Yevtushenko is personal. The youngest member of the Writers' Union: biography of the legendary Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Positions held by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Once, while visiting Bella Akhmadulina, the tipsy Vasily Shukshin began to ridicule Yevtushenko: they say, what is he - a Siberian who grew up at Zima station, wears a bow tie, like the last dude! .. Eugene did not hesitate, answered in tone: tarpaulin boots - not foppery? .. ”The altercation ended with the poet agreeing to take off the“ butterfly ”on the condition that the writer remove his tarpaulins. The result of this story was the poem "Bow Tie ..."
All his life, Yevtushenko dressed unusually, preferring colorful, brightly colored jackets, shirts and ties. According to Yevgeny Aleksandrovich, such an addiction came from the Siberian childhood of the war years - as a contrast to the black quilted jackets with numbers on their backs, in which the gloomy prisoners were dressed, walking in endless columns to the prison camps, and the dusty-earthy overcoats of the Vokhrovites accompanying them ...
Photo: Anatoly Lomokhov
2. At the Zima station of the Irkutsk region, June 18, 1932, the future poet was born
From his father's side, he has Latvian, German and Belarusian roots, from his mother - Polish and Ukrainian. Father Alexander Gangnus worked as a hydrogeologist, his developments were used in the construction of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station. Mother Zinaida Ermolaevna is an actress by her second profession. Without finishing her studies at the Geological Prospecting Institute, she entered the Music College. MM. Ippolitova-Ivanov, after which she became a soloist of the Moscow Theater. K.S. Stanislavsky.
In 1944, Eugene's parents divorced - his father had another woman, but his communication with his son did not stop. Being himself an amateur poet, he gave the teenager a brilliant literary education.
3. At the very beginning of the war, parents sent 9-year-old Zhenya to be evacuated to their grandmothers
The boy traveled to the Irkutsk region alone. The journey took four and a half months. He rode, as he had to, mainly on the roofs of train cars, tied with a belt to the ventilation hatch. It has been bombed many times. However, the most terrible test was hunger. He earned money for a crust of bread and a mug of boiling water by reading poetry on the platforms. At one of the stops in the Urals, I went to the market, where aunts were selling freshly boiled potatoes. Fascinated by the aroma, he picked up one potato and began to sniff. Noticing this, the traders attacked the hungry boy and began to beat him. Broke ribs. He escaped from the angry speculators by a miracle - the homeless children recaptured ...
Yevtushenko Evgeny with his mother Zinaida Ermolaevna (1993). Photo: Nikolay Malyshev/TASS
4. “I stopped drinking vodka at 19”
In the Abkhazian village of Gulripsh, where Yevtushenko had his own house, he was considered a noble winemaker. At one time, rumors spread about the poet's addiction to alcohol. False. “I stopped drinking vodka at the age of 19. the poet said. - And I drank it from the age of 12 ... ”This is when he worked at a factory that produced grenades during the war years. In dank Siberia, even children were allowed to drink - so that they would not freeze ... Yevtushenko developed his own philosophy regarding alcohol consumption. He believed that you can drink only in cases where the mood is good. Because this process enhances exactly the state in which a person is currently located - whether it be depression or joy ...
5. The future poet composed the first poems at the age of 5:
“Why such a cold, why do I breathe with difficulty?
Because Aunt Puddle became a fat Uncle Ice ... "
From childhood, he began to compile his own dictionary of rhymes, which, as it seemed to the boy, did not yet exist in poetry. There were about 10 thousand of them. Alas, over the years, the notebook with these notes was lost ...
Songs were written to Yevtushenko’s poems that have long become popular: “The river runs, it melts in the fog ...”, “Do the Russians want wars”, “Waltz about the waltz”, “Ferris wheel”, “And it's snowing ...”, “Your traces”, "Don't rush", "God forbid..."
In addition to Russian, Yevgeny Yevtushenko was fluent in four languages: English, French, Italian and Spanish.
6. In 1991, Evgeny Aleksandrovich left for America with his family.
He taught Russian poetry and Russian cinema at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma and at Queens College in New York.
By the way, Evgeny Alexandrovich received a diploma of higher education only in 2001. The fact is that shortly before graduating from the Literary Institute. A. M. Gorky, a fifth-year student Yevtushenko received disciplinary sanctions for public support of Dudintsev’s officially condemned novel “Not by Bread Alone”, after which he was expelled from the university.
Petrozavodsk. Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko with his wife Maria and sons (seven-year-old Dima and five-year-old Zhenya) visiting mother-in-law Ghana Nikolaevna Novikova. (1994). Photo by Semyon Meisterman/TASS
7. In 1963, the poet was nominated for the Nobel Prize for the poem "Babi Yar"
In the USSR, for the same poems, which raised the topic of the Holocaust, which was taboo in the USSR, he was accused of anti-patriotism. Miraculously published in Literaturnaya Gazeta, it had the effect of a bombshell. All copies of that issue were instantly sold out. But the scandal flared up serious. And the editor-in-chief of Literaturka, Valery Kosolapov, who decided to publish it, soon lost his post ... Impressed by Babi Yar, Dmitry Shostakovich composed his famous 13th symphony. Which, being performed once, was immediately removed from the repertoire ...
8. Officially, Yevtushenko was married four times.
The first legal wife was Bella Akhmadulina. They lived together for only three years, and all this time the husband was desperately jealous of his beautiful wife for her countless admirers. The stormy quarrels of the spouses were replaced by no less stormy reconciliations ... Passionate love ended due to Bella's pregnancy - the young poet was not ready for the birth of a child and forced his wife to have an abortion. For which later, bitterly repenting, he blamed himself for the rest of his life.
