Poems
Poems by Andrei Voznesenski, Voznesensky, in English translation. To read his poems in Russian please change the language with a language switch above in the top menu.
Biography, unedited
Andrei Andreevich Voznesensky (1933-2010) was born on May 12, 1933 in Moscow into the family of a scientist.
Father – Andrei Nikolaevich Voznesensky (1903-1974), hydraulic engineer, Doctor of Technical Sciences, professor, director of the Hydroproject, Institute of Water Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences, participant in the construction of the Bratsk and Inguri hydroelectric power stations, Honored Worker of Science and Technology of the Uzbek SSR; mother – Antonina Sergeevna (1905-1983), born. Pastushikhina was from the Vladimir region. Voznesensky spent part of his childhood in Kirzhach, Vladimir region. During the Great Patriotic War, Andrei and his mother were evacuated from Moscow and lived in the city of Kurgan in the family of a machinist. Andrei studied in 1941-1942 at school No. 30. After returning from evacuation, he studied at one of the oldest Moscow schools (now School No. 1060). At the age of fourteen, he sent his poems to Boris Pasternak, whose friendship later had a strong influence on his fate.
In 1957 he graduated from the Moscow Architectural Institute. He lived in marriage for forty-six years with the writer, film and theater critic Zoya Boguslavskaya. He published his first poems in 1958. In 1960, the first 2 collections of his poems and poems were published: “Parabola” – in Moscow and “Mosaic” – in Vladimir. This was followed by “40 lyrical digressions from the poem “Triangular Pear”” (1962), “Antiworlds” (1964), “Achilles’ Heart” (1966), “Shadow of Sound” (1970), “Look” (1972), “Release the Bird” ! (1974), “Oak cello leaf” (1975), “Stained glass master” (1976), “Temptation” (1979), “Unaccountable” (1981), “Foremen of the spirit” (1984), “Ditch” (1987) , “Axiom of self-quest” (1990), “Rosa, Poesia” (1991), etc.
Voznesensky is one of the leaders of the young, “pop” poetry of the 1960s, imbued with the spirit of innovation and emancipation of man from the power of outdated, outdated ideological, social, moral and aesthetic dogmas. That poetry that literally burst onto the stages, stands, and stadiums, calling on listeners to renew their lives. Voznesensky defined the main themes of his poetry in the “Parabolic Ballad”: “Sweeping away canons, forecasts, paragraphs, / Art, love and history rush – / Along a parabolic trajectory!” It is significant that here the young poet put art in first place, since the main theme of all his work will be connected with it – the theme of masters, “foremen of the spirit,” transforming life with their creative work. Unlike Yevtushenko, whose poetry is addressed to all people, Voznesensky appeals mainly to intellectuals, “physicists and lyricists,” people of creative work, and attaches paramount importance not to social and moral-psychological issues, like Yevtushenko, but to artistic means and forms of it comprehension and implementation. From the very beginning, his favorite poetic means becomes a hyperbolic metaphor, akin to the metaphors of Mayakovsky and Pasternak, and the main genres are the lyrical monologue, ballad and dramatic poem, from which he builds the largest genre structures – books of poetry and poems.
It is no coincidence, of course, that Voznesensky began to create his poetic universe with the poem “Masters,” which talks not only about seven ancient Russian fellows – the builders of the “seditious temple,” but also about “artists of all times.”
Among the “artists of all times,” Voznesensky is especially close to architects, sculptors, painters (Michelangelo, Rublev, Rubens, Goya, Filonov, Chagall) and poets, whose work is somewhat akin to fine art (Dante, Mayakovsky, Pasternak, Khlebnikov, Lorca) . Expressive figurativeness is also characteristic of Voznesensky’s own poetry, but the architectural vision of the world is especially clearly reflected in it (“architects become poets”).
Being a singer of rapid movement and scientific and technological progress, belonging to the “loud” poetry, Voznesensky was one of the first to feel the urgent need for “silence” (this was especially reflected in the collection “Achilles’ Heart”). Silence is necessary for the poet to communicate with nature, for love, for internal concentration and reflection on life, to gain a sense of harmony; it is an alternative, a counterbalance to the centrifugal movement of the century, its scientific and technological progress and disharmony, shaking out the living soul from a person. The love poem “Oz” is also associated with such silence. The theme of femininity in general is widely represented in Voznesensky’s poetry: “Wedding”, “Autumn”, “You are sitting pregnant, pale…”, “They are beating a woman”, “Confrontation of eyes”, “Elena Sergeevna”, “Ophelia’s Song”, “A woman is beating “, “Monologue of Marilyn Monroe”, “Ice-69”, “Maybe!” etc., and it is most often revealed dramatically.
The theme of the Great Patriotic War is one of the important ones in Voznesensky’s work; it is associated with “The Ballad of 1941”, later entitled “The Ballad of the Kerch Quarry”, “Goya”, “The Unknown – a Requiem in Two Steps, with an Epilogue”, “Doctor Autumn” and other works.
The theme of collapse runs through all of Voznesensky’s work, but over time its meaning changes significantly: if in the early period, in the 1960s, the poet spoke about the collapse of old, outdated forms of life and art, which interfered with the birth and establishment of a new one, then in the 1980s The 90s are already talking about the disintegration of existential, life-building spiritual and moral values (see, for example, “Rhapsody of Decay”). Voznesensky considers poetry and art to be an antidote to lack of spirituality and barbarism (“Poetarch”).
Voznesensky’s work is deeply dramatic, spectacular, theatrical and scenic in its spirit and artistic structure. Based on his works, Yu. Lyubimov staged the play “Antiworlds” at the Taganka Theater, R. Grinberg staged the stage compositions “Parabola” and “Mosaic” at the Ivanovo Youth Theater, A. Rybnikov wrote the rock opera “Juno and Avos”, and M Zakharov staged it at the Theater. Lenin Komsomol; R. Shchedrin – “Poetory”, A. Nilaev – oratorio “Masters”, V. Yarushin – rock oratorio “Masters”.
Voznesensky was friends with many artists, whose meetings he recalled in articles and memoirs and biographical books. He was an interlocutor with Sartre, Heidegger, Picasso, and met with Bob Dylan.
At the end of the 20th century. (1991-2000), revealing mainly the theme of the collapse of traditional values and ideals in post-Soviet Russia, Voznesensky experiments a lot in the field of artistic form, widely uses post-avant-garde poetic means, creates “isops” and “videos”, in which poetry is combined with drawings and photographs , font compositions, Internet signs and symbols, arranges the text in a certain form, for example, in the shape of a cross (the “Crucifixion” cycle), or, conversely, randomly scatters it, like peas, into letters unrelated to each other (the finale of the poem “The Last seven words of Christ”). Such visual means should obviously complement verbal-figurative poetry itself, clearly demonstrate the idea of the collapse of everything and everyone, but in fact they make it more difficult to perceive an artistic text, often turning it into a poetic rebus, into a demonstration of the collapse of poetic form.
Voznesensky lived and worked in Peredelkino, near Moscow, next door to Boris Pasternak’s dacha-museum, where twice a year, on February 10 (Pasternak’s birthday) and May 30 (the poet’s death day), he held poetry readings. Voznesensky’s book “I am Fourteen Years Old” is dedicated to his meetings with Pasternak.
Back in 1995, at the Burdenko clinic, the poet was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. At first, Voznesensky’s voice began to disappear, then the muscles of his throat and limbs began to weaken.
Andrei Andreevich Voznesensky died after a long illness on June 1, 2010. The poet was buried on June 4, 2010 at the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow.