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/ Biographies / Brodsky I. A.
Brodsky I. A.
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BRODSKY, JOSEPH ALEXANDROVICH (1940-1996), poet, translator, novelist, playwright.
Brodsky was born on May 24, 1940 in Leningrad.
He, perhaps the most" non Soviet " subject of the USSR, was named Joseph in honor of Stalin.
From an early age, many things are symbolic in Brodsky's life.
They spent their childhood in a small apartment in the same "St. Petersburg" house where they lived before the revolution and from where they went to emigrate.
At the school that Brodsky attended, Alfred Nobel once studied: in 1986, Brodsky would become a Nobel laureate.
He recalled his childhood reluctantly: "An ordinary childhood.
I donot think that children's impressions play an important role in further development."
In adolescence, his independence and obstinacy were manifested.
In 1955, without finishing his studies, Brodsky went to work at a military factory as a milling cutter, choosing for himself self education, mainly reading.
Wishing to become a surgeon, he goes to work as an assistant dissector in the morgue of the hospital at the Leningrad prison "Kresty", where he helps to dissect corpses.
For several years, he has tried out more than a dozen professions: geophysicist technician, orderly, stoker, photographer, etc.
He is looking for a job that can be combined with creativity.
I first tried to write poetry at the age of 16.
I was prompted to write by the impression of reading the collection of Boris Slutsky.
The first poem was published when Brodsky was seventeen years old, in 1957: Goodbye, / forget / and do not forget.
/ And burn the letters, / like a bridge.
/ May your path be courageous, / may it be straight / and simple...
At the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, he studied foreign languages (English and Polish), attended lectures at the Philological Faculty of LSU.
In 1959, he got acquainted with a collection of poems by E. A. Baratynsky, after which he finally strengthened his desire to become a poet: "I had nothing to read, and when I found this book and read it, then I understood everything what I should do...".
The reader's impressions of Brodsky at this time are haphazard, but fruitful for the development of a poetic voice.
Brodsky's first poems, according to his own vocation, arose "out of nothingness": "We came to literature from God knows where, practically only from the fact of our existence, from the depths" (Brodsky's conversation with J. Glad).
The restoration of cultural continuity for the Brodsky generation meant, first of all, an appeal to the Russian poetry of the Silver Age.
However, even here Brodsky stands apart.
By his own admission, he did not "understand" Pasternak until the age of 24, until the same time he did not read Mandelstam, he almost did not know (before personal acquaintance) Akhmatova's lyrics.
For Brodsky, the work of M. Tsvetaeva was of absolute value – from the first independent steps in literature to the end of his life.
Brodsky identifies himself more with the poets of the early 19th century.
In Stanzas to the City (1962), he correlates his fate with the fate of Lermontov.
But here, too, the characteristic feature of the poet is reflected: the fear of being like someone else, of dissolving one's individuality in other people's meanings.
Brodsky defiantly prefers the lyrics of E. Baratynsky, K. Batyushkov and P. Vyazemsky to Pushkin's traditions.
In the 1961 poem The Procession, Pushkin's motifs are presented deliberately aloof, detached, and placed by the author in an alien context, they begin to sound frankly ironic.
Brodsky's creative preferences were determined not only by the desire to avoid banality.
The aristocratic poise of the" enlightened " Pushkin muse was less close to Brodsky than the tradition of Russian philosophical poetry.
Brodsky perceived a meditative intonation, a tendency to the poetics of reflection, the drama of thought.
Gradually, he goes further into the past of poetry, actively absorbing the legacy of the 18th century Lomonosov, Derzhavin, Dmitriev.
The development of the pre Pushkin layers of Russian literature allows him to see huge areas of the poetic language.
Brodsky realized the need to synthesize continuity and identify new expressive possibilities of Russian classical verse.
Since the early 1960s, he began working as a professional translator under an agreement with a number of publishing houses.
At the same time, he got acquainted with the poetry of the English metaphysical poet John Donne, to whom he dedicated a Large Elegy to John Donne (1963).
Brodsky's translations from Donne are often inaccurate and not very successful.
But Brodsky's original work became a unique experience of introducing the Russian word to the hitherto alien experience of Baroque European poetry of the "metaphysical school".
Brodsky's lyrics will absorb the basic principles of" metaphysical "thinking: the rejection of the cult of the experiences of the lyrical" I "in poetry, the" dry "masculine intellectuality, the dramatic and personal situation of the lyrical monologue, often with a tense sense of the interlocutor, colloquial tone, the use of" non – ethical " vocabulary (colloquialisms, vulgarisms, scientific, technical concepts), the construction of the text as a series of proofs in favor of some statement.
Brodsky inherits from Donn and other metaphysical poets and the "business card" of the school – the so called "concetti" (from ital. - "concept") is a special kind of metaphor that brings together concepts and images that are far from each other, which, at first glance, have nothing in common with each other.
Both the poets of the English Baroque in the 17th century and Brodsky in the 20th century used such metaphors to restore broken ties in a world that seems to them tragically disintegrated.