With Voznesensky and Akhmadulina (1984). Photo: Global Look Press
With his second wife, Galina Sokol-Lukonina, Eugene spent 17 years in marriage. They knew each other long before the divorce from Akhmadullina, but got together only after both of their marriages cracked at the seams. After seven years of marriage, the couple took from the orphanage and adopted a baby - the boy Petya (1967), whose godmother was Galina Volchek. He became an artist.
According to the stories of relatives, the marriage broke up due to the numerous novels of Eugene on the side. After the divorce, the husband and wife maintained friendly relations. And the father never left his adopted son with his attention: he paid for his education in America, provided him with an apartment ... However, Peter, especially after the death of his mother, developed an alcohol addiction. Two years ago, he died of sudden cardiac arrest in a psychiatric hospital, where he spent six months due to mental illness.
For the third time, Yevtushenko married an Irish woman, Jan Butler. She worked in a Soviet publishing house, translated Russian literature and was an ardent admirer of the poet ... This marriage, which lasted eight years, gave Yevtushenko two sons: Alexander (1979) and Anton (1981). Both were born and live in London. The first-born works as a journalist for the Air Force. The second son is disabled. Anton was diagnosed with a rare incurable disease.
Evgeny Yevtushenko with his wife Jan (Jan Butler) Moscow (January 22, 1979). Photo: East News
From 1987 until the last day, the life of Evgeny Alexandrovich was connected with Maria Novikova (married - Yevtushenko). They were separated by 30 years of age. We met when Yevtushenko was filing a divorce from Can. It so happened that young Masha, a graduate of a medical school, approached the legendary poet to ask for an autograph for her mother. Five months later they got married.
Unable to get a job in America in the medical specialty, Maria received another education - philology, and devoted herself to teaching. Teaches Russian language and literature to college students.
In this marital union, Yevgeny Yevtushenko also had two sons: Yevgeny (1989) and Dmitry (1990). Both write poetry and translate their father's poetry into English. The senior is engaged in political science. The younger one is a computer scientist and plans to become a philologist.
9. Next to Yevtushenko until the last were relatives ... 39_014
Death began to creep up on the poet for a long time. In 2013, due to the developing inflammatory process, Yevtushenko's leg was amputated. Having barely recovered from the operation, the poet flew to Russia and gave more than 40 concerts around the country ...
A year and a half ago, he was hospitalized in Moscow with a diagnosis of arrhythmia. To eliminate the problems associated with the heart rhythm, he was fitted with a pacemaker ...
This year, a big festival was being prepared for the poet's anniversary: in addition to anniversary evenings in different halls of Moscow, Yevtushenko planned to go on a tour of the cities of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
According to TASS, two days before the hospitalization, in a telephone conversation with the general producer of ceremonial events, Sergei Vinnikov, Evgeny Aleksandrovich turned to him with two requests. Firstly, he expressed a wish to be buried in Russia - in the writer's village of Peredelkino, not far from the grave of Boris Pasternak. And yet, admitting that he was in an extremely serious condition, he said: “I'm sorry ... that I let you down very much. But ... I ask you that the projects we planned together - an evening in the Great Hall of the Conservatory and a performance in the Kremlin Palace, take place without me. Promise me this. I will die with peace of mind…”
Next to the poet in the last hours were his sons Evgeny and Dmitry, and their mother Maria Vladimirovna, now the widow of Evgeny Alexandrovich ...
Yevgeny Yevtushenko has repeatedly admitted that he maintained friendly relations with his spouses. And he didn't leave his children. The ability to part with friends is a special talent that was bestowed on him along with literary
Bella Akhmadulina
The love of the rock stars of Soviet literature had a poetic beginning. “Having dropped his head on the lever, the handset is fast asleep ...” - these Akhmadulinsky lines in the October magazine struck the imagination of Yevtushenko. The poet immediately called the editor Yevgeny Vinokurov: "Who is this Akhmadulina?" - and soon appeared in the literary circle at ZIL, where 18-year-old Bella Akhatovna read her poems. The picture coincided with the “magazine” impression: “In fact, she had no equal rivals, at least young ones, neither in poetry nor in beauty,” Evgeny Alexandrovich later recalled. However, they were not destined to become Philemon and Baucis of Russian literature: the union lasted only three years. Akhmadulina realized that she was expecting a baby. But the young husband did not want to hear about paternity. The young wife had an abortion, and the relationship fell apart.
Later, the poet repented of his frivolity: “I did not understand then that if a man forces a beloved woman to kill their common child in her womb, then he kills her love for herself ... Then I suffered for a long time, thinking that because of my young stupid cruelty, she lost the opportunity to have children - so we were told by the doctors. But a few years later, when I found out that she still gave birth to a daughter, I thanked God ... "
Galina Lukonina-Sokol
This love grew out of a 12-year friendship. Galina Semyonovna was married to a friend of Yevtushenko, Mikhail Lukonin. Evgeny Alexandrovich admitted that "he never crossed the line until their marriage with Misha and my marriage with Bella began to fall apart ...". Then he admitted that he felt guilty before Lukonin, although the poets continued to be friends.
Galina Semyonovna could not have children, and in 1968 the couple adopted the boy Petya (In 2015, the adopted son of the poet Peter, who became an artist, died in Moscow). Parenthood did not save the family from disintegration.
Galina was a powerful personality, "flint", as contemporaries write. Sometimes she criticized her husband, reproached her for a lack of character: “I sew well, and we will somehow live on it. Why do you sometimes go to the amendments and spoil the verses! All the same, all the best will break through .. ". The poet felt a little under pressure. “I still loved her, but I was already trying to fall in love with someone, I was trying ...,” Yevtushenko recalled about the history of the break with his second wife. When he left her, she attempted suicide by slitting her wrists. But it was not possible to keep a loved one ...
