Joseph Brodsky - collected works. Joseph Brodsky - collected works The most original teacher and his list
Years of life: from 05/24/1940 to 01/28/1996
One of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th century, laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature 1987, essayist, playwright and translator, US laureate 1991-1992.
Born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). The name was given in honor of Joseph Stalin. “In the Orthodox calendar, May 24th celebrates the days of Saints Cyril and Methodius, the creators of Slavic literacy, but the poet, who grew up in an assimilated Jewish family, learned about this only as an adult, when he had long since cast his lot in with the “dear Cyrillic alphabet.” In his poems, he sometimes recalled that he was born under the constellation Gemini (according to astrologers, this portends a tendency towards deep dualism and harmonious ambiguity).”(1)
Father - Alexander Brodsky served in the navy, was a photojournalist for an army newspaper, and after the war he worked in the photography department of the Naval Museum. Mother Maria Volpert was an accountant.
Joseph Brodsky's early childhood was during the war years. After the blockade winter of 1942, the mother, with two-year-old Joseph in her arms, left for evacuation to Cherepovets. After the end of the war they returned to Leningrad.
Since childhood, Brodsky had speech defects, some of which corrected with age, only burr remained, but still, due to the characteristics of the vocal apparatus, Brodsky’s pronunciation was characterized by nasality, especially when reciting. “This is not a person, but a brass band...”(2)
In 1955, while in the eighth grade, Joseph left school and became a milling machine apprentice at the Arsenal plant. In the period until 1957, he tried 13 professions, dreaming of becoming either a submariner or a doctor. In the summer of 1957, seasonal work began on geological expeditions - in the north of the Arkhangelsk region, in the Far East, in Yakutia and in the steppe northeast of the Caspian Sea.
During the same period, Brodsky began to actively engage in self-education. He read a lot, but chaotically: poetry, philosophical and religious literature; began to study English and Polish and translate Polish poets. The key word for him was “search”.
He began writing poetry in 1956-1957. One of the decisive impetuses was the acquaintance with the poetry of Boris Slutsky. Despite the fact that Brodsky did not write direct political poems against the Soviet regime, the independence of the form and content of his poems, plus the independence of personal behavior, irritated ideological overseers.
Brodsky's first published work was "The Ballad of the Small Tugboat". On February 14, 1960, Joseph Brodsky’s first major public performance took place at the “tournament of poets” in the Leningrad Palace of Culture. Gorky with the participation of A. S. Kushner, G. Ya. Gorbovsky, V. A. Sosnora. The reading of the poem “Jewish Cemetery” caused a scandal.
The poet's talent was appreciated by the famous Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova. Brodsky, rejected by official circles, gained fame in literary circles and the intellectual underground, but he never belonged to any group or was associated with dissidence.
Brodsky was not even twenty-two years old when on January 2, 1962 he met Marina Basmanova. The young artist was almost two years older. From this union, a son, Andrei, was born in 1967.
By 1964, Brodsky had already been under the radar of the Leningrad KGB and its party handlers for three years. On February 12, 1964, the poet was arrested in Leningrad on charges of parasitism. On March 13, Brodsky's trial took place.
“The interrogation conducted by Judge Savelyeva was openly aimed at immediately confirming Brodsky’s accusation of parasitism.
« Judge: What do you do?
Brodsky: I write poems. I'm translating. I believe...
Judge: No “I guess.” Stand fast! Don't lean against walls! Look at the court! Answer the court properly! Do you have a regular job?
Brodsky: I thought it was a permanent job.
Judge: Answer accurately!
Brodsky: I wrote poetry! I thought they would be printed. I believe...
Judge: We are not interested in “I suppose.” Tell me, why didn't you work?
Brodsky: I worked. I wrote poetry.
Judge: We are not interested in this...”
The judge asks Brodsky questions about his short-term work at the factory and on geological expeditions, literary earnings, but the leitmotif of the interrogation is the judge’s refusal to recognize Brodsky’s literary work as work and Brodsky himself as a writer.
« Judge: In general, what is your specialty?
Brodsky: Poet. Poet-translator.
Judge: Who admitted that you are a poet? Who classified you as a poet?
Brodsky: Nobody. (No challenge.) And who ranked me among the human race?
