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Joseph Brodsky
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Joseph Brodsky
(24.05.1940 - 28.01.1996)
Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky – the only child in a family of Leningrad intellectuals was born on May 24, 1940 in Leningrad.
His father, Alexander Ivanovich Brodsky (1903-1984), was a professional photographer, during the war – a war correspondent on the Leningrad front, after the war he served in the Navy (captain of the 3rd rank), his mother, Maria Moiseevna Volpert (1905-1983), during the war as a translator helped to receive information from prisoners of war, after the war she worked as an accountant.
Brodsky recalled his childhood reluctantly: "Russians do not attach much importance to childhood.
At least I donot attach it.
An ordinary childhood.
I donot think that children's impressions play an important role in further development."
Already in adolescence, his independence, determination, and firm character were manifested.
In 1955, without finishing school, he went to work at a military factory as a milling cutter, choosing for himself self education, mainly multi reading: "It started as an accumulation of knowledge, but turned into the most important activity for which you can sacrifice everything.
Books have become the first and only reality" (I. Brodsky).
In 1956, for the first time, like many at his age, he tried to rhyme.
He experienced a strong influence of Lermontov in his youth.
I often changed places and types of work (the most unexpected combinations – eight years later, in March 1964, at the trial (the accusation of parasitism!) 13 professions tested by him were announced: milling cutter, geophysicist technician (according to L. Stern, 1959-1961; geography – Yakutia, Tien Shan, Kazakhstan, the White Sea coast), orderly, stoker, photographer, translator, etc.), trying to find such earnings that would leave more time for reading and writing: on a geological trip to Yakutsk in 1959, he purchased a volume of poems by E. A. Baratynsky in the series "Poet's Library", after reading which, I finally strengthened my desire to become a poet: "I had nothing to read, and when I found this book and read it, then I understood everything: what should I do.
He intensively studied new languages (primarily English, Polish), attended lectures at the Faculty of Philology of LSU, studied the history of literature, began translating (since the early 60s he signed contracts with publishing houses and worked as a professional poet translator), and continuously wrote his original poems – not trying to please the social order, completely rejecting all banality, but daring to continuously search for a new topic, fresh intonation and sound, unexpected (often semantic) rhyme, a strong memorable image.
He quickly acquired a huge number of friends of different ages ("half a thousand acquaintances", L. Stern), on whom he ran all his new "rhymes, rhymes".
In typewritten and handwritten lists, from hand to hand, among the intelligentsia reading poetry, wonderful poems and poems of the Leningrad Joseph Brodsky, unknown to the majority, "Christmas Romance", "Procession", "Pilgrims", "Poems", which were distinguished by early maturity, sharpness, recognizable individuality and sharpness of writing, confessional openness, lyrical piercing, amazing subtlest skill of cutting, were quickly distributed among the intelligentsia reading poetry under the epigraph "("Everyone is naked before God...")," Loneliness"," Elegy"," Now I feel tired more and more often..."," Romance"," Fly from here, white moth..."," Guest"," In memory of E. A. Baratynsky"," Leave,
leave, leave..."," Petersburg novel"," July intermezzo"," I do not ask for Immortality from death..."," Roosters will shout and clap..."," Stanzas to the city "("May it not be given to me to die away from you...") and many others.
Despite the lack of significant publications, Joseph Brodsky had a scandalous for that time wide fame of the best, most famous poet of samizdat.
The early period of Joseph Brodsky's work is extremely productive: actively mastering and assimilating the best samples of domestic and foreign poetry, he clearly formulated for himself the principle of the need for his constant spiritual growth and the recipe for sculpting an individual, easily recognizable poetic masterpiece: conciseness, power, novelty, content, aesopian allegory, aphorism, skill, harmony.
Russian Russian poetry of the XIX XX centuries) and the reform of the Russian classical verse, the identification of its new expressive possibilities, he realized early on the need for a synthesis of continuity (Russian poetry of the XIX XX centuries).
I was sad to see that these tasks are not just beyond the vast majority of contemporaries, but are even unknown: "It is impossible to fall behind.
Overtake – only this is possible."
His social circle is very wide, but most often about poems in 1960-1964.
he talked with the same young poets, students of the Technological Institute Evgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, Dmitry Bobyshev.
It was Rein who introduced him to Anna Andreevna Akhmatova, who confidently singled out Brodsky from his entourage, gifted him with friendship and predicted a brilliant poetic future for him.
In 1963, his relations with the authorities in Leningrad worsened.
