Brodsky works. Joseph Brodsky - collected works

The poet's mother, Maria Moiseevna, was an accountant. Father Alexander Ivanovich is a photojournalist, and quite famous. During the war he worked as a correspondent in the navy.

Joseph's mother believed that only hooligans study at the school, which is located next to the house, and sent him to a men's school (then there was separate education for boys and girls) far from home. Joseph often caught a cold and stayed at home. His neighbor Vladimir Uflyand, future poet, recalled that at the age of ten, Osya "realized that he wanted to become a poet, and took an oath to become one." Joseph graduated from an eight-year school in 1955 and, in search of himself, his vocation, went to work at a factory. “I have been working since I was fifteen. I have the professions of a milling machine operator, a geophysicist, a stoker, a sailor, a nurse, a photographer. I worked in geological parties in Yakutia, on the White Sea coast, in the Tien Shan, in Kazakhstan. All this is recorded in my work book". At the same time, he studied English and Polish.

Brodsky's first experiments in poetry date back to 1957. In the early 1960s, he turned to translation. His attention was attracted by Slavic and English-speaking poets. By the end of the 60s, his name was well known among the creative youth of Leningrad and in unofficial literary circles.

In February 1964, Brodsky was arrested. A case was fabricated against him: he was accused of parasitism, which in those days was a criminal offense. As a result, he was exiled for five years to the village of Norenskaya in the Konosha district of the Arkhangelsk region. At the court for a question. "Why didn't you work?" The 24-year-old poet replied: “I worked. I wrote poetry." - “Answer why you didn’t work?” - “I worked hard. I wrote poetry." - “Why didn’t you study this at the university?” - "I thought it was from God." The well-known children's writer Frida Vigdorova secretly stenciled the course of the trial, since the meeting was closed and the press was not allowed to attend.

On the collective farm "Danilovsky", where the exiled poet was sent, at first he was a worker, that is, he performed a variety of unskilled work. As the hostess, with whom he was a guest, recalled, “he carried manure, chopped poles for a hedge ...”. But for health reasons, he was allowed to change his career. And he became a traveling photographer. At this time (1965), his first book, Poems and Poems, was published abroad without his knowledge. By this time, Brodsky was already a fairly well-known poet. Anna Akhmatova, S. Ya. Marshak, Dmitri Shostakovich and many other personalities stood up for him, whose opinion the Soviet government could not ignore, especially since Brodsky's case received worldwide publicity. In 1965, by decision of the Supreme Court, the expulsion period was reduced. Under pressure from the international cultural community, Brodsky was released ahead of schedule. This happened a year and a half later.

The poet returned to Leningrad. However, this return in itself did not mean the end of the conflict with those in power. The poet wrote to the table, they were afraid to print it. And, according to the wonderful Russian tradition, the disgraced poet took up translations. During this entire period up to emigration, in addition to translations, Brodsky managed to print only 4 poems. His work was known in the USSR only thanks to samizdat. The poet's life in his homeland became more and more unbearable every day. And on June 4, 1972, Brodsky was forced to leave Russia.

Brodsky, as he put it himself, “landed” in the USA, in New York. Professor Brodsky taught the history of Russian and English literature at Southheadley. He wrote poetry in Russian. Around 1973, he began to write some articles and essays on English language. In 1987, Brodsky received the Nobel Prize in Literature (he became the fifth Russian laureate after Bunin, Pasternak, Sholokhov and Solzhenitsyn). In July 1989, the Supreme Court of the RSFSR dismissed Brodsky's "case" "due to the absence of an administrative offense in his actions." In December 1987 " New world”For the first time after 15 years of emigration, I. Brodsky published in his homeland a selection of poems by an already world-famous poet. And an avalanche of publications has already poured in. Finally, in 1992 - 1994. The Pushkin Foundation, to which the poet transferred the exclusive right to publish his works, prepared a Collected Works in 4 volumes (compiled by V.F. Komarov, publishing house "Third Wave"). Abroad, collections of the poet in Russian have been published since 1965 (mainly in the USA).

Living abroad, the poet travels a lot around the world, gives lectures in different cities. His impressions are reflected in poems, travel notes, and essays.

Akhmatova called Brodsky's poetry magical. The poet himself said this about poetic creativity in his Nobel speech: “Writing a poem writes it first of all because versification is a colossal accelerator of consciousness, thinking, attitude, having experienced this acceleration once, a person is no longer able to refuse to repeat after this experience, he falls into dependence on this process, as one falls into dependence on drugs or alcohol. A person who is in such a dependence on language, I believe, is called a poet.

Not just a list of books born with a stroke of the pen of an outstanding poet and essayist. This is his own way of learning about 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 a writer. Brodsky considered the value and virtue of the aesthetes of his generation to be that people from among him, acting "only by intuition", paved the way for creativity in a hostile to humanity, in principle, totalitarian environment.

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 at the same time for two diametrically opposite countries, the USSR and the USA, and, having gone the path of the poet 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 the young Brodsky: "He is a nice ... small, but I'm afraid that he will end badly." So it happened with Joseph Alexandrovich: in the USSR they stopped publishing him, after which he ended up in the USA.

Recognition of Brodsky abroad

Brodsky's list, as is known, was written by him in the mid-seventies of the last century, during his forced emigration to the United States. Overseas, he was in the status of a professor at five American colleges. The assignment of academic titles to a person who had been self-educating since the age of 15 was a precedent for recognizing his mighty intellect.

In the USA, the professor lived in succession 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 just seek to turn his students into people versed in literature. He tried to transform their attitude towards language.

The starting point of the route map for adepts he developed (Brodsky’s list) is a quote from the poem “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” by the British William Auden, which says that only a developed sense of language can “plunge”, “pit” a person into poetic art.

And it is impossible to accomplish this spiritual action without stimulating the craving for self-education. An American professor of Soviet origin acquired the glory of an eccentric among the students. He was a unique teacher, requiring students to read creatively many works, in each of which young people had to catch the author's aesthetics. The professor's wise pedagogical approach should be evaluated not from the point of view of a schoolboy, but from the standpoint of a practical poet.

The sense of language as the Alpha and Omega of becoming a poet

Having a great personal poetic experience and having kept his finger on the pulse of world culture for a long time, Iosif Alexandrovich 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 patterns of creating poems. Main Feature such a person, 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 poets Pushkin and Lermontov in the list of works, seeing some political insinuations in this. In fact, it is unlikely that they can be discussed.

After all, Brodsky's list was written by an American teacher for his students. The students were native English speakers. Therefore, the list compiled by the poet includes authors who gravitate toward Western values. In the end, we ourselves are to blame: the poets "walking barefoot on the blade of a knife" and "cutting their living souls into the blood" should be heard in their homeland, perceived, understood precisely by its people. Then Brodsky would not have been arrested and exiled, and he would have written his own list for Russian-speaking students. And the latter would certainly include Pushkin, Lermontov, and many others...

Brodsky and the beginning of poetic activity

Joseph Alexandrovich did not make his way into poetry a secret under seven locks. He told students that in his youth, before the age of 15, he wrote poetry episodically and accidentally. Once, 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 poet of the 19th century (an associate of Pushkin). It was the poetry of Yevgeny Abramovich, in its effect on Brodsky, that brought into action his “sense of language”. The impression of Baratynsky's work prompted him to develop, forced the poet to write really good poetry.

In the future, the young writer from St. Petersburg took into account a lot of advice from his senior colleague, the poet Yevgeny 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 famous literary critic, recalls that his classmates remembered Brodsky at the same time as the worst teacher, on the one hand, and the most charismatic, on the other.

Why the worst (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 the students with literature.

