~o
RUFUS MATHEWSON
This book, one might conclude, is shaped by strategy, which makes
it full of intellectual banality and political piety-a work of little
intrinsic interest to the student of modern culture. In this sense, the
rebel would seem to be tainted by the world he would transform.
But if one sees Evtushenko in relation to the situation in Russia, it is
possible to read the book through the euphemisms, as it were, as a
daring polemic, a personal statement by a courageous, embattled and
fragile man. There
is
no place where literature-as exemplified by a
militant few-is engaged more fully in the cause of humanism. The
record of Evtushenko's collisions with the cultural bosses-the time–
serving editors, the poet-bureaucrats of the Writers' Union-not only
testifies to his courage, but also indicates the terms of the cultural war.
It should be remembered, too, that one of the cruellest risks he runs
is estrangement from the purists of his own group, who may denounce
him as a bad poet, a crowd-pleaser, an international clown.
If
he
is
able to maintain his public position and to endure as a person and
to grow as a poet, he will at least have served the cause he stands for.
Rufus Mathewson
Series: No. 4
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