"Despite the fact that Brodsky did not write direct political poems against the Soviet government, the independence of the form and content of his poems, plus the independence of personal behavior, irritated ideological supervisors" (Yevtushenko).
November 29, 1963 in the newspaper "Evening Leningrad" signed by A.Ionin, Ya.
Lerner, M. Medvedev published a lampoon "Near literary Drone" on Brodsky, where the following was said about him and his inner circle, in particular:
«...A few years ago, a young man who called himself a poet appeared in the near literary circles of Leningrad.
His friends simply called him Osei.
In other places, he was called by his full name – Joseph Brodsky.
What did this self confident young man want to come to literature with?
He had a dozen other poems on his account, copied into a thin notebook, and all these poems testified that their author's worldview was clearly flawed.
He imitated poets who preached pessimism and disbelief in man, his poems are a mixture of decadence, modernism and the most ordinary gibberish.
Brodsky's poor imitative attempts looked pathetic.
However, he could not create anything independent: he did not have enough strength.
There was a lack of knowledge and culture.
And what kind of knowledge can a half educated person who has not even graduated from high school have?
As you can see, this pygmy, confidently climbing Parnassus, is not so harmless.
Having admitted that he "loves a foreign homeland," Brodsky was extremely frank.
He really does not love his Homeland and does not hide it.
More than that!
They have been hatching plans for treason for a long time."
At the end of the article there was a direct call to the authorities to protect Leningrad and Leningrad residents from a dangerous drone:
"Obviously, we need to stop coddling a near literary parasite.
A man like Brodsky has no place in Leningrad.
Not only Brodsky, but everyone around him, is following the same dangerous path as he is.
Let the near literary idlers like Joseph Brodsky receive the sharpest rebuff.
Let them be unwilling to muddy the water!"
Organized harassment grew; it was dangerous for Brodsky to stay in Leningrad; in order to avoid arrest, friends took the poet to Moscow in December 1963.
On January 2, 1964, in the apartment of E. Rein, who moved to Moscow on Kirovskaya Street, Brodsky learned from L. Stern that his fiancee Marina Pavlovna Basmanova (the parents of the young people on both sides had a sharply negative attitude to their meetings) celebrated the New Year together with D. Bobyshev at the dacha of mutual friends of the Sheinins in Zelenogorsk (near Leningrad).
The poet, full of misgivings, urgently returned to Leningrad, where he learned about the infidelity of the bride and the base, everyday betrayal of his friend.
Twenty three year old Brodsky had an extremely difficult experience with this double nasty blow from people very close to him (perhaps the exceptional strength of these experiences that he endured in himself greatly aggravated his heart disease, which caused his premature death).
Soon another misfortune awaited him: on the evening of February 13, 1964, Joseph Brodsky was unexpectedly arrested on the street.
After the first closed trial on February 18 in the district court on Vosstaniya Street, the poet was placed in a judicial psychiatric hospital ("psychiatric hospital"), "where he was subjected to mocking experiments for three weeks, but was recognized as mentally healthy and able bodied" (L. Stern).
The second, open, trial was held on March 13, 1964.
The court's decision was expulsion for 5 years with mandatory involvement in physical labor.
The poet served his exile in the Konoshsky district of the Arkhangelsk region, in the village of Norinskaya.
Ya.
Gordin recalls: "The village is located about thirty kilometers from the railway, surrounded by swampy northern forests.
Joseph did all sorts of physical work there.
When the writer Igor Efimov and I came to him in October of the sixty fourth year, he was assigned to the granary to shovel grain so that it would not heat up.
They treated him well in the village, completely unaware that this polite and calm parasite would take their village with him into the history of world literature."
After reconciliation, M. Basmanova came to Norinskaya to Brodsky, who gave birth to his son Andrey in 1967 (despite Brodsky's protests, Andrey was recorded in metrics by Osipovich with the surname Basmanov).
During the period of exile, he wrote such famous poems as "To a poetess", "I am infected with normal classicism", "Two hours in a tank", "New stanzas for August", "Northern Mail", "A letter in a bottle", "I wander in a thinning forest...", "To you, when my voice sounds...", "Orpheus and Artemis", "Carnation", "Prophecy", "24.5.65 Bullpen", "A goose in a ditch, like stereo pipe...", "God does not live in the corners in the village...", "A bowl with a snake", "In a village lost in the woods...", "The Northern edge, hide...",
"With sadness and with tenderness" and others.
In 1965, under the pressure of the world community, the decision of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR reduced the term of expulsion to actually served (1 year, 5 months).
In 1965, the first book of Joseph Brodsky in Russian, "Poems and Poems", was published in New York.