He was an individualist, and Brodsky's list suggested that each adept should master it individually. But those students who did bother to read the books indicated in it, could always hope for a consultation, a conversation with the Master. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Brodsky's voice was unusually saturated with shades. He spoke slightly through his nose and always told interesting things. Friends jokingly called him "man-brass band".

The minutes of his frank conversation with students were priceless.

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 the attitude towards it.

Illusion of immersion in literature

At the beginning of the couple, he briefly presented one of the outstanding works that filled Brodsky's terrifying list of some lazy students. And then he asked about the feelings evoked by the poem by Akhmatova or Montale, led the student to the arena, uttering the famous quote by Sergei Diaghilev: "Surprise me." It was not easy for an American boy or girl to explain, for example, whether Akhmatova was able to successfully portray the scene of a fire, or to reveal the imagery of the Iliad.

Brodsky's highest praise was far from being addressed to everyone: single word"great". Most often, the average student banally exposed his misunderstanding. And Brodsky at that time was crumpling an unlit cigarette in his hand ...

But behind all this action there was a considerable share of humor. After listening to the efforts of the student, Iosif Alexandrovich made his famous deep exhalation, looked around the whole class, and then began to speak. He asked questions and answered them himself. He led his adepts through thickets of sounds and associations, filled the imagination of his listeners with awareness of the amazing power of language. Sven Birkets and students like him left those meetings with the feeling of invisible forces swirling around them, but unclaimed in ordinary life.

American Humanities rated the list

Brodsky's reading list proved to be a pioneering step in the education of young Americans. They, previously trained according to the John Dewey system, possessed the skills of independent thinking, the ability to critically evaluate social phenomena. But Joseph Alexandrovich did not recognize this system. At the very first lessons, he distributed to his students an impressive list, briefly informing the adepts 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 70s of the last century.

Obviously, for modern students, this list can be supplemented. In the middle of the sea fiction, which appears annually and in abundance on the bookshelves, you should choose books that have real artistic value. We recall that the main criterion in this case should remain a sense of language, talentedly interpreted by Brodsky.

Contents of Brodsky's list. Bhavat Gita, Mahabharata

The list of Joseph Brodsky 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 to resolve the primary question: "Who am I?", contributes to the achievement internal state necessary to achieve spiritual values. At the same time, the Bhavat Gita covers being from Everyday life to spiritual life, and is also closely connected with reality.

The second work that mentions Brodsky's list for reading is the Mahabharata. It captures the epic, reflecting the problems social entity personality, the ratio of its freedom and destiny (fate). Mahabharata, on the one hand, welcomes unselfishness, and on the other hand, condemns the complete rejection of personal benefits.

Old Testament

Joseph Alexandrovich in the third position among the main books opening the famous list of Brodsky mentions the Holy Scriptures 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 for fulfillment).

There is in the list from the famous poet and the world's first bestseller that has come down to us - a book about the hero of everything ancient world, the adventurer, lucky 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 make such a list. Known List Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy is more balanced in terms of chronology, in terms of the direction of influence on readers. The list of Joseph Alexandrovich is aimed at maintaining a “basic conversation” with them.

Immediately after the spiritual works, according to the logic of Brodsky, follows a three-dimensional block 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, characterized his commitment to the world by developing a "sense of time." So 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 the empire (cult veneration of Caesar, despotic power) was characteristic of him, identifying himself with the disgraced and exiled poet Ovid.

The poet presented the bill not so much to the Soviet (Roman) authorities, but to the intelligentsia, resigned to the lack of freedom.

Brodsky's list contains, after the antique one, several successive blocks of books. The next one is Renaissance literature. Books and Dante Alighieri, the knight of Platonic love are presented.

