Give, Pushkin, your melodiousness and your ability, as it were, to burn with a verb. Give, Lermontov, your bilious look. Give, Nekrasov, the pain of your excised muse, give the power of your inelegance. Give, Block, your prophetic nebula. Give, Pasternak, that your candle burns in me forever. Yesenin, give me tenderness for happiness. Give, Mayakovsky, a formidable intransigence, so that I, cutting through time, could tell my comrades-descendants about him.

Prologue

I'm over thirty. At night I cry that I wasted my life on trifles. We all have one disease of the soul - superficiality. We give half-answers to everything, and our strength is fading away ...

Together with Galya, we drove across Russia to the sea in the fall and after Tula turned to Yasnaya Polyana. There we realized that genius is the connection between height and depth. Three brilliant people gave birth to Russia anew and will give birth to it more than once: Pushkin, Tolstoy and Lenin.

We drove again, spent the night in the car, and I thought that perhaps only a link was missing in the chain of great insights. Well, well, it's our turn.

Monologue of the Egyptian pyramid

I beg: people, steal my memory! I see that everything in the world is not new, everything is exactly repeated by Ancient Egypt. The same meanness, the same prisons, the same oppression, the same thieves, gossips, traders ...

And what is the face of the new sphinx called Russia? I see peasants, workers, there are scribes - there are a lot of them. Is this a pyramid?

I, the pyramid, will tell you something. I saw slaves: they worked, then they rebelled, then they were humbled ... What is the use of this? Slavery has not been eradicated: the slavery of prejudices, money, things still exists. There is no progress. Man is a slave by nature and will never change.

Monologue of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station

The patience of Russia is the courage of the prophet. She endured - and then exploded. Here I am raising Moscow to you with a bucket of an excavator. Look - something happened there.

Execution of Stenka Razin

All the inhabitants of the city - the thief, the tsar, the noblewoman with the boyar, and the merchant, and the buffoons - are in a hurry to execute Stenka Razin. Stenka rides on a cart and thinks that he wanted the people well, but something let him down, maybe illiteracy?

The executioner raises an ax, blue like the Volga, and Stenka sees in its blade FACES sprouting from the faceless crowd. His head rolls, wheezing "Not in vain ..." and laughs at the king.

Bratsk HPP continues

Now, pyramid, I'll show you something else.

Decembrists

They were still boys, but the ringing of spurs did not drown out someone's groans for them. And the boys fumbled for their swords angrily. The essence of a patriot is to rebel in the name of liberty.

Petrashevtsy

The Semenovsky parade ground smells like Senate Square: the Petrashevites are being executed. Hoods are pulled over the eyes. But one of those executed through the hood sees the whole of Russia: how Rogozhin is rampaging through it, Myshkin is rushing about, Alyosha Karamazov is wandering. But the executioners see nothing of the kind.

Chernyshevsky

When Chernyshevsky stood at the pillar of shame, he could see the whole of Russia from the scaffold, like a huge "What is to be done?" A fragile hand threw him a flower from the crowd. And he thought: the time will come, and the same hand will throw the bomb.

Fair in Simbirsk

Goods flicker in the hands of the clerks, the bailiff is watching the order. Hiccuping, the caviar god rolls. And the woman sold her potatoes, grabbed the first and fell, drunk, into the mud. Everyone laughs, points their fingers at her, but some bright-faced schoolboy picked her up and led her away.

Russia is not a drunken woman, she was not born for slavery, and she will not be trampled into the mud.

Bratsk hydroelectric power station addresses the pyramid

Kindness is fundamental to revolutions. The Provisional Government is still feasting in the Winter Palace. But now the "Aurora" is unfolding, the palace has been taken. Look at history - there is Lenin!

The pyramid replies that Lenin is an idealist. Only cynicism does not deceive. People are slaves. It's alphabetical.

But the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station replies that it will show a different alphabet - the alphabet of the revolution. Here is the teacher Elkina at the front in the nineteenth teaches the Red Army to read and write. Here the orphan Sonya, having escaped from Zybkov's fist, comes to Magnitogorsk and becomes a red digger. She has a patched quilted jacket, torn supports, but together with their beloved Petka, they put

Socialism concrete

Bratsk hydroelectric power station roars over eternity: "Communists will never be slaves!" And, thinking, the Egyptian pyramid disappears.

First echelon

Ah, the trans-Siberian highway! Do you remember how carriages with bars flew over you? There was a lot of scary, but do not grieve about it. Now there is an inscription on the carriages: "Bratsk hydroelectric power station is coming!" A girl is riding from Sretenka: in the first year, her pigtails will freeze to the cot, but she will stand, like everyone else.

The Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station will rise, and Alyosha Marchuk will answer questions about it in New York.

Frying

Grandmother is walking through the taiga, and in her hands are flowers. Previously, prisoners lived in this camp, and now they are the builders of the dam. Neighboring residents bring them some sheets, some shanezhki. But the grandmother is carrying a bouquet, crying, baptizing excavators and builders ...

Nyushka

I am a concrete worker, Nyushka Burtova. I was raised and brought up by the village of Velikaya Gryaz, because I became an orphan, then I was a housekeeper, worked as a dishwasher. The people around me lied, stole, but while working in the restaurant car, I recognized the real Russia ... Finally, I got to the construction of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station. She became a concrete worker, gained public weight. Fell in love with a proud Muscovite. When a new life woke up in me, that Muscovite did not recognize paternity. The unfinished dam did not give me suicide. Sonny Trofim was born and became a construction son, as I was a village daughter. We were together with him at the opening of the dam. So let the grandchildren remember that they got the light from Ilyich and a little from me.