The poet in 1972 spoke about this event as follows: "I remember very well my feelings from my first book, published in Russian in New York.
I had a feeling of some ridiculousness of what had happened.
It never occurred to me what had happened and what kind of book it was."
Having returned prematurely from exile (September 1965), Brodsky tried to actively join the literary process.
He studied hard and hard on samples, analyzed the successes and failures of other poets, mastered new rhythms and stanzas, worked extremely productively creatively, wrote original poems, translated, read poems and translations at literary evenings.
Opportunities and creative business trips led him from Leningrad to Moscow, Palanga, Yalta, Gurzuf...
His interest in the poetic borderline the junction of white verse and rhythmic prose led to the creation of the famous poem "Stop in the Desert", which later gave the name to his first poetry collection, published abroad in 1972.
His mastered and fixed genre is an easily recognizable long elegy, a kind of semi poem aphoristic, sadly sad, ironically reflexive, with a language and syntax as brittle as mica, carrying (no less than the content) the function of refreshing and much desired novelty.
As an example, we can cite "Goodbye, Mademoiselle Veronika", "Fountain", "In memory of T. B.", built on a chopped rhythm, monotonous army appeals and army conclusions, "Letter to General Z", "Stanzas", "Elegy", the poem "Gorbunov and Gorchakov" (a special poetic task – a dialog form), "Dedicated to Yalta" (a special task – an updated syntax), "With a view of the sea", "The end of a beautiful era", "From the School Anthology"," Conversation with a celestial", "Singing without music", "POST AETATEM NOSTRAM", "Lithuanian divertissement", "Still Life" and others.
For some ten years, Brodsky has grown extremely quickly into a virtuoso master of Russian verse and the work of creating another masterpiece brought him, obviously, enormous creative satisfaction.
When trying to publish his poems, Brodsky faced severe censorship pressure, which destroyed all the originality of his poems and all the titanic work done; the poet did not accept all attempts at censorship interference in any form.
Meanwhile, Russian special agencies were rapidly preparing to expel the inconvenient, unbroken, uncompromising poet Joseph Brodsky abroad.
Early in the morning on June 4, 1972, leaving the country, as it seemed and turned out, forever, going to Pulkovo airport, Joseph Brodsky wrote a letter to the General Secretary of the CPSU Leonid Brezhnev, in which he expressed the hope that he would be allowed to publish in Russian magazines and books: "Dear Leonid Ilyich, leaving Russia not of his own free will, as you may know, I decide to appeal to you with a request, the right to which gives me a firm consciousness that everything that I have done for 15 years of literary work, serves and will serve only to 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.
I dare to think that my work was a good job, and I could continue to be useful.
After all, this was practiced a hundred years ago.
I belong to Russian culture, I am aware of myself as a part of it, a component, and no change of place can affect the final result.
Language is an older and more inevitable thing than the state.
I belong to the Russian language, and as for the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer's patriotism is how he writes in the language of the people among whom he lives, and not oaths from the rostrum.
I am sad to leave Russia.
I was born here, grew up here, lived here, and I owe everything I have to her.
All the bad things that fell to my lot were more than covered by the good, and I never felt offended by the Fatherland.
I donot feel it now either.
For, ceasing to be a citizen of the USSR, I do not cease to be a Russian poet.
I believe that I will return; poets always return: in the flesh or on paper.
I want to believe in both.
People have come out of the age when the strong were right.
There are too many weak people in the world for this.
The only rightness is kindness.
From evil, from anger, from hatred let them be called righteous no one wins.
We are all condemned to the same thing: to death.
I will die writing these lines, you will die reading them.
Our affairs will remain, but they will also be destroyed.
Therefore, no one should interfere with each other to do his work.
The conditions of existence are too difficult to complicate them even more.
I hope you will understand me correctly, understand what I am asking for.
Russian Russian literature, I ask you to give me the opportunity to continue to exist in Russian literature, on Russian soil.
I think that I am not guilty of anything before my Homeland.
On the contrary, I think I'm right in many ways.
I do not know what your response to my request will be, whether it will take place at all.
I'm sorry I didnot write to you earlier, and now there's no time left.
But I will tell you that in any case, even if my people do not need my body, my soul will still be useful to them."
Brodsky recalled his stay in Vienna: "I remember very clearly the first days in Vienna.
I wandered the streets, looked at the shops.
In Russia, the things displayed in the windows are separated by gaping gaps: one pair of shoes is almost a meter away from the other, and so on...
When you walk down the street here, you are struck by the crowding that reigns in the windows, the abundance of things displayed in them.
