Wit & Attitude Quote by Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Sorrow happens, hardship happens: the blunt rhythm acknowledges the inevitability of pain. Then comes the jolt of defiance, the hell with it, a streetwise refusal to let suffering turn into self-pity. The line pivots on the idea of a price, as if happiness is not a windfall but a value learned through contrast. Without contact with loss, struggle, or risk, joy remains weightless; to be happy is to feel the relief and fullness that only perspective grants.

The tone fits Yevgeny Yevtushenkos public voice. A leading Soviet poet of the Khrushchev Thaw, he read to packed halls and wrote in an idiom that blended lyricism with everyday speech. He came of age after war and terror, pushed back against censorship and antisemitism in poems like Babi Yar, and insisted on remembering what official optimism tried to forget. Saying the hell with it does not trivialize suffering; it rejects the paralyzing aura that authorities and fatalists often give to it. Knowledge of sorrow becomes moral knowledge, a source of empathy and a guard against propaganda that promises happiness without cost.

The claim is not a cruel glorification of hardship. It suggests that happiness without awareness is shallow, and that people who never confront limits tend to confuse comfort with joy. Real happiness draws strength from vulnerability, from having endured and still choosing to affirm life. That is why the line sounds both consoling and goading: life will hurt, so do not pretend otherwise, but do not let the hurt define you.

Yevtushenkos swaggering colloquialism masks a stern ethic. By naming sorrow plainly and then shrugging at it, he clears a path for resilient joy. The price of happiness is not endless suffering; it is the honesty to look at suffering and refuse to be owned by it. In a culture that knew both catastrophe and bravado, that honesty was a form of freedom.