Bolshevik

I am a hydraulic engineer Kartsev. When I was young, I raved about the world fire and chopped down the enemies of the commune. Then I went to the workers' school. He built a dam in Uzbekistan. And I could not understand what was happening. The country seemed to have had two lives. In one - Magnitka, Chkalov, in the other - arrests. I was arrested in Tashkent, and when tortured, I wheezed: "I am a Bolshevik!" Remaining an "enemy of the people", I built hydroelectric power plants in the Caucasus and on the Volga, and finally the XX Congress returned my party card. Then I, a Bolshevik, went to build a hydroelectric power station in Bratsk. I will tell our young shift: there is no place for scoundrels in the commune.

The shadows of our loved ones

In Hellas there was a custom: starting to build a house, the first stone was placed in the shade of the woman he loved. I do not know in whose shadow the first stone was laid in Bratsk, but when I peer into the dam, I see in it the shadows of yours, builders, loved ones. And I put the first line of this poem in the shadow of my beloved, as if in the shadow of conscience.

Mayakovsky

Standing at the foot of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station, I immediately thought of Mayakovsky: he seemed to have risen in her appearance. He, like a dam, stands across untruth and teaches us to stand for the cause of the revolution.

Poetry night

On the Bratsk Sea we read poetry, sang a song about commissars. And the commissars stood in front of me. And I heard the hydroelectric power station thundering over the false grandeur of the pyramids in a meaningful grandeur. At the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station, the maternal image of Russia was revealed to me. There are still many slaves on earth, but if love fights and does not contemplate, then hatred is powerless. There is no fate purer and loftier - to give all his life so that all people on earth could say: "We are not slaves."

I'm over thirty. I'm scared at night.
I will lay a sheet with my knees for a humpback,
I drown my face in a pillow, I cry ashamed,
that I wasted my life on trifles,
and in the morning I spend it again in the same way.
If you only knew, my critics,
whose kindness is innocently questionable,
how affectionate are the articles
versus my own speed,
you would feel better if at a late hour
your conscience is unjustly tormenting you.
Going through all my poems
I see: recklessly squandering,
I've done so much nonsense ...
but you will not burn it: it fled around the world.
My rivals
let's put aside flattery
and curse deceitful honor.
Let us ponder over our destinies.
We all have the same
illness of the soul.
Superficiality is her name.
Superficiality, you are worse than blindness.
You can see, but you don't want to see.
Perhaps you are from illiteracy?
Or maybe from the fear of pulling out the roots
trees under which it grew,
without planting a single cola to replace?
And isn't that why we're in such a hurry
removing the outer layer only half a meter,
that, the courage of forgetting, is a fear
the task itself - to grasp the essence of the subject?
We are in a hurry ... Giving only a half-answer,
we carry superficiality like treasures,
not from the calculation of cold - no, no! -
but from the instinct of self-preservation.
Then comes the fading away
and the inability to fly, to fight,
and the feathers of our domestic wings
the scoundrels' pillows are already stuffed ...
I rushed ... I was thrown back and forth
me from someone's sobbing or moaning
then in the inflatable uselessness of od,
then into the false usefulness of feuilletons.
Someone rubbed his whole life with his shoulder,
and it was me. I'm in passionate passion
naively stomping, fought with a hairpin,
where the sword should have been.
Criminally childish was my ardor.
There was not enough ruthlessness,
which means full of pity ...
I was
as an average of wax and metal
and by this he ruined his youth.
Let everyone enter life under this vow:
help what should bloom,
and take revenge without forgetting about it,
everything that deserves revenge!
We will not take revenge for fear of revenge.
The very possibility of revenge diminishes
and self-preservation instinct
does not save us, but kills.
Superficiality is a killer, not a friend
feigned health ailment,
entangled in networks of seduction ...
Exchanging the spirit for particulars,
we run away from generalizations.
The globe of the earth loses its strength in an empty one,
leaving generalizations for later.
Or maybe his insecurity
and there is a lack of human destinies
into the epiphany of the century, clear and simple ?!
... I drove across Russia with Galya,
somewhere to the sea in the "Moskvich" in a hurry
from all the sorrows ...
Autumn of Russian distances
Sideways everything was gilded and tired,
rustling sheets under the tires,
and rested behind the wheel of the shower.
Breathing steppe, birch, pine,
throwing an unthinkable array at me,
at a speed of seventy, with a whistle,
Russia flowed around our "Moskvich".
Russia wanted to express something
and understood something like no one else.
She pressed "Moskvich" into her body
and pulled into the very core.
And, apparently, with some kind of idea,
hiding its essence before the deadline,
told me right after Tula
turn to Yasnaya Polyana.
And here in the estate, breathing decrepit,
we entered, children of the atomic age,
hurrying, in nylon raincoats,
and froze, suddenly blundering.
And, descendants of walkers for righteousness,
we suddenly felt at that moment
all the same, the same knapsacks on the shoulders
and the same legs broken barefoot.
Silently obeying the command
run through the foliage by the sunset,
we entered a shady alley
named "Alley of Silence".
And this golden dryness
without moving away from human shortages,
took off vanity like a leper,
and, without removing, heightened the pain.
The pain, rising, became beautiful,
combining peace and passion in yourself,
and the spirit seemed to be an all-powerful power,
but an impassive question arose in my soul -
and is this power really so omnipotent?
Have you made any changes
all those who are so honored from us,
whose spirit is broader than our dimensions?
Have you got it?
Or is everything flowing as of old?
And meanwhile - the owner of the estate,
invisible, kept us in sight
and fancied around: then slipping
a gray-bearded cloud in a pond,
it was heard with his large gait
in a nebula of smoking hollows,
then part of the face was coarse in the bark,
gorged wrinkles.
Shaggy his eyebrows sprouted
in the wilderness of the weeds in the meadow,
and the roots stood out on the paths,
like veins on his mighty forehead.
And, not decaying, - regally ancient,
performing sorcery with the summit noise,
powerful trees rose around,
as thoughts are not encompassing him.
They rushed to the clouds and bowels,
roared more and more menacingly,
and the roots of their summits grew from the sky,
going deep into the tops of the roots ...
Yes, up and down - and only at the same time!
Yes, genius - heights with the depth of the connection! ..
But how many still live as perishable,
in the shadow of great thoughts fussing ...
So, geniuses were burning in vain
in the name of changing people?
And maybe ideas are not obsolete -
evidence of the impotence of ideas?
Which year has passed, which,
and our purity, as in drunkenness,
rushes to Natasha Rostova
to a false experience - a rake and I lie!
And again and again - to Tolstoy in rooting -
we forget, hiding from passions,
that Vronsky is harder than Karenin,
in his soft-hearted cowardice.
And Tolstoy himself?
Shaken by myself,
he is not an example of his impotence, -
rushing about helplessly like Levin
in a benevolent pursuit of change? ..
The work of geniuses sometimes by themselves
frightens with the doubtful result,
but generalizations of each of them,
as in battle, centimeter by centimeter.
Three greatest names of Russia
let us be protected from fear.
They gave birth to Russia again
and they will give birth to her again and again.
When both speechless and blind

