Weekly Feature | HE WAS GOYA: Andrei Voznesenski in Minneapolis

by Mike Finley

White American poets don’t have great credibility in protest.
We come across as privileged.
I saw a poet do it right, March 19, 1971.
Russian, Andrei Voznesenski. Protégé of Boris Pasternak.
In the 1960s he was as big as the Beatles in the USSR
because he embodied the rage of Soviet youth.
(He wrote a book with a Beatles title, Rubber Souls.)
Kruschev personally asked Voznesensky, to his face,
to obtain a passport and get the hell out of Russia.
He was that unbearable.
He filled stadiums with electricity and charisma,
and often, as in his great poem to Goya,
the Spanish painter and critic,
he swung his arm like a steel-driving man.
Lub dub, lub dub.
One critic said that he along with Yevtushenko
were the first poets to write for the stage, not the page,
making them the first slam poets.
I met Andrei Voznesensky, and this is our story.

With less than a day’s notice, the KGB
gave Siberian poet Andrej Vosnesenski a visa
to fly to Minnesota.
There was no time to promote the event.
A handful of writers and scholars and a few Soviet emigrés
cluster in the front rows of the roped off-Northrop Auditorium,
a mere 50 people dotting the 5,000 seats
while, standing like a speck upon the giant stage,
The poet groans and raises his fist like a steal sledge,
poised to come down hard.
while, standing like a speck upon the giant stage,
the poet groans and raises his fist like a steel sledge,
poised to come down hard.

He reads his poem about Goya, Spanish painter of the
post-Napoleonic years,
regarded as the last of the old masters and the first
of the new revolutionaries, nailing the establishment
for their heartless offenses.

An English actor translates V’s words, but no one
listens to that blow-dried fop.
All eyes are on the pumping hand, all ears attuned to
Voznesenski’s condemnation of tyrants.
No one understands, and yet everyone understands.
And as he moves into action, one word thunders
through the auditorium — GOYA!
GOYA reanimates the frozen corpses of the field.
GOYA baptizes you with the blood of your victims.
The dashed, the dead, the unblinking eyes.
GOYA stands against the blistering fire,
accosting you with your terrible crimes.
GOYA slams the hammer that cracks the rock.
GOYA swings the scythe that mows the grain.

Even when all the words against you are shredded,
even when the books have made a roaring fire,
the lies that murdered millions come back on you.

GOYA is implacable against the barrels of rifles.
GOYA sees you for what you are.
GOYA stabs with his unforgiving truth.
GOYA announces that the day is over
where the whited dead cry out for justice.
You mighty leaders have not prevailed.
You are vanquished by your deeds.
Your generations are sown with lime.
You have not won, you are dead and you don’t know.

GOYA!

Afterward the reading breaks up and the poets and professors
drive through the snow and ice to Chester Anderson’s house
to boast and jostle and drink,
Voznesenski alone at the end of the couch with a shy,
puzzled frown on his face.
Several beers later, I take to the bathroom,
where Chester’s golden retriever lies on a pink poof rug.
I step over the dog to pee.
Behind me, Voznesenski creeps into the room
And kneels by the dog on the pink poof rug,
a foot from the stream splashing against the porcelain lip.
He scratches the dogs ears and smiles seraphically
His two eyes closed, his face held out,
the dew alighting like communion from God
on his face, as if finally – FINALLY free!

There is a postscript to this story.
Voznesenski in 1971 was the conquering poet,
poised to obliterate the world. The USSR would fall to Goya.
The West would follow suit.
That night in Golden Valley may have been his high point,
worshiped in America. But it wasn’t what
his soul cried out for — obliteration.
The teenager who amazed Pasternak and offended Khruschev,
who consorted with Olivier, Ginsberg, Robert Lowell,
Arthur Miller, and Marilyn Monroe, pulled back.
He declined into middle age, then withered even further.
Voznesensky became a recluse.
He taught at a remote regional university.
He suffered a a series of strokes, succumbing at 77.
No cause of death was given.

It may be that America proved no solution to the enslavement
of the Soviet Union. He pulled back, held in check
by reality, unable to fulfill the promises of his youth.
In the end, there was only the earth — for him, no truly free
planet to escape to. Like Goya, he was swallowed up by reality.
Instead of claiming what was his,
Voznesenski withered on the vine.
He no longer set the planet on fire.
His later books were admirable but did not make the earth
tremble. Goya was no longer young.
You could almost see the hammer falling from his hand.