Jan Butler
In the summer of 1974, the Irish woman Jan Butler, a translator at the Progress publishing house, becomes the third chosen one. In an interview, Evgeny Alexandrovich told how she witty conquered him. The poet saw a bright red-haired girl in a restaurant, asked: "Are you an American?" And he received a brisk answer that England is not yet part of the North American United States ... Two boys were born in this marriage - Alexander and Anton. Relations began to cool after the birth of a second, seriously ill son. It is clear that the wife, burdened with two children, could not accompany him on endless creative business trips. Of course, she had a grudge against her husband, Evgeny Aleksandrovich himself recalled this divorce as rather calm. The relationship lasted 12 years.
Maria Evtushenko (Novikova)
In the summer of 1986, in Petrozavodsk, the poet met his fourth muse, a graduate of a medical school. Maria asked the master for an autograph for her mother. And already on December 31, the lovers got married. Subsequently, the poet dedicated the lines to his young wife: The last attempt to become happy,
As if my ghost is in front of a cliff
And wants to jump from all insults
To where I've been broken for a long time...
Despite the 30-year age difference, “an attempt to become happy” turned out to be not at all ghostly and not tragic. The couple lived for 30 years in love and harmony - until the very death of the poet, giving each other sons Eugene and Dmitry.
Born on July 18, 1933 in Siberia, at the Zima station of the Irkutsk region. Father - Gangnus Alexander Rudolfovich (1910-1976), geologist. Mother - Evtushenko Zinaida Ermolaevna (1910-2002), geologist, actress, Honored Worker of Culture of the RSFSR. Wife - Evtushenko Maria Vladimirovna (born in 1961), doctor, philologist. Sons: Peter (born in 1967), artist; Alexander (born 1979), journalist, lives in England; Anton (born 1981), lives in England; Eugene (born 1989), high school student in the USA; Dmitry (born 1990) is a high school student in the USA.
Yevgeny Rein, Brodsky's friend and, as many believe, teacher, postulate, dated 1997: “Russia is a special country in all respects, even from the angle of its poetic appearance. For two hundred years, at all times, Russian poetry has been represented by one great poet. So it was in the eighteenth century, in the nineteenth and in our twentieth. Only this poet has different names. And it's an unbreakable chain. Let's think about the sequence: Derzhavin - Pushkin - Lermontov - Nekrasov - Blok - Mayakovsky - Akhmatova - Yevtushenko. This is one and only Great poet with different faces. Such is the poetic fate of Russia. It seems that in relation to Yevtushenko, this formula can be unmistakably extended to the beginning of the 21st century.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko's unforgettable childhood years passed in Zima. “Where am I from? I am from a certain / Siberian station Winter ... ”One of his most poignant lyric poems and many chapters of his early poems are dedicated to this city.
Yevtushenko from early childhood considered and felt himself a Poet. This is evident from his early poems, first published in the first volume of his Collected Works in 8 volumes. They are dated 1937, 1938, 1939. Not touching verses at all, but talented pen (or pencil) tests of a 5-7-year-old child. His writing and experiments are supported by his parents, and then by school teachers, who are actively involved in the development of his abilities.
The poet more than once recalls with gratitude his parents, who from an early age helped him through everyday communication, books, acquaintance and contact with art to learn the values of the world around him, the artistic heritage. “Father 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, at the age of 6 I learned to read and write, read in one gulp indiscriminately Dumas, Flaubert, Boccaccio, Cervantes and Wells. There was an unimaginable vinaigrette in my head. I lived in an illusory world, did not notice anyone and nothing around ... "
In subsequent years, despite the fact that Alexander Rudolfovich formed another family, he continued to educate his eldest son with poetry. So, in the fall of 1944, they went together to a poetry evening at Moscow State University, and visited other evenings, listening to the poems of Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Svetlov, Alexander Tvardovsky, Pavel Antokolsky and other poets.
Zinaida Ermolaevna did not interfere with Zhenya's meetings with his father, and even earlier, when she wrote letters to him, she sent her son's poems, in which lines and rhymes already came across, testifying to the abilities of the boy who took up the pen so early. Mom believed in his abilities and was aware of the value of his early experiences. She kept notebooks and separate sheets of poetry, with the work of compiling a dictionary of rhymes that did not yet exist, in his opinion, in poetry. Unfortunately, for various reasons, something was still lost, like a notebook, which included about 10 thousand rhymes.
A positive influence on the formation of the aesthetic tastes of the poet, the skill of variety performances and a genuine interest in theater and cinema was also exerted by the mother's second, artistic, profession. In 1938-41 she was a soloist of the Moscow Theater named after K.S. Stanislavsky, graduating in 1939 from the M.M. Ippolitova-Ivanova, which she entered while still a last-year student at the Geological Prospecting Institute - after she won first place in the amateur art show of the capital's universities. In her house there were artists - both who later became celebrities, and modest workers of the Moesstrad scene, whom the poet wrote so touchingly after many decades in one of the chapters of the poem "Mother and the Neutron Bomb".
From the beginning of the war to December 1943, she performed at the fronts, then - on tour with the grain growers of the Chita region (December 1943), during which she fell seriously ill with typhus and spent several months in a hospital in Chita. After recovering in 1944, she worked as the head of the Zimin House of Culture for railway workers, and at the end of July 1944 she returned with her son to Moscow, from where, after her mother’s call from Zima, she again went to the fronts as part of the concert brigade of her theater, only returned home in April the victorious 45th. In subsequent years, she worked in the All-Union Touring and Concert Association and in the Moscow Philharmonic as a director of children's musical work until her retirement in 1977.
The hospitality of Zinaida Ermolaevna extended not only to her own friends, but also to the environment of her young son, who was entering into a stormy creative life. Many poets were at home in the house - Evgeny Vinokurov, Vladimir Sokolov, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Grigory Pozhenyan, Mikhail Lukonin and others, not to mention Bella Akhmadulina, the poet's first wife; prose writer Yuri Kazakov, playwright Mikhail Roshchin, literary critic Vladimir Barlas, students of the Literary Institute, artists Yuri Vasilyev and Oleg Tselkov, actors Boris Morgunov and Evgeny Urbansky...
