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Evgeny Yevtushenko
BRATSKAYA HPP
Poem

PRAYER BEFORE A POEM

A poet in Russia is more than just a poet.
It is destined to be born poets
only to those in whom the proud spirit of citizenship roams,
for whom there is no comfort, there is no rest.

The poet in it is the image of his century
and future ghostly prototype.
The poet brings, without falling into timidity,
the end of everything that came before it.

Can I? Culture is missing...
The grasp of prophecies does not promise ...
But the spirit of Russia hovers over me
and boldly try orders.

And, kneeling quietly,
ready for death and victory,
I humbly ask you for help
great Russian poets...

Give me, Pushkin, your melodiousness,
his loose speech
his captivating fate -
as if shalya, burn with a verb.

Give, Lermontov, your bilious look,
its contempt poison
and the cell of a closed soul,
where he breathes, hidden in silence,
unkindness of your sister -
lamp of secret goodness.

Give, Nekrasov, calming my agility,
the pain of your excised muse -
at the front entrances, at the rails
and in the open spaces of forests and fields.
Give your ugliness strength.
Give me your painful feat,
to go, dragging all of Russia,
how barge haulers go towed.

Oh, give me, block, nebula prophesy
and two leaning wings,
so that, melting the eternal riddle,
music flowed through the body.

Give, Pasternak, the shift of days,
branch confusion,
fusion of smells, shadows
with the torment of the century,
so that the word, mumbling with a garden,
blossomed and ripe
so that your candle is forever
burned in me.

Yesenin, give me tenderness for happiness
to birches and meadows, to animals and people
and to everything else on earth,
that you and I love so defenselessly

Give me, Mayakovsky,
lumpiness,
rampage,
bass,
intransigence formidable to the scum,
so that I can
cutting through time,
tell about him
fellow descendants.

