?
Will he send you to heaven or to hell?
We are all guilty of something
But he is afraid of retribution,
Who is least to blame?
Help me, Lord,
Overcome everything
Don't hide the stars in the window,
Grant, Lord,
A loaf of bread - for crumbs for the pigeons.
On April 1, 2017, the outstanding poet, prose writer, screenwriter, and publicist Evgeny Yevtushenko passed away. He died in an American clinic in Tulsa (Oklahoma). His wife, Maria Vladimirovna, reported his death. An entire era in literature was associated with the name of Yevgeny Yevtushenko; he was the idol of youth in the 1950s-1960s. and became a symbol of Russian poetry in the mid-twentieth century. 
Young poet Evgeny Yevtushenko 
He inherited his poetic talent from his father, geologist and amateur poet Alexander Gangnus. And how could one not become a poet, having been born at a station called Winter (Irkutsk region), to which he later dedicated a collection of poems. Already at the age of 5, Yevgeny Yevtushenko began writing poetry. He also owed his broad outlook to his father: “He could spend hours telling me, still a foolish child, about the fall of Babylon, and about the Spanish Inquisition, and about the War of the Scarlet and White Roses, and about William of Orange... Thanks to my father, I am already in It took him 6 years to learn to read and write; he read indiscriminately Dumas, Flaubert, Boccaccio, Cervantes and Wells. There was an unimaginable vinaigrette in my head. I lived in an illusory world, I didn’t notice anyone or anything around...” 
After moving to Moscow, Evgeniy studied in the poetry studio of the House of Pioneers. In 1949, when the poet was only 16 years old, his poems were first published in the Soviet Sport newspaper. In 1951, Yevtushenko entered the Literary Institute. M. Gorky, but did not study there for long - he was soon expelled because he defended V. Dudintsev’s novel “Not by Bread Alone.” At the age of 20, Yevtushenko became the youngest member of the USSR Writers' Union. 
All-Union fame came to him after the publication of the poetry collections “The Third Snow” and “Highway of Enthusiasts” in the mid-1950s. And in the 1960s. Yevtushenko became one of the most popular and cited authors in the country. The phrase “A poet in Russia is more than a poet” from the poem “Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station” was known to every schoolchild and became an aphorism. 
In the 1960s Yevtushenko, together with Rozhdestvensky, Akhmadulina and Okudzhava, took part in poetry evenings at the Polytechnic Museum, which became a symbol of the “thaw”. They were called the “sixties,” and Yevtushenko was one of those who provoked the beginning of a real “poetry boom” in the USSR. 
In 1991, the poet was offered to teach Russian literature at one of the universities in Oklahoma. Yevtushenko went to the USA and spent the last years of his life there, although he often came to Russia. Inspiration did not leave him until his last days: in 2011 he released a collection of poems “You Can Still Save”, in 2012 - a collection of “Happiness and Retribution”, in 2013 - a collection of “I Can’t Say Goodbye”, and in recent years For two years he dictated a new novel to his wife. 
One of the most famous poets of the sixties, Yevgeny Yevtushenko 
In recent years, the poet has been plagued by health problems: in 2013, his leg was amputated due to a developing inflammatory process; in 2015, a pacemaker was installed to normalize his heart rhythm. On March 31, 2017, the poet was hospitalized in serious condition. Details were not known; his wife stated only that it was not a routine examination. On April 1 at about 19:30 Moscow time, Yevgeny Yevtushenko died of cardiac arrest. 
On July 18, 2017, Yevgeny Yevtushenko would have turned 85 years old; this summer a festival was planned in Moscow to mark the poet’s anniversary. A few days ago he announced his desire to be buried in Peredelkino, not far from the grave of Boris Pasternak. 
The famous poet, whose poems have long been quoted
On April 1, Yevgeny Yevtushenko died. A day earlier, it became known that he was hospitalized in serious condition. At Gorky’s request, Oleg Lekmanov reminds us of the poet’s importance for Russian culture.
Early seventies. I, a little boy, play dump truck on the floor in the large room of our apartment. A large black Raikin record is spinning on an old red Leningrad record player. She is terribly funny, I know all the lines by heart. Now the record will say: “My second wife was very smart. It happened that he would ask: “Who wrote this - “A storm covers the sky with darkness...”?” And she answers: “That’s right, Yevtushenko.” Here loud, recorded laughter from the audience was heard.