The poet grew up and studied in Moscow, attended the poetic studio of the House of Pioneers. He was a student of the Literary Institute, in 1957 he was expelled for speaking in defense of V. Dudintsev's novel "Not by Bread Alone". He began typing at the age of 16. The first publications of poems in the newspaper "Soviet Sport" are dated 1949. Admitted to the Writers' Union of the USSR in 1952, he became its youngest member.
The first book - "The Scouts of the Future" (1952) - carried generic signs of declarative, slogan, pathetic and peppy poetry at the turn of the 1940s and 50s. But the same year as the book dated the poems “The Carriage” and “Before the Meeting”, which Yevtushenko, almost a quarter of a century later, in the article “Education by Poetry” (1975) would call “the beginning ... of serious work” in literature.
It was not the first “romantic stilted book” that became truly debut, as the poet himself certifies today “Scouts of the Future”, and not even the second - “Third Snow” (1955), but the third - “Highway of Enthusiasts” (1956) and the fourth - “The Promise " (1957) books, as well as the poem "Station Winter" (1953-56). It is in these collections and poems that Yevtushenko recognizes himself as a poet of a new generation entering into life, which will later be called the generation of the “sixties”, and loudly declares this with the program poem “The Best of the Generation”.
The poet's attitude and mindset were formed under the influence of shifts in the self-consciousness of society, caused by the first revelations of Stalin's personality cult.
Recreating a generalized portrait of a young contemporary of the "thaw", Yevgeny Yevtushenko paints his own portrait, absorbing the spiritual realities of both social and literary life. To express and affirm it, the poet finds catchy aphoristic formulas that were perceived as a polemical sign of the new anti-Stalinist thinking: “Eagerness in suspicions is not merit. / A blind judge is not a servant of the people. / More terrible than mistaking an enemy for a friend, / hastily mistaking a friend for an enemy. Or: “And snakes climb into falcons, / replacing, taking into account modernity, / opportunism for lies / opportunism for courage.”
Declaring his own difference with youthful enthusiasm, the poet revels in the diversity of the world around him, life and art, ready to absorb it in all its all-encompassing richness. Hence the violent love of life of the program poem "Prologue", and other consonant poems of the turn of the 1950s and 60s, imbued with the same irrepressible joy of being, greed for all of it - and not just beautiful - moments, to stop, to embrace which the poet is irresistibly in a hurry. No matter how declarative his other poems may sound, there is not even a shadow of thoughtless cheerfulness in them, willingly encouraged by semi-official criticism - it is about the maximalism of the social position and moral program, which the “outrageously illogical, unforgivably young” poet proclaims and defends: “No, I don't need half of anything! / Give me the whole sky! Lay down the whole earth!"
The fury of the then guardians of the canon was provoked by the prose "Autobiography", published in the French weekly "Expresso" (1963). Rereading the “Autobiography” now, after 40 years, you clearly see: the scandal was deliberately inspired and its initiators were ideologists from the Central Committee of the CPSU. Another study campaign was carried out to tighten the screws and twist the arms - to intimidate both Yevtushenko himself and those "dissenters" who took the opposition to the pogrom meetings of N.S. Khrushchev with the creative intelligentsia. E. Yevtushenko gave the best answer to this by including fragments of the early "Autobiography" in later poems, prose, autobiographical articles and publishing it with slight reductions in 1989 and 1990.
The ideological and moral code of the poet was not immediately formulated: at the end of the 1950s, he spoke at the top of his voice about citizenship, although at first he gave it an extremely shaky, vague, approximate definition: “It is not at all a goad, / but a voluntary war. / She is a great understanding / and she is the highest valor. Developing and deepening the same idea in the “Prayer Before the Poem”, which opens the “Bratskaya HPP”, Yevtushenko will find much clearer, more precise definitions: “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, / to whom there is no comfort, no peace.
However, these lines, which have become textbooks, would also be written off as declarations, if they were not confirmed by verses, whose publication, being an act of civic courage, became a major event both literary and (no less, if not more) public life: "Babi Yar" (1961), "Stalin's Heirs" (1962), "Letter to Yesenin" (1965), "Tanks go through Prague" (1968), "Afghan Ant" (1983). These pinnacles of Yevtushenko's civic lyrics were not of the nature of a one-time political action. Thus, “Babi Yar” grows out of the poem “Okhotnoryadets” (1957) and, in turn, echoes in 1978 with other consonant lines: “A Russian and a Jew / have one era for two, / when, like bread, breaking time, / Russia raised them."
His fearless actions in support of the persecuted talents, in defense of the dignity of literature and art, freedom of creativity, and human rights match the heights of Yevtushenko's civil poetry. Such are the numerous telegrams and letters of protest against the trial of A. Sinyavsky and Y. Daniel, the persecution of A. Solzhenitsyn, the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia, human rights actions of intercession for the repressed dissidents - General P. Grigorenko, writers A. Marchenko, Z. Krakhmalnikova, F. Svetov , support of E. Neizvestny, I. Brodsky, V. Voinovich.
Frequent trips around the country, including the Russian North and the Arctic, Siberia and the Far East, the poet owes both many individual poems and large cycles and books of poetry. A lot of travel impressions, observations, meetings flowed into the plots of the poems - a wide geography purposefully works in them for the epic wide scope of the idea and theme.
In terms of frequency and length, the routes of E. Yevtushenko's foreign trips are unmatched among the writers. He visited all continents except Antarctica, using all modes of transport - from comfortable liners to Indian pies - traveled far and wide through most countries. It came true: “Long live movement and hotness, / and greed, triumphant greed! / Borders get in my way... I feel embarrassed / not knowing Buenos Aires, New York.”