Current page: 1 (total of the book has 5 pages)

Evgeny Evtushenko
BRATSKAYA HPP
Poem

PRAYER BEFORE THE POEM

A poet in Russia is more than a poet.
In it poets are destined to be born
only to those in whom the proud spirit of citizenship wanders,
to whom there is no comfort, there is no peace.

The poet in her is the image of his century
and a ghostly prototype of the future.
The poet fails, without falling into shyness,
the result of everything that came before him.

Will I be able to? Culture is lacking ...
Grasping prophecies does not bode well ...
But the spirit of Russia hovers over me
and boldly orders to try.

And, kneeling quietly,
ready for death and victory,
I humbly ask you for help,
great Russian poets ...

Give me your melodiousness, Pushkin,
your uninhibited speech,
its captivating fate -
as if naughty, burn with a verb.

Give, Lermontov, your bilious look,
poison of my contempt
and a cell of a closed soul,
where it breathes, hidden in silence,
your sister's unkindness -
lamp of secret good.

Give, Nekrasov, subduing my agility,
the pain of your mutilated muse -
by the front porches, by the rails
and in the vastness of forests and fields.
Give your inelegance strength.
Give me your painful feat,
to go, dragging all of Russia,
as the barge haulers go by the line.

Oh, give me Block, the prophetic nebula
and two heeling wings,
so that, melting the eternal riddle,
music flowed through the body.

Give, Pasternak, shift of days,
confusion of branches,
fusion of smells, shadows
with the agony of the century,
so that the word, muttering in the garden,
bloomed and ripened,
so that forever your candle
burned in me.

Yesenin, give me tenderness for happiness
to birches and meadows, to animals and people
and everything else on earth,
that you and I love so helplessly

Give, Mayakovsky, to me
lumpiness,
riot,
bass,
formidable irreconcilability to scum,
so that I can too,
cutting through time
tell about him
comrades descendants.