PROLOGUE

For thirty me. I'm scared at night.
I will bend the sheet with my knees,
I drown my face in a pillow, I cry in shame,
that I wasted my life on trifles,
and in the morning I use it again in the same way.
If only you knew, my critics,
whose kindness is innocently in question,
how affectionate the odd articles are
in comparison with my own dressing,
it would be easier for you if at a late hour
your conscience is unjustly tormenting you.
Going through all my poems
I see: recklessly squandering,
I've been talking so much nonsense...
but you won’t burn it: it scattered around the world.
my rivals,
let's drop the flattery
and abuse deceitful honor.
Let's think about our destinies.
We all have the same
disease of the soul.
Surface is her name.
Superficiality, you are worse than blindness.
You can see, but you don't want to see.
Perhaps from illiteracy you?
Or maybe from the fear of tearing out the roots
the trees under which it grew,
without putting a stake on the shift ?!
And isn't that why we're in such a hurry
removing the outer layer only half a meter,
that, having forgotten courage, we are afraid of ourselves
the task itself - to delve into the essence of the subject?
We hurry ... Giving only a half answer,
we carry superficiality as treasures,
not from the calculation of the cold - no, no! -
but from the instinct of self-preservation.
Then comes the fading
and inability to fly, to fight,
and the feathers of our domestic wings
the pillows of the scoundrels are already stuffed ...
I rushed about ... I threw back and forth
me from someone's sobs or moans
then into the inflatable futility of one,
then into the false usefulness of feuilletons.
Someone rubbed his whole life with his shoulder,
and that was myself. I'm in passionate passion
naively trampling, fought with a hairpin,
where the sword should have been used.
My ardor was criminally infantile.
Ruthlessness was not enough
which means full of pity...
I was
as an average of wax and metal
and ruined his youth.
Let everyone enter life under this vow:
help that which should bloom,
and take revenge without forgetting about it,
everything that deserves revenge!
Fear of revenge, we will not take revenge.
The very possibility of revenge diminishes,
and self-preservation instinct
does not save us, but kills us.
Surface is a killer, not a friend
disease pretending to be healthy,
entangled in nets of seduction...
Exchanging the spirit for particulars,
we run away from generalizations.
The globe of the earth is losing strength in an empty one,
Leaving generalizations for later.
Or maybe his insecurity
and there is human destinies non-generalization
in the insight of the century, clear and simple?!
... I traveled around Russia with Galya,
somewhere to the sea in "Moskvich" in a hurry
from all sorrows...
Autumn of Russian distances
pooboch golden all tired,
rustling under the tires,
and rested behind the wheel of the soul.
Breathing steppe, birch, pine,
throwing an unthinkable array at me,
at a speed of seventy, with a whistle,
Russia flowed around our Moskvich.
Russia wanted to say something
and understood something like no one else.
She "Moskvich" pressed into her body
and pulled into the very core.
And, apparently, with some idea,
hiding its essence until the time,
I was prompted right behind Tula
turn to Yasnaya Polyana.
And here in the estate, breathing dilapidated,
we entered, children of the atomic age,
in a hurry, in nylon raincoats,
and froze, suddenly blundered.
And descendants of walkers for the truth,
we suddenly felt in that minute
all the same, the same knapsacks on the shoulders
and the same broken bare feet.
Obedient to the command of the mute,
through the foliage through the sunset,
we entered the shady alley
named "Alley of Silence".
And this golden permeability
without moving away from human nedolki,
removed the fuss, like a leper,
and, without removing, exalted the pain.
Pain, rising, became beautiful,
combining peace and passion,
and the spirit seemed to be an all-powerful force,
but a dispassionate question arose in my soul -
And is this power so omnipotent?
Have there been any changes
all those to whom such honor from us,
whose spirit is vaster than our dimensions?
Have you achieved?
Or is everything running like clockwork?
And meanwhile - the estate of that owner,
invisible, kept us in sight
and wondered around: then slipping
gray-bearded cloud in the pond,
then he heard his large gait
in the nebula of smoking hollows,
then part of the face showed in the rough bark,
carved with gorges of wrinkles.
Cosmato his eyebrows sprouted
in the dense weeds in the meadow,
and the roots on the paths stood out,
like the veins on his mighty forehead.
And, not dilapidated, - royally ancient,
making sorcery with peak noise,
powerful trees rose around,
how unreachable his thoughts are.
They strove into the clouds and bowels,
murmured louder and louder,
and the roots of their peaks grew from the sky,
going deep into the tops of the roots ...
Yes, up and down - and only at the same time!
Yes, genius - height with depth connection! ..
But how many live all the same mortal,
bustling about in the shadow of great thoughts...
So, in vain the geniuses burned
in the name of changing people?
And maybe the ideas are not obsolete -
proof of the impotence of ideas?
Which year has already passed, which,
and our purity, as in hops,
rushes to Natasha Rostova
to false experience - hang and lie!
And again and again - Tolstoy in the root -
we forget, hiding from passions,
that Vronsky is more callous than Karenin,
in his soft-hearted cowardice.
And Tolstoy himself?
shaken by himself,
he is not an example of his impotence, -
helplessly tossing about like Levin,
in the benevolent zeal of change? ..
The work of geniuses sometimes themselves
frightens with a doubtful result,
but generalizations of each of them,
like in a battle, centimeter by centimeter.
Three Greatest Names of Russia
let us be protected from fear.
They gave birth to Russia again
and they will give birth to her again and again.
When both speechless and blind
she wandered through the lashes, batozhe,
Pushkin appeared simply and transparently,
as self-realization of it.
When she tired eyes
I was looking for the source of my sorrows, -
as a comprehension of a mature consciousness,
Tolstoy came, pitifully cruel,
but - hands clasped behind the strap.
Well, when the way out was unclear to her,
and anger irreversibly ripened, -
Lenin broke out of the whirlwind, as a conclusion,
And to save her, he blew her up!
So I thought confusingly, extensively,
leaving Yasnaya Polyana long ago
and through Russia rushing on "Moskvich"
with your beloved, sleeping quietly on your shoulder.
The night thickened, only faintly turning pink
along the edge...
Lights flew in the forehead.
The harmonicas were filled.
red month
fell drunkenly behind the wattle fence.
Turning somewhere off the highway
I slowed down, laid out the seats,
and we sailed with Galya in dreams
through the obsessions of the stars - cheek to cheek ...
I dreamed of the world
without the weak and fat,
without dollars, chervonets and pesetas,
where there are no borders, where there are no false governments,
rockets and foul-smelling newspapers.
I dreamed of a world where everything is so pristine
bristling bird cherry in the dew,
filled with nightingales and thrushes,
where all nations are in brotherhood and kinship,
where there is neither slander nor abuse,
where the air is clear, like in the morning on the river,
where we live, forever immortal,
with Galya,
as we see this dream - cheek to cheek ...
But we woke up...
"Moskvich" our boldly
stood on the arable land, poked into the bushes.
I opened the shattered door,
and breathtaking beauty.
Above the furious dawn, red, rough,
with a cigarette clenched furiously in his mouth,
a steel-toothed boy drove a dump truck,
drove furiously in a furious wind.
And furiously, like a fiery nozzle,
over the black arable land, the greenery of the meadows
the sun pushed itself out
from furiously clutching haystacks.
And furiously flew around the trees,
and, galloping furiously, the stream roared,
and blue, alley and yareya,
swayed crazy from the rooks.
I wanted to rush in just as violently,
as in a rage, into life, revealing the fury of the wings ...
The world was wonderful. Should have fought
for making it even more beautiful!
And again I took in, crouching on the steering wheel,
in my insatiable eyes
Palaces of Culture.
Tea rooms.
Barracks.
District committees.
Churches.
And traffic police posts.
Factories.
Huts.
Slogans.
Birches.
Jet crack in the sky.
Shaking carts.
Silencers.
Overgrown figurines
milkmaids, pioneers, miners.
The eyes of the old women, looking iconic.
Grandmother's task.
The kids are jumbled.
Prostheses.
Oil rigs.
Heaps,
like the breasts of reclining giantesses.
The men were driving the tractor. sawed.
We walked to the checkpoint, hurrying then to the machine.
They fell into the mines. drinking beer,
placing salt on the rim.
And the women were cooking. Washed.
Latali, doing everything at the moment.
Painted. They stood in lines.
They pounded the ground. Drag cement.
It got dark again.
"Moskvich" was all dewy.
and the night was full of stars,
and Galya took out our transistor,
putting the antenna out of the window.
The antenna rested on the universe.
The transistor hissed in Galya's hands.
from there,
not ashamed before the stars,
there was a brisk lie in so many languages!
Oh, globe of the earth, do not lie and do not play!
You yourself are suffering - no more lies!
I will gladly give the afterlife paradise,
so that there is less hell on earth!
The car bounced over bumps.
(Road builders, what are you, bastards!)
It could seem that there was chaos around,
but there were "beginnings" and "ends" in it.
There was Russia
the first love
coming...
And in it, forever imperishable,
Pushkin was foaming somewhere again,
Tolstoy thickened, Lenin was born.
And, looking into the starry night, forward,
I thought in saving links
great insights are connected
and maybe only a link is missing...
Well, we are alive.
Our turn.

