Brodsky, Iosif Alexandrovich 1940–1996

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Brodsky, Iosif Alexandrovich 1940–1996

(Joseph Brodsky, Yosif Brodsky)

PERSONAL: Born May 24, 1940, in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), U.S.S.R. (now Russia); became naturalized U.S. citizen, 1977; died of heart failure, January 28, 1996, in Brooklyn Heights, New York; son of Alexander I. and Maria M. (Volpert) Brodsky; married wife (an Italian-Russian translator), 1990; children: Andrei, Anna. Education: Attended schools in Leningrad until 1956. Religion: Jewish

CAREER: Poet. Worked variously as a stoker, sailor, photographer, geologist's assistant on expedition to Central Asia, coroner's assistant, and farm laborer; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, poet-in-residence, 1972–73, 1974–79; Columbia University, New York, NY, adjunct professor; Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA, educator, became Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Literature, 1990–96.

MEMBER: Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Munich; corresponding member), American Academy of Arts and Sciences, until 1987.

AWARDS, HONORS: D.Litt., Yale University, 1978, Dartmouth College, University of Keele, Amherst College, Uppsala University, University of Rochester, Williams College, Colchester University, and Oxford University; Mondello Prize (Italy), 1979; National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, 1980, for A Part of Speech, and award, 1986, for Less than One: Selected Essays; New York Institute for the Humanities fellowship; MacArthur fellowship, 1981; Guggenheim fellowship; Nobel Prize in Literature, 1987; Poet Laureate of the United States, 1991; Decorated Legion d'Honneur (France); Knight, Order of St. John of Malta.

WRITINGS:

Stikhotvoreniia i poemy (title means "Longer and Shorter Poems"), Inter-Language (Washington, DC), 1965.

Xol 'mi, translated by Jean-Jacques Marie and published in France as Collins et autres poemes, Editions de Seuil, 1966.

Ausgewahlte Gedichte, Bechtle Verlag, 1966.

Velka elegie, Edice Svedectvi (Paris, France), 1968.

Ostanovka v pustyne (title means "A Halt in the Wilderness"), Chekhov (New York, NY), 1970.

Konets prekrasnoi epokhi: Stikhotvoreniia, 1964–1971 (title means "The End of a Wonderful Era: Poems"), Ardis (Ann Arbor, MI), 1977.

Chast' rechi: Stikhotvoreniia, 1972–1976 (title means "A Part of Speech: Poems"), Ardis (Ann Arbor, MI), 1977, translation published as A Part of Speech, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1980.

V Anglii (title means "In England"), Ardis (Ann Arbor, MI), 1977.

Verses on the Winter Campaign 1980, translation by Alan Meyers, Anvil Press (London, England), 1981.

Rimskie elegii (title means "Roman Elegies"), [New York, NY], 1982.

Novye stansy k Avguste: Stikhi k M.B., 1962–1982 (title means "New Stanzas to Augusta: Poems to M.B."), Ardis (Ann Arbor, MI), 1983.

Uraniia: Novaia kniga stikhov (title means "Urania: A New Book of Poems"), Ardis (Ann Arbor, MI), 1984, translation published as To Urania: Selected Poems, 1965–1985, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1988.

Mramor, Ardis (Ann Arbor, MI), 1984.

(With Gianni Berengo Gardin) Gli anni di Venezia, F. Motta (Milan, Italy), 1994.

Isaak I Avraam, Izd-vo M.K. (St. Petersburg, Russia), 1994.

Brodskii o Tsvetaevoi, Nezavisimaia gazeta (Moscow, Russia), 1997.

Pis-mo Goratsiiu, Nash dom-L'age d'Homme (Moscow, Russia), 1998.

Gorbunov i Gorchakov, Pushkinskii fond (St. Petersburg, Russia), 1999.

Predstavlenie, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (Moscow, Russia), 1999.

Bol'shaia kniga interv'iu, Zakharov (Moscow, Russia), 2000.

