SOURCE: Glaessner, Tina Tupikina, and Geoffrey Dutton. “Translators' Note on ‘Bratsk Station’.” In Bratsk Station and Other Poems, pp. xxiii-xxv. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1967.

In the following excerpt, Glaessner and Dutton extol the importance of Yevtushenko as a poet and remark on the problems encountered translating his poetry into English.

To understand this poem of Yevtushenko's, it is essential to realize that the word “Bratsk,” the name of the gigantic complex of inland sea and hydroelectric station and factories in Siberia, two thirds of the way from Moscow to Vladivostok, also refers to “brotherhood” in Russian, through the adjective “Bratskiy,” “brotherly.” It is obviously impossible to reproduce this in English with such grotesqueries as “The Brotherly Hydroelectric Station.” Therefore, throughout this English translation, only the words “Bratsk Station” have been used. But the dual meanings of the name, as also of “light” meaning both “light” and “enlightenment...