Andrey Voznesensky

Andrey Voznesensky in 2008

Andrey Andreyevich Voznesensky (May 12, 1933 – June 1, 2010) was one of the group of Russian poets who first came to notice during the Khrushchev era. He is often compared and contrasted with his friend Yevtushenko.

Quotes

• Everything's sliding apart.
  Yet, "Long live everything!"
  For the art of creation
  Is older than the art of killing.
  • "Lines to Robert Lowell"; translation by Louis Simpson and Vera Dunham, from Vera Dunham and Max Hayward (eds.) Nostalgia for the Present (New York: Doubleday, 1978) p. 111.

• It's shameful to spot a lie and not to name it,
  shameful to name it and then to shut your eyes,
  shameful to call a funeral a wedding
  and play the fool at funerals besides.
  • Stanley Kunitz (trans.) Story Under Full Sail (New York: Doubleday, 1974) p. 20.

Antiworlds, and the Fifth Ace

Quotations are cited from Patricia Lake and Max Hayward (eds.) Antiworlds, and the Fifth Ace (New York: Basic Books, 1967), to which page-numbers also refer.

• I am Goya
  of the bare field, by the enemy's beak gouged
  till the craters of my eyes gape
  I am grief
  I am the tongue
  of war, the embers of cities
  on the snows of the year 1941
  I am hunger.
  • "I am Goya"; translated by Stanley Kunitz, p. 3.

• I have hurled westward the ashes of the uninvited guest!
  and hammered stars into the unforgetting sky – like nails
  I am Goya.
  • "I am Goya"; translated by Stanley Kunitz, p. 3.

• Along a parabola life like a rocket flies,
  Mainly in darkness, now and then on a rainbow.
  • "Parabolic Ballad"; translated by W. H. Auden, p. 113.

• The urge to kill, like the urge to beget,
  Is blind and sinister. Its craving is set
  Today on the flesh of a hare: tomorrow it can
  Howl the same way for the flesh of a man.
  • "Hunting a Hare"; translated by W.H. Auden, p. 13.

Criticism

• Akhmatova's seeming successor as the best living Russian poet is Voznesensky. His talent is dazzling. He has the gift of fresh, witty perception, works with unusual images and modern rhythms. His poetry is marvelously dynamic.
  • Olga Carlisle in The New York Times, September 11, 1966.

• With good reason, Voznesensky is a hero to all those in the Soviet Union who want their poets to tell them the truth. But at the risk of his career, freedom, and perhaps even his life, he has never been able to do much more than drop hints.
  • Clive James From the Land of Shadows (London: Picador, 1983) p. 222.