Jewogle - Joseph Brodsky (Ио́сиф Алекса́ндрович Бро́дский)

Biography:

Joseph Brodsky, born Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (Russian: Ио́сиф Алекса́ндрович Бро́дский) was a Russian poet and essayist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987) and was chosen Poet Laureate of the United States (1991-1992). He had an honorary degree from the University of Silesia.

In the Soviet Union:

Brodsky was born into a Jewish family in Leningrad, the son of a professional photographer in the Soviet Navy. In early childhood he survived the Siege of Leningrad. When he was fifteen, Brodsky left school and tried to enter the School of Submariners (школа подводников) without success. He went on to work as a milling machine operator (фрезеровщик) at a plant. Later, having decided to become a physician, he worked at a morgue at the Kresty prison. He subsequently held a variety of jobs at a hospital, in a ship's boiler room, and on geological expeditions.

At the same time, Brodsky engaged in a program of self-education. He learned English and Polish (mainly to translate poems by Czesław Miłosz, who was Brodsky's favourite poet and a friend), and acquired a deep interest in classical philosophy, religion, mythology, and English and American poetry. Later in life, he admitted that he picked up books from anywhere he could find them, including even garbage dumps.

Brodsky began writing his own poetry and producing literary translations around 1957. His writings were apolitical. The young Brodsky was encouraged and influenced by the poet Anna Akhmatova who called some of his verses "enchanting." He had no degree in the liberal arts.

In 1963, he was arrested and in 1964 charged with parasitism ("тунеядство") by the Soviet authorities. A famous excerpt from the transcript of his trial made by journalist Frida Vigdorova was smuggled to the West:

Judge: And what is your profession, in general?
Brodsky: I am a poet and a literary translator.
Judge: Who recognizes you as a poet? Who enrolled you in the ranks of poets?
Brodsky: No one. Who enrolled me in the ranks of humankind?
Judge: Did you study this?
Brodsky: This?
Judge: How to become a poet. You did not even try to finish high school where they prepare, where they teach?
Brodsky: I didn’t think you could get this from school.
Judge: How then?
Brodsky: I think that it ... comes from God.

For his "parasitism" Brodsky was sentenced to five years of internal exile with obligatory engagement in physical work and served 18 months in Archangelsk region. The sentence was commuted in 1965 after prominent Soviet and foreign literary figures, such as Evgeny Evtushenko and Jean Paul Sartre, protested.

In 1964, Leonid Brezhnev came to power. As the Khrushchev Thaw period ended, only four of Brodsky's poems were published in the Soviet Union. He refused to publish his writings censored and most of his work has appeared only in the West or in samizdat.

In the United States:

On June 4, 1972 Brodsky was expelled from the USSR. He became a U.S. citizen in 1977. His first teaching position in the United States was at the University of Michigan (U-M). He was Poet-in-Residence and Visiting Professor at Queens College, Smith College, Columbia University, and the Cambridge University in England. He was a Five-College Professor of Literature at Mount Holyoke College.

He achieved major successes in his career as an English language poet and essayist. In 1978, Brodsky was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at Yale University, and on May 23, 1979, he was inducted as a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1981, Brodsky received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's "genius" award.

In 1986, his collection of essays Less Than One won the National Book Critic's Award for Criticism. In 1987, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, being the fifth Russian-born writer to do so. At an interview in Stockholm airport, to a question: "You are an American citizen who is receiving the Prize for Russian-language poetry. Who are you, an American or a Russian?", he responded: "I am Jewish - a Russian poet and an English essayist".

In 1991, Brodsky became Poet Laureate of the United States. His inauguration address was printed in Poetry Review. He married Maria Sozzani in 1990. They had one daughter.

Brodsky died of a heart attack in his New York City apartment on January 28, 1996 and was buried in the Episcopalian section at Isola di San Michele cemetery in Venice, Italy. Venice is the setting for his book Watermark.

Poets who influenced Brodsky included Osip Mandelstam, W.H. Auden and Robert Frost.

A close friend to the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, Brodsky has been remembered and memorialised in the latest collection of poetry entitled The Prodigal (pp. 26-27).

Ideas:

A recurring theme in Brodsky's writing is the relationship between the poet and society. In particular, Brodsky emphasized the power of literature to positively impact its audience and to develop the language and culture in which it is situated. He suggested that the Western literary tradition was in part responsible for the world having overcome the catastrophes of the twentieth century, such as Nazism, Communism and the World Wars. During his term as the Poet Laureate, Brodsky promoted the idea of bringing the Anglo-American poetic heritage to a wider American audience by distributing free poetry anthologies to the public through a government-sponsored program. This proposal was met with limited enthusiasm in Washington.