Judge: Did you study this?
Brodsky: To what?
Judge: To be a poet? Didn’t try to graduate from a university where they train... where they teach...
Brodsky: I didn’t think that this was given by education.
Judge: And what?
Brodsky: I think this... (confused) from God...” (3)
Anna Akhmatova, writer Samuil Marshak, composer Dmitry Shostakovich, as well as the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre stood up for the poet. Brodsky was sentenced to five years of exile in the Arkhangelsk region (Norenskaya) “with mandatory involvement in physical labor.” He spent 18 months in exile - from March 1964 to September 1965, and wrote about 80 poems in the village.
Upon returning from exile, the poet lives in Leningrad. Brodsky continues to write poetry, but as before his poems could not appear in official publications. Funds for living were provided by transfers and support from friends and acquaintances. Mainly from the works of this time, Brodsky himself compiled a unique book of lyrics addressed to one addressee, “New Stanzas in August. Poems to M.B.”
Until 1972, only eleven of his poems were published in the USSR in the third issue of the Moscow samizdat hectographed magazine "Syntax" and local Leningrad newspapers, as well as translation works under his own name or under a pseudonym.
On May 12, 1972, Brodsky was summoned to the visa and registration department of the Leningrad police (OVIR) and “offered” to emigrate to Israel. Brodsky was not allowed to really get ready or say goodbye. On June 4, 1972, ten days after his 32nd birthday, Brodsky flew from Leningrad to Vienna.
Brodsky, as he himself put it, “landed” in the USA, in New York. Professor Brodsky taught the history of Russian and English literature at the University of Michigan. He then moved to New York and taught at Columbia University and New York and New England colleges.
Brodsky was published in The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, participated in conferences, symposia, traveled a lot around the world, which was reflected in his work - in the works “Rotterdam Diary”, “Lithuanian Nocturne”, “Lagoon” (1973) , "Twenty Sonnets to Mary Stuart", "Thames at Chelsea" (1974), "Lullaby of the Cape Cod", "Mexican Divertissement" (1975), "December in Florence" (1976), "Fifth Anniversary", "San Pietro" ", "In England" (1977).
In 1978, Brodsky became an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts, from which he resigned in protest against the election of Yevgeny Yevtushenko as an honorary member of the academy.
Eight of Brodsky’s poetry books in Russian were published in the USA and Great Britain: “Poems and Poems” (1965); "Stop in the Desert" (1970); "In England" (1977); "The End of a Beautiful Era" (1977); "Part of Speech" (1977); "Roman Elegies" (1982); “New Stanzas for Augusta” (1983); "Urania" (1987); drama “Marble” (in Russian, 1984). Brodsky received wide recognition in the scientific and literary circles of the USA and Great Britain, and was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor in France.
He was engaged in literary translations into Russian (in particular, he translated Tom Stoppard’s play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”) and Nabokov’s poems into English. In 1986, Brodsky's collection of essays, Less Than One, written in English, was recognized as the best literary critical book of the year in the United States.
In 1987, Brodsky won the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded to him for “comprehensive creativity, saturated with purity of thought and brightness of poetry.” Joseph Alexandrovich allocated part of the Nobel Prize for the creation of the Russian Samovar restaurant, which became one of the centers of Russian culture in New York. He himself remained one of its famous regular visitors until the end of his life.
Brodsky was also a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. In 1991-1992, Brodsky received the title of poet laureate of the US Library of Congress.
Since the late 1980s, Brodsky's work has gradually returned to his homeland. Invitations to return to their homeland followed. Brodsky postponed his visit: he was embarrassed by the publicity of such an event, the celebration, and the media attention that would accompany his visit. One of the last arguments was: “The best part of me is already there - my poems.” The motif of return and non-return is present in his poems of the 1990s, in particular in the poems “Letter to an Oasis” (1991), “Ithaca” (1993), “We lived in a city the color of petrified vodka...” (1994), and in the last two - as if the return had really happened. At the same time, while in exile, he actively supported and promoted Russian culture.
In 1990, Brodsky married Russian-Italian translator Maria Sozzani. In 1993, their daughter Anna was born.
In 1995, Brodsky was awarded the title of honorary citizen of St. Petersburg.
