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An Interview with Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Poet
- University of Wisconsin Press
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“Let’s take this mediocre chump and we say, ‘He is terriWc!’” All the other mediocre chumps say, “Yeah, that’s right and that gives me hope, because one day as mediocre and chumpish as I am, I can.” It’s smart labor relations. An MBA decision . That is the orientation of most entertainment, politics, and religion. So considering how Wrmly entrenched all that is right now, you think it’s going to turn around? Not without a genetic mutation, it’s not! —Batya Friedman is currently a stone carver, designer, innovator, and professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. Putting his University of California, Berkeley degree in electrical engineering to good use, Steve Lyons writes stage plays and is a house husband for his wife and son. An Interview with Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Poet Katrina vanden Heuvel april 1987 q: What role did you and your fellow artists play in bringing about the changes that are under way in the Soviet Union? yevgeny yevtushenko: Who are these people who lead our country? They are people who were listeners of our poetry readings in the late 1950s and early 1960s. That’s true. That’s reality. Some people absorbed my message that bureaucracy is stiXing them. We created a new generation with our poetry. We created people who now are recreating our country. For instance, there is a new openness in the Soviet Union. This is an echo of our poetry. q: Are you saying that writers and poets prepared the way for Gorbachev? yevtushenko: Of course. Absolutely. I’m sure. They absorbed our spirits. They were students—some of them were students—squeezing without tickets on the balcony of our poetry readings. I think my generation of poets did a lot of things to break the Iron Curtain. We wounded our hands breaking this Iron Curtain with our naked hands. We didn’t work with gloves on. Sometimes there were victories, sometimes there were defeats. Some retreats were preparatory, and sometimes we sat under the ground after a hail of insults. But our literature, our art, didn’t come as a gift from the so-called upstairs. We worked for it. We didn’t get this as a gift. We forged this gift for ourselves and for future generations. Of course, we didn’t think that we would produce new kinds of people. But it’s happened. We’ve produced a new kind of person, a newminded person. Poetry plays a great role in the Soviet Union, and so I am very happy that we worked for it not in vain. q: What are some of the areas where you would like to see the policy of openness extended? vanden Heuvel / Interview with Yevgeny Yevtushenko 331 yevtushenko: We don’t have enough openness when we speak about our past. Without having more open conversations about the problems of our past, we can’t decide the problems of our present. To put sugar on the open wounds is even more dangerous. Ever since ancient times, professional seamen have cured their wounds with salty water. It was the only way for them. Salt, honest salt, could be more helpful than dishonest sugar. Yes, we must not only put salt on open wounds, we must dig into them as deep as possible, because there is still some infection which doesn’t give us the possibility to be absolutely healthy. Great literature is always a great warning. If we see some danger, we must prophylactically write about it. Even if it’s very painful. This literature must be like acupuncture. We mustn’t be afraid to put needles into the most painful points of the conscience. It’s painful, it’s unpleasant, but you might be saved. q: Your critics ask why the Soviet state, which will not tolerate others, tolerates you. yevtushenko: Some of the American press accuse some Russian writers of being conformist, not rebellious enough, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I am a victim of this accusation, because I am not in prison, I am not in a mental hospital, nothing like that. Such a writer’s life is sometimes interpreted in your country as a kind of dishonesty. But I am a poetician, not a politician. As a poet, I don’t like any kind of borders, prisons, any kind of police, army, missiles, anything which is connected with repression. I don’t like it. And I never gloriWed it. And I did everything that was...