Recalling nostalgically the “first day of poetry” in the poem of the late 1970s with the same title, E. Yevtushenko glorifies poetry, which rushed “to the assault of the streets” at that encouraging “thaw” time, “when the worn out words were replaced / living words rose from the graves ". With his oratorical pathos of a young tribune, he, more than others, contributed to the fact that “there was a miracle of revival / trust born by a line. / Poetry gives birth to the expectation / of poetry by the people and the country. It is not surprising that it was he who was recognized as the first tribune poet of variety art and television, squares and stadiums, and he himself, without arguing this, always passionately advocated for the rights of the speaker. But he also owns an “autumn” reflection, referring precisely to the noisy time of pop triumphs of the early 1960s: “Insights are the children of silence. / Apparently, something happened to me, / and I rely only on silence ... "To whom, if not to him, therefore, it was necessary to energetically refute the annoying oppositions of "quiet" poetry to "loud" in the early 1970s, having unraveled do they contain an unworthy “game of freedom from the epoch”, a dangerous narrowing of the range of citizenship? And, following oneself, to proclaim the unvarnished truth of time as the only criterion by which one and the other should be verified? “Poetry, be loud or quiet, - / never be a lying quiet one!”
The thematic, genre, and stylistic diversity that distinguishes Yevtushenko's lyrics fully characterizes his poems. The lyrical confession of the early poem "Station Winter" and the epic panorama of the "Bratskaya HPP" are not the only extreme poles. For all their artistic unequalness, each of his 19 poems is marked by "faces with an uncommon expression." No matter how close the poem “Kazan University” (1970) is to the “Bratskaya HPP”, it has its own specific originality even with the general epic structure. The ill-wishers of the poet, not without secret and obvious gloating, blame the very fact of writing it for the 100th anniversary of the birth of V.I. Lenin. Meanwhile, "Kazan University" is not a jubilee poem about Lenin, who appears, in fact, in the last two chapters (there are 17 in total). This is a poem about the advanced traditions of Russian social thought, "passed" through the history of Kazan University, about the traditions of enlightenment and liberalism, freethinking and love of freedom.
The poems "Ivanovskie calico" (1976) and "Nepryadva" (1980) are immersed in Russian history. The first is more associative, the second, dedicated to the 800th anniversary of the Battle of Kulikovo, is eventful, although its figurative structure, along with epic narrative pictures recreating a distant era, includes lyrical and journalistic monologues that connect the centuries-old past with the present.
On the virtuosic linkage of numerous voices of the public, greedy for disturbing spectacles, a bull doomed to be slaughtered, a young bullfighter, but already poisoned by the “poison of the arena”, sentenced until he dies himself, again and again “to kill by duty”, and even sand soaked with blood the poem "Corrida" (1967) is being built in the arena. A year later, the “idea of blood”, which excites the poet, which paid for the centuries-old fate of mankind, also invades the poem “Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty”, where the murders of Tsarevich Dmitry in ancient Uglich and President John F. Kennedy in modern Dallas are placed in a single chain of bloody tragedies of world history.
The poems "Snow in Tokyo" (1974) and "Northern Surcharge" (1977) are sustained in the vein of plot narratives about human destinies. In the first, the poetic idea was embodied in the form of a parable about the birth of talent, freed from the shackles of an immovable family life, consecrated by the centuries-old ritual. In the second, the unpretentious worldly story grows on purely Russian soil and, presented in the usual stream of everyday life, is perceived as a reliable cast of them, containing many familiar, easily recognizable details and details.
Not in its original, but in a modified form, the publicistically oriented poems “In Full Growth” (1969-1973-2000) and “Proseka” (1975-2000) are included in the eight-volume collected works of E. Yevtushenko. What is explained by the poet in the author's commentary to the second is also applicable to the first: he wrote both a quarter and more centuries ago "quite sincerely clinging to the remnants of illusions that have not been completely killed ... since the time of the Bratskaya Hydroelectric Power Station." The current rejection of them almost prompted the renunciation of the poems as well. But the upraised hand was “dropped, as if independently of my will, and did the right thing.” Just as correctly as the friends did, the editors of the eight-volume edition, persuading the author to save both poems. Heeding the advice, he saved them by removing the excesses of journalism, but keeping the realities of the past decades intact. “Yes, the USSR no longer exists, and I am sure that even the music of its anthem did not need to be revived, but the people who called themselves Soviet, including me, ... remained.” This means that the feelings they lived in are also part of history. And the story of our life, as shown by so many events, is impossible to cross out ... "
The synthesis of epic and lyric features the political panorama of the modern world deployed in space and time in the poems “Mom and the Neutron Bomb” (1982) and “Fuku!” (1985). Unconditional superiority belongs to E. Yevtushenko in depicting such interconnected phenomena and tendencies of the agonizing Soviet reality of the 1980s as the resuscitation of Stalinism and the emergence of domestic fascism.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko tore down the dense veil of bashful silence about the legalization of Russian fascism and its first public demonstration in Moscow on Pushkin Square "on Hitler's birthday / under the all-seeing sky of Russia." Back then, in the early 1980s, it was really "a miserable bunch of guys and girls" "playing swastika." But, as the emergence of active fascist parties and movements, their paramilitary formations and propaganda publications, showed in the mid-1990s, the poet’s alarming question sounded on time and even ahead of schedule: “How could it happen / that these, as we say, units, / born in the country / twenty million and more - shadows? / What allowed them, / or rather, helped to appear, / what allowed them / to grab onto the swastika in it?