The poet's health was constantly deteriorating. Back in 1976, he suffered a massive heart attack. In December 1978, Brodsky underwent his first heart surgery, and in December 1985, the second, which was preceded by two more heart attacks. Doctors talked about a third operation, and later about a heart transplant, openly warning that in these cases there was a high risk of death.
On the night of January 28, 1996, Joseph Brodsky died of a heart attack in New York. On February 1, he was temporarily buried in a marble wall at Trinity Church Cemetery on 153rd Street in Manhattan. A few months later, in accordance with the poet’s last will, his ashes were buried in the cemetery of the island of San Michele in Venice.
Brodsky's last collection, Landscape with Flood, was published in 1996 after his death.
From Joseph Brodsky's Nobel Prize speech: “Whoever writes a poem writes it first of all because versification is a colossal accelerator of consciousness, thinking, worldview; having experienced this acceleration once, a person is no longer able to refuse to repeat this experience, he becomes dependent on this process, just as one becomes dependent from drugs or alcohol. A person who is in such a dependence on language, I believe, is called a poet.”(4)
Brodsky's widow Maria heads the Joseph Brodsky Memorial Scholarship Fund, created in 1996 to provide the opportunity for writers, composers, architects and artists from Russia to train and work in Rome.
In 2013, in the village of Norinskaya, Konosha district, Arkhangelsk region, where the poet was serving his exile, the world's first museum of Joseph Brodsky was opened.
1.
2. N.Ya Mandelstam
3. Joseph Brodsky. Lev Losev. ZhZL series
4. Joseph Brodsky. Nobel lecture
Venice was one of Brodsky's favorite cities,where he visited many times and where he was buried. The Nobel Prize laureate left his impressions of the city in his autobiographical essay “The Embankment of the Incurabili” (Fondamenta degli incurabili). “In winter in this city, especially on Sundays, you wake up to the ringing of countless bells, as if behind the muslin a giant tea set is clinking on a silver tray in the pearly sky. You open the window, and the room is instantly flooded by that street haze, filled with the roar of bells, which is partly raw oxygen, part coffee and prayer. No matter what pills or how many you have to swallow this morning, you understand that not everything is over."
On the Brodsky monument in the cemetery in San Michele there is an engraving: “Everything does not end with death.”
Joseph Brodsky wrote several children's poems:
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Writer's Awards
MacArthur Fellowship (1981)
Nobel Prize in Literature (1987)
US Poet Laureate (1991)
Bibliography
Editions in Russian:
Brodsky I. Poems and poems. - Washington - New York: Inter-Language Literary Associates, 1965.Brodsky I. Stop in the desert / prev. N.N. (A. Naiman). - New York: Publishing house named after. Chekhov, 1970. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1988 (corrected).
Brodsky I. The end of a beautiful era: Poems 1964-1971. - Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1977. St. Petersburg: Pushkin Foundation, 2000.
Brodsky I. Part of speech: Poems 1972-1976. - Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1977. St. Petersburg: Pushkin Foundation, 2000.
Brodsky I. Roman elegies. - New York: Russica Publishers, 1982.
Brodsky I. New stanzas for Augusta (Poems for M.B., 1962-1982). - Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1983. St. Petersburg: Pushkin Foundation, 2000.
Brodsky I. Marble. - Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1984.
Brodsky I. Urania. - Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1987, 1989 (revised).
Brodsky I. Notes of the fern. - Bromma, Sweden: Hylaea, 1990.
Brodsky I. Autumn cry of a hawk: poems 1962-1989 / comp. O. Abramovich. - Leningrad: LO IMA-press with the assistance of the Petropolis International State Enterprise, 1990.
Joseph Brodsky, original size / collection dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the poet (prose and interviews with I. Brodsky, as well as articles about him), comp. G. Komarov. - Leningrad-Tallinn: Publishing house of the Tallinn center of the Moscow headquarters of MADPR, 1990.
Brodsky I. Poems / comp. Ya. Gordin. - Tallinn: joint publication of the publishing houses “Eesti Raamat” and “Alexandra”, 1991.
Brodsky I. Cappadocia. Poetry. - St. Petersburg: supplement to the almanac Petropol, 1993.
Brodsky I. In the vicinity of Atlantis. New poems. - St. Petersburg: Pushkin Foundation, 1995.