PROLOGUE

I'm over thirty. I'm scared at night.
I will lay a sheet with my knees for a humpback,
I drown my face in a pillow, I cry ashamed,
that I wasted my life on trifles,
and in the morning I spend it again in the same way.
If you only knew, my critics,
whose kindness is innocently questionable,
how affectionate are the articles
versus my own speed,
you would feel better if at a late hour
your conscience is unjustly tormenting you.
Going through all my poems
I see: recklessly squandering,
I've done so much nonsense ...
but you will not burn it: it fled around the world.
My rivals
let's put aside the flattery
and curse deceitful honor.
Let us ponder over our destinies.
We all have the same
illness of the soul.
Superficiality is her name.
Superficiality, you are worse than blindness.
You can see, but you don't want to see.
Perhaps you are from illiteracy?
Or maybe from the fear of pulling out the roots
trees under which it grew,
without planting a single cola to replace?
And isn't that why we're in such a hurry
removing the outer layer only half a meter,
that, the courage of forgetting, is a fear
the task itself - to grasp the essence of the subject?
We are in a hurry ... Giving only a half-answer,
we carry superficiality like treasures,
not from the calculation of cold - no, no! -
but from the instinct of self-preservation.
Then comes the fading away
and the inability to fly, to fight,
and the feathers of our domestic wings
the scoundrels' pillows are already stuffed ...
I rushed ... I was thrown back and forth
me from someone's sobbing or moaning
then in the inflatable uselessness of od,
then into the false usefulness of feuilletons.
Someone rubbed his whole life with his shoulder,
and it was me. I'm in passionate passion
naively stomping, fought with a hairpin,
where the sword should have been.
Criminally childish was my ardor.
There was not enough ruthlessness,
which means full of pity ...
I was
as an average of wax and metal
and by this he ruined his youth.
Let everyone enter life under this vow:
help what should bloom,
and take revenge without forgetting about it,
everything that deserves revenge!
We will not take revenge for fear of revenge.
The very possibility of revenge diminishes
and self-preservation instinct
does not save us, but kills.
Superficiality is a killer, not a friend
feigned health ailment,
entangled in networks of seduction ...
Exchanging the spirit for particulars,
we run away from generalizations.
The globe of the earth loses its strength in an empty one,
leaving generalizations for later.
Or maybe his insecurity
and there is a lack of human destinies
into the epiphany of the century, clear and simple ?!
... I drove across Russia with Galya,
somewhere to the sea in the "Moskvich" in a hurry
from all the sorrows ...
Autumn of Russian distances
Sideways everything was gilded and tired,
rustling sheets under the tires,
and rested behind the wheel of the shower.
Breathing steppe, birch, pine,
throwing an unthinkable array at me,
at a speed of seventy, with a whistle,
Russia flowed around our Moskvich.
Russia wanted to express something
and understood something like no one else.
She pressed "Moskvich" into her body
and pulled into the very core.
And, apparently, with some kind of idea,
hiding its essence before the deadline,
told me right after Tula
turn to Yasnaya Polyana.
And here in the estate, breathing decrepit,
we entered, children of the atomic age,
hurrying, in nylon raincoats,
and froze, suddenly blundering.
And, descendants of walkers for righteousness,
we suddenly felt at that moment
all the same, the same knapsacks on the shoulders
and the same legs broken barefoot.
Silently obeying the command
run through the foliage by the sunset,
we entered a shady alley
named "Alley of Silence".
And this golden dryness
without moving away from human shortages,
took off vanity like a leper,
and, without removing, heightened the pain.
The pain, rising, became beautiful,
combining peace and passion in yourself,
and the spirit seemed to be an all-powerful power,
but an impassive question arose in my soul -
and is this power really so omnipotent?
Have you made any changes
all those who are so honored from us,
whose spirit is broader than our dimensions?
Have you got it?
Or is everything flowing as of old?
And meanwhile - the owner of the estate,
invisible, kept us in sight
and fancied around: then slipping
a gray-bearded cloud in a pond,
it was heard with his large gait
in a nebula of smoking hollows,
then part of the face was coarse in the bark,
gorged wrinkles.
Shaggy his eyebrows sprouted
in the wilderness of the weeds in the meadow,
and the roots stood out on the paths,
like veins on his mighty forehead.
And, not decaying, - regally ancient,
performing sorcery with the summit noise,
powerful trees rose around,
as thoughts are not encompassing him.
They rushed to the clouds and bowels,
roared more and more menacingly,
and the roots of their summits grew from the sky,
going deep into the tops of the roots ...
Yes, up and down - and only at the same time!
Yes, genius - heights the connection with the depth! ..
But how many still live as perishable,
in the shadow of great thoughts fussing ...
So, geniuses were burning in vain
in the name of changing people?
And maybe ideas are not obsolete -
evidence of the impotence of ideas?
Which year has passed, which,
and our purity, as in drunkenness,
rushes to Natasha Rostova
to a false experience - a rake and I lie!
And again and again - to Tolstoy in rooting -
we forget, hiding from passions,
that Vronsky is harder than Karenin,
in his soft-hearted cowardice.
And Tolstoy himself?
I am shaken by myself,
he is not an example of his impotence, -
rushing about helplessly like Levin
in a benevolent pursuit of change? ..
The work of geniuses sometimes by themselves
frightens with the doubtful result,
but generalizations of each of them,
as in battle, centimeter by centimeter.
Three greatest names of Russia
let us be protected from fear.
They gave birth to Russia again
and they will give birth to her again and again.
When both speechless and blind
she wandered through the whips, my dear,
Pushkin appeared simply and transparently,
as self-awareness of her.
When she's tired eyes
I was looking for the source of my sorrows, -
as a comprehension of a ripening consciousness,
Tolstoy came, pitifully cruel,
but - hands clasped by the strap.
Well, when the way out was unclear to her,
and anger ripened irreversibly, -
Lenin burst out of the whirlwind, like a conclusion,
and blew it up to save her!
So I thought confusingly, at length,
leaving Yasnaya Polyana long ago
and rushing through Russia on "Moskvich"
with her beloved, sleeping quietly on her shoulder.
The night was deepening, only faintly turning pink
along the edge ...
Lights flew in the forehead.
The accordions poured.
Red month
drunk over the fence.
Turning off the highway somewhere
I slowed down, unfolded the seats,
and we sailed with Galya into dreams
through the obsessions of the stars - cheek to cheek ...
I dreamed of the world
without the weak and fat,
without dollars, ducats and pesetas,
where there are no borders, where there are no lying governments,
rockets and foul-smelling newspapers.
I dreamed of a world where everything is so pristine
bristles with bird cherry in the dew,
full of nightingales and blackbirds,
where all nations are in brotherhood and kinship,
where there is no slander or abuse,
where the air is clear as in the morning on the river,
where we live, forever immortal,
with Galya,
as we see this dream - cheek to cheek ...
But we woke up ...
"Moskvich" is our audacious
stood on arable land, poking into the bushes.
I opened the chilled door
and took your breath away from beauty.
Over a furious dawn, red, rough,
with a cigarette, clenched violently in the mouth,
the steel-toothed lad drove the dump truck,
drove fiercely in the fierce wind.
And fiercely like a fiery nozzle
over the black arable land, green meadows
the sun pushed itself out
from furiously clutching haystacks.
And the trees flew furiously,
and, galloping furiously, the brook growled,
and blue, scarlet and yareya,
rocked madly from rooks.
I wanted to rush in just as fiercely
as in a rage, in life, opening the fury of the wings ...
The world was beautiful. I had to fight
for making him even more beautiful!
And again I took in, leaning to the steering wheel,
into my insatiable eyes
Palaces of culture.
Tea rooms.
Barracks.
District committees.
Churches.
And the traffic police posts.
Factories.
Huts.
Slogans.
Birches.
Crackling jet in the sky.
The shaking of the carts.
Jammers.
Overgrown figurines
milkmaids, pioneers, miners.
The eyes of old women, looking like icons.
The preoccupation of women.
The kids are a jerk.
Prostheses.
Oil derricks.
Waste heaps,
like the breasts of reclining giantesses.
The men drove the tractor. Sawed.
We went to the checkpoint, then hurrying to the machine.
We fell into the mines. We drank beer
placing the salt along the rim.
And the women cooked. Washed.
Patched, having time to do everything in a moment.
Painted. We stood in lines.
They pounded the ground. They dragged the cement.
It was getting dark again.
The Moskvich was all dewy.
and the night was full of stars,
and Galya got our transistor,
exposing the antenna out of the window.
The antenna rested against the universe.
The transistor hissed in Galina's hands.
From there,
not ashamed in front of the stars,
there was a cheerfully lie in so many languages!
Oh, globe of the earth, do not lie and do not play!
You yourself suffer - no more lies!
I will gladly give the afterlife paradise
so that there was less hell on earth!
The car thrashed over the bumps.
(Road workers, well you bitches!)
It might seem like there was chaos around
but there were "beginnings" and "ends" in it.
There was Russia -
the first love
coming ...
And in her, forever imperishable,
foaming Pushkin somewhere again,
Tolstoy thickened, Lenin was born.
And, looking into the starry night, forward,
i thought i was in saving links
connect great insights
and maybe only a link is missing ...
Well, we are alive.
It's our turn.