Such metaphors are the basis of most of Brodsky's works.
Brodsky's metaphysical flights and metaphorical delights were side by side with a fear of lofty words, a feeling of frequent tastelessness in them.
Hence his desire to balance the poetic with the prosaic, to "understate" high images, or, as the poet himself expressed it, "aiming at a "descending metaphor"".
It is significant how Brodsky describes his first religious experiences related to reading the Bible: "at the age of 24 or 23, I donot remember exactly, I read the Old and New Testaments for the first time.
And this made perhaps the strongest impression on me in my life, i.e. the metaphysical horizons of Judaism and Christianity made quite a strong impression.
It was difficult to get a Bible in those years – I first read the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata, and after that I got my hands on the Bible.
Of course, I realized that the metaphysical horizons offered by Christianity are less significant than those offered by Hinduism.
But I have made my choice towards the ideals of Christianity, if you like...
I would, I must say, use the expression Judeo Christianity more often, because one is unthinkable without the other.
And, in general, this is about the sphere or those parameters that determine my, if not necessarily intellectual, then at least some kind of mental activity."
From now on, almost every year, the poet created poems about Christmas on the eve or on the very day of the holiday.
His "Christmas poems" formed into a certain cycle, the work on which went on for more than a quarter of a century.
In the early 1960s, Brodsky's social circle was very wide, but he came closest to the same young poets, students of the Technological Institute E. Rein, A. Naiman and D. Bobyshev.
Rein introduced Brodsky to Anna Akhmatova, whom she gifted with friendship and predicted a brilliant poetic future for him.
She was always Brodsky moral standard (dedicated to her poems 1960s Morning post for Akhmatova, from the city of Sestroretsk, you Scream, and shlopotat cocks..., Candlemas, 1972, On the centenary of Anna Akhmatova, 1989 essay the Muse crying, 1982).
Already by 1963 his work becomes better known, Brodsky's poetry are beginning to walk in the manuscripts.
Despite the lack of significant publications, Brodsky had a scandalous for that time and the fame of the poet "samizdat".
November 29, 1963 in the newspaper "Evening Leningrad" signed by A.Ionin, Ya.
Lerner, M. Medvedev published a letter against Brodsky Near literary drone.
In 1964, he was arrested.
After the first closed trial, the poet was placed in a judicial psychiatric hospital, where he stayed for three weeks, but was recognized as mentally healthy and able to work.
The second, open, trial in the case of Brodsky, accused of parasitism, took place on March 13, 1964.
The court's decision is expulsion for 5 years with mandatory involvement in physical labor.
He served his exile in the village of Norinsk, Arkhangelsk region.
There was enough free time here, and it is completely filled with creativity.
Here he created the most significant works of the pre emigrant period: One poetess, Two hours in a tank, New stanzas for August, Northern Mail, A Letter in a bottle, etc.
Brodsky was released early.
Instead of five, he spent a year and a half in exile and then received permission to return to Leningrad.
"What a biography is being made for our red – haired man!"
- A.
Akhmatova exclaimed in the midst of the campaign against Brodsky, anticipating what a service his persecutors would render him by giving him a martyr's halo.
In 1965, in the wake of outrage at the persecution of the poet, Brodsky's first book, Poems and Poems, was published in New York.
In his work of these years, experimentation based on the classical tradition gives more and more interesting results.
So, in 1966, experiments with the syllabic verse of the 18th century were clothed in a dense imitation of the satires composed by Cantemir in the manner of writing.
Brodsky transforms the syllabic tonic system of versification, which is classic for Russian poetry, from two sides: not only through an appeal to the past experience of two hundred years ago, but also through ultra – modern exercises at the junction of white verse and rhythmic prose for example, a Stop in the Desert (1966), which later gave the name to a poetry collection published in 1972 in the USA.
The main genre in Brodsky's work becomes an easily recognizable long elegy, a kind of semi poem aphoristic, melancholic, ironically reflexive, with a brittle syntax aimed at updating a stable language.
Brodsky can also update the language, like the futurist poets, through experiments with stanzas and "typesetting graphics" (i.e., to beat the" appearance " of the printed text and the associations caused by it).
So, in the 1967 poem The Fountain, thanks to the special stanza and the distribution of words across the page space, the printed text resembles a multi tiered park fountain in outline.
In the pre emigrant period of Brodsky's work, tragic irony is invariably shaded by a generous perception of the world and emotional openness.
In the future, the proportions between these beginnings will change significantly.
Emotional openness will go away, its place will be taken by a willingness to stoically accept the tragedy of life.
In 1972, Brodsky left the USSR.
He leaves on an Israeli visa, but settles in the United States, where he teaches Russian literature at various universities until the end of his days.
From now on, Brodsky, in his own words, is doomed to a "fictitious situation" – a poetic existence in a foreign language environment, where a narrow circle of Russian speaking readers is balanced by international recognition.
Leaving his Homeland, Brodsky writes a letter to the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Leonid Brezhnev: "Dear Leonid Ilyich, leaving Russia not of my own free will, as you may know, I decide to make a request to you, the right to which is given to me by the firm consciousness that everything that I have done over 15 years of literary work serves and will serve only for the glory of Russian culture, nothing else.
