Word: yevtushenko
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Almost at the End demonstrates why. A collection of prose and poetry, the book is nicely timed with the reappearance of Yevtushenko, 53, as a prominent spokesman for Gorbachev's liberalization campaign. The new work is theatrical but tame. The targets are either old monsters or the class of unreconstructed bureaucrats whom the new regime has pledged to replace. The daring urgency of earlier poems, such as The Heirs of Stalin and Babi Yar, has given way to all- purpose indictments of totalitarianism and effusions of universality. "I ; would like to be born in every country,/ have a passport...
...sentiment is generously larded throughout the collection, although, in fairness, Yevtushenko's verse is more effective in recital. At his best, he is a performance artist whose readings enchant audiences who may not understand what he is saying. He seduces them not with the message but with the medium, the Russian language, with its soft buzzings and throaty sighs...
...centerpiece of the volume is Fuku, an 87-page autobiographical odyssey that combines verse and narrative. The title is attributed to an African word used by Latin-American peasants to describe con men and exploiters. Yevtushenko has a little list, starting with Christopher Columbus, whom he evokes as a gold-hungry conquistador and an impatient actor on the set of a television mini-series (" 'When will this all end?!' grumbled Columbus, feeling his face to see if his gray beard had come unglued. 'Somebody, bring me a gin and tonic...
...Yevtushenko is proud of his popular success and pugnacious about his critics...
This sort of grandstanding must surely offend writers who have suffered physical and mental pain under the Soviet system while Yevtushenko flourished. But that is an old, sad story of envies, misunderstandings and compromises that the author does not confront. Rather he defends his style on the justifiable grounds that poetry springs from rude experience and common speech...