Who is Yevtushenko? I never asked myself this question, because I always knew: Yevtushenko (pronounced “Petushenko” in early childhood) is a poet, he is curly-haired, tall, sits at a typewriter, a cigarette in his mouth, and writes poetry.
The first feeling when I learned about his death: how long ago and how firmly he was rooted in the lives of each of us and with what important names for the history of Russian culture of the second half of the twentieth century, and simply world post-war history, he is inextricably linked. That’s for sure - you won’t go around, you won’t forget... Khrushchev scolded him and loved him. Anna Andreevna Akhmatova sneered at him (Sergei Dovlatov: “Young Yevtushenko was introduced to Akhmatova. Yevtushenko was in a fashionable sweater and a foreign jacket. A fountain pen glittered in his breast pocket. Akhmatova asked: - Where is your Toothbrush?). He was asked to make an entry in his famous album by Korney Chukovsky (Yevtushenko wrote: “The wise super-conscripts of literature, // The gray-haired night owls of the earth, // The pages of your book are like interlinear, // Where you haven’t translated everything yet”). He was the first husband of Bella Akhmadulina. Alexander Galich and Bulat Okudzhava dedicated songs to him. Pier Paolo Pasolini was going to film him in the role of Christ, and Eldar Ryazanov - in the role of Cyrano de Bergerac... They all died, turned into a legend, into a myth, but Yevtushenko lived and continued to respond in poetry to almost every high-profile newspaper occasion, and it seemed , this will go on forever. Alas, it only seemed so. And what a pity it is that he, who attached so much importance to acquaintance and friendship with the great, did not write detailed memoirs about his meetings with them. But he deservedly enjoyed the reputation of a man who knew how and loved to find himself in in the right place at the right time.
Evgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko, of course, was not an absolute champion of taste: who among us did not cringe, looking at his stunning costumes with a spark, reading his prose, trying to watch the films he shot to the end? But he truly, passionately loved Russian literature and did a lot for both living and dead writers. How many of those who achieved such a degree of fame could boast of the same? Compiled by Yevtushenko with the help of Evgeny Vitkovsky, the anthology “Strophes of the Century” introduced first the subscribers of the Ogonyok magazine, and then the readers of the book version, to many, many domestic poets twentieth century, whose names, it would seem, have sunk into oblivion forever.
I haven’t said anything yet about the main thing - about Yevtushenko’s poems, but it was he, together with his comrades, who in the post-Stalin era returned such important and simple words, like “woman” and “love”. After several terrible years being in a state clinical death Russian literature was learning to speak again, and Yevtushenko was then among the first students. Particular mention should be made of those poems of his, which in Russia became more than just poetic texts(to paraphrase Yevtushenko himself) and were rightly perceived as an almost material weapon of the intelligentsia in the fight against inertia and evil. These are “Babi Yar”, “Stalin’s Heirs” and “Tanks Are Walking Through Prague”.
All of us, even those who do not like poetry at all, have in their memory a fair supply of Yevtushenko’s lines and stanzas, songs, but not only. “Do the Russians want war?”, “This is what’s happening to me, my old friend doesn’t walk”, “My nerves are stretched like wires between the city of “no” and the city of “yes””, “You are Evgeniy, I am Evgeniy, you are not a genius, I am not a genius”, “The bed was laid out, and you were confused”... The list of quotes can be continued for a long time, almost indefinitely. What if even Joseph Brodsky, who had a more than cool attitude towards Yevtushenko (after all, everyone remembers about “collective farms”), admitted in a conversation with Solomon Volkov that he knew “two hundred to three hundred” of his lines from memory.
It’s now difficult for me to understand about many of Yevtushenko’s poems, whether they are good or bad, but pieces of them have stuck in my consciousness forever, they have become integral part me - I know that for sure. And at least two lines by Yevtushenko still seem like very much poetry to me. high standard, I got them from mine early childhood I remember I charmed girls with them, I repeated them in my mind, shifting on guard, at a post in the army, in thirty-degree frost:
White snows are falling
As if sliding on a thread...
Here there is a failure of stress in the verb, and the strange noun “snows”, and the comparison of snowflakes with beads sliding along a thread - all this still not only worries me, but touches me almost to tears, and I look outside the window, and there... once and lies White snow, who lingered on Moscow streets until the beginning of April. Is it not in memory of the poet who sang his praises?
Farewell and forgive me, Evgeniy Alexandrovich! Life will be much more boring without you.
“No, it’s not Yevgeny Yevtushenko who left, it’s a part of your life that broke away from your life and floated into eternity.”
