Volume 26, Number 17 · November 8, 1979
On Voznesensky
By S. Frederick Starr
In response to Voznesensky's Case
(August 16, 1979)
To the Editors:
I wish to take issue with Mr. Clive James' recent review essay on the Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky. While acknowledging that Mr. Voznesensky possesses a formidable creative imagination, Mr. James goes on to accuse him of turning his back on the great moral issues of Soviet society and confining himself instead to mere "ritual beefing." "What ought to be Voznesensky's main subject," James charges, "is hardly there."
Mr. James is not the first to assign subject matter to Russian poets and then to evaluate them according to the degree to which they fulfill, or overfulfill, their plan. Unfortunately, though, he is better at setting norms for others than at gauging their fulfillment. A substantial number of the poems in Voznesensky's collection, Nostalgia for the Present, fully satisfy Mr. James' exacting standards, among them "Pornography of the Mind," "Table Matters," "The Internment of Nikolai Vasilich Gogol," and "The Russian Intelligentsia." Voznesensky treats sensitive issues without flinching, but he does so through poetry, not pasquinade. Nor should he be blamed for the fact that it was possible for the poems in this collection to be published legally in the USSR, or to be read before thousands of persons in officially sponsored readings. For both Andrei Voznesensky and the world of Soviet letters of which he is a part are far more complex than Clive James would have us believe.
While Voznesensky is being excoriated from London for his supposed silence on the great issues of the day, he is being attacked in Moscow for precisely the opposite sin. On May 9, 1979, a letter bearing the fictitious signature "Vasilii Riazanov" was mailed to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, to the Union of Writers of the USSR, and to some eighty prominent Soviet writers. The letter contained the following paragraph:
We in the USSR are not stingy with prizes for the troubadours of Zionism. A. Voznesensky recently received a State Prize—and immediately showed his gratitude by participating in Metropol. Is it really possible that Voznesensky's political views were not evident to those who distribute the awards? They were already well known long ago, for Voznesensky does not hide them. From the tribune that our central television network obligingly provided, he even advertised Marc Chagall as a "great Russian artist." Why, one might ask? Chagall's entire oeuvre is shot through with Jewish national motifs, and he lived most of his life abroad. So what is Russian about him? Only that he was born in Russia? But Menachem Begin and Golda Meir were also Russian born.
Against the background of such anonymous denunciations as this, Mr. James' charges of civic irresponsibility seem peculiarly out of place. To Voznesensky's credit, he has not reacted publicly either to Riazanov or James. He has preferred, instead, to practice a kind of "quiet diplomacy" directed not only toward his friends abroad, but, more important, toward those members of the community of Soviet writers who work conscientiously to uphold the integrity of their art. It would be wrong to think that Voznesensky is the only Soviet writer engaged in this enterprise, or that such efforts go wholly without positive response from officialdom. But Voznesensky's efforts are significant nonetheless for, as he writes:
It's rare in our polluted skies
to hear the crane's lonely cries,
while every bookstore's lined with stacks
of monolithic published hacks
In his concern to air his charges against Andrei Voznesensky's politics, Mr. James neglected to assess the poetry included in the recent volume. Since the collection includes many works of significance, and since they have been translated by such talented American poets as Richard Wilbur, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Bly, and William Jay Smith, is it too much to ask that they now be subjected to the careful review they deserve?
S. Frederick Starr
Kennan Institute
for Advanced Russian Studies
The Wilson Center
Washington, DC
