Russia's 'Other' Poets

...and fortunately this possibility seems less and less feasible...

...The figure addressed is Evtushenko, to whom Akhmadulina was married...

...Here, for example, is a short poem, uncomplicated and yet perfect in its conveyance of felt life: A man walked alone in the world, Lifted his collar, closed the flap, Lit a cigarette, bending over, Back to the wind, at a corner...

...For the present at least, this is the state of Russian poetry...

...I am speaking of the disillusionment experienced by many of our leading critics in the 1930s when, beset with the problem of their own society, they turned hopefully to what they thought was the radically new conception of social organization and responsibility of Soviet Russia...

...I remember how, when I met Evtushenko at a party in New York two years ago, my first impression of him was precisely that, in complexion and physique, he has the appearance of a candle...

...Such poetry could just as well have been written in French or in English—the point is that it is poetry, fine poetry, and this fact renders pointless all attempts at definition by political criteria...

...Korzhavin employs a wide range of meters and forms, all of which he handles with equal skill...

...The signs of cultural awakening in Russia are everywhere...

...Whistling, snapped off a branch...

...The most outstanding among these poets, in my opinion, is Evgeny Vinokurov, who has already published five books of poetry: The Human Face, The Word, Poems on Duty, Dark Blue, and Confessions...

...Stale...

...But now, because of the "literopolitical" efforts of writers like Ehrenburg and Evtushenko (for which they deserve all gratitude), the possibility of a literature of the non-litero-political variety has been gained...

...and perhaps I was drawn to this notion of the classical because I was afraid of the literature of modern Europe, because I was scared of its terrible intensities, ironies, and ambiguities...

...So far have things advanced...

...One could hardly say that it has deserved any other sort of attention...

...Partisans...

...The difference is an important one...

...Andrew Field is currently editing an anthology of Soviet literature to be published by Little, Brown...

...The Driver" is an outstanding long poem about a cab driver and the raw deal he gets in love and in life generally...

...The history of Russian literature, remember, is a history of surprises...

...This incipient, supervening literature, which merits strictly literary judgment, requires an act of effort, a commutation of our set ways of thinking about Soviet literature...

...Reading this poem, I am reminded of the film Marty: Stars fell before the unseen day, The end of night was ready to begin...

...Less widely noted, but of enormous importance, is the publication in the journal Moskva this year of Vladislav Khodasevich, the Parisian émigré poet whom Vladimir Nabokov has called the greatest Russian poet of this century...

...The young poets may be divided roughly into two groups: the "quiet school" and the avantgarde...

...He handles words and images like a juggler, and with consumate skill...

...What all this means is simply that the uncomplicated way in which Soviet literature has long been presented to the West—rather like some sort of rudimentary Arthur Murray dance pattern: two steps forward, one backward—is now inadequate to the reality...

...I'm covered as with sand by small affairs, But I shall yet shake off the petty stuff, Break through . . . To where I'll breathe but chilled, fresh air...

...All these poets—and there are scores of others like them—involve themselves outspokenly in the process of liberalization in the Soviet Union...

...Kornilov's hero is not a hero, just a guy...

...He is, I believe, the only significant Soviet poet now writing who regularly uses ternary, including amphibrachic, meter...

...It is effervescent in character, yet far from being what we call "light verse...

...One has only to compare the sometimes minor but always lively and original pre-1928 Soviet literature to what followed it to take the proper measure of the enormous difference...

...Akhmadulina's poetry has a cold, chiselled quality about it...

...But Slutsky has also written some outstanding non-political poetry—I think particularly of his cycle of poems on old age— which has received far too little notice...

...And Pushkin looks on kindly, And the candles are snuffed, night retreats, And the soft sound of our native speech Strokes the lips so coldly...

...ON POETRY Russia's Other' Poets By Andrew Field I am told that Vladimir Nabokov, when he was teaching at Cornell, would from time to time be sent listings of current Soviet publications from which he was asked to select those books he wished the library to purchase...

...And your pen hastens On its florid navigations, Intelligent and thoughtful, While goodness floods the soul...

...And nothing at all happened, except That he suddenly saw: why life has passed me by...

...They are Viktor Bokov, Evgeny Evtushenko, Bulat Okudzhava, Robert Rozhdestvensky, and Andrei Voznesensky...

...While the avant-garde poets, who frequently employ free verse (something quite new in Russia), enjoy greater popularity—imagine the Rose Bowl full of people listening to poetry!—the more traditional younger poets have a sounder record of artistic accomplishment...

...Another poet, Vladimir Kornilov, writes verse that is so conversational as to give the appearance of being careless, though in fact it is not...

...It is a judgment with which the serious student of literature must concur—especially if we date "Soviet" (as opposed to "Russian") literature from 1928, when the authority of the Party over the artist was first actively asserted...

...Political statements do occur in their work, yes, but their poems are never written as political statements...

...There can be no turning back now, unless it be by force...

...And there the going won't be quite so rough, And, look, by that invariable star, How, all the same, on way I've not strayed far...

...The mention of Pushkin in the poem is also particularly significant, for Akhmadulina's diction and meter are very much "in the Pushkin manner...

...It was," wrote Lionel Trilling, "as if I had hoped that the literature of the Revolution would realize some simple inadequate notion of the 'classical' which I had picked up at college...