The word “stagnation” appeared in Yevtushenko’s poetic dictionary as early as the mid-1970s, that is, long before it entered the political lexicon of “perestroika”. In the poems of the late 1970s - early 1980s, the motif of spiritual restlessness, discord with the "stagnant" era is one of the dominant ones. The key concept of “perestroika” will appear after a while, but the sense of the dead end of the “pre-perestroika” path already dominates the poet. It is therefore natural that he became one of those first enthusiasts who not only accepted the ideas of "perestroika", but actively contributed to their implementation. Together with Academician A. Sakharov, A. Adamovich, Yu. Afanasiev - as one of the co-chairs of Memorial, the first mass movement of Russian democrats. As a public figure, who soon became a people's deputy of the USSR and raised his parliamentary voice against censorship and the humiliating practice of formalizing foreign trips, the dictates of the CPSU, its - from district committees to the Central Committee - the hierarchy in personnel matters and the state's monopoly on the means of production. As a publicist who stepped up his speeches in the democratic press. And as a poet whose revived faith, having acquired new stimuli, expressed itself sonorously in the poems of the second half of the 1980s: "The Peak of Shame", "Perestroika Perestroika", "Fear of Glasnost", "You Can't Live Like This Anymore", "Vendee". The last one is also about literary existence, in which the inevitable split of the Union of Writers of the USSR was brewing, whose monolithic unity turned out to be one of the phantoms of the propaganda myth that disappeared after the “gekachepist” putsch in August 1991.
Poems of the 1990s, included in the collections "Last Attempt" (1990), "My Emigration" and "Belarusian Blood" (1991), "No Years" (1993), "My Golden Mystery" (1994), "Late Tears ”and“ My very best ”(1995),“ God happens to all of us ... ”(1996),“ Slow Love ”and“ Unpourable ”(1997),“ Stolen Apples ”(1999),“ Between the Lubyanka and the Polytechnic "(2000)," I will break into the twenty-first century ... "(2001) or published in newspaper and magazine publications, as well as the last poem" Thirteen "(1993-96) indicate that in the" post-perestroika "creativity of E. Yevtushenko is invaded by motifs of irony and skepticism, fatigue and disappointment.
In the late 1990s and in the first years of the new century, a decrease in Yevtushenko's poetic activity was noticeable. This is explained not only by a long stay in teaching in the United States, but also by more and more intense creative searches in other literary genres and art forms. As early as 1982, he emerged as a novelist whose first experience, The Berry Places, elicited mixed reviews, ranging from unreserved support to outright rejection. The second novel - "Don't Die Before You Die" (1993) with the subtitle "Russian Fairy Tale" - despite the kaleidoscopic nature of the storylines, the diversity of the characters inhabiting it, has as its guiding rod the dramatic situations of the "perestroika" period. A notable phenomenon in modern memoir prose was the book "Wolf Passport" (M., 1998).
The result of more than 20 years of not just compiling, but research work of Yevtushenko is the publication in English in the USA (1993) and Russian (M .; Minsk, 1995) of the anthology of Russian poetry of the XX century "Strophes of the Century", a fundamental work (more than a thousand pages , 875 personalities!). Foreign interest in the anthology is based on the objective recognition of its scientific significance, in particular, as a valuable textbook for university courses in the history of Russian literature. The logical continuation of the "Strophes of the Century" will be an even more fundamental work, completed by the poet - the three-volume "In the beginning was the Word." This is an anthology of all Russian poetry, from the 11th to the 21st century, including The Tale of Igor's Campaign in a new "translation" into modern Russian.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko was the editor of many books, the compiler of a number of large and small anthologies, led creative evenings of poets, compiled radio and television programs, organized recordings, he himself read poetry by A. Blok, N. Gumilyov, V. Mayakovsky, A. Tvardovsky, wrote articles, including for record sleeves (about A. Akhmatova, M. Tsvetaeva, O. Mandelstam, S. Yesenin, S. Kirsanov, E. Vinokurov, A. Mezhirov, B. Okudzhava, V. Sokolov, N. Matveeva, R. Kazakova and many others).
The entire creative path of Yevtushenko was inseparably accompanied by a by no means amateur and not at all amateurish interest in cinema. The visible beginning of his filmmaking was laid by the “poem in prose” “I am Cuba” (1963) and the film by M. Kalatozov and S. Urusevsky, shot according to this scenario. Friendship with Fellini, close acquaintance with other masters of the world screen, as well as participation in S. Kulish's film "Rise" (1979), where the poet starred in the title role of K. Tsiolkovsky, probably played a beneficial role as a creative stimulus. (The desire to play Cyrano de Bergerac in the film by E. Ryazanov did not come true: after successfully passing the auditions, Yevtushenko was not allowed to shoot by the decision of the Committee of Cinematography.) According to his own script, Kindergarten, he directed the film of the same name (1983), in which he also acted as a director and as an actor. In the same triune capacity as a screenwriter, director, actor, he appeared in the film "Stalin's Funeral" (1990).
No less than the screen, the poet is creatively attached to the stage. And not only as a brilliant performer of poetry, but also as at first the author of dramatizations and stage compositions (“On this quiet street” according to “The Fourth Meshchanskaya”, “Do Russians Want Wars”, “Civil Twilight” according to “Kazan University”, “Proseka” , "Corrida", etc.), then as the author of plays. Some of them became events in the cultural life of Moscow - for example, "Bratskaya HPP" in the Moscow Drama Theater on M. Bronnaya (1967), "Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty" in the Lyubimovsky Theater on Taganka (1972), "Thank you forever ..." in Moscow Drama Theater named after M.N. Ermolova (2002). It was reported about the premieres of performances based on the play by E. Yevtushenko "If all Danes were Jews" in Germany and Denmark (1998).