MONOLOGUE OF THE EGYPTIAN PYRAMID

I -
Egyptian pyramid.
I'm covered in legends.
And hacks
me
looking at
and museums
me
steal,
and scientists fiddle with magnifiers,
timidly scraping dust with tweezers,
and tourists
sweating,
crowded
to take off against the background of immortality.
Why is the old proverb
the fellahs and the birds repeat,
what everyone is afraid of
time
and it -
afraid of the pyramids!
People, tame the age-old fear!
I'll be good
I only pray:
steal,
steal,
steal my memory!
I absorb into the harsh silence
all the explosive power of the ages.
Space ship
with a roar
rock out
I
from the sands.
I sail the martian mystery
above the ground,
over people-bugs,
just some tourist hanging out,
clinging to me with suspenders.
I see through the nylon neon
states are only superficially new.
Everything to horror in the world is not new -
the same ancient Egypt -
Alas!
The same meanness in her nudity.
The same prisons
only modern ones.
The same oppression
only more hypocritical.
The same thieves
thirsty,
gossips,
hucksters...
Remake them!
Dudki!
Pyramids are not without reason skeptics.
Pyramids -
they are not stupid.
I will part the clouds with corners
and cut through
like a ghost, of them.
Come on, a sphinx called Russia,
show your mysterious face!
Again I see the familiar with my own eyes -
only snowdrifts instead of sands.
There are peasants
and there are workers
and scribes -
a lot of scribes.
There are officials
there is also an army.
There are probably
your pharaoh.
I see a banner...
Aloe!
BUT, -
I knew so many banners!
I see
new buildings are heaving,
I see
the mountains are on their hind legs.
I see
are working...
Unseen - they work!
Previously, slaves also worked ...
I hear -
rustles primitively
them
taiga called forest.
I see something...
No way, pyramid!
"Hey, who are you?"
"I am the Bratsk hydroelectric power station."
"Oh, I heard:
you are the first in the world
and in terms of power
etc.
You listen to me
pyramid.
I will tell you something.
I am an Egyptian pyramid
as a sister, I will open my soul to you.
I am washed by the rains of sand,
but not yet washed from the blood.
I am immortal
but in the thoughts of unbelief,
and inside everything screams and sobs.
I curse any immortality
if death -
its foundation!
I remember
like slaves with groans
dragged under whips and sticks,
pulling up
a hundred-ton block
along the sand
on palm skids.
A lump has risen...
But looking for a way out
they were told without any hesitation
dig hollows for skids
and lie down in these hollows.
And the slaves lay down in obedience
under the skids:
so God wanted...
The block immediately moved along the slipperiness
their crushed bodies.
The priest was...
With a wicked grin
looking over the labors of the slaves,
hair smelling of ointments,
he pulled out of his beard.
Personally, he whips
and squealed:
"Remake, nits!" -
if a hair passes
between the blocks of the pyramid.
AND -
obliquely
forehead or temple:
"Relax for a while?
A piece of bread?
Eat the sand!
Drink your juice!
To - not a hair!
So that - not a hair!
And the overseers ate
got fat
and whistled their song with lashes.

SONG OF THE OVERVIEWERS

We are overseers
we -
your legs
throne.
At the sight of us
winces
fastidiously
Pharaoh.
And what is he without us?
Without our eyes?
Without our sips?
Without our whips?
Whip -
medicine,
although she is not honey.
The foundation of the state
supervision,
supervision.
People without edification
would not be able to work.
The basis of creation
supervision,
supervision.
And the warriors, limp,
would run like a rabble.
The basis of heroism -
supervision,
supervision.
dangerous
who are thoughtful.
All those who think
to the swear
Watching Souls
more important
than over bodies.
Did you make something up?
Are you up for whining again?
Wanted freedom?
Isn't she there?
(And they don't sound too cheerful
vote:
"There is!
There is!" -
Do they have freedom
whether they want to eat!)
We -
overseers.
We are humanely rude.
We don't beat you to death
for your benefit, fools.
whips
on black
backs
cutting,
suggest:
"Honorable
Job
slave."
What about the freedom to dream?
Do you fools
freedom -
how much will fit
be silent,
What are you thinking about.
We are overseers.
With us too
sweat stream.
Slaves
you can't us
reproach
nothing.
We are watching with caution.
We are dogs
only without muzzles.
But we, too,
overseers -
slaves of other overseers.
And over the groaning slaves, -
he is a slave of Amon
overseer of all overseers,
our poor pharaoh.

But slaves are not grateful for slavery.
Irresponsible slaves,
unconscious.
They do not feel sorry for the overseers,
slaves
they do not feel sorry for the pharaoh,
slaves -
lack of self-pity.
And a groan passes through the ranks,
groan of fatigue.

SONG OF SLAVES

We are slaves... We are slaves... We are slaves...
Like the earth, our hands are rough.
Our huts are our coffins.
Our backs are hard as humps.
We are animals. We are for mowing
threshing, and also gorodby
pyramids - to exalt in order to
pharaohs haughty foreheads.
You laugh while you party
among women, guilt, boasting,
well, a slave - he carries poles
and stones pyramidal cubes.
Is there no strength to fight
to ever stand on its hind legs?
Is it really in the eyes of nakedness -
predestination of eternal destiny
repeat: "We are slaves ... We are slaves ..."?

P i r a m i d e c t i o n s :

And then the slaves rebelled
the pharaohs were paid for everything,
they were thrown at the feet of the crowds...
And what's the point of this?
I,
egyptian pyramid,
I'm telling you,
Bratsk HPP:
so many slaves killed in riots,
but I do not see something miracles.
They say,
slavery abolished...
I do not agree:
even more powerful
slavery
all class prejudices,
slavery of money
slavery of things.
Yes,
no old-fashioned chains,
but other chains on people -
chains of false politics,
churches
and paper chains of newspapers.
Here lives a little man.
Say clerk.
He collects stamps.
He has his own house in installments.
He has a wife and a daughter.
He insults the authorities in bed,
well, in the morning brings reports
bending, nods:
"Yes..."
He's free,
Bratskaya HPP!
Don't judge him harshly.
Poor little one
he is a servant of the family.
Well, here
in the presidential chair
other man,
and if,
suppose he's not even a bastard,
what good can he do?
After all, like the throne of the pharaoh,
without innovation
armchair -
in bondage at their own feet.
Well, the legs
those who support
and when they need
hold.
The President is fed up
what's above it
someone's "must!" hovers,
but it's too late to fight
in their flattery
fists are tied
like in the test.
The President snores exhaustedly:
"Well, to hell with them!
Everything is disgusting…”
Noble passions go out in him ...
Who is he?
Slave to his own power.
Think about it,
Bratskaya HPP,
in how many people
downtrodden,
intimidation.
People,
where is your vaunted progress?
People,
people,
how confused you are!
I watch with strict edges
and cracked sphinxes
behind your great construction projects,
for your great swine.
I see:
the human spirit is weak.
in man
it is forbidden
don't be fooled.
Man -
slave by nature.
Man
will never change.
Not,
I flatly refuse
waiting for something...
Straight,
open
I say it
Bratskaya HPP,
I am an Egyptian pyramid.