And I was struck not by the freedom that Russians are deprived of, although this is also true, but by the real matter of life, its materiality.
I immediately thought about our women, imagining how they would be confused at the sight of all these clothes.
And one more thing: one day I was sailing from England to Holland and saw a group of children on the ship going on an excursion.
What a joy it would be for our children, I thought then, and it was stolen from them forever.
Generations grew up, grew old, died without seeing anything..."
A month after his arrival in the United States, on July 9, 1972, Brodsky arrived in Ann Arbor, where he took up the position of visiting professor at the Faculty of Slavic Studies (tenured professor in the Slavic Department) University of Michigan, where he held this position for nine years until leaving for permanent residence in New York in 1981.
Russian Russian poet taught a course of lectures on the history of Russian poetry, Russian poetry of the 20th century, the theory of verse, conducted seminars, took exams from future American Slavists.
There, in Ann Arbor, in 1972, his collection of Russian poems and poems "Stop in the Desert" was published – the first independent collection of Joseph Brodsky, in the compilation of which he showed extreme pickiness and high demands.
In 1973, a volume of selected poems by Joseph Brodsky was published, translated into English by Professor George Klein.
Already in the year of his arrival in America, Brodsky gave the first memorable interviews.
American interlocutors, as a rule, did not feel at all that they were dealing with a self taught person who, with the help of self education, had far exceeded the university horizons: "Brodsky demonstrated boundless knowledge in world literature, art, music and other areas of interest to him" (Anne Marie Bramm).
In 1975, for the 200th anniversary of the United States, a program poem "The Lullaby of the Cod Cape" was written (with a dedication to A. B.-son Andrey).
In 1977, Joseph Brodsky wrote a review "The Geography of Evil" on the book by A. I. Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago".
In 1978, after a trip to Brazil, Brodsky wrote an essay "After a trip, or Dedicated to the spine".
In July 1989, before the graduates of Dartmouth College, he gave a speech "Praise for Boredom", which was included in the book of selected essays "On Sorrow and Reason" (1995).
Brodsky was accepted as an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts, from which he left in protest against the admission of Yevgeny Yevtushenko to it.
In 1977, the publishing house "Ardis "in Ann Arbor published two important collections of poems by Joseph Brodsky" The End of the Beautiful Era.
Poems 1964-71 / Comp.
V. Maramzin and L.Losev" and " Part of speech.
Poems 1972-76 / Comp.
V. Maramzin and L.Losev".
In the reply letter of A. I. Solzhenitsyn to Brodsky received on May 14, 1977, in the first paragraph, the poet's admiration for the professional work was expressed: "I do not miss your poems in any Russian magazine, I do not cease to admire your brilliant skill.
Sometimes I am afraid that you are destroying the verse in some way — but you do this with incomparable talent."
By May 24, 1980, i.e., on the fortieth anniversary of Brodsky, his friends published the almanac "Part of Speech", which included, in particular, Brodsky's poems dedicated to M. Basmanova: "You, a guitar like thing with a tangled web / strings...", his essay "Leningrad", written in English and translated into Russian by yayzyk L.Losev, Brodsky's interview with Solomon Volkov under the title "New York: the Soul of a Poet".
In 1980, Brodsky received American citizenship ("I became an American citizen in Detroit.
It was raining, it was early in the morning, there were about seventy or eighty of us gathered in the courthouse, we took the oath in a crowd.
There were immigrants from Egypt, Czechoslovakia, Zimbabwe, Latin America, Sweden... the judge who was present at the ceremony made a small speech.
He said: by taking the oath, you are not at all renouncing the ties that bind you to your former homeland; you no longer belong to it politically, but the United States will only become richer if you maintain your cultural and emotional ties.
I was very touched by it then – I am still touched now when I remember that moment. "
- I. B.).
In 1981, he underwent heart surgery (bypass surgery).
The doctors forbade him to smoke a lot, but he continued to do it, without fail breaking off the filters of strong cigarettes.
"In 1981, he lived for several months at the American Academy in Rome, and this time turned out to be very fruitful for him" (M. Brodskaya).
In 1983, the publishing house "Ardis" in Ann Arbor published a book of lyrics by Joseph Brodsky " New Stanzas for August.
Poems to M. B. 1962-82".
In 1984, Brodsky's play "Marble"was published in the same publishing house.
In 1986, his English book "Less then one" was recognized as the best literary critical book of the year in America.
The title of Joseph Brodsky's 1987 poetry collection "Urania" is, according to his testimony, a tribute to Baratynsky ("Fans of cold Urania...").