Brodsky I. Landscape with flood. - Dana Point: Ardis, 1996. St. Petersburg: Pushkin Foundation, 2000 (corrections and additions).
Brodsky I. Works of Joseph Brodsky: In 4 volumes / comp. G. Komarov. - St. Petersburg: Pushkin Foundation, 1992-1995.
Brodsky I. Works of Joseph Brodsky: In 7 volumes / ed. Ya. Gordin. - St. Petersburg: Pushkin Foundation, 1997-2001.
Brodsky I. Expulsion from Paradise: Selected Translations / ed. Ya. Klots. - St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 2010.
Brodsky I. Poems and poems: In 2 volumes / comp. and approx. L. Losev. - St. Petersburg: Pushkin House, 2011.
Brodsky I. Elephant and Maruska / ill. I. Ganzenko. - St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 2011.
Editions in English:
Joseph Brodsky. Selected poems. - New York: Harper & Row, 1973.Joseph Brodsky. A Part of Speech. - New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980.
Joseph Brodsky. Less Than One: Selected Essays. - New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986.
Joseph Brodsky. To Urania. - New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988.
Joseph Brodsky. Marbles: a Play in Three Acts / translated by Alan Myers with Joseph Brodsky. - New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989.
Joseph Brodsky. Watermark. - New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992.
Joseph Brodsky. On Grief and Reason: Essays. - New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995.
Joseph Brodsky. So Forth: Poems. - New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996.
Joseph Brodsky. Collected Poems in English, 1972-1999 / edited by Ann Kjellberg. - New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000.
Joseph Brodsky. Nativity Poems/Bilingual Edition. - New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001.
Film adaptations of works, theatrical productions
Film adaptation of Joseph Brodsky's poem "Gorbunov and Gorchakov".
A great poet and incomparable playwright of the Soviet and American space. It is impossible to imagine the poetic culture of the USSR without Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky. Visitors to one of the popular sites chose the three most read poems by a Jew, a Russian poet with American citizenship (as he called himself).
Poems are not just sentences superimposed on a rhyme, they are not just text with meaning. Poems are a corridor between the poet and the reader. Sometimes it is so narrow that even a thought cannot pass through it entirely.
I loved you, 1974
I loved you. Still love (possibly)that just pain) drills my brains,
Everything was blown to hell, into pieces.
I tried to shoot myself, but it was difficult
with weapon. And then, whiskey:
which one to hit? It wasn't the trembling that spoiled it, but
thoughtfulness. Crap! everything is not human!
I loved you so much, hopelessly,
as God grant you others - - - but he won’t!
He, being capable of many things,
will not create - according to Parmenides - twice
this heat in the chest, this big-boned crunch,
so that the fillings in the mouth melt from thirst
touch - “bust” I cross out - mouth!
Don't leave the room, 1970
Don't leave the room, don't make a mistake.Why do you need the sun if you smoke Shipka?
Everything outside the door is meaningless, especially the cry of happiness.
Just go to the restroom and come back right away.
Oh, don't leave the room, don't call the engine.
Because the space is made of a corridor
and ends with a counter. And if she comes in alive
my dear, open your mouth, drive me out without undressing.
Don't leave the room; consider yourself blown.
What's more interesting in the world than a wall and a chair?
Why leave a place where you will return in the evening?
the same as you were, especially mutilated?
Oh, don't leave the room. Dance catching bossa nova
in a coat on a naked body, in shoes on bare feet.
The hallway smells of cabbage and ski wax.
You wrote a lot of letters; one more will be superfluous.
Don't leave the room. Oh, let it be just the room
guesses what you look like. And generally incognito
ergo sum, as the substance noticed in the hearts.
Don't leave the room! On the street, tea, not France.
Do not be an idiot! Be what others were not.
Don't leave the room! That is, give free rein to the furniture,
blend your face with the wallpaper. Lock up and barricade yourself
closet from chronos, space, eros, race, virus.
Loneliness, 1959
When you lose your balanceyour mind is tired,
when the steps of this ladder
disappear from under your feet,
like a deck
when he spits on humanity
your night loneliness, -
You can
think about eternity
and doubt integrity
ideas, hypotheses, perceptions
works of art,
and - by the way - the very conception
Madonna of the son of Jesus.