Peremena imperii: stikhotvoreniia, 1960–1996, Neza-visimaia gazeta (Moscow, Russia), 2001.

Iosif Brodskii: Uraniia: Leningrad-Venetsiia-Neiu Iork: 11 aprelia-31 avgusta 2003, [redaktor, IA.A. Gor-din], Muzei Anny Akhmatovoi v Fontannom dome: Izd-vo zhurnala "Zvezda" (St. Petersburg, Russia), 2003.

UNDER NAME JOSEPH BRODSKY

Elegy to John Donne and Other Poems, selected, translated, and introduced by Nicholas Bethell, Longmans, Green (London, England), 1967.

Poems, Ardis (Ann Arbor, MI), 1972.

Selected Poems, translated by George L. Kline, Harper (New York, NY), 1973.

(Editor, with Carl Proffer) Modern Russian Poets on Poetry: Blok, Mandelstam, Pasternak, Mayakovsky, Gumilev, Tsvetaeva (nonfiction), Ardis (Ann Arbor, MI), 1976.

Less than One: Selected Essays, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1986.

(Editor, with Alan Myers) An Age Ago: A Selection of Nineteenth-Century Russian Poetry, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1988.

Marbles: A Play in Three Acts, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1989.

Watermark, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Alexander Liberman) Campidoglio: Michaelangelo's Roman Capitol, Random House (New York, NY), 1994.

(Editor) The Essential Hardy, Ecco Press (Hopewell, NJ), 1995.

On Grief and Reason: Essays, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1995.

So Forth: Poems, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott) Homage to Robert Frost, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1996.

Discovery, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1999.

Collected Poems in English, edited by Ann Kjellberg, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2000.

Nativity Poems, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 2001.

Joseph Brodsky: Conversations, edited by Cynthia L. Haven, University Press of Mississippi (Jackson, MS), 2002.

Contributor to Three Slavic Poets: Joseph Brodsky, Tymoteusz Karpowicz, Djordie Nikoloc, edited by John Rezek, Elpenor Books, 1975.

Translations of Brodsky's poems appear in James Scully's Avenue of the Americas, University of Massachusetts Press, 1971, and in New Underground Russian Poets: Poems by Yosif Brodsky and others. Poems have been published in anthologies in twelve languages, and in Russian Review, New York Review of Books, Nouvelle Revue Française, Unicorn Journal, Observer Review, Kultura, La Fiera Letteraria, New Yorker, New Leader, and other journals. Author also translated poetry from English and Polish into Russian, and from Russian into Hebrew.

SIDELIGHTS: Iosif Alexandrovich Brodsky was reviled and persecuted in his native Soviet Union, but the Western literary establishment lauded him as one of that country's finest poets. From the time he began publishing his verse—both under his own name, and under the name Joseph Brodsky—which was characterized by ironic wit and a spirit of fiery independence, Brodsky aroused the ire of Soviet authorities; he was also persecuted because he was a Jew. He was brought to trial for "parasitism," and a smuggled transcript of that trial helped bring him to the attention of the West, for he answered his interrogators with courageous and articulate idealism. Brodsky was condemned to a Soviet mental institution and later spent five years in Arkhangelsk, an Arctic labor camp. A public outcry from American and European intellectuals over his treatment helped to secure his early release. Forced to emigrate, he moved to Michigan in 1972, where, with the help of the poet W.H. Auden, he settled in at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor as poet-in-residence. He then taught at several universities, including Queens College in New York and Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. He continued to write poetry, however, often writing in Russian and translating his own work into English, and eventually winning the Nobel Prize for his work. His predominant themes were exile and loss, and he was widely praised for his hauntingly eloquent writing style.