MONOLOGUE OF THE EGYPTIAN PYRAMID

I -
Egyptian pyramid.
I am intertwined with legends.
And scribblers
me
look at
and museums
me
steal
and scientists tinker with magnifiers,
dust with tweezers timidly picking up,
and tourists,
sweating
crowded
to take pictures against the background of immortality.
Why is the ancient proverb
repeat fellahs and birds,
that all people are afraid
time,
and it -
afraid of the pyramids!
People, tame the age-old fear!
I will become kind
I just pray:
steal,
steal,
steal my memory!
I absorb into the harsh silence
all the explosive power of centuries.
Spaceship
with a roar
come off
I
from the sands.
I'm sailing a Martian mystery
over the ground,
over insect people,
only some tourist is hanging out,
hooked on my braces.
I see through the nylon-neon:
states are only superficially new.
Everything in the world is terribly not new -
the same ancient Egypt -
Alas!
The same meanness is in its openness.
The same prisons -
only modern.
The same oppression
only more hypocritical.
The same thieves
greedy
gossips,
hucksters ...
Redo them!
Dudki!
The pyramids are not without reason skeptics.
Pyramids -
they are not stupid.
I'll spread the clouds apart
and cut through
like a ghost of them.
Come on, a sphinx called Russia,
show your mysterious face!
I see with my own eyes the familiar again -
only drifts instead of sand.
There are peasants
and there are workers
and the scribes -
a lot of scribes.
There are officials
there is also an army.
There is probably
your pharaoh.
I see some kind of banner ...
Scarlet!
BUT, -
I have known so many banners!
I see
new buildings are piling up,
I see
the mountains are rearing up.
I see
working ...
Nevidal - they are working!
Previously, slaves also worked ...
I hear -
makes a primal noise
them
a taiga called a forest.
I see something ...
Not a pyramid!
"Hey, who are you?"
“I am the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station”.
“Oh, I heard:
you are the first in the world
and by power,
etc.
You listen to me
pyramid.
I'll tell you something.
I, the Egyptian pyramid,
as a sister, I will open my soul to you.
I'm washed by rains of sand
but not yet washed of blood.
I am immortal
but in thoughts of disbelief,
and inside everything is screaming and crying.
I curse any immortality
if death -
its foundation!
I remember
like moaning slaves
dragged under lashes and sticks,
pushing hard
a hundred-ton lump
on the sand
on palm runners.
A lump has risen ...
But looking for a way out
they were told without any hesitation
for the runners to dig the gully
and lie down in these hollows.
And the slaves lay down in obedience
under the runners:
so God wanted ...
The lump immediately moved along the slippery
their bodies being crushed.
The priest was ...
With a dirty smirk
looking at the slaves' labors,
a hair smelling of ointments,
he pulled out of his beard.
Himself, he lashes a sec
and squealed:
"Redo, nits!" -
if suddenly a hair passed
between the blocks of the pyramid.
AND -
obliquely
on the forehead or temple:
“Relax for an hour?
At least a piece of bread?
Eat the sand!
Drink bitch juice!
That - not a hair!
That - not a hair! "
And the overseers ate,
got fat
and whistled their song with whips.

SONG OF SUPERVISORS

We are the overseers
we -
your legs
throne.
At the sight of us
frowns
squeamishly
Pharaoh.
And what is he without us?
Without our eyes?
Without our sips?
Without our whips?
Lash -
medicine,
although she is not honey.
The basis of the state is
supervision,
supervision.
A people without edification
could not work.
The basis of creation -
supervision,
supervision.
And the warriors, limp,
would run like rabble.
The basis of heroism -
supervision,
supervision.
Dangerous
who are brooding.
All thinking -
to the slaughter.
Supervision over souls
more important,
than over bodies.
Are you talking about something?
Are you nagging again?
Do you want freedom?
Isn't there her?
(And they don't sound too cheerful
vote:
"There is!
There is!" -
whether they have freedom,
whether they want to eat!)
We -
overseers.
We're humanely rude.
We don't beat you to death,
for your benefit, stupid ones.
Lash
on black
backs
chopping,
suggest:
"Honorable
Job
slave. "
What about freedom to dream?
Do you fools
freedom -
how much will fit
be silent
What are you thinking about.
We are overseers.
With us too
sweat in a stream.
Slaves,
you can't us
reproach
not with anything.
We look wary.
We are dogs -
only without muzzles.
But we, too,
overseers, -
slaves of other overseers.
And over the moaning slaves, -
he is a slave to Amun -
overseer of all overseers,
our poor pharaoh.

