in notes, thus allowing a reader not thoroughly
versed in Russian and Soviet history, politics,
culture, and current events to more readily
understand these pieces. Also useful to readers
and scholars of this poetry are the four appendi-
ces with which the book concludes. The first two
are listings of writers, historical figures, rivers,
and geographic names frequently referred to in
the poems. The third identifies smaller collec-
tions of Yevtushenko’s poetry which have been
published in English translation, and the fourth
lists bibliographic data for each of the poems in
the collection. In this final appendix, each poem
is listed both in English translation and in tran-
scription and is followed by the place and date of
first publication, generally in a journal or news-
paper; an indication of the first book publication
of the poem; and a notation of where it is located
in Yevtushenko’s three-volume collected works.
Yevtushenko scholars, obviously, will find
the bibliographic data in the final appendix use-
ful, especially in order to locate a copy of the
poem in the original Russian or to compare the
book publication version(s) with the original
published version. Those who study Russian
and Soviet culture will also find much of interest
in this collection, since Yevtushenko quite often
integrates a number of literary and cultural allu-
sions into his poetry. Finally, historians and
political scientists, who normally might not use
poetry as a source of information, will find many
poems in this collection of use, especially in a
study of the last four decades of Soviet and
Russian history.
Since the appearance of this collection, Yev-
tushenko has published two other works of note.
The first work appears in the collection20th
Century Russian Poetry: Silver and Steel(Dou-
bleday: New York, 1993) which Yevtushenko
himself edited and introduced. Included among
the several poems of his own which he placed in
this collection is the 1991 poem ‘‘Loss,’’ a poem
previously unpublished in English. This poem is
particularly timely, for it poses several political
questions, including ‘‘Is it true that we Russians
have only one unhappy choice?/The ghost of
Tsar Ivan the Terrible?/Or the Ghost of Tsar
Chaos?’’ (820), questions which are surely on
the mind of nearly every Russian yet today.
The second work, the novelDon’t Die Before
Your Death: A Russian Tale(Liberty Publishing
House: New York, 1993) is set during the
attempted 1991 coup. It is not only an historical
novel, but it is also a detective story, a sentimen-
tal romance, a satire, and a philosophical treatise
in which the author himself is the hero. Above
all, however, it represents a serious look at every-
day life in contemporary Russia. The publica-
tion of this novel and the aforementioned poem
demonstrates that Yevtushenko is continuing to
write in the way that made him well-known both
in Russia and in the West: critical of that which
he considers wrong, yet continuing to affirm
nature, life, and the living.
Source:Jonathan Z. Ludwig, Review ofThe Collected
Poems: 1952–1990andDon’t Die before Your Death,in
Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 38, No. 3,
Autumn 1994, pp. 515–17.Patricia Pollock Brodsky
In the following review, Brodsky evaluates a col-
lection of Yevtushenko’s poetry that includes the
poem ‘‘Babii Yar.’’
The newCollected Poems 1952–1990reflects
Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poetic career in micro-
cosm: vast and uneven, sometimes irritating,
often appealing, and ever astonishing in its vari-
ety. The title is somewhat misleading, since the
volume offers only a selection from Yevtushen-
ko’s extensive oeuvre, and in addition, several
long poems are represented in excerpts only.
Yevtushenko’s allusiveness can be a problem
for Western readers; a few names and terms are
explained in footnotes, but this practice could
profitably have been expanded. A helpful fea-
ture is the chronological list of poems with their
Russian titles, date and place of first publication,
and location, if any, in the 1983Sobranie sochi-
nenii(seeWLT59:4).
Like the poems themselves, the translations
by twenty-five translators vary in quality. A few
are revisions of earlier versions. Most of Yev-
tushenko’s poems use slant rhyme relying heav-
ily on assonance, a practice so closely associated
with him as to be called ‘‘Yevtushenkean rhyme’’
(evtushenkovskaia rifma). Russian’s rich pho-
netic structure allows almost limitless use of
this kind of rhyme; a master of the form and
clearly one of Yevtushenko’s teachers was the
poet Marina Tsvetaeva. Wisely, few attempts are
made to retain this feature in the English trans-
lations, or indeed to use rhyme at all.
From the beginning of his prolific career in
the early 1950s, Yevtushenko’s poetry has been
characterized by strong stances on political
issues. He praises Allende and Che Guevara,Babii Yar