In many ways, Brodsky had lived as an exile before leaving his homeland. His father had lost a position of rank in the Russian Navy because he was Jewish, and the family lived in poverty. Trying to escape the ever-present images of Lenin, Brodsky quit school and embarked on a self-directed education, reading literary classics and working a variety of unusual jobs, which included assisting a coroner and a geologist in Central Asia. He learned English and Polish so that he would be able to translate the poems of John Donne and Czeslaw Milosz. His own poetry expressed his independent character with an originality admired by poets such as Anna Akhmatova.

According to a Times Literary Supplement reviewer, Brodsky's poetry "is religious, intimate, depressed, sometimes confused, sometimes martyr-conscious, sometimes elitist in its views, but it does not constitute an attack on Soviet society or ideology unless withdrawal and isolation are deliberately construed as attack: of course they can be, and evidently were." According to a reviewer in Time, the poet's expulsion from Russia was "the culmination of an inexplicable secret-police vendetta against him that has been going on for over a decade." Brodsky said: "They have simply kicked me out of my country, using the Jewish issue as an excuse." The vendetta first came to a head in a Leningrad trial in 1964, when Brodsky was charged with writing "gibberish" instead of doing honest work; he was sentenced to five years hard labor. Protests from artists and writers helped to secure his release after eighteen months, but his poetry still was banned. Israel invited him to immigrate, and the government encouraged him to go; Brodsky, though, refused, explaining that he did not identify with the Jewish state. Finally, Russian officials insisted that he leave the country. Despite the pressures, Brodsky reportedly wrote to Leonid Brezhnev before leaving Moscow, asking to be allowed to stay in Russia and work in Russian literature.

Brodsky's poetry bears the marks of his confrontations with the Russian authorities. "Brodsky is someone who has tasted extremely bitter bread," wrote Stephen Spender in New Statesman, "and his poetry has the air of being ground out between his teeth…. It should not be supposed that he is a liberal, or even a socialist. He deals in unpleasing, hostile truths and is a realist of the least comforting and comfortable kind. Everything nice that you would like him to think, he does not think. But he is utterly truthful, deeply religious, fearless and pure. Loving, as well as hating."

Brodsky elaborated on the relationship between poetry and politics in his Nobel lecture, "Uncommon Visage," published in Poets & Writers magazine. Art teaches the writer, he said, "the privateness of the human condition. Being the most ancient as well as the most literal form of private enterprise, it fosters in a man … a sense of his uniqueness, of individuality, or separateness—thus turning him from a social animal into an autonomous 'I.'" Brodsky went on to note, "A work of art, of literature especially, and a poem in particular, addresses a man tete-a-tete, entering with him into direct—free of any go-betweens—relations."

In addition, literature points to experience that transcends political limits. Brodsky observed, "Language and, presumably, literature are things that are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature toward the state is essentially the reaction of the permanent—better yet, the infinite—against the temporary, against the finite…. The real danger for a writer is not so much the possibility (and often the certainty) of persecution on the part of the state, as it is the possibility of finding oneself mesmerized by the state's features which, whether monstrous or undergoing changes for the better, are always temporary."

Brodsky went on to say that creative writing is an essential exercise of individual freedom, since the writer must make many aesthetic judgments and choices during the process of composition. He pointed out, "It is precisely in this … sense that we should understand Dostoyevsky's remark that beauty will save the world, or Matthew Arnold's belief that we shall be saved by poetry. It is probably too late for the world, but for the individual man there always remains a chance…. If what distinguishes us from other members of the animal kingdom is speech, then literature—and poetry, in particular, being the highest form of locution—is, to put it bluntly, the goal of our species."

Even more compelling than the relationship between poetry and politics is the relationship between the writer and his language, Brodsky claimed. He explained in Nobel speech that the first experience the writer has when taking up a pen to write "is … the sensation of immediately falling into dependence on language, on everything that has already been uttered, written, and accomplished in it." But the past accomplishments of a language do not impinge on the writer more than the sense of its vast potential. Brodsky added, "There are times when, by means of a single word, a single rhyme, the writer of a poem manages to find himself where no one has ever been before him, further, perhaps, than he himself would have wished for…. Having experienced this acceleration once … one falls into dependency on this process, the way others fall into dependency on drugs or alcohol."