Text: Dmitry Shevarov
Photo: kp.ru
It was yesterday at the station. The passengers sitting in the minibus were chilled and exhausted from life - everything was as usual. We waited long and nervously for the last passenger. We waited - a thin woman with a girl of about six squeezed into the minibus. As if apologizing, she said: "Yevtushenko died..."
Everyone will remember something about Evgeniy Alexandrovich these days, and this is terribly important, because oblivion is the worst thing that is happening to us today. More quickly than ever, we forget both near and far. Yevtushenko resisted this like no one else. His “Ten Centuries of Russian Poetry” - five volumes! - evidence of the enormous work of memory of predecessors. By returning dozens, if not hundreds of forgotten names to our poetry, Evgeniy Aleksandrovich created an eternal memory for them.
When I heard the sad news from America, I immediately thought: no, it was not Yevgeny Yevtushenko who left, it was a part of your life that broke away from your life and floated into eternity.
Yevtushenko reads poetry. My classmates and I are sitting somewhere in the last rows and hanging on every word. And the whole hall seems not to breathe. I'm eighteen years old and I've never seen living poets. Stretching my neck, I try to make out the poet, but due to my myopia, his lonely figure on the stage seems to me like a wavering candle.
A chill of tenderness from your favorite poems about white snow, about an alder earring. We look at each other happily. We listen in shock to “Babi Yar” and the still unpublished poems of “In Memory”.
Sometimes it seems that the poet’s voice is about to break, but then he asks for forgiveness and pauses. A thin candle leans towards the coffee table on which there is a glass. “I wonder what’s there?” - the girls whisper. “Milk,” they also whisper from the front rows, “I’ve got a cold...”
But the main thing was later, when at eleven o’clock in the evening we found ourselves on the street. After Yevtushenko, for some reason we were unable to go home.
Let's go wander around the city. Found the most tall house, which was only then in the city. The entrances were not closed, nor were the attics. We went out onto the roof. There was no arguing or discussing anything. They just stood and looked at the fresh spring stars, each thinking about his own. Then, just as silently, they descended to the ground and said goodbye somehow seriously, as if feeling more mature for this April evening.
Of course, all this had to coincide: youth, spring, poems written as if for you alone. But this happened not only with us. Yevtushenko coincided with the youth of several generations. They grew old, and he remained twenty years old, and yesterday’s Komsomol members, who became grandmothers, came up to him for an autograph: “Zhenechka...” And the French in Paris, recognizing him on the street, rushed to hug him in Russian: “Eu-zhen! Eu-zhen!..” And the girls, like half a century ago, shouted to him from the hall: “Zhenya, read “Darling, Sleep”... And he read with all his bewitching tenderness:
Darling, sleep...
We are on the globe,
flying fiercely,
threatening to explode, -
and we need to hug
so as not to fall down,
and if you fall apart, the two of you will fall apart.
Darling, sleep...
And how can you believe that this was written half a century ago, and not last night!
Recently, the legendary Izvestia journalist Leonid Shinkarev told me how the poet was met in 2004 in the Irish town of Galway: “Rising from their seats, people chanted three Russian words: “Sputnik!”, “Ga-ga-rin!” , “Ev-tu-shen-ko!”…
Forty years earlier, in 1964, Yevtushenko read his book for the first time in Bratsk. new poem"Bratskaya HPP". An eyewitness told me: “The poet stood alone on the stage, but as soon as he began to read, it seemed as if a choir from ancient Greek times had descended onto the stage. When the story of Nyushka and her lip-blind Troshka, adopted by the brigade, was heard, a young concrete worker sitting in my row, holding a baby in her arms, finding it difficult for this reason to applaud, stood up, raised the child above her head, and it was no longer clear whether the one who stood up after her was applauding her or the poet. her hall..."
He was the only Russian poet of the twentieth century who did not need translation - at least for those who saw and heard him. When Yevgeny Yevtushenko read “White Snows Are Coming…” somewhere in Africa or Latin America, even those who did not know what snow was saw both snow and Russia.
White snow is falling...
And I will leave too.
I'm not sad about death
and I don’t expect immortality.
I don't believe in miracles
I'm not snow, I'm not a star,
and I won't do it anymore
never ever.
And I think, sinner,
Well, who was I?
that I'm hasty in life
loved more than life?
And I loved Russia
with all the blood, ridge,
its rivers are in flood
and when under the ice...
Now it was on the news: “Ice drift begins on Russian rivers...”
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