...The names of the outstanding avant-garde poets will be more familiar to the American reader than those I have been discussing...

...They separated some time ago, and she is now married to another writer, Jury Nagibin...

...Freshly painted rowboats, all moored up...

...Only Voznesensky commands respect as an original and truly important poet...

...Still another encouraging sign is the fact that émigré poets are now being recognized and brought back into the mainstream of Russian culture...

...Like always, my eyes were on the highway...

...As always, there is an exception to the rule, and this exception is Boris Slutsky, author of some of the most well-known antiStalin poetry...

...And the ghetto wire rends her brow like thorns . . . What love I bear her barely opened eyes, Sultry and snowy, my reveries, for a second, for eternities . . . Even when their images are incomprehensible to us, Voznesensky's poems seem finished, wrought objects...

...Nabokov's judgment, however waspish and whatever its political background, is a literary one...

...Vincent Millay...

...This article is adapted from a lecture delivered at Yale University...

...To rush...

...To dream of it at night And just to crawl, while it stays out of sight...

...The following poem has a stillness and a reserve which are belied by its emotive quality: It was all for a candle, A simple wax candle, That its ageless antiquity Would stand fresh in my memory...

...You're thinking now of friends, Ever finer, in the olden way...

...You're a stearine stalactite, Framed with tenderness in my sight...

...Many previously forbidden poets have been published, including Nikolai Gumilyov, whose anti-Bolshevik activity and consequent execution in 1921 long placed him at the head of the list of proscribed poets in the Soviet Union...

...He spat down from the wooden dock, Spat so lazily, not in anger...

...Greenish little pond...

...There is now astonishingly diverse publishing activity not only in Moscow and Leningrad, but also in less noticed provincial areas such as Kaluga and Saratov...

...There is a striking difference in the quality of his earliest work of the late '40s and that of his poems of recent years...

...Someone else's soul's not for me to dig in...

...Vinokurov's poetic voice gives the appearance of being unintellectual (he himself says in one poem: "I believe in simple-mindedness"), but I believe that his "simplicity" is a conscious, studied manner, not unlike Robert Frosfs...

...From this truly heady atmosphere of artistic endeavor there may yet emerge a poet of major stature—perhaps someone still unknown...

...The subject of this poem is love suspended in the past and contemplated as under glass...

...Vinokurov does not frequent poetry readings but enjoys, nonetheless, widespread popular recognition in addition to great respect from his peers...

...In h'.s case at least, one feels no need to ask oneself the question that so many other young Russian poets bring to mind: What kind of poetry will he, could he write in 20 years...

...Went to the park...

...And indeed, the classic poets are being taken as models by a great many poets of the "quiet school...

...Anyone who has taken the trouble to look beyond Premier Khrushchev's virulent speeches and observe the widespread intellectual and artistic ferment in Russia today was not at all surprised by recent newspaper reports that the Party was wavering in regard to its strict position toward writers and poets...

...Another extremely talented young poet whose work is traditional in form and highly personal in content is Bella Akhmadulina...

...And so, forsaken by the best representatives of criticism, Russian and non-Russian, Soviet literature has been left to the devices of the political scientist and the journalist...

...For no reason, slapped it on his leg...

...While there is not much value in reading tea leaves about the years ahead, there is, I feel, good reason to be optimistic about the future of poetry in the Soviet Union...

...There are some pointed remarks about the Stalin era in this poem...

...Unfortunately, from a critical point of view, there is much truth in the charge of immaturity which Party hacks have hurled against them...

...These catalogs, so the story goes, were always sent back with the following legend written across the cover: "There is no Soviet literature...

...Time burns...

...In the good sense of both terms, Voznesensky is a "modern" and a "traditional" poet...

...Oh, not again—why it's just the same as Gogol's tale— "Andrei and some Polish dame...

...It is a difference that reflects more than the development of a single poet, for much the same contrast may be seen between any representative group of poems of the two periods...

...Marina Tsvetaeva, the "poetess of the White Guard," and Ivan Bunin, the Nobel prize-winner, have been published...

...I have by no means intended to infer that the poets about whom I am writing are political escapists...

...Their poetry has in common an inclination for the boldest possible imagery...

...There is, too...

...another view of Soviet literature, ultimately identical to Nabokov's, but having its own extra-literary circumstances...

...Korzhavin greatly admires precisely this quality in Pushkin (to whom many of his best poems are addressed), and he has succeeded in the difficult task of making himself master of Pushkin's light iamb: To wish...

...The girl gets older...

...One of the most significant occurrences on the Soviet literary scene in the last few months has been the criticism from the liberal position, and on purely artistic grounds, of Evgeny Evtushenko and poets similar to him...

...She is often compared to Anna Akhmatova, though I find her poetry has a much greater similarity to that of Edna St...

...The most productive genre in the Soviet literary renaissance is poetry, and, as at few times before in its history, Russian poetry means youth...

...His lines are always densely speckled with internal sound play, as in the following fragment from his newest book, The Triangular Pear: Poland—champagne and tanks gutted with flame Poland...

...The poetry of Naum Korzhavin, for example, is even closer in character to Pushkin than Akhmadulina's...