During his life in America, Brodsky was worried about constant heart problems.
By May 1987, the poet had suffered three heart attacks.
Heart attacks were treated at the Presbyterian Hospital (New Jersey).
In 1987, the poet estimated his exile in this way: "The fifteen years that I spent in the United States were extraordinary for me, because everyone left me alone.
I led the kind of life that, I believe, a poet should lead not yielding to public temptations, living in seclusion.
Perhaps exile is a natural condition for the existence of a poet, unlike a novelist, who must be inside the structures of the society he describes.
I felt a certain advantage in this coincidence of my conditions of existence and my occupations.
And now, because of all these "changes for the better", there is a feeling that someone wants to invade my life by force.
It is as if you are in the market, a gypsy woman comes up to you, grabs your hand, looks intently into your eyes and says: "Now I'll tell you what will happen..."
I have been living far from my homeland for so long, my view is a view from the outside, and that's all;
I donot feel what is happening there with my skin...
If they print me, it's good, if they donot print me, it's also not bad.
The next generation will read it.
I donot care at all... almost donot care."
In December 1987, at the age of forty seven, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (after Bunin and Pasternak, he became the third Russian poet to receive the Nobel Prize): "for all encompassing authorship, full of clarity of thought and poetic depth" (Brodsky is one of the youngest Nobel Prize laureates in all the years of its award).
The "Nobel Lecture" read by him became (and remains) an intellectual and aesthetic bestseller, treating the problem of the independence of the creative personality from the social environment, the spirit of continuity and moral obligations, the tragedy of life and the lessons of history for future generations.
In December 1988, in front of graduates of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Brodsky delivered the famous "Speech at the Stadium" with a wish to young people accuracy in language, love for parents, modesty, absence of complaints, ignoring enemies, etc.
In July 1989, before the graduates of Dartmouth College, he gave a speech "Praise for Boredom", which was included in the book of selected essays "On Grief and Reason" (1995).
On October 11, 1990, he gave the first annual lecture "Times Literary Supplement" at the British Academy, which formed the basis for the published essay "Altra Ego".
In 1991, at the University of Leiden, he gave the Heising lecture "The Profile of Clio".
In the same year, he wrote an essay "A collector's copy".
In Paris in 1991, Joseph Brodsky met an Italian aristocrat Maria Sozzani and married her.
In 1993, the couple had a daughter, Anna Alexandra Maria.
In 1991, he became a professor of literature at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts (Andrew Mellon Professor of Literature at Mount Holyoke College).
From May 1991 to May 1992, he was appointed Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress, which required his almost constant presence in Washington.
Brodsky did not like the city, which he reflected in the poem "View from the Hill", deciphering in it a line with dates ("For two years lived here") as follows :" this is nominally: the 91st and 92nd years.
The winner's year is one, but according to the calendar there were two years."
On October 2, 1991, at the Library of Congress, Brodsky gave a lecture "An Immodest Proposal", which was included in the book of selected essays.
On September 9, 1993, at the Gothenburg Book Fair, Joseph Brodsky and the American poet Derek Walcott held a conversation "The Power of Poetry".
On April 9, 1995, Brodsky held the last author's evening for Russian emigrants at the Morse Auditorium of Boston University.
Another important detail is that Joseph Brodsky was against the publication of a consolidated volume of his interviews.
And here's why: "Joseph was against such a book.
And before his death, he wrote a letter to Professor Polukhina, in which he asked her not to do this.
We donot know why he was against this particular project - he didnot tell us anything about it at the time.
But I know for sure that the interview as a form of printed expression really annoyed him.
First of all, because the person being interviewed usually does not have the ability to control the translation and the final text, which is often edited by journalists, and as a result, his words are often significantly distorted" (M. Brodskaya).
Joseph Brodsky died at the age of 55, on January 28, 1996.
"Brodsky's aesthetics turns out to be not so much a mathematical sum of modernity, postmodernism and traditionalism, but rather the integration of all these artistic systems, the extraction of an artistic and philosophical root common to them all.
This integral or "root", on the one hand, revealed a deep affinity with the aesthetics of the Baroque; and on the other, proved its viability by how organically it accepted the germs of antiquity, metaphysical tradition, English language poetry of the twentieth century (Eliot, Auden, Frost), almost futuristic linguistic freedom, Oberiut absurdism and much more "grafted" by Brodsky.
Brodsky is considered to be the finisher of the twentieth century, but his aesthetic experiment has created a living and fruitful soil that forms a common basis for a new variety of literature in the next century."
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