MONOLOGUE OF THE BRATSKAYA HEP

Pyramid,
I am the daughter of Russia
land you don't understand.
She was baptized with whips from childhood,
tore to shreds,
burned.
Her soul was trampled, trampled,
striking blow after blow,
Pechenegs,
Varangians,
Tatars
and their -
worse than the Tatars.
And the feathers of the ravens shone,
the past grew over the bones,
and there was a belief in the world
about her great patience.
The patience of Russia is glorified.
It has grown to heroism.
She was kneaded on blood like clay,
well, she endured, and that's all.
And a barge hauler, with a shoulder rubbed with a strap,
and the plowman who fell in the steppe,
she whispered with motherly caress
eternal: "Be patient, son, be patient ..."
I can understand how so many years Russia
endured hunger and cold,
and cruel wars, inhuman torments,
and the burden of hard work,
and parasites, deceitful to the limit,
and various deceitful lies,
but I can’t comprehend: how I endured
Is she her own patience?
There is a feeble, miserable patience.
In it is the complete clogging of nature,
there is slavish obedience, dullness in it ...
Russia is not like that at all.
Her patience is the courage of a prophet,
who is wisely patient.
She endured everything...
But only before the deadline
like a mine.
And then
happened
explosion!

P r w a l a p i r a m i d a:

I'm against
any explosions...
I saw!
prickly,
chop,
but is it a lot of good?
Only blood is shed in vain!

Bratsk HPP continues:

In vain?
I call on the memory of the past,
repeating to myself
prophetic lines:
"... The case is solid,
when blood flows under him.
And over the faucets
flyovers,
pyramid,
to you through the midge
lift with excavator bucket
in taverns and boyars in Moscow.
Take a look:
in bucket over teeth
golden
domes stick out.
What happened there?
What's frowning
did the bells ring?

BRATSKAYA HPP

Poem

PRAYER BEFORE A POEM

A poet in Russia is more than a poet.

It is destined to be born poets

only to those in whom the proud spirit of citizenship roams,

for whom there is no comfort, there is no rest.

The poet in it is the image of his century

and future ghostly prototype.

The poet brings, without falling into timidity,

the end of everything that came before it.

Can I? Culture is missing...

The grasp of prophecies does not promise ...

But the spirit of Russia hovers over me

and boldly try orders.

And, kneeling quietly,

ready for death and victory,

I humbly ask you for help

great Russian poets...

Give me, Pushkin, your melodiousness,

his loose speech

his captivating fate -

as if shalya, burn with a verb.

Give, Lermontov, your bilious look,

its contempt poison

and the cell of a closed soul,

where he breathes, hidden in silence,

unkindness of your sister -

lamp of secret goodness.

Give, Nekrasov, calming my agility,

the pain of your excised muse -

at the front entrances, at the rails

and in the open spaces of forests and fields.

Give your ugliness strength.

Give me your painful feat,

to go, dragging all of Russia,

how barge haulers go towed.

Oh, give me, block, nebula prophesy

and two leaning wings,

so that, melting the eternal riddle,

music flowed through the body.

Give, Pasternak, the shift of days,

branch confusion,

fusion of smells, shadows

with the torment of the century,

so that the word, mumbling with a garden,

blossomed and ripe

so that your candle is forever

burned in me.

Yesenin, give me tenderness for happiness

to birches and meadows, to animals and people

and to everything else on earth,

that you and I love so defenselessly

Give me, Mayakovsky,

lumpiness,

intransigence formidable to the scum,

so that I can

cutting through time,

tell about him

fellow descendants.

PROLOGUE

For thirty me. I'm scared at night.

I will bend the sheet with my knees,

I drown my face in a pillow, I cry in shame,

that I wasted my life on trifles,

and in the morning I use it again in the same way.

If only you knew, my critics,

whose kindness is innocently in question,

how affectionate the odd articles are

in comparison with my own dressing,

it would be easier for you if at a late hour

your conscience is unjustly tormenting you.

Going through all my poems

I see: recklessly squandering,

I've been talking so much nonsense...

but you won’t burn it: it scattered around the world.

my rivals,

let's drop the flattery

and abuse deceitful honor.

Let's think about our destinies.

We all have the same

disease of the soul.

Surface is her name.

Superficiality, you are worse than blindness.

You can see, but you don't want to see.

Perhaps from illiteracy you?

Or maybe from the fear of tearing out the roots

the trees under which it grew,

without putting a stake on the shift ?!

And isn't that why we're in such a hurry

removing the outer layer only half a meter,

that, having forgotten courage, we are afraid of ourselves

the very task - to delve into the essence of the subject?

We hurry ... Giving only a half answer,

we carry superficiality as treasures,

not at the rate of cold, - no, no! -

but from the instinct of self-preservation.

Then comes the fading

and inability to fly, to fight,

and the feathers of our domestic wings

the pillows of the scoundrels are already stuffed ...

I rushed about ... I threw back and forth

me from someone's sobs or moans

then into the inflatable futility of one,

then into the false usefulness of feuilletons.

Someone rubbed his whole life with his shoulder,

and that was myself. I'm in passionate passion

naively trampling, fought with a hairpin,

where the sword should have been used.

My ardor was criminally infantile.

Ruthlessness was not enough

which means full of pity...

as an average of wax and metal

and ruined his youth.

Let everyone enter life under this vow:

help that which should bloom,

and take revenge without forgetting about it,

everything that deserves revenge!

Fear of revenge, we will not take revenge.

The very possibility of revenge diminishes,

and self-preservation instinct

does not save us, but kills us.

Surface is a killer, not a friend

disease pretending to be healthy,

entangled in nets of seduction...

Exchanging the spirit for particulars,

we run away from generalizations.

