‘Holy fools’ – how Soviet-era poets redefined the meaning of love

Poets are the unacknowledged philosophers of love. With words poets collect the consequences of that strange stirring we call love. Most of us are not trained to turn ideas into symphonies or sonatas, but humanity is gifted with the ubiquitous use of language. The ability to manipulate air with one’s mind and mouth and to fuse a select sound with a certain meaning is the power that distinguishes us from our fellow creatures. We want words to reveal what it is we know. Seldom, however, are we satisfied. The importance of the experience merits the invocation of dramatic imagery, of musical allusion and natural beauty. Of all the nations on earth, few have produced as many authors who have undertaken these literary labours for the sake of love, as Russia. Under the harsh and crushing hand of history, Russian composers, poets, painters and novelists had to endure abject oppressions to an egregious degree. These obstacles were hardest to overcome in the Soviet Union, but the era of the Soviet Union marked an extraordinarily successful period for Russian poetry.

The common comprehension of Soviet poetry is that it unfolded throughout three phases. The first was transitional. The second was under the strain of Stalin’s regime and advocated the stultifying style of Socialist Realism; and the third has come to be known as The Thaw when after Stalin’s death Khrushchev permitted uncensored performances of poetry and music. Over this arduous timeline many great poets exercised their talents and advanced the standards of Russian literature, but three poets in particular exemplified the evolution of Russian verse: Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova and Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

Boris Pasternak

Famous for his World Classic, Dr Zhivago, Pasternak was born in Moscow. He was already a published poet by the time of the revolution and was celebrated for his 1923 collection My Sister, Life. His intensity made him a respected figure early in his career and the critics deemed his poems the products of a deep and innate talent. The story goes that when his name appeared on a death list, Stalin crossed him out and said to his attendant “leave that holy fool alone”. The tall and imposing Pasternak composed some of the most tender and lyrically inventive Russian poems of the twentieth century. In The Spring – it had been you Pasternak eloquently complains about the intrusions of memory and his inability to rid his perceptions of his former lover’s presence. “The drift of an empty bottle of scent” is one item among several that stimulates his involuntary recollections and in a frenzy, he asks the “whirlwind” to search the world for a new life for him to live. In a minor poem, My Love, he courses through the old cliché of expressing a desire to immortalise his lover in literature – “And I’d like, that in future chronicles/ After we’re dead and gone in past/ More closely than hearts with auricles/ They’ll rhyme forever both of us”. A master reinvigorates clichés and restores their potency through skill and sincerity. Pasternak achieves this again and again while gracefully propounding the euphonic simplicity of Pushkin.

Anna Akhmatova

One of the most significant and revered poets of the Soviet Union. Her husband was executed and her son was imprisoned from 1938 until 1956. Her work was censored between 1922 and 1940 and she became a prominent target for the cultural ideologist Zhdanov. In 1936 she wrote the short lyric From you I hid my heart, a vulnerable piece of sensual longing in which ghosts gather to mutter the “black whisper of misfortune”, a taunt which reminds her that she is lost to the love her soul requires. In many of her romantic meditations, a tragic atmosphere accompanies her expressions of intolerable yearning. Imbibed with the bitter sweetness of loving to the point of agony, she made songs of pain which are admired across the world. Disdain is due when love fails and Akhmatova was never afraid to use poetry as a punishing weapon. In The Final Toast she derides her partner for the failure of their relationship and in a state of manic clarity sets about listing the woes of her life. Her earliest efforts apprehended the complexities of compassion, rejection and forgiveness without failing to sound oddly conversational. In I wrung my hands, she laments making her “loved one drunk with an astringent sadness” and rushes out to say she did not mean to send him away. Her lover looks back and with a smile, casually says “get out of the rain”. Hers is a hauntingly sad and beautifully subtle body of work.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Born in 1933, he flourished under the Khrushchevian thaw and gained notoriety for his poem Babi Yar. Like a Russian Ginsberg, he became the embodiment of youthful rebellion and prodigious wisdom. His love poems are an unusual read for English speakers. He has the habit of suddenly transforming literal inhabitants and adornments of his poems into metaphors. He passionately lauds the unblemished outlook of childhood and the redemptive powers of life-affirming romance. His poetry is almost polemical, an argument that real life is reliant on true love. It is difficult to dismiss. After the light of love, who wants to be another serf in the kingdom of the shades?