Pre-Morning (Predutro) is the title poem of Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s first book of poetry published after his Collected Poems in 1991. The 11 quatrains that make up the poem are set in a liminal time, when the day is coming into being but has not yet come to be.
The persona of the poem expresses delight in the openness that characterizes this special time; he loves this period of possibility, which touches the past but is not entirely shaped by it. The nature imagery and the few religious allusions add to the tone of reverence that is consonant with the solemn joy of this special time.
Pre-Morning is a space of glorious solitude when the speaker is free from social constraint. He can be happy in a way impossible when he wears a face that meets other faces and when the day is taking its ultimate shape. In spite of the wonders of this freedom, the persona also has the assurance from the past that the future holds good for him.
The work’s confiding speaker is less oratorical than the typical persona in Yevtushenko’s verse; he asserts calmly that he loves the way his life has come to be and the knowledge that he has a future through his children. He has friends and family, whose images remain with him even as he jogs in this indeterminate stage of the day. His referring to them as icons suggests that each is as mysteriously a creation of God as the time of day is.
He reflects also on love for Russia, to which he is inextricably attached. This love, however, is paradoxical in bringing pain as well as felicity. He loves the Earth, nature, humankind—all moving together in this life. He feels all the same the pain that comes from life in this world, as well as the joy that comes from the potential of the day and of the other self or child whom he addresses in stanza 10.
Even as he confesses that he remains imperfect, he wonders at the beauty of the place and time in which he meditates, and he expresses a thankful paean for love that creates and re-creates.
Bibliography
Pursglove, Michael. “Yevgeny Yevtushenko.” In The Literary Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Clark, Emory Elliott, and Janet Todd. London: Literary Dictionary Company. Available online. URL: http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5904. Accessed on April 27, 2007.
Yevtushenko, Yevgeny. Pre-Morning: A New Book of Poetry in English and Russian. Edited by Albert C. Todd. Baltimore: Vestnik Information Agency, 1995.