Western and Russian poetry

The next block on the list is Western European literature from the time of the bourgeois social formation and Russian poetry of the Silver Age. The authors are 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, Wisten Auden, Elizabeth Bishop;
• German: Rainer Rilke, Ingeborg Bachmann, Gottfried Benn;
• Spanish: Frederico Garcia Lorca, Antonio Machado, Rafael Alberti, Juan Ramon Jimenos;
• Polish: Zbigniew Herbert, Czesław Milosz, Leopold Staff, Wislawa Szymborska;
• French: Jules Supervielle, Blaise Cendrard, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Henri Michaud;
• Greek: Yorgos Seferis, Constantine Cavafy, Yannis Ritsos;
• Swedish: Harry Martinson, Gunnar Ekellef.

Conclusion

To this day, Brodsky's list evokes resonance. The reviews of real book lovers are unanimous that this list certainly deserves attention, based on the genius of Brodsky himself.

There are also disputes. Some readers dispute the expediency of reading a huge array of ancient literature. Others answer them that the value of the literature of the ancients lies in the subtle (now they don’t write like that) elaboration of human relations.

Many of the reader's 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 the works of Nikolai Klyuev, a person of anti-Semitic and pro-party orientation.

Summing up what has been said, it is worth noting the main thing: the books from Brodsky's list served as steps to the work of Joseph Alexandrovich himself. Brodsky offers the readers of his list his own path to understanding the beauty of poetry.

For whom is it of practical value? Not all people have a special philological and literary education. But in some of them lies a poetic or prose 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 for a start.

The future poet was born in Leningrad, which he prefers to call Petersburg. In his essay “Less Than One,” Brodsky devotes many pages to describing post-siege Leningrad. From these porticos and façades, both classical and eclectic and modernist, he learned the history of culture much better than later from books. But, Brodsky does not hide, life was going on on the stage of the beautiful city-museum, crushing people with its centralization, militarization. Obedience was considered the main virtue of citizens, including schoolchildren. The school gave Brodsky the first importunately mediocre lessons in ideology. At the age of 15, the future poet leaves school and is further engaged in self-education. He believed that narrow specialization should begin from the 8th grade, since the young man has a sharp mind and an excellent memory, but he has to devote time to studying disciplines that he will never need again.

Brodsky thoroughly learned two foreign languages- English and Polish, subsequently engaged in translations from them. He studies philosophy, including religious and metaphysical, of course, illegally. Of course, he is engaged in literature, both official and unofficial.

Brodsky refers himself to the generation of 1956, but not to the “children of the 20th Congress”, but to those young people whose consciousness was changed under the influence of the suppression of the “Budapest Autumn” by the police forces. Many thinking people have stopped believing in Soviet propaganda. This was the first impetus for the emergence of dissident sentiment. Some went into legal opposition, others, like Brodsky, much more sharply denied the existing order of things.

Since that time, Brodsky's texts have been dominated by global categories. He begins to write at the age of 16 and is formed as a poet among poets who begin their work in the journal "Syntax" (1958). Brodsky reads his poems among friends and acquaintances. The talent of the poet was appreciated by Akhmatova, the way to the house of which was opened to the young poet by his senior comrade Yevgeny Rein.

Despite unofficial recognition, Brodsky did not expect official publication in the USSR. From the age of 16 he has been under the supervision of the KGB. He was arrested four times and in 1964, on trumped-up charges, was subjected to a psychiatric examination, and then, on charges of parasitism, received 5 years of exile. Due to public protest (Akhmatova, Shostakovich), the exile was reduced to one and a half years. He was in exile in 1964-1965 in the village of Norenskaya, Arkhangelsk region, where he was supposed to study forced labor. The authorities miscalculated, as they awarded Brodsky with the halo of a martyr for intellectual freedom. From now on, everything that came out from under his pen attracted wide public interest. In 1965, the collection Poems and Poems was published in the USA, and in 1970 the second collection, Stop in the Desert. The total amount written by Brodsky in 1956 - 1972 amounted to 4 volumes of typescript.

