A Poet In Russia - Prison And Exile, Comments

Your title PRISON AND EXILE refers to the earthly fate of poets under Bolshevism, but that dark destiny is redeemed in your last line: I WILL GO OUT AS A SAINT. / THAT'S HOW THE RUSSIANS WANT TO SEE THEIR POETS. A government, promising for seventy years to create a workers' paradise on earth, making war for all those years against its own people - but the poets kept another vision of Russia alive through all that suffering! ! You are part of that victory.//As a young man Yevtushenko met an emigre poet in Paris: how could they communicate with such different lives? Yevtushenko wrote: WHAT UNITED US? THE COMMON SPIRITUAL HOMELAND WAS RUSSIAN POETRY. IT REMAINED UNCHANGED DESPITE THE MADNESS OF SOVIET HISTORY. RUSSIAN CULTURE IS ALWAYS A SINGLE WHOLE. Amen to that.