But it's better to worship the given
with her deep graves,
which then,
for a long time,
they seem so cute.
Yes.
Better to worship the given
with its short roads,
which then
strangely
will seem to you
wide,
will seem big
dusty,
strewn with compromises,
will seem like big wings,
They will seem like big birds.
Yes. Better to bow to the given
with its poor standards,
which then to the extreme,
will serve as a railing for you
(although not particularly clean),
keeping in balance
your lame truths
on this chipped staircase.
Do you have a favorite poem by Joseph Brodsky? Please write in the comments.
Not just a list of books, born with the stroke of the pen of an outstanding poet and essayist. This is his own way of understanding literature. It is optimized for a person living in the 70s of the last century. After all, a person must read many good books before becoming a poet or writer. Brodsky considered the value and virtue of the aesthetes of his generation to be that people from his generation, acting “solely by intuition,” paved the way for creativity in an environment hostile to humanity, in principle, totalitarian.
Joseph Alexandrovich is an amazing person. His biography is also unique. Isn’t it true, it looks somehow special - to be a poet and essayist, creating simultaneously for two diametrically opposed countries, the USSR and the USA, and, having followed the poet’s path to the end, to be buried in Venice, the birthplace of the Renaissance and the X region of the Roman Empire !
An elderly woman once tried to predict the fate of young Brodsky: “He is a nice... fellow, but I’m afraid that he will end badly.” This is what happened with Joseph Alexandrovich: they stopped publishing him in the USSR, after which he ended up in the USA.
Recognition of Brodsky abroad
Brodsky's list, as you know, was written by him in the mid-seventies of the last century, during his forced emigration to the United States. Overseas, he served as a professor at five American colleges. The awarding of academic titles to a man who had been self-educating since the age of 15 was a precedent for recognizing his powerful intellect.
In the USA, the professor lived successively in three cities: first in Ann Arbor, then in New York and finally in South Hadley.
Criteria for selecting books for Brodsky's list
The teacher did not simply strive to turn his students into people versed in literature. He tried to transform their attitude towards language.
The starting point of the route map he developed for adherents (Brodsky’s list) is a quote from the British William Auden’s poem “In Memory of W.B. Yeats,” which states that only a developed sense of language can “plunge” or “drive” a person into the art of poetry.
And it is impossible to accomplish this spiritual act without stimulating the craving for self-education. An American professor of Soviet origin gained fame among students as an eccentric. He was a unique teacher, requiring students to creatively read many works; in each of them, young people needed to grasp the author’s aesthetics. The wise pedagogical technique of the professor should be assessed not from the point of view of a student, but from the point of view of a practicing poet.
The sense of language as the Alpha and Omega of becoming a poet
Having extensive personal poetic experience and keeping his finger on the pulse of world culture for a long time, Joseph Aleksandrovich convincingly argued that the formation of a real poet does not come from a “thirst for creativity” and not from a clear understanding of the laws of creating poems. The main feature of such a personality, according to Brodsky, is precisely the “sense of language.” Without it, poetry is dead.
Russian-speaking Internet users sometimes express bewilderment arising from the absence of works by the poets Pushkin and Lermontov in the list, seeing in this some kind of political insinuation. In reality, they can hardly be discussed.
After all, Brodsky’s list was written by an American teacher for his students. And the students were native English speakers. Therefore, the list compiled by the poet contains authors who gravitate towards Western values. In the end, we ourselves are to blame: poets who “walk barefoot on the blade of a knife” and “cut their living souls into blood” should be heard in their homeland, perceived and understood by its people. Then Brodsky would not have been arrested and exiled, and he would have written his list for Russian-speaking students. And the latter would probably include Pushkin, Lermontov, and many others...
Brodsky and the beginning of poetic activity
Joseph Alexandrovich did not make his path into poetry a secret behind seven locks. He told students that in his youth, until he was 15 years old, he wrote poetry sporadically and by accident. One day, when he was 16 years old, he signed up for a geological expedition. He worked near the Chinese border, north of the river. Amur.
On the expedition, he read a volume of poetry by Baratynsky, a 19th-century poet (a close associate of Pushkin). It was the poetry of Yevgeny Abramovich, in its impact on Brodsky, that brought into action his “sense of language.” The impression of Baratynsky’s work prompted him to develop and forced the poet to write truly good poetry.