Brodsky was persecuted, although it cannot be said that political themes occupied a prominent place in his works. His poetry is of an intellectual and philosophical nature, however, his interpretation of eternal themes differed sharply from that adopted in the literature of socialist realism, since Brodsky declared himself as an existentialist poet, reviving the traditions of modernism, artificially cut off during the period of totalitarianism, and peculiarly crossing them with traditions pre-postmodern classics. Brodsky, as it were, synthesized on the modernist platform the discovery of various artistic systems of the past, so that his artistic orientation is often defined as neomodernism.

“The theme of existential despair broke through in the poetry of the young Brodsky,” writes Viktor Erofeev, “capturing along the way the themes of parting, separation and loss.” In this poetry, a certain timelessness, detachment was palpable, there was no historical optimism inherent in the work of the sixties. On the contrary, it is very pessimistic, dramatic and tragic notes appear, sometimes softened by irony. But even this tragedy appears not openly, not forcedly, but as if from a subtext, as if against the will of the author, who is by no means inclined to demonstrate his spiritual wounds, is very restrained in expressing poetic feelings and prefers an impassive tone. In this regard, Brodsky was greatly influenced by Anglo-American poetry and, above all, by T. S. Eliot. Brodsky noted the influence exerted on him by the English language itself, by its nature colder, neutral, aloof, expressing rational rather than emotional language, in which the features of the English national character were manifested. Brodsky contributes to Russian literary language, which, in the sense of expressing the emotional and rational, occupies an intermediate position, elements of anglicization - restraint, detachment. He often constructs his texts according to the syntactic models of not Russian, but English. All this taken together gave the Russian language a new quality. Brodsky expanded the possibilities of poetic creativity due to an even deeper subtext than Akhmatova's, virtuoso use of details. Brodsky, as a modernist, recalled the polysemantic nature of the poetic word, which for him turns out to be a point of intersection of many meanings.

Brodsky focused on the prose of poetic speech. In the second half of the century, the poetry of the leading Western literatures switched to vers libre. The dispassionately detached style was very closely merged with personality traits, it was not an artificial inoculation for Brodsky and contributed to the identification of the features of his worldview. Brodsky is primarily a poet of thought. The rational principle in his personality and poetry dominates the emotional one. It is no coincidence that most of Brodsky's works are reflections on being and non-being, about space and time, about culture and civilization. Increased attention to eternal themes reflected the desire to break out of the limited circle cultural life, in which an ordinary Soviet person was closed. Brodsky has significant ancient and biblical cultural layers. Brodsky emphasizes not merging with his time, but demarcation. “I erected a different monument to myself / Back to the shameful century.”

Brodsky's works are distinguished by the obligatory connection between the individual and the universal. The timeless, existential, eternal emerges through the concrete forms of time. Brodsky's intonation cannot be confused with anyone else's. In it, established skepticism, irony, melancholy appear as habitual melancholy. Brodsky hides his mental anguish, he is restrainedly imperturbable, proudly contemptuous and even mocking. Sometimes this is served by a gayer tone, which plays the role of a mask: "The Greek principle of the mask is now back in use."

The works of the first period reflected the non-conformism of a person who is ready to defend his "I" to the end, looking for a life purpose on the paths of existentialism, a peculiarly understood stoicism. According to existentialism, the main definition of being is its openness, openness to transcendence. Transcendence - going beyond, in the philosophy of existentialism, transcending is understood as going beyond the limits of one's "I" into the sphere of pure spirit. This exit is considered to be salutary, because, coming into the world, a person becomes a victim of objectification and begins to realize his life is meaningless. As a factor that allows you to escape from the world of objectification, where necessity prevails, existence through transcending is considered.

