Andrei Voznesensky Quotes

Everything's sliding apart.
Yet, "Long live everything!"
For the art of creation
Is older than the art of killing.

Along a parabola life like a rocket flies,
Mainly in darkness, now and then on a rainbow.

It's shameful to spot a lie and not to name it,
shameful to name it and then to shut your eyes,
shameful to call a funeral a wedding
and play the fool at funerals besides.

I am Goya
of the bare field, by the enemy's beak gouged
till the craters of my eyes gape
I am grief
I am the tongue
of war, the embers of cities
on the snows of the year 1941
I am hunger.

With good reason, Voznesensky is a hero to all those in the Soviet Union who want their poets to tell them the truth. But at the risk of his career, freedom, and perhaps even his life, he has never been able to do much more than drop hints.

The urge to kill, like the urge to beget,
Is blind and sinister. Its craving is set
Today on the flesh of a hare: tomorrow it can
Howl the same way for the flesh of a man.

I have hurled westward the ashes of the uninvited guest! and hammered stars into the unforgetting sky – like nails
I am Goya.

Akhmatova's seeming successor as the best living Russian poet is Voznesensky. His talent is dazzling. He has the gift of fresh, witty perception, works with unusual images and modern rhythms. His poetry is marvelously dynamic.