The globe of the earth is losing strength in an empty one,

Leaving generalizations for later.

Or maybe his insecurity

and there is human destinies non-generalization

in the insight of the century, clear and simple?!

I traveled around Russia with Galya,

somewhere to the sea in "Moskvich" in a hurry

from all sorrows...

Autumn of Russian distances

pooboch golden all tired,

rustling under the tires,

and rested behind the wheel of the soul.

Breathing steppe, birch, pine,

throwing an unthinkable array at me,

at a speed of seventy, with a whistle,

Russia flowed around our Moskvich.

Russia wanted to say something

and understood something like no one else.

She "Moskvich" pressed into her body

and pulled into the very core.

And, apparently, with some idea,

hiding its essence until the time,

I was prompted right behind Tula

turn to Yasnaya Polyana.

And here in the estate, breathing dilapidated,

we entered, children of the atomic age,

in a hurry, in nylon raincoats,

and froze, suddenly blundered.

And descendants of walkers for the truth,

we suddenly felt in that minute

all the same, the same knapsacks on the shoulders

and the same broken bare feet.

Obedient to the command of the mute,

through the foliage through the sunset,

we entered the shady alley

named "Alley of Silence".

And this golden permeability

without moving away from human nedolki,

removed the fuss, like a leper,

and, without removing, exalted the pain.

Pain, rising, became beautiful,

combining peace and passion,

and the spirit seemed to be an all-powerful force,

but a dispassionate question arose in my soul -

And is this power so omnipotent?

Have there been any changes

all those to whom such honor from us,

whose spirit is vaster than our dimensions?

Have you achieved?

Or is everything running like clockwork?

And meanwhile - the estate of that owner,

invisible, kept us in sight

and wondered around: then slipping

gray-bearded cloud in the pond,

then he heard his large gait

in the nebula of smoking hollows,

then part of the face showed in the rough bark,

carved with gorges of wrinkles.

Cosmato his eyebrows sprouted

in the dense weeds in the meadow,

and the roots on the paths stood out,

like the veins on his mighty forehead.

And, not dilapidated, - royally ancient,

making sorcery with peak noise,

powerful trees rose around,

how unreachable his thoughts are.

They strove into the clouds and bowels,

murmured louder and louder,

and the roots of their peaks grew from the sky,

going deep into the tops of the roots ...

Yes, up and down - and only at the same time!

Yes, genius - height with depth connection! ..

But how many live all the same mortal,

bustling about in the shadow of great thoughts...

So, in vain the geniuses burned

in the name of changing people?

Give me, Pushkin, your melodiousness and your ability, as if shalya, to burn with a verb. Give me, Lermontov, your bilious glance. Give me, Nekrasov, the pain of your slashed muse, give me the strength of your inelegance. Give me, Blok, your prophetic nebula. Give, Pasternak, that your candle burns in me forever. Yesenin, give me tenderness for happiness. Give me, Mayakovsky, a formidable intransigence, so that I, hacking through time, can tell my comrades-descendants about him.

Prologue

I'm over thirty. At night I cry that I wasted my life on trifles. We all have one disease of the soul - superficiality. We give half-answers to everything, and the forces are fading ...

Together with Galya, we traveled across Russia to the sea in the autumn and after Tula we turned to Yasnaya Polyana. There we realized that genius is the connection of height with depth. Three men of genius gave birth to Russia anew and will give birth to it more than once: Pushkin, Tolstoy and Lenin.

We drove again, spent the night in the car, and I thought that in the chain of great insights, perhaps only a link was missing. Well, well, it's our turn.

Egyptian pyramid monologue

I beg: people, steal my memory! I see that everything in the world is not new, everything exactly repeats Ancient Egypt. The same meanness, the same prisons, the same oppression, the same thieves, gossips, traders...

And what is the face of the new sphinx called Russia? I see peasants, workers, there are also scribes - there are a lot of them. Is this a pyramid?

I, the pyramid, will tell you something. I saw slaves: they worked, then they rebelled, then they were humbled ... What good is it? Slavery has not been abolished: the slavery of prejudices, money, things still exists. There is no progress. Man is a slave by nature and will never change.

Monologue of the Bratsk HPP

The patience of Russia is the courage of a prophet. She suffered - and then exploded. Here I am lifting Moscow to you with a bucket of an excavator. Look, something happened there.

The execution of Stenka Razin

All the inhabitants of the city - and the thief, and the king, and the noblewoman with the boyarch, and the merchant, and buffoons - rush to the execution of Stenka Razin. Stenka rides on a cart and thinks that he wanted the people to do well, but something let him down, maybe illiteracy?

The executioner raises an ax blue as the Volga, and Stenka sees in its blade how FACES sprout from the faceless crowd. His head rolls, croaking "Not in vain ...", and laughs at the king.

Bratsk HPP continues

And now, pyramid, I'll show you something else.

Decembrists

They were still boys, but the ringing of spurs did not drown out someone's moans for them. And the boys angrily fumbled for their swords. The essence of a patriot is to rise in the name of freedom.

Petrashevtsy

On the Semyonovsky parade ground, it smells like Senate Square: the Petrashevites are being executed. Pull hoods over eyes. But one of the executed through the hood sees all of Russia: how Rogozhin rampages through it, Myshkin rushes about, Alyosha Karamazov wanders. But the executioners see nothing of the sort.

Chernyshevsky

When Chernyshevsky stood at the pillory, he could see all of Russia from the scaffold, like a huge “What is to be done?” Someone's fragile hand threw him a flower from the crowd. And he thought: the time will come, and this same hand will throw a bomb.

Fair in Simbirsk

Goods flash in the hands of the clerks, the bailiff observes the order. Ikaya, the caviar god rolls. And the woman sold her potatoes, grabbed the pervach and fell, drunk, into the mud. Everyone laughs and points their fingers at her, but some clear-headed schoolboy picks her up and leads her away.

Russia is not a drunken woman, she was not born for slavery, and she will not be trampled into the mud.

