BOOKS
THE PUBLIC POET
A PRECOCIOUS AUTOBIOGRAPHY. By Evgeny Ev+u shenko. Tronslo+ed
by Andrew R. McAndrew. E. P. Dutton. $3.50.
The underlying question may be this: to what degree is
the rebel disfigured by the spurious culture he seeks to change; to
what extent is he formed by the world he would transform? How much
of Bolshevism's centralism is a translation of Tsarist autocracy? Abram
Tertz traps his schoolboy rebel in the cruellest of ironies in his story
"The Trial Begins"; what would he do with those who "hurt the
feelings" of their fellow men? Shoot them! Evtushenko's self-justifying
book bears many marks of the immediate past, but the "autobiographical"
data are so scanty and so obviously chosen (or invented) for tactical
purposes that there is no ready answer to the larger question.
The book defends his views on art, attacks his enemies, "the
dogmatists," invokes a number of routine Russian myths in his own
support and aims finally, one must suppose, at advancing his own cause.
Its effects were to be immediate, as Khrushchev recognized when he
denounced it.
The tactical questions loom larger, and invite speculation about
Evtushenko's motives in publishing it, and in publishing it as he did,
in a Paris weekly. Although it was no doubt meant to be overheard
back home, it was addressed to the West. Having chosen
to
publish it in
L'Express,
he knew that it would not be brought out at home, and
that it meant some personal danger to himself. It is safe to assume that
he felt that everything he stood for was endangered by the sensational
speculations a:bout him in the Western press.
It
was better, perhaps,
to risk personal trouble at home in order to save others from a crack–
down brought on by continuous scandal abroad. There might have
been two other considerations: to give his Western audience an authori–
tative version of himself and of his views; to maintain continuous
access to the West, principally to create a source of intelligent and well
informed support. Thus the first thing to communicate was the
special nature of his loyalty to the Revolution: it is unequivocal and
