New Works: Bratsk Station

by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Translated by Tina Tupikina-Glaessner, Geoffrey Dutton, Igor Mezhakoff-Koriakin. With an Introduction by Rosh Ireland.

Genres: Poetry, Russian Literature, Russia, Nonfiction

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Евгений Евтушенко
Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko (Russian: Евгений Александрович Евтушенко; born 18 July 1933 in Zima Junction, Siberia) is a Soviet and Russian poet. He is also a novelist, essayist, dramatist, screenwriter, actor, editor, and a director of several films.

Reviews

[James Schlichter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can understand why some people think Yevtushenko, and this book in particular, is overrated. This cycle of poems about the Bratsk hydroelectric power station is highly idealistic and the language so very nationalistic and somewhat hyperbolic, it makes the 21st century reader cringe. It may have made the 20th century reader cringe! However, I doubt it would have made the 20th Century Russian reader cringe; particularly, when one reflects upon the Stalinist epoch preceding it. There was a powerful intellectual movement taking place in Russia when this was written, and it was a time when this huge undertaking was the most massive in the world. The geographical history of this region also represented a theme of redemption.

I don't read Russian, so I can't say if this is a good translation or not. I believe that unless you can read the Russian original, it is hard to pass judgement on this cycle. However, I do read German as well as English and have read many translations. Not surprisingly, much of the depth of a single word's meaning is lost in translation.

I appreciated this cycle for it's idealism. Real or not, it so conflicts with the middling center we have all been forced into, it really is Revolutionary. Yevtushenko is calling to us all to get back to a sense of the concrete, to take back from the crooked politicians what are essentially our rights as autonomous beings. He reminds us that the government is made up of the people and is only as good as its citizens. Yes, it's idealistic, but maybe we could use more idealism these days.

[Stephen Leary · Rating 2 out of 5]

The poetry is truly awful. Soviet trash. Yevtushenko's reputation is highly inflated.

[Steve R]

I read this 1967 collection in the mid-1970s, and found Yevtushenko’s verse, even in translation, quite compelling. The title poem is cut from the cloth of ‘socialist realism’, extolling as it does the construction of a massive hydroelectric station, but the other poems in the volume represent what I found Yevtushenko truly excelled at: the private, intimate, quite personal, wistful and almost elegiac lyric.

In particular, the three pages of ‘Sleep, my beloved’, with its haunting refrain that ‘The dog and his day are on the chain/And I say to you/ Whispering/And then half whispering/sleep, my beloved’ are lines that I can recall now, more than a half century later, as sublimely evocative in capturing the loving regard one feels for another in such a situation.

Maybe, just maybe, I will try to find time to reread this work.

Highly recommended.

[Shane Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well frankly I do not care for poetry but my friend gave me this book and I felt obliged to read of it.....it is by the famous Russian part time dissident, Yevtushenko......he always walked a fine line in the brutal Soviet Union.....regarding the poetry....well what can I say....a few of them were interesting because of contemporary references from the 50's and 60's.....some of the poems were easy to follow.....I guess I broadened myself by indulging.....

[Conor · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful.

[Kaylee · Rating 2 out of 5]

ok mid!

[Dexter McNally · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite poems in here “Nushka” and “the light controller”

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[Lilly Brenneman]

russian poets are so sprawling and mad, idealistically lovely!

[John Ledingham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some historical interest but some mostly wooden, propagandistic poems of Soviet national power and trchnological supremacy, especially with championing its title hydroelectric dam, who, not kidding, plays the part of the enlightened half of a platonic dialogue with the backwards, evil, hierarchical - and not to mention literally long historical - pyramid of giza ... hmmmmmm!!! Very strange stuff. A couple nice lines here and there but a lot of Lenin Lenin boomayea. Supposedly this guy was a kind of intra-Soviet dissident, but none of that is on display here. The man who wrote Bratsk station is either still wrapped up in a party line that always served him, or so buried under fear and persecution nothing else but party line shines out. I don't mean to pick on the guy too hard. I enjoyed skimming through this book as an artifact.

[Edward · Rating 5 out of 5]

The man

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. Good imagery. The Soviet Union’s answer to Allen Ginsburg?

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

First read in the early 1970s.......