The Bratsk hydroelectric power station refers to the pyramid

The fundamental principle of revolutions is kindness. The Provisional Government is still feasting in Zimny. But now the Aurora is already unfolding, now the palace has been taken. Look at history - Lenin is there!

The pyramid replies that Lenin is an idealist. Only cynicism does not deceive. People are slaves. It's alphabetical.

But the Bratsk hydroelectric power station replies that it will show a different alphabet - the alphabet of the revolution. Here is the teacher Elkina at the front in the nineteenth teaches the Red Army to read and write. Here the orphan Sonya, having escaped Zybkov's fist, comes to Magnitogorsk and becomes a red digger. She has a patched padded jacket, tattered supports, but together with their beloved Petka they put

The concrete of socialism

The Bratsk hydroelectric power station roars over eternity: “Communists will never be slaves!” And, thinking, the Egyptian pyramid disappears.

First echelon

Ah, the Trans-Siberian highway! Do you remember how the wagons with bars flew over you? There were a lot of scary things, but don't worry about it. Now there is an inscription on the cars: “The Bratsk hydroelectric power station is coming!” A girl is coming from Sretenka: in the first year, her pigtails will freeze to the cot, but she will stand like everyone else.

The Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Plant will be put into operation, and Alyosha Marchuk will be in New York answering questions about it.

Frying

A grandmother is walking through the taiga, and she has flowers in her hands. Previously, prisoners lived in this camp, and now - the builders of the dam. Neighboring residents bring them some sheets, some shanezhki. But the grandmother carries a bouquet, cries, baptizes excavators and builders ...

Nyushka

I am a concrete worker, Nyushka Burtova. I was raised and brought up by the village of Velikaya Mud, because I was left an orphan, then I was a housekeeper, worked as a dishwasher. The people around me lied and stole, but while working in the restaurant car, I got to know the real Russia... Finally, I got to the construction of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station. She became a concrete worker, received social weight. Fell in love with a proud Muscovite. When a new life woke up in me, that Muscovite did not recognize paternity. An unfinished dam prevented me from committing suicide. A son, Trofim, was born and became a builder's son, just as I was a village daughter. We were together with him at the opening of the dam. So let the grandchildren remember that they got the light from Ilyich and a little from me.

Bolshevik

I am a hydraulic engineer Kartsev. When I was young, I raved about the world fire and cut down the enemies of the commune. Then he went to the labor faculty. He built a dam in Uzbekistan. And he couldn't understand what was going on. The country seemed to have two lives. In one - Magnitka, Chkalov, in the other - arrests. I was arrested in Tashkent, and when they tortured me, I croaked: “I am a Bolshevik!” Remaining an "enemy of the people", I built hydroelectric power stations in the Caucasus and on the Volga, and finally the 20th Congress returned my party card to me. Then I, a Bolshevik, went to build a hydroelectric power station in Bratsk. I will tell our young generation: there is no place in the commune for scoundrels.

Shadows of our loved ones

In Hellas there was a custom: when starting to build a house, the first stone was laid in the shadow of the beloved woman. I do not know in whose shadow the first stone was laid in Bratsk, but when I peer into the dam, I see in it the shadows of your, builders, loved ones. And I put the first line of this poem in the shadow of my beloved, as if in the shadow of conscience.

Mayakovsky

Standing at the foot of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station, I immediately thought of Mayakovsky: he seemed to have resurrected in her guise. He stands like a dam across untruth and teaches us to stand for the cause of the revolution.

Night of Poetry

On the Brotherly Sea, we read poetry, sang a song about commissars. And the commissars stood before me. And I heard how in the meaningful grandeur of the hydroelectric power station thunders over the false grandeur of the pyramids. In the Bratsk hydroelectric power station, the maternal image of Russia was revealed to me. There are still many slaves on earth, but if love fights and does not contemplate, then hatred is powerless. There is no fate cleaner and more sublime - to give your whole life so that all people on earth can say: "We are not slaves."

"BRATSKAYA HPP"- a poem by E.A. Yevtushenko. Written in 1963-1965. on impressions from trips around Siberia, including the construction of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station; published in the journal "Youth" in 1965. When published as a separate book (1967), the author did not include a chapter on Khalturin.

The poet "wanted to express a sense of connection between modernity and history, a sense of connection between the individual and society, a sense of connection between those historical processes that take place in various countries and even in different time periods."

The poem opens with a "Prayer" addressed to the seven greatest poets of Russia (including Pasternak, which sounded very bold in 1965); a correspondingly stylized stanza is dedicated to each (for example: “Yesenin, give tenderness to me for happiness ...”). A special role is assigned to Mayakovsky: an appeal to him - the code of "Prayer", an entire chapter is named after him. Yevtushenko sees in his idol the embodiment of the poet's eternal struggle with "stupidity, hypocrisy, vulgarity." "Prayer" develops the technique of six epigraphs from the poets of the 20th century to the hitherto completely unpublished poem "Asia" by N.I. Glazkov, who later spoke of the "Bratskaya HPP" as graphomania.

The Prologue contains reflections on the civic tasks of the artist: “The world was beautiful. We had to fight to make it even more beautiful.” The plot is based on a comparison of the HPP with the Egyptian Pyramid: both structures enter into a dialogue about the meaning of historical development. The pyramid expresses skepticism, hydroelectric power station - civil optimism. This plot move creates not only a symbolic plan, but also a pictorial characteristic of the poem. The history of Russia is shown in six chapters devoted to revolutionary figures from Razin to the young Lenin; four "post-revolutionary" chapters express the concept of the revolution as the beginning of the creation of a beautiful new world, one of the symbols of which is the construction of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station. The best chapters are portraits of the dam builders; hydrobuilder Kartsev, a Bolshevik who suffered during the years of repression; “village daughter” Nyushka, a witness of hunger in her homeland and unrighteous satiety among the party arbiters of “telephone law”; "light controller" Izya Kramer, with whose image the tragic fate of the Jews enters the poem. The author is extremely close to his heroes, he knows how to speak on their behalf through their lips. The next seven chapters are a cycle of lyrical poems about the connection of man with the people and history. The last chapter, "The Night of Poetry", depicts the reading of poetry and singing around the fire - a cultural and everyday sign of the time, in which, according to the author, the mutual involvement of the people and art was expressed. The performance by the heroes of Okudzhava's "Sentimental March" with the quote: "I will still fall on that one, on that one civilian," includes a chapter on the theme of the continuity of revolutionary traditions, understood as goodness and historical justice.