E. Yevtushenko's works have been translated into more than 70 languages, they have been published in many countries of the world. Only in the Soviet Union, Russia, and this, it should be admitted, is far from a large part of what was published, by 2003 more than 130 books were published, including more than 10 books of prose and journalism, 11 collections of poetic translations from the languages of the fraternal republics and one - a translation from Bulgarian, 11 collections - in the languages of the peoples of the former USSR. Abroad, in addition to what has been said, photo albums, as well as exclusive and collectible rarities, were published in separate editions.
E. Yevtushenko's prose, in addition to the novels mentioned above, consists of two stories - "Pearl Harbor" (1967) and "Ardabiola" (1981), as well as several short stories. Hundreds, if not thousands of interviews, conversations, speeches, responses, letters (including those with his collective signature), answers to questions of various questionnaires and surveys, presentations of speeches and statements are scattered in the media alone. Five screenplays and plays for the theater were also published only in periodicals, and photographs from the personal photo exhibitions "Invisible Threads", shown in 14 cities of the country, in Italy and England, were published in booklets, prospectuses, newspaper and magazine publications.
Dozens of the poet's works stimulated the creation of musical works, starting from Babi Yar and a chapter from the Bratskaya Hydroelectric Power Station, which inspired D. Shostakovich to the Thirteenth Symphony, which was almost banned from above, and the symphonic poem for choir and orchestra, The Execution of Stepan Razin, highly appreciated by the State Prize ”, and ending with the popular songs “The river runs, it melts in the fog ...”, “Do the Russians want wars”, “Waltz about the waltz”, “And the snow will fall, fall ...”, “Your traces”, “Thank you for silence”, “Do not rush”, “God forbid” and others.
About a dozen books have been written about the life and work of E. Yevtushenko, at least 300 general works, and the number of articles and reviews devoted to individual collections and works of the poet, his poetic translations, language and style cannot be counted - it is huge. This information, if desired, can be obtained from published bibliographies.
Evgeny Yevtushenko is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts, an honorary member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Malaga, a full member of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honorary professor of Honoris Causa at New School University in New York and King's College in Queens. For the poem "Mom and the Neutron Bomb" he was awarded the State Prize of the USSR (1984). Laureate of T. Tabidze (Georgia), J. Rainis (Latvia), Fregene-81, Golden Lion of Venice, Enturia, Triada city award (Italy), Simba Academy international award and others. Laureate of the Tefi Academy of Russian Television Award for the best educational program “A Poet in Russia is More Than a Poet” (1998), the Walt Whitman Award (USA). He was awarded orders and medals of the USSR, an honorary medal of the Soviet Peace Foundation, the American Medal of Freedom for his activities in the defense of human rights, and a special badge of merit from Yale University (1999). The refusal to receive the Order of Friendship in protest against the war in Chechnya (1993) had a wide resonance. The novel "Don't Die Before You Die" was recognized as the best foreign novel of 1995 in Italy.
For literary achievements in November 2002 Yevgeny Yevtushenko was awarded the international Aquila Prize (Italy). In December of the same year, he was awarded the Lumiere gold medal for his outstanding contribution to the culture of the 20th century and the popularization of Russian cinema.
In May 2003 Yevtushenko was awarded the public order "Living Legend" (Ukraine) and the Order of Peter the Great, in July 2003 - the Georgian "Order of Honor". Marked with the Badge of Honor of the founder of the Center for the Rehabilitation of Children in Russia (2003). Honorary citizen of the city of Winter (1992), and in the United States - New Orleans, Atlanta, Oklahoma, Tulsa, Wisconsin.
In 1994, a minor planet of the solar system, discovered on May 6, 1978 at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory (4234 Evtushenko, diameter 12 km, minimum distance from Earth 247 million km), was named after the poet.
Name: Evgeniy Evtushenko
Age: 84 years old
Place of Birth: Winter, East Siberian Territory
Place of death: Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA
Activity: poet, prose writer, director, screenwriter, publicist, actor
Family status: was married to Maria Novikova
Yevgeny Yevtushenko - biography
Known as a poet, Yevtushenko fell in love with connoisseurs of his works as a wonderful master of scripts and director of what he himself wrote. The poet's poems were read by his contemporaries, his works are understandable and loved by the current generation.
Childhood, the poet's family
There were many pleasant and unpleasant moments in the biography of Yevgeny Yevtushenko. But it was the difficulties that hardened his character. Siberia is a harsh land in which the poet was born. As soon as the boy was born, he was recorded in his mother's surname. Father Eugene, half German, half Baltic, had the surname Gangnus. This surname would have caused a lot of different interpretations, so the mother made a rather far-sighted act.
The boy with his mother's milk absorbed the love of beauty: his mother was an actress, she had the title of "Honored Worker of Culture of the RSFSR", his father wrote poetry. Reading books aloud, fascinating retellings were the most favorite family pastime. The boy could read and write at the age of 6. As a child, Zhenya read Dumas and Cervantes.
Evgeny Yevtushenko - emotional experiences
When Zhenya was 11 years old, the Yevtushenko family moved to Moscow, his father met another woman and left the family. But the father did not stop raising his son and supported his interest in literature in every possible way, he very often takes Zhenya with him to the evenings of poetry reading. So Eugene managed to listen and see,.
In the house where the family of the future poet lived, guests often came, including Bella Akhmadulina. The boy was not given in every possible way to understand that the family had not been there for a long time. Zhenya wrote poetry. At the age of sixteen, the newspaper "Soviet Sport" publishes the work of a young man.
Years of study and creativity Yevtushenko
Biography in store for Eugene new surprises. The Literary Institute named after M. Gorky cordially opened its doors for Yevgeny Yevtushenko, but after some time just as cordially slammed them behind him. He was considered too like a freethinker because of some statements. Much later, but he still received a diploma. Without proper education, however, he manages to achieve recognition. In 1952, the collection Scouts of the Future was published, at the age of 20 Yevgeny was accepted into the Union of Writers of the Soviet Union.