In keeping with these views, Brodsky's poetry is known for its originality. Arthur C. Jacobs, in the Jewish Quarterly, noted that Brodsky is "quite apart from what one thinks of as the main current of Russian verse." A critic in New Leader wrote: "The noisy rant and attitudinizing rhetoric of public issues are superfluous to Brodsky's moral vision and contradictory to his craft. As with all great lyric poets, Brodsky attends to the immediate, the specific, to what he has internally known and felt, to the lucidities of observation heightened and defined by thought."

Though many critics agreed that Brodsky was one of the finest contemporary Russian poets, some felt that the English translations of his poetry are less impressive. Commenting on George L. Kline's translation of Selected Poems, Joseph Brodsky in the New Statesman, Spender wrote: "These poems are impressive in English, though one is left having to imagine the technical virtuosity of brilliant rhyming in the originals…. One is never quite allowed to forget that one is reading a second-hand version." In A Part of Speech, Brodsky gathered the work of several translators and made amendments to some of the English versions in an attempt to restore the character of the originals. Brod-sky's personal style remains somewhat elusive in that collection due to the subtle effects he achieves in the original Russian, Tom Simmons observed in the Christian Science Monitor. Brodsky, he said, "is a poet of dramatic yet delicate vision—a man with a sense of the increasingly obscured loftiness of human life. But under no circumstances is his poetry dully ethereal…. He can portray a luminous moment or a time of seemingly purposeless suffering with equal clarity."

Czeslaw Milosz felt that Brodsky's background allowed him to make a vital contribution to literature. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Milosz stated, "Behind Brodsky's poetry is the experience of political terror, the experience of the debasement of man and the growth of the totalitarian empire…. I find it fascinating to read his poems as part of his larger enterprise, which is no less than an attempt to fortify the place of man in a threatening world." This enterprise connected Brodsky to the literary traditions of other times and cultures.

Exile was always difficult for Brodsky. In one poem, he describes an exiled writer as one "who survives like a fish in the sand." Yet despite these feelings, Brodsky was largely unmoved by the sweeping political changes that accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union. He told David Remnick of the Washington Post that those changes were "devoid of autobiographical interest" for him, and that his allegiance was to his language. In the Detroit Free Press, Bob McKelvey cited Brodsky's declaration from a letter: "I belong to the Russian culture. I feel part of it, its component, and no change of place can influence the final consequence of this. A language is a much more ancient and inevitable thing than a state. I belong to the Russian language."

Shortly before his death, Brodsky completed So Forth, a collection of poems he wrote in English, or translated himself from poetry he wrote in Russian. So Forth was judged inferior to Brodsky's best work by several critics, including Michael Glover, who in New Statesman described the collection as "more failure than success." Glover felt that too often Brodsky "lapses into a kind of swashbuckling slanginess, a kind of raw muscularity that, at its worst, reads like embarrassing doggerel." Yet others found So Forth a powerful statement, such as a Publishers Weekly contributor who called it "an astonishing collection from a writer able to mix the cerebral and the sensual, the political and the intimate, the elegiac and the comic…. Brodsky's death is a loss to literature; his final collection of poems is the best consolation we could ask for."

Collected Poems in English, published posthumously, is a definitive collection of Brodsky's translated work and his original work in English. It is "dramatic and ironic, melancholy and blissful," reported Donna Seaman in Booklist. She claimed this volume "will stand as one of the twentieth century's tours de force." Collected Poems in English is "a highly accomplished, deft, and entertaining book, with a talent for exploitation of the richness of language and with a deep core of sorrow," commented Judy Clarence in Library Journal. It captures Brodsky's trademark sense of "stepping aside and peering in bewilderment" at life, according to Sven Birkerts in the New York Review of Books. Birkerts concluded: "Brodsky charged at the world with full intensity and wrestled his perceptions into lines that fairly vibrate with what they are asked to hold. There is no voice, no vision, remotely like it."