Criticism noted the civic consciousness of thought, the penetration into folk life, the creative renewal of the genre of the poem. The rapprochement of everyday colloquial speech with artistic speech, the creation of new speech formations (Mayakovsky's "lumpyness") turned out to be fruitful.

The resonance of the poem was unusually great. The poem was nominated for the Lenin Prize, but did not receive it. Officially, critics appealed to aesthetic miscalculations: carelessness of the composition, eclecticism, rhetoric (the parodist A. Ivanov called the poem "a vinaigrette of beatniks, Cheops and citizenship"). The real reason for the attacks was the anti-Stalinist orientation of the work, in which the censorship crossed out 593 lines. Around the mid 70's. the poet did not republish this work in full text, including, however, individual chapters of it in new poetry collections, and said that historical material turned out to be an unbearable burden for him.

One of the best chapters of the poem, "The Execution of Stenka Razin", inspired D. D. Shostakovich to create the vocal-symphonic poem of the same name (1964)

Lit.: Makarov A. Reflections on the poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko // Banner, 1965, No. 10; Lobanov M.“The grasp of prophecies does not promise ...” // Young Guard, 1965, No. 9; Nikulkov A.V. A book about poets. Novosibirsk, 1972.

Evgeny Alexandrovich Evtushenko

"Bratskaya HPP"

Prayer in front of the dam

Give me, Pushkin, your melodiousness and your ability, as if shalya, to burn with a verb. Give me, Lermontov, your bilious glance. Give me, Nekrasov, the pain of your slashed muse, give me the strength of your inelegance. Give me, Blok, your prophetic nebula. Give, Pasternak, that your candle burns in me forever. Yesenin, give me tenderness for happiness. Give me, Mayakovsky, a formidable intransigence, so that I, hacking through time, can tell my comrades-descendants about him.

Prologue

I'm over thirty. At night I cry that I wasted my life on trifles. We all have one disease of the soul - superficiality. We give half-answers to everything, and the forces fade away ...

Together with Galya, we traveled across Russia to the sea in the autumn and after Tula we turned to Yasnaya Polyana. There we realized that genius is the connection of height with depth. Three men of genius gave birth to Russia anew and will give birth to it more than once: Pushkin, Tolstoy and Lenin.

We drove again, spent the night in the car, and I thought that in the chain of great insights, perhaps only a link was missing. Well then, it's our turn.

Egyptian pyramid monologue

I beg: people, steal my memory! I see that everything in the world is not new, everything exactly repeats Ancient Egypt. The same meanness, the same prisons, the same oppression, the same thieves, gossips, traders...

And what is the face of the new sphinx called Russia? I see peasants, workers, there are also scribes - there are a lot of them. Is this a pyramid?

I, the pyramid, will tell you something. I saw slaves: they worked, then they rebelled, then they were humbled ... What good is it? Slavery has not been abolished: the slavery of prejudices, money, things still exists. There is no progress. Man is a slave by nature and will never change.

Monologue of the Bratsk HPP

The patience of Russia is the courage of a prophet. She suffered - and then exploded. Here I am lifting Moscow to you with a bucket of an excavator. Look, something happened there.

The execution of Stenka Razin

All the inhabitants of the city - and the thief, and the king, and the noblewoman with the boyarch, and the merchant, and buffoons - rush to the execution of Stenka Razin. Stenka rides on a cart and thinks that he wanted the people to do well, but something let him down, maybe illiteracy?

The executioner raises an ax blue as the Volga, and Stenka sees in its blade how FACES sprout from the faceless crowd. His head rolls, croaking "Not in vain ...", and laughs at the king.

Bratsk HPP continues

And now, pyramid, I'll show you something else.

Decembrists

They were still boys, but the ringing of spurs did not drown out someone's moans for them. And the boys angrily fumbled for their swords. The essence of a patriot is to rise in the name of freedom.

Petrashevtsy

On the Semyonovsky parade ground, it smells like Senate Square: the Petrashevites are being executed. Pull hoods over eyes. But one of the executed through the hood sees all of Russia: how Rogozhin rampages through it, Myshkin rushes about, Alyosha Karamazov wanders. But the executioners see nothing of the sort.

Chernyshevsky

When Chernyshevsky stood at the pillory, he could see all of Russia from the scaffold, like a huge “What is to be done?” Someone's fragile hand threw him a flower from the crowd. And he thought: the time will come, and this same hand will throw a bomb.

Fair in Simbirsk

Goods flash in the hands of the clerks, the bailiff observes the order. Ikaya, the caviar god rolls. And the woman sold her potatoes, grabbed the pervach and fell, drunk, into the mud. Everyone laughs and points their fingers at her, but some clear-headed schoolboy picks her up and leads her away.

Russia is not a drunken woman, she was not born for slavery, and she will not be trampled into the mud.

The Bratsk hydroelectric power station refers to the pyramid

The fundamental principle of revolutions is kindness. The Provisional Government is still feasting in Zimny. But now the Aurora is already unfolding, now the palace has been taken. Look at history - Lenin is there!

The pyramid replies that Lenin is an idealist. Only cynicism does not deceive. People are slaves. It's alphabetical.

But the Bratsk hydroelectric power station replies that it will show a different alphabet - the alphabet of the revolution. Here is the teacher Elkina at the front in the nineteenth teaches the Red Army to read and write. Here the orphan Sonya, having escaped Zybkov's fist, comes to Magnitogorsk and becomes a red digger. She has a patched padded jacket, tattered supports, but together with their beloved Petka they put

The concrete of socialism

The Bratsk hydroelectric power station roars over eternity: “Communists will never be slaves!” And, thinking, the Egyptian pyramid disappears.