But slaves are not grateful for slavery.
Unconscious slaves
unconscious.
They do not feel sorry for the overseers,
slaves,
they do not feel sorry for Pharaoh,
slaves, -
I don't have enough pity for myself.
And a groan runs through the rows,
groan of weariness.

SONG OF SLAVES

We are slaves ... We are slaves ... We are slaves ...
Like earth, our hands are rough.
Our huts are our coffins.
Our backs are hard as humps.
We are animals. We are for mowing
threshing, and also hammering
pyramids - to exalt in order
pharaohs haughty foreheads.
You laugh during the ghoul
among women, guilt, boasting,
well, the slave - he drags the pillars
and stones of pyramidal cubes.
Is there really no strength to fight
to rears up someday?
Is it possible in the eyes of the nakedness -
destiny of eternal destiny
repeat: "We are slaves ... We are slaves ..."?

P i r a m and d a p o d o l e t:

And then the slaves rebelled
they repaid the pharaohs for everything,
they were thrown at the feet of crowds ...
What's the use?
I,
Egyptian pyramid,
I'm telling you,
Bratsk hydroelectric power station:
so many slaves killed in riots,
but I do not see something miracles.
They say,
slavery is abolished ...
I do not agree:
even more powerful
slavery
all class prejudices,
slavery of money,
slavery of things.
Yes,
there are no old-fashioned chains,
but other chains in public -
chains of deceitful politics,
churches
and paper chains of newspapers.
Here is a little man lives.
Let's say a clerk.
He collects stamps.
He has his own house in installments.
He has a wife and daughter.
He vilifies the authorities in bed,
well, in the morning brings reports
flexing, nods:
"Yes ..."
He's free,
Bratsk hydroelectric power station!
Don't judge him cruelly.
Poor fellow
he is a slave to the family.
Well, here
in the presidential chair
another man,
and if,
suppose he's not even a bastard,
what good can he do?
After all, like the throne of Pharaoh,
no innovation
armchair -
in slavery at their own feet.
Well, the legs -
those who support
and when they need it,
hold.
The President gets bored
what's above him
someone's "must!" hovers
but it's too late to fight:
in their flattery
fists get bogged down
as in the test.
The President sniffs exhaustedly:
“Well, to hell with them!
Everything is disgusted ... "
Noble passions are extinguished in him ...
Who is he?
A slave to his own power.
Think about it,
Bratsk hydroelectric power station,
in how many people -
clogging,
intimidation.
People,
where is your vaunted progress?
People,
people,
how confused you are!
I observe strict edges
and cracked sphinxes
behind your great construction sites,
behind your great swinishness.
I see:
the human spirit is weak.
In man
it is forbidden
do not be misled.
Man -
slave by nature.
Man
will never change.
No,
I flatly refuse
wait for something ...
Straight,
open
I say this
Bratsk hydroelectric power station,
I, the Egyptian pyramid.

MONOLOGUE OF BRATSKAYA HPP

Pyramid,
I am the daughter of Russia,
incomprehensible land to you.
She was baptized with whips since childhood,
tore to shreds,
burned.
Her soul was trampled, trampled,
striking blow after blow,
Pechenegs,
Varangians,
Tatars
and their -
more terrible than the Tatars.
And the feathers of the ravens shone,
reality grew over the bones,
and there was a belief in the world
about her great patience.
The patience of Russia is glorified.
It has grown to heroism.
It was kneaded like clay on blood,
well, and she endured, and that's all.
And a barge haule, with a shoulder rubbed with a strap,
and to the plowman who fell in the steppe,
she whispered with motherly affection
eternal: "Be patient, son, be patient ..."
I can understand how so many years Russia
suffered hunger and cold,
and wars of cruel inhuman torment,
and the severity of backbreaking work,
and parasites, lying to the limit,
and various deceitful lies,
but I cannot comprehend: how I endured
she is her own patience ?!
There is a feeble, pitiful patience.
It is full of downtrodden nature,
in him is slavish obedience, stupidity ...
Russia is not at all like that.
Her patience is the courage of a prophet,
who is wisely patient.
She endured everything ...
But only before the deadline,
like a mine.
And then
happened
explosion!

R e r v a l and p i r a m and d and:

I'm against
any explosions ...
I saw it!
Prick,
chop,
but is there much use?
Only blood is shed in vain!

B r a t and I G ES p o d about:

In vain?
I call the past in memory,
repeating to myself again
prophetic lines:
"... The case is solid,
when blood flows underneath. "
And over the taps,
overpasses,
pyramid,
to you through the midge
I lift with an excavator bucket
in taverns and boyars Moscow.
Look:
in the bucket above the teeth
gold
domes stick out.
What happened there?
What is frowning
did the bells ring?

Evgeny Alexandrovich Evtushenko

"Bratskaya HPP"

Prayer in front of the dam

Give, Pushkin, your melodiousness and your ability, as it were, to burn with a verb. Give, Lermontov, your bilious look. Give, Nekrasov, the pain of your excised muse, give the power of your inelegance. Give, Block, your prophetic nebula. Give, Pasternak, that your candle burns in me forever. Yesenin, give me tenderness for happiness. Give, Mayakovsky, a formidable intransigence, so that I, cutting through time, could tell my comrades-descendants about him.

Prologue

I'm over thirty. At night I cry that I wasted my life on trifles. We all have one disease of the soul - superficiality. We give half-answers to everything, and our forces are fading away ...

Together with Galya, we drove across Russia to the sea in the fall and after Tula turned to Yasnaya Polyana. There we realized that genius is the connection between height and depth. Three brilliant people gave birth to Russia anew and will give birth to it more than once: Pushkin, Tolstoy and Lenin.

We drove again, spent the night in the car, and I thought that perhaps only a link was missing in the chain of great insights. Well, well, it's our turn.

