First Poems as Career Beginnings: The Case of the Shestidesiatniki

• In Event: Beginnings and Endings in Russian Poetry: Progressions, Portrayals, Potentials

Abstract

The shestidesiatniki in their early careers pursued different professional beginnings in Soviet literature. Focusing in particular on Evgenii Evtushenko and Andrei Voznesenskii, this paper examines these poets’ very first published poems (Evtushenko: “Dva sporta”, 1949; Voznesenskii: “Liricheskoe otstuplenie”, 1958), as well as the contexts and consequences of said publications. Edward Said’s early work on “beginnings” and “origins” (Beginnings: Intention and Method, 1975) provides a theoretical frame to understand both the textual and biographical material. While these two poets were (and still are) often paired together in literary-critical and literary-historical discussion, Evtushenko and Voznesenskii pursued dissimilar on-ramps onto the figurative highway of professional Soviet literature –– such poetical and biographical contrasts are of particular interest. This paper further tests whether inaugural literary publications either predict or obscure poets’ future professional and poetic directions.

Author

• Benjamin Musachio, Princeton U