Quotes:

Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe — not empirically, alas, but only theoretically--that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens.
Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Bibliography:

Works in English, including translations into English:

Poetry:

1967: Elegy for John Donne and Other Poems, selected, translated, and introduced by Nicholas William Bethell, London: Longman
1968: Velka elegie, Paris: Edice Svedectvi
1972: Poems, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis
1973: Selected Poems, translated from the Russian by George L. Kline. New York: Harper & Row
1977: A Part of Speech
1977: Poems and Translations, Keele: University of Keele
1980: A Part of Speech, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
1981: Verses on the Winter Campaign 1980, translation by Alan Meyers. – London: Anvil Press
1988: To Urania : Selected Poems, 1965-1985, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
1995: On Grief and Reason: Essays, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
1996: So Forth : Poems, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
1999: Discovery, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2000: Collected Poems in English, 1972-1999, edited by Ann Kjellberg, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2001: Nativity Poems, translated by Melissa Green – New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Essays:

1986: Less Than One: Selected Essays, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
1992: Watermark, Noonday Press; New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
1996: On Grief and Reason

Plays:

1989: Marbles : a Play in Three Acts, translated by Alan Myers with Joseph Brodsky. – New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
1991: Democracy!

Interviews:

2003: Joseph Brodsky: Conversations

Works in Russian:

1965: Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, Washington, D.C. : Inter-Language Literary Associates
1970: Ostanovka v pustyne, New York: Izdatel'stvo imeni Chekhova (Rev. ed. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1989)
1977: Chast' rechi: Stikhotvoreniia 1972-76, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis
1977: Konets prekrasnoi epokhi : stikhotvoreniia 1964-71, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis
1977: V Anglii, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis
1982: Rimskie elegii, New York: Russica
1983: Novye stansy k Avguste : stikhi k M.B., 1962-1982, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis
1984: Mramor, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis
1984: Uraniia : novaia kniga stikhov, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis
1989: Ostanovka v pustyne, revised edition, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1989 (original edition: New York: Izdatel'stvo imeni Chekhova, 1970)
1990: Nazidanie : stikhi 1962-1989, Leningrad : Smart
1990: Chast' rechi : Izbrannye stikhi 1962-1989, Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura
1990: Osennii krik iastreba : Stikhotvoreniia 1962-1989, Leningrad: KTP LO IMA Press
1990: Primechaniia paporotnika, Bromma, Sweden : Hylaea
1991: Ballada o malen'kom buksire, Leningrad: Detskaia literatura
1991: Kholmy : Bol'shie stikhotvoreniia i poemy, St. Petersburg: LP VTPO "Kinotsentr"
1991: Stikhotvoreniia, Tallinn: Eesti Raamat
1992: Naberezhnaia neistselimykh: Trinadtsat' essei, Moscow: Slovo
1992: Rozhdestvenskie stikhi, Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta (revised edition in 1996)
1992-1995: Sochineniia, St. Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond, 1992-1995, four volumes
1992: Vspominaia Akhmatovu / Joseph Brodsky, Solomon Volkov, Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta
1992: Forma vremeni : stikhotvoreniia, esse, p'esy, Minsk: Eridan, two volumes
1993: Kappadokiia. – St. Petersburg
1994: Persian Arrow/Persidskaia strela, with etchings by Edik Steinberg. – Verona: * Edizione d'Arte Gibralfaro & ECM
1995: Peresechennaia mestnost ': Puteshestviia s kommentariiami, Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta
1995: V okrestnostiakh Atlantidy : Novye stikhotvoreniia, St. Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
1996: Peizazh s navodneniem, compiled by Aleksandr Sumerkin. – Dana Point, Cal.: Ardis
1996: Rozhdestvenskie stikhi, Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta, revised edition of a work originally published in 1992
1997: Brodskii o Tsvetaevoi, Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta
1998: Pis'mo Goratsiiu, Moscow: Nash dom
1996 and after: Sochineniia, St. Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond, eight volumes
1999: Gorbunov i Gorchakov, St. Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
1999: Predstavlenie : novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Moscow
2000: Ostanovka v pustyne, St. Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
2000: Chast' rechi, St. Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
2000: Konets prekrasnoi epokhi, St. Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
2000: Novye stansy k Avguste, St. Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
2000: Uraniia, St. Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
2000: Peizazh s navodneniem, St. Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond
2000: Bol'shaia kniga interv'iu, Moscow: Zakharov
2001: Novaia Odisseia : Pamiati Iosifa Brodskogo, Moscow: Staroe literaturnoe obozrenie
2001: Peremena imperii : Stikhotvoreniia 1960-1996, Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta
2001: Vtoroi vek posle nashei ery : dramaturgija Iosifa Brodskogo, St. Petersburg: Zvezda