Subsequently, the St. Petersburg young writer took into account a lot of advice from his older colleague, the poet Evgeniy Rein, whom he considered one of the best in Russia until the end of his days.
The most original teacher and his list
His student Sven Birkets, who became a famous literary critic, recalls that his classmates remembered Brodsky as both the worst teacher, on the one hand, and the most charismatic, on the other.
Why the worst (it’s unusual to hear this word in the context of the name of a famous poet)? Sven answers this question in detail. The fact is that Joseph Alexandrovich did absolutely nothing to captivate the bulk of students with literature.
He was an individualist, and Brodsky’s list assumed individual mastery of it by each adept. But those students who bothered to read the books indicated in it could always hope for a consultation and conversation with the Master. According to the recollections of contemporaries, Brodsky’s voice was unusually rich in shades. He spoke slightly through his nose and his stories were always interesting. Friends jokingly called him “the brass band man.”
There was no price for the minutes of his frank conversation with students.
The pedagogical method of Joseph Alexandrovich, according to the memoirs of Sven Birkets, was unique. The teacher, rather, did not teach literature, but tried to convey an attitude towards it.
The illusion of immersion in literature
At the beginning of the class, he briefly presented one of the outstanding works that filled Brodsky’s list, which was terrifying to some lazy students. And then he asked about the feelings evoked by Akhmatova’s or Montale’s poem, took the student into the arena, pronouncing the famous quote from Sergei Diaghilev: “Surprise me.” It was not easy to explain to an American boy or girl, for example, whether Akhmatova was able to successfully depict the fire scene, or to reveal the imagery of the Iliad.
Brodsky’s highest praise was not addressed to everyone: the only word was “wonderful.” More often than not, the average student simply revealed his misunderstanding. And at that time Brodsky was crumpling an unlit cigarette in his hand...
But behind all this action there was a considerable amount of humor. After listening to the student’s efforts, Joseph Alexandrovich took his famous deep exhalation, looked around the whole class, and then began to speak. He asked questions and answered them himself. He led his followers through thickets of sounds and associations, filling the imagination of his listeners with an awareness of the amazing power of language. Sven Birkets and students like him left those meetings with a sense of invisible forces swirling around them, but unclaimed in everyday life.
American humanists rated the list
Brodsky's reading list proved to be an innovative step in the education of young Americans. They, previously trained according to the John Dewey system, had the skills of independent thinking and the ability to critically evaluate social phenomena. But Joseph Alexandrovich did not recognize this system. At the very first classes, he distributed an impressive list to his students, briefly informing the adherents that the next two years of their lives should be devoted to this canon.
Indeed, Brodsky’s reading list begins with outstanding canonical texts and ends with works of art from the 70s of the last century.
Obviously, for modern students this list can be supplemented. Among the sea of fiction that appears annually and in abundance on bookshelves, one should choose books that have real artistic value. Let us recall that the main criterion in this case should remain the sense of language, skillfully interpreted by Brodsky.
Contents of Brodsky's list. "Bhavat Gita", "Mahabharata"
Joseph Brodsky's list begins with the Bhavat Gita (song of God). The value of this work lies in its focus on the development of human spirituality. It helps him resolve the primary question: “Who am I?” and helps him achieve the internal state necessary to achieve spiritual values. At the same time, “Bhavat Gita” covers existence from everyday life to spiritual life, and is also closely related to reality.
The second work that Brodsky mentions on his reading list is the Mahabharata. It captures an epic that reflects the problems of the social essence of the individual, the relationship between his freedom and purpose (fate). The Mahabharata, on the one hand, welcomes selflessness, and on the other, condemns the complete renunciation of personal benefits.
Old Testament
Joseph Alexandrovich, in third position among the main books that open Brodsky’s famous list, mentions the Holy Scripture of Christians and Jews - the Old Testament. As you know, it was originally written in Hebrew. Its central philosophical and ideological part is the Sinai Covenant - the obligations imposed by God on the people of Israel, which became the basis of the Torah (the law to be fulfilled).
There is also on the list from the famous poet the world's first bestseller that has come down to us - a book about the hero of the entire ancient world, the adventurer, the successful and charismatic king Gilmagesh.