In 2001, a collection of eighteen Christmas poems by Brodsky were published as Nativity Poems. According to Paul Mariani, writing in America, Brodsky once told an interviewer, "Ever since I took to writing poems seriously … I've tried to write a poem for every Christmas—as a sort of birthday greeting. Several times I've missed the opportunity, let it slip by. One or another circumstance blocked the road." The poems range from 1962, when Brodsky was twenty-two, until 1992. They were translated from the original Russian, which appears on the facing pages, by six poets, including Brodsky. Judy Clarence, writing in Library Journal, called the collection "enjoyable." Mariani noted that the early Christmas poems, written while Brodsky underwent hardships in the former Soviet Union, were much different than the later poems, commenting that the early poems were "more concerned with surviving the dark turning of the year than about Christ's coming among us. They're brash, angry poems, and you feel Brodsky is simply trying to stay alive in a world where that takes some doing." Mariani went on to comment that the later poems were "in fact Christmas poems. The focus has changed. Brodsky seems to have slowed down, he seems to have more breathing room, and he can begin to ask what Christmas may be all about."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Authors in the News, Volume 1, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1973.

Bethea, David, Joseph Brodsky and the Creation of Exile, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1994.

Brodsky, Joseph, A Part of Speech, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1980.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 4, 1975, Volume 6, 1976, Volume 36, 1986, Volume 50, 1988.

Speh, Alice J., The Poet as Traveler: Joseph Brodsky in Mexico and Rome, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 1996.

PERIODICALS

Agenda, winter, 1998, review of On Grief and Reason: Essays and So Forth: Poems, p. 140.

America, December 17, 2001, Paul Mariani, review of Nativity Poems, p. 18.

Antioch Review, winter, 1985; spring, 1996, Gerda Old-ham, review of On Grief and Reason: Essays, pp. 247-248.

Bloomsbury Review, March, 1998, review of Homage to Robert Frost, p. 22.

Booklist, July, 1996, Donna Seaman, review of So Forth, p. 1797; August, 2000, Donna Seaman, review of Collected Poems in English, p. 2100.

Books in Canada, summer, 1996, review of On Grief and Reason, p. 12.

Book World, February 11, 1996, review of On Grief and Reason, p. 13.

Children's Book Review Service, December, 1999, review of Discovery, p. 42.

Choice, April, 1974; September, 1977.

Christian Century, November 11, 1987.

Christian Science Monitor, August 11, 1980, Tom Simmons, review of A Part of Speech.

Commonweal, November 5, 1999, review of Discovery, p. 24.

Contemporary Review, June, 1997, review of Watermark, p. 334.

Detroit Free Press, September 17, 1972; October 23, 1987.

Hungry Mind Review, fall, 1999, review of Discovery, p. 33.

Jewish Quarterly, winter, 1968–69, Arthur C. Jacobs.

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 1996, review of Homage to Robert Frost, p. 940; September 15, 1999, review of Discovery, p. 1498.

Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, March 12, 1996; October 16, 1996.

Library Journal, June 1, 1996, Graham Christian, review of So Forth, p. 110; November 15, 1996, Denise S. Sticha, review of Homage to Robert Frost, p. 62; January, 1997, review of So Forth, p. 48; August, 2000, Judy Clarence, review of Collected Poems in English, p. 109; March 1, 2002, Judy Clarence, review of Nativity Poems, p. 104.

Los Angeles Times, October 23, 1987; February 15, 1989.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 20, 1996, review of Homage to Robert Frost, p. 14; November 7, 1999, review of Discovery, p. 8.

Nation, October 4, 1980; February 12, 1996, Jessica Greenbaum, review of On Grief and Reason, pp. 32-33.