First echelon

Ah, the Trans-Siberian highway! Do you remember how the wagons with bars flew over you? There were a lot of scary things, but don't worry about it. Now there is an inscription on the cars: “The Bratsk hydroelectric power station is coming!” A girl is coming from Sretenka: in the first year, her pigtails will freeze to the cot, but she will stand like everyone else.

The Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Plant will be put into operation, and Alyosha Marchuk will be in New York answering questions about it.

Frying

A grandmother is walking through the taiga, and she has flowers in her hands. Previously, prisoners lived in this camp, and now they are the builders of the dam. Neighboring residents bring them some sheets, some shanezhki. But the grandmother carries a bouquet, cries, baptizes excavators and builders ...

Nyushka

I am a concrete worker, Nyushka Burtova. I was raised and brought up by the village of Velikaya Mud, because I was left an orphan, then I was a housekeeper, worked as a dishwasher. The people around me lied and stole, but while working in the dining car, I got to know the real Russia… Finally, I got to the construction of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station. She became a concrete worker, received social weight. Fell in love with a proud Muscovite. When a new life woke up in me, that Muscovite did not recognize paternity. An unfinished dam prevented me from committing suicide. A son, Trofim, was born and became a builder's son, just as I was a village daughter. We were together with him at the opening of the dam. So let the grandchildren remember that they got the light from Ilyich and a little from me.

Bolshevik

I am a hydraulic engineer Kartsev. When I was young, I raved about the world fire and cut down the enemies of the commune. Then he went to the labor faculty. He built a dam in Uzbekistan. And he couldn't understand what was going on. The country seemed to have two lives. In one - Magnitka, Chkalov, in the other - arrests. I was arrested in Tashkent, and when they tortured me, I croaked: “I am a Bolshevik!” Remaining an "enemy of the people", I built hydroelectric power stations in the Caucasus and on the Volga, and finally the 20th Congress returned my party card to me. Then I, a Bolshevik, went to build a hydroelectric power station in Bratsk. I will tell our young generation: there is no place in the commune for scoundrels.

Shadows of our loved ones

In Hellas there was a custom: when starting to build a house, the first stone was laid in the shadow of the beloved woman. I do not know in whose shadow the first stone was laid in Bratsk, but when I peer into the dam, I see in it the shadows of your, builders, loved ones. And I put the first line of this poem in the shadow of my beloved, as if in the shadow of conscience.

Mayakovsky

Standing at the foot of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station, I immediately thought of Mayakovsky: he seemed to have resurrected in her guise. He stands like a dam across untruth and teaches us to stand for the cause of the revolution.

Night of Poetry

On the Brotherly Sea, we read poetry, sang a song about commissars. And the commissars stood before me. And I heard how in the meaningful grandeur of the hydroelectric power station thunders over the false grandeur of the pyramids. In the Bratsk hydroelectric power station, the maternal image of Russia was revealed to me. There are still many slaves on earth, but if love fights and does not contemplate, then hatred is powerless. There is no fate cleaner and more sublime - to give your whole life so that all people on earth can say: "We are not slaves."

The suffering hero, singing the beauty of the words of the Russian poet, turns to them for help. This kind of prayer is directed to the image of Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Blok, Pasternak, Yesenin and Mayakovsky.

The author is over thirty years old. He is dissatisfied with his life. He believes that there is an understatement in his fate, but time takes strength over the years. With his girlfriend Galya, he understands that there is a meaning of genius - this is the connection of height with depth. And he truly considers Pushkin, Tolstoy and Lenin as representatives of high character in Russia.

With a feeling of annoyance and resentment, the hero speaks about his country. He compares the historical events of the past and understands that there is nothing new in the world, that the life of the people repeats itself. And Mother Russia repeats the mistakes of Ancient Egypt. In his reasoning, he gives her the name of the new sphinx. People, peasants still remained slaves, and this is their cruel fate. The dialogue is between the Bratsk hydroelectric power station and the Egyptian pyramid.

Further events unfold around the execution of Stenka Razin. Everyone rushes to watch the cruel spectacle. And the punished Stenka in his thoughts blames himself for illiteracy, which was the reason for his failure. The last words of the executed were mocking words over the Russian Tsar: "Not in vain ...".

One of the heroes of the story are young Decembrists. These children are already ready to fight the enemy and defend the rights of a free peasant-patriot. Next come the punishment and execution of the Petrashevites. Semyonovsky parade ground becomes the place of massacre. Through the hood, one of the executioners sees the raging Rogozhin, Myshkin, Alyosha Karamazov. All of Russia appears before his eyes. And the executioners do not see this.

Chernyshevsky, standing at the pillory, looked at his native country as a defenseless and hopeless land. Someone from the crowd threw him a flower, and he realized that the time would come and the people would rise up against injustice and dishonor.

The story has its continuation at the fair in Simbirsk. The strength of the Russian spirit is reflected on the example of a drunken woman who fell into the mud, but was raised by a clear-headed high school student. The Bratsk hydroelectric power station is engaged in a dialogue and dispute with the pyramid, presented in the image of the tsarist empire. The revolution begins by calling people to kindness and sympathy.

People are not slaves! This is understood even by children who strive for education and literacy. The Egyptian pyramid disappears under the slogan of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station: “Communists will never be slaves!”. The story of Nyushka strikes with the breadth of her soul. In the image of this girl, the features and fates of all Russian women are revealed. Nyushka Burtova is a simple orphan concrete worker. Many difficult trials fell on her: she worked as a dishwasher and a housekeeper. People often offended her. Then she went to the construction site at the Bratsk hydroelectric power station. And here she felt herself necessary for the state.

People are capable of building a new life, a new Russia. They no longer want to be depressed and humiliated. They are ready to fight for justice and a happy future for their children. Step by step, stone by stone - gradually, but people will prove that they are not free citizens of their state.