Ancient literature
Brodsky's list is a voluminous list of literature that can be classified. The poet was not the first person to compile such a list. The well-known list of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is more balanced in chronology and in the direction of impact on readers. Joseph Alexandrovich’s list is aimed at maintaining a “basic conversation” with them.
Immediately after spiritual works, according to Brodsky’s logic, there follows a voluminous block of ancient literature: Sophocles, Homer, Herodotus, Horace, Marcus Aurelius, Aristophanes... This list is incomplete, there are about 20 names in it. Brodsky himself, in an interview, described his commitment to peace by developing a “sense of time.” This is what he called his understanding of the nature of time and its influence on people.
Why did Joseph Alexandrovich pay such close attention to ancient Greek and Roman literature? It is no secret that in literary circles he was called the Roman. The poet used a conceptualizing and liberating literary mask. Speaking about the USSR, he allegorically called it “Rome”.
A deep understanding of the essence of empire (cult veneration of Caesar, despotic power) was characteristic of him, identifying himself with the disgraced and exiled poet Ovid.
The poet presented the account not so much to the Soviet (Roman) authorities, but to the intelligentsia, which had come to terms with the lack of freedom.
Following the ancient one, Brodsky's list contains several more successive blocks of books. The next one is Renaissance literature. Books by Dante Alighieri, the knight of platonic love, are also presented.
Western and Russian poetry
The next block on the list is Western European literature from the times of the bourgeois social formation and Russian poetry of the Silver Age. The authors were selected with taste, according to their talent and the significance of the literary heritage:
- Russians: Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelstam, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Vladislav Khodasevich;
- British and American: Eliot, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, Wysten Auden, Elizabeth Bishop;
- German: Rainer Rilke, Ingeborg Bachmann, Gottfried Benn;
- Spanish: Frederico Garcia Lorca, Antonio Machado, Rafael Alberti, Juan Ramon Jimenos;
- Polish: Zbigniew Herbert, Czeslaw Milosz, Leopold Staff, Wislawa Szymborska;
- French: Jules Supervielle, Blaise Cendrars, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Henri Michaud;
- Greek: Giorgos Seferis, Constantine Cavafy, Yiannis Ritsos;
- Swedish: Harry Martinson, Gunnar Ekelef.
Conclusion
Brodsky's list still resonates today. Reviews from real book lovers are unanimous that this list certainly deserves attention, based on the genius of Brodsky himself.
Disputes also arise. Some readers dispute the advisability of reading a huge array of ancient literature. Others answer them that the value of ancient literature lies in its subtle (they don’t write like that now) elaboration of human relations.
Many of the readers' comments are of a formal nature. Someone reminds that structurally the Bhavat Gita is part of the Mahabharata. Someone doubts the authenticity of the list, motivating their position by the presence in it of works by Nikolai Klyuev, a man of anti-Semitic and pro-party orientation.
To summarize what has been said, it is worth noting the main thing: the books from Brodsky’s list served as stepping stones to the work of Joseph Alexandrovich himself. It is precisely his path to realizing the beauty of poetry that Brodsky offers to readers of his list.
For whom is it of practical value? Not all people have a special philological and literary education. But some of them harbor poetic or prosaic talent. How to wake him up? The answer is obvious: you should read a lot of good books. And from this point of view, Brodsky’s list is complete - a good option to start with.