I want to ask you to give me the opportunity to preserve my existence, my presence in the literary process.
At least as an interpreter – in the capacity in which I have acted so far."
However, his request went unanswered.
Even Brodsky's parents were not allowed to go to their son at the request of doctors (Brodsky, as a core, needed special care).
He was not allowed to come to Leningrad himself for the funerals of his mother (1983) and father (1985).
This largely affected his late reluctance to visit his native city in the 1990s.
In the United States, Brodsky began writing in English.
His English language creativity was expressed, first of all, in the genre of essays (collections Less than one (Less than one), 1986, On grief and reason (About sadness and reason), 1995).
Basically, Brodsky's essayism consisted of articles written by order as prefaces to editions of works by Russian and Western classics (A. Akhmatova, M. Tsvetaeva, W. Auden, K. Cavafy, etc.).
On his own initiative, as he admitted, he wrote only 2 or 3 articles.
In 1980, Brodsky received US citizenship.
In 1977, two collections of Brodsky's poems The End of the Beautiful Era were published in the publishing house "Ardis".
Poems 1964-71 and Part of the speech.
Poems 1972-76.
These books capture a new stage of the poet's creative maturity.
"The biography of the poet is in the cut of his language."
This postulate of Brodsky determines the evolution of his lyrics.
By the mid 1970s, Brodsky's lyrics were enriched with complex syntactic constructions, constant so called "anjambemans" (i.e., the transfer of a thought, the continuation of a phrase into the next line or stanza, the discrepancy between the boundaries of a sentence and a line).
Contemporaries testified to the poet's constant desire to read his poems aloud, even when the situation was not conducive to it.
The poet has almost no simple sentences.
Infinite complex sentences imply an infinite development of thought, its test for truth.
The Brodsky poet does not take anything for granted.
Each statement clarifies and "judges" itself.
Hence the innumerable "but", "although", "therefore", " not so much... how much" in his poetic language.
The experience of the "mature" Brodsky is the experience of a deep experience of the tragedy of existence.
Brodsky often violates grammar, resorts to shifted, incorrect speech, conveying the tragedy not only in the subject of the image, but above all in the language.
The abandoned Fatherland is gradually being built in Brodsky's poetic consciousness into a grandiose surreal image of the empire.
This image is wider than the real Soviet Union.
It is becoming a global symbol of the decline of world culture.
Giving a clear account of the meaninglessness of life (Mexican Romancero, 1976), Brodsky's lyrical hero, like the ancient Stoics, tries to find support in the higher principles of the universe that are indifferent to man.
Such a higher principle, in general, replacing God, appears in Brodsky's poetry Time.
"All my poems, more or less, are about the same thing: about Time," the poet said in an interview.
But at the same time, there is another universal category in his poetic universe that is able to curb Time, to defeat it.
This is a Language, a Word (Fifth Anniversary, 1978).
The process of poetic creativity becomes the only way to overcome Time, which means death, a form of victory over death.
Strings extend the life: ...I donot know what kind of land I'm going to lie down in.
/ Creak, creak the pen!
Translate the paper (Fifth Anniversary, 1977).
For Brodsky, "The poet is an instrument of language".
It is not the poet who uses the language, but the language expresses itself through the poet, who can only adjust his hearing correctly.
But at the same time, this tool is saving, and it is completely free.
Being left alone with Language and Time, Brodsky's lyrical hero loses all emotional connections with the world of things, as if he leaves his body and rises to an almost airless height (Autumn cry of a hawk, 1975).
From here, however, he continues to distinguish with clarity and indifference the details of the world left below.
Brodsky's verbosity, his unthinkable lengthiness are due to the desire to curb Time with the Language.
In 1978, Brodsky became an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts, from which he, however, withdrew in protest against the election of Yevgeny Yevtushenko as an honorary member of the Academy.
In 1983, another collection of lyrics New Stanzas for August was published in "Ardis".
Poems to M. B., 1962-82; in 1984, Brodsky's play Marble was published.
In 1986, the collection Less than one was recognized as the best literary critical book of the year in the United States.
In December 1987, he became a writer laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature - "for all encompassing authorship, full of clarity of thought and poetic depth," as it was said in the official decision of the Nobel Committee.
The Nobel Prize brought financial independence and new troubles.
Brodsky devotes a lot of time to the establishment of numerous immigrants from Russia in America.
From May 1991 to May 1992, Brodsky received the title of Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress.
Since the late 1980s, Brodsky's work has gradually returned to his homeland, but he himself invariably rejects offers to come to Russia even for a while.
At the same time, in exile, he actively supports and promotes Russian culture.
In 1995, Brodsky was awarded the title of honorary citizen of St. Petersburg.
Joseph Brodsky died in New York from a heart attack in 1996, in his sleep, on the night of January 28.
He was 55 years old.
He was buried in the Protestant part of the cemetery on the island of San Michele in Venice.
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