Monologue of the Egyptian pyramid

I beg: people, steal my memory! I see that everything in the world is not new, everything is exactly repeated by Ancient Egypt. The same meanness, the same prisons, the same oppression, the same thieves, gossips, traders ...

And what is the face of the new sphinx called Russia? I see peasants, workers, there are scribes - there are a lot of them. Is this a pyramid?

I, the pyramid, will tell you something. I saw slaves: they worked, then they rebelled, then they were humbled ... What is the use of this? Slavery has not been eradicated: the slavery of prejudices, money, things still exists. There is no progress. Man is a slave by nature and will never change.

Monologue of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station

The patience of Russia is the courage of the prophet. She endured - and then exploded. Here I am raising Moscow to you with a bucket of an excavator. Look - something happened there.

Execution of Stenka Razin

All the inhabitants of the city - the thief, the tsar, the noblewoman with the boyarchon, the merchant, and the buffoons - are in a hurry to execute Stenka Razin. Stenka rides on a cart and thinks that he wanted the people well, but something let him down, maybe illiteracy?

The executioner raises an ax, blue like the Volga, and Stenka sees in its blade FACES sprouting from the faceless crowd. His head rolls, wheezing "Not in vain ..." and laughs at the king.

Bratsk HPP continues

Now, pyramid, I'll show you something else.

Decembrists

They were still boys, but the ringing of spurs did not drown out someone's groans for them. And the boys fumbled for their swords angrily. The essence of a patriot is to rebel in the name of liberty.

Petrashevtsy

The Semenovsky parade ground smells like Senate Square: the Petrashevites are being executed. Hoods are pulled over the eyes. But one of those executed through the hood sees the whole of Russia: how Rogozhin is rampaging through it, Myshkin is rushing about, Alyosha Karamazov is wandering. But the executioners see nothing of the kind.

Chernyshevsky

When Chernyshevsky stood at the pillar of shame, he could see the whole of Russia from the scaffold, like a huge "What is to be done?" A fragile hand threw him a flower from the crowd. And he thought: the time will come, and the same hand will throw the bomb.

Fair in Simbirsk

Goods flicker in the hands of the clerks, the bailiff is watching the order. Hiccuping, the caviar god rolls. And the woman sold her potatoes, grabbed the first and fell, drunk, into the mud. Everyone laughs, points their fingers at her, but some bright-faced schoolboy picked her up and led her away.

Russia is not a drunken woman, she was not born for slavery, and she will not be trampled into the mud.

Bratsk hydroelectric power station addresses the pyramid

Kindness is fundamental to revolutions. The Provisional Government is still feasting in the Winter Palace. But now the "Aurora" is unfolding, the palace has been taken. Look at history - there is Lenin!

The pyramid replies that Lenin is an idealist. Only cynicism does not deceive. People are slaves. It's alphabetical.

But the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station replies that it will show a different alphabet - the alphabet of the revolution. Here is the teacher Elkina at the front in the nineteenth teaches the Red Army to read and write. Here the orphan Sonya, having escaped from Zybkov's fist, comes to Magnitogorsk and becomes a red digger. She has a patched quilted jacket, torn supports, but together with their beloved Petka, they put

Socialism concrete

Bratsk hydroelectric power station roars over eternity: "Communists will never be slaves!" And, thinking, the Egyptian pyramid disappears.

First echelon

Ah, the trans-Siberian highway! Do you remember how carriages with bars flew over you? There was a lot of scary, but do not grieve about it. Now there is an inscription on the carriages: "Bratsk hydroelectric power station is coming!" A girl is riding from Sretenka: in the first year, her pigtails will freeze to the cot, but she will stand, like everyone else.

The Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station will rise, and Alyosha Marchuk will answer questions about it in New York.

Frying

Grandmother is walking through the taiga, and in her hands are flowers. Previously, prisoners lived in this camp, and now they are the builders of the dam. Neighboring residents bring them some sheets, some shanezhki. But the grandmother is carrying a bouquet, crying, baptizing excavators and builders ...

Nyushka

I am a concrete worker, Nyushka Burtova. I was raised and brought up by the village of Velikaya Gryaz, because I became an orphan, then I was a housekeeper, worked as a dishwasher. The people around me lied, stole, but while working in the restaurant car, I recognized the real Russia ... Finally, I got to the construction of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station. She became a concrete worker, gained public weight. Fell in love with a proud Muscovite. When a new life woke up in me, that Muscovite did not recognize paternity. The unfinished dam did not give me suicide. Sonny Trofim was born and became a construction son, as I was a village daughter. We were together with him at the opening of the dam. So let the grandchildren remember that they got the light from Ilyich and a little from me.

Bolshevik

I am a hydraulic engineer Kartsev. When I was young, I raved about the world fire and chopped down the enemies of the commune. Then I went to the workers' school. He built a dam in Uzbekistan. And I could not understand what was happening. The country seemed to have had two lives. In one - Magnitka, Chkalov, in the other - arrests. I was arrested in Tashkent, and when tortured, I wheezed: "I am a Bolshevik!" Remaining an "enemy of the people", I built hydroelectric power plants in the Caucasus and on the Volga, and finally the XX Congress returned my party card. Then I, a Bolshevik, went to build a hydroelectric power station in Bratsk. I will tell our young shift: there is no place for scoundrels in the commune.

The shadows of our loved ones

In Hellas there was a custom: starting to build a house, the first stone was placed in the shade of the woman he loved. I do not know in whose shadow the first stone was laid in Bratsk, but when I peer into the dam, I see in it the shadows of yours, builders, loved ones. And I put the first line of this poem in the shadow of my beloved, as if in the shadow of conscience.

Mayakovsky

Standing at the foot of the Bratsk hydroelectric power station, I immediately thought of Mayakovsky: he seemed to have risen in her appearance. He, like a dam, stands across untruth and teaches us to stand for the cause of the revolution.