This book is part of the electronic collected works of I. Brodsky, containing the main body of poems and poems. Not included here (and included in separate files): Brodsky’s poetic translations from various authors into Russian. language; unfinished poem “The Hundred Years' War” with notes by Y. Gordin; translations of Brodsky's poems into English. language (by the author himself and other translators); poems originally written by Brodsky in English. language, and their translations into Russian (not by the author); unfinished poem “History of the 20th Century”, written in English and translated into Russian by E. Finkel. All original poetic texts by Brodsky published in the former USSR are presented (as far as possible). The collection may not yet include some early poems (before 1962?), which the author later did not want to publish (for example, “Earth” and “The Ballad of the Little Tug”), as well as unfinished poems, sketches, variants and other little-known works (perhaps they will still be published). The texts were prepared by collating and proofreading electronic source texts that have long been on the Internet (presumably these were hand-typed from early publications or “samizdat”), and OCR according to the publications: “Works of Joseph Brodsky” , hereinafter “SIB” (1st ed. in 4 vols., ed. G. F. Komarov, “Pushkin Fund”, St. Petersburg, 1994; 2nd ed., vols. 1 and 2, ed. Y. Gordin, 1998); based on the collection “Part of Speech” approved by Brodsky (compiled by E. Beznosov, M., “Fiction”, 1990; hereinafter “ChR”); and from the collection “Form of Time” (compiled by V. Uflyand, “Eridan”, Minsk, 1992; hereinafter FV). In case of discrepancies in punctuation and minor corrections to the text, preference is given to NIB, with corrections for the existing volumes of the 2nd edition; if there are significant differences in the text, options are given from other publications or from the electronic source text (designated as “unknown source”). The order of the poems follows the chronological principle of the NIB: within each month, season, year, decade, precisely dated poems appear first in chronological order , then dated more and more approximately in alphabetical order, i.e. dated by month, season, year, then dated imprecisely, tentatively or not dated at all - also in alphabetical order. Dating follows NIB:<1990>means date of first publication, 1990? indicates approximate dating. Some undated early poems not included in the NIB are given from unknown sources and dated. In some noted cases, the dating followed those published in English. language, with the participation of Brodsky, collections: “Selected Poems” (1973, hereinafter SP), “Part of Speech” (1980, hereinafter PS), “To Urania” (1988, hereinafter TU) and “So Forth” (1996, hereinafter SF) .The notes to the texts present in the NIB are supplemented by notes from other publications (and, where necessary, my textual explanations); all notes are attributed. Words highlighted in capital letters or spaced in the NIB are given in italics.S. V. Preparation of the text: Sergey Vinitsky. The collected works of I. Brodsky are located on the Internet at “http://brodsky.da.ru”.]
Russian poet, prose writer, essayist, translator, author of plays; also wrote in English.
In 1972 Joseph Brodsky emigrated to the USA. In the poems (collections “Stop in the Desert”, 1967, “The End of a Beautiful Era”, “Part of Speech”, both 1972, “Urania”, 1987) the understanding of the world as a single metaphysical and cultural whole. The distinctive features of the style are rigidity and hidden pathos, irony and breakdown (early Brodsky), meditativeness realized through an appeal to complex associative images, cultural reminiscences (sometimes leading to the tightness of the poetic space). Essays, stories, plays, translations. Nobel Prize (1987), Chevalier of the Legion of Honor (1987), winner of the Oxford Honori Causa.
Striving for bilingualism, Joseph Brodsky also wrote essays, literary criticism, and poetry in English. Brodsky managed to expand the capabilities of the Russian poetic language. The poet's artistic world is universal. His style is influenced by baroque, neoclassicism, acmeism, English metaphysical poetry, underground, and postmodernism. The very existence of this personality became the embodiment of the intellectual and moral opposition to lies and cultural degradation. Initially, because of the “parasitism” trial, Brodsky became a kind of household figure of an independent artist who resisted generally accepted hypocrisy and violence - both in his homeland and abroad. Until 1987 in the USSR, he was actually a poet for the “initiated”: keeping his poems at home was not only considered reprehensible, but was punishable, nevertheless, his poems were distributed in a way tested in Soviet times - with the help of Samizdat.
International fame came to the poet after the publication of his first collection in the West in 1965. In the USSR, until 1987, Joseph Brodsky was practically not published. Some of Brodsky’s lines are generally known as formulaic aphorisms: “Death is something that happens to others” or “But until my mouth is filled with clay, only gratitude will come out of it.” The world of Brodsky’s creations reflected the consciousness of a significant intellectual group of immigrants from Russia, and in general people of the “exodus”, living on the edge of two worlds, in the words of V. Uflyand, “Brodsky humanity”: these new wanderers, as if continuing the fate of romantic wanderers, are like some kind of connecting fabrics of different cultures, languages, worldviews, perhaps on the way to the universal man of the future.
The poet Joseph Brodsky died suddenly in New York on January 28, 1996, before reaching the age of 56. Brodsky's death, despite the knowledge of his deteriorating health, shocked people on both sides of the ocean. Buried in Venice.