Yevtushenko fell in love, he became incredibly popular, he is invited to poetry evenings, his poems and prose are expected. At such events, and. Yevgeny Yevtushenko's works are diverse in genre and mood. It belongs to him the phrase: "A poet in Russia is more than a poet." English, French and German were subject to the famous poet. The author often performs his own poems in public. He performs on the radio, releases his own CD.
Life needs change
In the nineties, Yevtushenko changed his place of residence, leaving for the USA. He continues to compose, introduces local university students to Russian poetry. In his creative biography there were many well-deserved awards, including the Nobel and State Prizes, the Badge of Honor, more than 130 books were published, poems were translated into many languages of the world. One of the planets in the solar system bears his last name.
Famous composers (Dmitry Shostakovich, Eduard Kolmanovsky, Yuri Saulsky) found inspiration in the poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, composed songs based on his poems. The writer writes scripts for films, he himself played one of the roles. His Konstantin Tsialkovsky was remembered by everyone in the film "Rise".
Evgeny Yevtushenko - biography of personal life
The personal life of Yevgeny Yevtushenko was as stormy as his work. Married four times. She became the first love and wife of the poet. For seven years, the spouses recognized each other, but this union broke up on the basis of the fact that there was an unwillingness of one of the spouses to have children. There were frequent scandals, hot reconciliations. But the poetess could not forgive Eugene that he insisted on an abortion, as he assured that fatherhood was not yet for him.
The poet marries a second time, from this marriage there can be no children, and they decide to adopt a boy. Marital ties and this time were not strong.
The Irish woman, a passionate admirer of the poet's talent, became the third wife and gave birth to sons Anton and Alexander.
In the fourth marriage, Yevtushenko lived with his wife for 26 years. Maria Novikova managed to create for the poet that comfort that the writer never had. Two little men grew up in the family: Dmitry and Yevgeny Yevtushenko. And it all started with the usual autograph: a young student of a medical school asked the poet to sign a postcard for her mother, a passionate admirer of Yevgeny's work.
We got married five months later. When the poet was asked about his personal life, he always praised all his companions in life, saying that it was his fault that marriages broke up. But true lovers of Yevtushenko's poetry and prose understand that the creator must have a muse, there must be a new round that inspires him and makes him create.
Death of a poet, cause of death
On March 30, Yevgeny Yevtushenko was urgently hospitalized in the American city of Tulsa. Then it was reported that doctors assess the poet's condition as serious. The poet asked to be buried in the village of Peredelkino next to the grave of Boris Pasternak.
On Saturday, April 1, 2017, the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko died. He was 84 years old. The cause of death is cardiac arrest. Six years ago, Yevtushenko was diagnosed with cancer, from which he successfully recovered. But recently his condition worsened, apparently the disease returned again. Experts consider such reasons for the death of the great poet.
Russian poet and writer Yevgeny Yevtushenko has died in the United States. The poet is 84 years old. Yevtushenko's death was announced by his wife Maria Novikova. She wrote that Eugene died in his sleep, peacefully, surrounded by his family and friends. The cause of death was cardiac arrest.
Earlier, on March 31, Yevtushenko was hospitalized in a serious condition. The posthumous desire of the writer was to bury him in the town of Peredelkino near Moscow. The last will of the poet will be fulfilled.
Biography Evgeny Evtushenko
Evgeny Yevtushenko was born on July 18, 1932 in the Irkutsk region. His father, German Alexander Rudolfovich Gangnus, was an amateur poet and geologist. Mother - Zinaida Ivanovna Yevtushenko was also a poet and geologist, as well as an honored worker of culture of the RSFSR. The creative environment in which the boy grew up did not pass without a trace. Since childhood, Yevtushenko was very fond of reading, and therefore grew up as an incorrigible romantic and idealist.
In 1944, the Yevtushenko family moved to Moscow. After some time, the father leaves the family and creates a new one with another woman. However, he continued to educate his son, however, the break in relations between the parents still influenced Yevtushenko. The boy missed his father very much and often wrote poetry to him. All these poems were carefully preserved by the mother. Eugene grew up as a very erudite boy, talked with many famous poets who visited their house.
In 1951, Eugene entered the Gorky Literary Institute, but soon the young man was expelled. Officially for not attending lectures, but the real reason was that Yevtushenko could afford statements that were indecent for that time. Yevtushenko will receive a diploma of higher education only in 2001.
In 1952, Yevtushenko published his first collection, Scouts of the Future, which consists of pathos slogans and praising poems. The start of a serious career was given by the poems "Wagon" and "Before the meeting." Immediately Yevgeny was accepted into the Union of Writers of the USSR, and Yevtushenko became the youngest poet of the organization.
For several years, Yevtushenko has achieved such recognition that he is invited to speak at poetry evenings. In addition to poetry, Yevtushenko writes prose.
In the early 90s, the poet moved to the United States, where he taught courses in Russian poetry at universities, and published his works. During his creative life, more than 130 books were published, his works were translated into 70 languages of the world. The poet has countless awards. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Tefi Prize. He has a "Badge of Honor" and a medal "For Services to the Fatherland." The poet's poems inspired many musicians to create songs and musical works.
Personal life of Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Yevgeny Yevtushenko was married four times. The first marriage took place in 1954. The famous poetess Bella Akhmadulina became the poet's wife. However, the creative union did not last long.
In 1961 Yevtushenko married again. Galina Sokol - Lukonina became his chosen one. In marriage, the first son of the writer Peter was born. The third wife of Yevtushenko was his admirer from Ireland, Jen Butler. In a marriage with a foreigner, Evgeny had two sons Anton and Alexander. But the marriage also fell apart.
The fourth and last chosen one of Yevtushenko was the philologist and doctor Maria Novikova. He lived with her in marriage for 26 years, raising two sons, Eugene and Dmitry.