Poetry night

On the Bratsk Sea we read poetry, sang a song about commissars. And the commissars stood in front of me. And I heard the hydroelectric power station thundering over the false grandeur of the pyramids in a meaningful grandeur. At the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station, the maternal image of Russia was revealed to me. There are still many slaves on earth, but if love fights and does not contemplate, then hatred is powerless. There is no fate purer and loftier - to give all his life so that all people on earth could say: "We are not slaves."

The suffering hero, singing the beauty of the words of the Russian poet, turns to them for help. This kind of prayer is directed to the image of Pushkin, Lermontov, Nekrasov, Blok, Pasternak, Yesenin and Mayakovsky.

The author is over thirty years old. He is dissatisfied with his life lived. He believes that there is an understatement in his fate, but time takes strength over the years. Together with his girlfriend Galya, he understands that there is a meaning of genius - this is the connection between height and depth. And he truly considers Pushkin, Tolstoy and Lenin to be representatives of high moral character in Russia.

With a feeling of vexation and resentment, the hero speaks about his country. He compares the historical events of the past and understands that there is nothing new in the world, that the life of the people is repeating itself. And Mother Russia repeats the mistakes of Ancient Egypt. In his reasoning, he gives her the name of the new Sphinx. People, peasants are still slaves, and this is their cruel fate. A dialogue is underway between the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station and the Egyptian pyramid.

Further events unfold around the execution of Stenka Razin. Everyone rushes to see the cruel spectacle. And the punished Stenka in his thoughts blames himself for illiteracy, which was the reason for his failure. The last words of the executed were the mocking words of the Russian tsar: "Not in vain ...".

One of the heroes of the story is the young Decembrists. These children are already ready to fight the enemy and defend the rights of the free peasant-patriot. Then the punishment and execution of the Petrashevites take place. The Semenovsky parade ground becomes the place of execution. Through the hood he sees one of the executed raging Rogozhin, Myshkin, Alyosha Karamazov. All of Russia appears before his eyes. But the executioners do not see such a thing.

Chernyshevsky, standing at the pillar of shame, looked at his native country as a defenseless and hopeless land. Someone from the crowd threw him a flower, and he realized that the time would come and the people would rise up against injustice and dishonor.

The story has its continuation at the fair in Simbirsk. The strength of the Russian spirit is reflected in the example of a drunken woman who fell into the mud, but was raised by a clear-faced schoolboy. The Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station is engaged in dialogue and dispute with the pyramid, represented in the image of the tsarist empire. The revolution begins by calling on the people to be kind and sympathetic.

People are not slaves! Even children who strive for education and literacy understand this. The Egyptian pyramid disappears under the slogan of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station: "Communists will never be slaves!" The story of Nyushka amazes with the breadth of her soul. In the image of this girl, the traits and fates of all Russian women are revealed. Nyushka Burtova is a simple concrete orphan. Many difficult tests fell on her: she worked as a dishwasher and as a housekeeper. People often hurt her. Then she went to a construction site at the Bratsk hydroelectric station. And here she felt herself necessary for the state.

People are able to build a new life, a new Russia. They don't want to be depressed and humiliated anymore. They are ready to fight for justice and a happy future for their children. Step by step, stone by stone - gradually, but people will prove that they are not free citizens of their state.

The poem "Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station" was written by E. Yevtushenko in the mid-sixties, based on fresh impressions of the grandiose construction. It contains pride in the people and the country who are implementing such unprecedented projects.
The poem "Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station", written in the mid-sixties, sounds relevant today, such is the power of the classics, and the fact that Evgeny Alexandrovich Yevtushenko is a classic is no longer in doubt.

The chapter "Execution of Stepan Razin" from the poem "Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station" is read by the author

Evtushenko, Evgeny Alexandrovich

Poet, screenwriter, film director; co-chairman of the April Writers 'Association, Secretary of the Board of the Commonwealth of Writers' Unions; was born on July 18, 1933 at the station. Winter in the Irkutsk region; graduated from the Literary Institute. A.M. Gorky in 1954; began publishing in 1949; was a member of the editorial board of the magazine "Youth" (1962-1969); member of the USSR Writers' Union, author of the poems "Bratsk Hydroelectric Power Station", "Kazan University", "Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty", "Fuku", "Mom and the Neutron Bomb", the novel "Berry Places" and many other prose and poetic works.
Yevtushenko wrote that in his youth he was "a product of the Stalinist era, a mixed-mixed creature in which revolutionary romance, and the animal instinct for survival, and devotion to poetry, and its frivolous betrayal at every step coexisted." Since the late 1950s, numerous performances have contributed to its popularity, sometimes 300-400 times a year. In 1963, Yevtushenko published his Premature Autobiography in the West German magazine Stern and in the French weekly Express. In it, he spoke about the existing anti-Semitism, about Stalin's "heirs", wrote about the literary bureaucracy, the need to open borders, about the artist's right to a variety of styles outside the rigid framework of socialist realism. The publication abroad of such a work and its individual provisions were sharply criticized at the IV plenum of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR in March 1963. Yevtushenko made a speech of repentance, in which he said that in his autobiography he wanted to show that the ideology of communism was, is and will be the foundation of his entire life. In the future, Yevtushenko often made compromises. Many readers began to be skeptical about his work, which received, in many respects, a journalistic, opportunistic orientation. With the beginning of perestroika, which Yevtushenko warmly supported, his social activities intensified; he made many appearances in the press and at various meetings; within the Writers' Union, the confrontation between it and a group of writers from the "soil" headed by S. Kunyaev and Yu. Bondarev intensified. He believes that the economic prosperity of society should be harmoniously combined with the spiritual.