New Leader, December 10, 1973; December 14, 1987; October 31, 1988; September 9, 1996, John Simon, reviews of So Forth and On Grief and Reason, pp. 14-19; January 13, 1997, Phoebe Pettingell, review of Homage to Robert Frost, pp. 14-15.

New Republic, March 4, 1996, Stanislaw Baranczak, review of On Grief and Reason, pp. 39-42.

New Statesman, December 14, 1973; December 20, 1996, Michael Glover, reviews of On Grief and Reason and So Forth, pp. 119-120.

New Statesman and Society, June 19, 1992, p. 24.

Newsweek, November 2, 1987.

New Yorker, July 13, 1992, p. 84; December 16, 1996, review of So Forth, p. 107.

New York Review of Books, August 14, 1980, Czeslaw Milosz, review of A Part of Speech; January 21, 1988; November 24, 1988; February 1, 1996, J.M. Coetzee, review of On Grief and Reason, pp. 28-31; September 17, 2000, Sven Birkerts, review of Collected Poems in English.

New York Times, October 31, 1987.

New York Times Book Review, November 8, 1987; May 31, 1992; February 29, 1996, p. 7; March 3, 1996, Seamus Heaney, "The Singer of Tales: On Joseph Brodsky," p. 31; April 14, 1996, Hugh Kenner, review of On Grief and Reason, p. 14; September 1, 1996, John Bayley, review of So Forth, p. 6; December 8, 1996, review of So Forth, p. 82; April 26, 1998, review of So Forth, p. 36; November 21, 1999, Deborah Hautzig, review of Discovery, p. 57.

Observer (London, England), October 27, 1996, review of On Grief and Reason, p. 15; September 28, 1997, review of On Grief and Reason, p. 18; January 4, 1998, review of Homage to Robert Frost, p. 15.

Partisan Review, fall, 1974.

Poetry, October, 1975; November, 1988; June, 1997, John Taylor, review of So Forth, pp. 169-172; April, 2001, F.D. Reeve, review of Collected Poems in English, p. 31.

Poets & Writers, March-April, 1988.

Publishers Weekly, June 1, 1996, Graham Christian, review of So Forth, p. 110; June 24, 1996, review of So Forth, p. 51; July 15, 1996, review of Homage to Robert Frost, p. 60; July 21, 1997, review of Homage to Robert Frost, p. 199; October 18, 1999, review of Discovery, p. 80; June 26, 2000, review of Collected Poems in English, p. 71.

School Library Journal, November, 1999, review of Discovery, p. 168.

Sewanee Review, April, 1996, review of On Grief and Reason, p. 295.

Texas Studies in Literature and Language, number 17, 1975.

Time, June 19, 1972; August 7, 1972; April 7, 1986; November 2, 1987.

Times Literary Supplement, July 20, 1967; January 10, 1997, reviews of So Forth and On Grief and Reason, p. 6.

Translation Review Supplement, July, 1997, review of So Forth, p. 35.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), February 11, 1996, review of On Grief and Reason, p. 3.

Village Voice Literary Supplement, winter, 1996, review of So Forth, p. 8.

Vogue, February, 1988.

Washington Post, October 23, 1987; March 21, 1996, Richard Cohen, "One of Them's a Poet," p. A17.

Washington Post Book World, August 24, 1980.

Wilson Quarterly, autumn, 1996, review of Homage to Robert Frost, p. 97.

World Literature Today, spring, 1996, Theodore Ziolkowsky, review of On Grief and Reason, p. 479; summer, 1997, Rosette C. Lamont, review of So Forth, pp. 592-593; autumn, 1997, William Pratt, review of Homage to Robert Frost, p. 801, "Pei-zazh S Navodneniem," p. 819; winter, 1997, David MacFadyen, "24 May 1996 in St. Petersburg, Russia: The Perceived Significance of Joseph Brodsky's Legacy," pp. 81-86; spring, 1998, "Brod-skii o Tsvetaevoi," p. 406; summer-autumn, 2002, Victor Terras, review of Nativity Poems, p. 146.