In an effort to spiritually free himself from the clutches of totalitarianism, Brodsky is more and more imbued with an existentialist worldview. To the question of a journalist what influenced the formation of his character: “When I was 22 or 23 years old, I had the feeling that something else had moved into me and that I was not interested in the environment ... at best, as a springboard ...” Illustration tendencies towards greater autonomy. “Sooner or later, there comes a moment when the earth’s gravity ceases to act on you.” inner life the poet, in which transcendence predominates, obscured the external life. Physically being in the earthly world, most Brodsky spent time in the realm of pure spirit. Persecuted by the authorities, Brodsky as a poet and personality is gradually turning into a self-sufficient closed system. Alienation from the world, as the researcher Lurie showed, was for Brodsky the only option for gaining spiritual freedom. “Our inner world is exaggerated, and the outer world, accordingly, is reduced,” - his neighbor in a psychiatric hospital conveys to the authorities the words of the autobiographical hero in the poem “Goryunov and Gorchakov”.

Gradually, Brodsky began to personify the outside world (under the influence of exile) as the image of the desert. The desert in Brodsky's works is a metaphor for an empty, meaningless life, which the poet equates with spiritual non-existence. This is the life of the mass people of a totalitarian society, which in a thinking person causes inescapable loneliness. It is no coincidence that Brodsky's desert landscape is completely without people. Beginning with the poem "Isaac and Abraham", the desert landscape also turns out to be barren. “Hills, hills, you can’t count them, measure them ...” Such is Brodsky’s reaction to the gradual curtailment of the thaw. Brodsky shows that walking in the desert falls into the sand, stands still and may even die.

“Without a compass, paving the way, // I use the altimeter of pride” - “Winter Mail”. The lyrical hero is a traveler across a vast area without any landmarks, where a person, in order not to destroy himself as a person, must obey exclusively reason and moral feelings. Traveling through space serves as a metaphor for the life path - the path of a person through time. "Edification" (1987) - life path like climbing the mountain paths and steeps of Asia. This is a very difficult path, but the main thing is that even if you reach the top, it is important that you do not get dizzy.

Through the entire "Edification" runs the motive of distrust of the world, where a sleeping person can be hacked to death, and hungry and undressed thrown out into the cold. All these are options for reprisals against a person who has chosen his own path in life. In such a world, you can fully rely only on yourself. But it is also a real opportunity to survive and take place. Hence the cult of individualism characteristic of Brodsky. Brodsky seeks to deprive this concept of a negative halo and use individuality as a counterbalance to "ohlos" - the collective, the basis of mass society. Sometimes Brodsky even sees the future as an empire of the masses. "The future is black, // but from people, and not // because it // seems black to me." Such a future is programmed for the disappearance of individuality. Brodsky characterizes his work as "the aria of the minority." "The idea of ​​the existential uniqueness of each is replaced by the idea of ​​personal autonomy." Brodsky's individualism can be regarded as a synonym for the principle of personality as the supreme value of society. This principle, Brodsky shows in his essay "Journey to Istanbul", is alien to the tradition of the East, which was also adopted in the USSR. Convinced of how cruelly the authorities and the masses crack down on those who differ from them, Brodsky portrays himself in New Stanzas for Augusta as a man whose soul is pierced through and through. In the poem "A Conversation with a Celestial", Brodsky compares existence in a totalitarian society with the daily endless Golgotha. This, of course, is about moral Golgotha. The lyrical hero is likened to a martyr. Life itself is, first of all, pain, and a person is a “pain tester”.

Brodsky depicts the consequences of his injury with all the norms governing the existence totalitarian state and exposed during the post-thaw decade. “The detachment from oneself began ... At that time it was something like self-defence.” Brodsky comes to self-detachment as a kind of anesthesia. From here, in Brodsky's work, detachment and self-detachment appear: "I want to fence myself off from myself." The poet begins to look at his suffering, like a certain researcher, from the outside. This is a look first at oneself in the mirror, and together, moving away from oneself to the side, the poet also moves away from the source of pain. Over time, this self-detachment becomes habitual. literary feature Brodsky. "Mexican Divertissement": "So while you look at yourself - from nowhere."

Sometimes Brodsky looks at himself from a very high and very distant point of view, for example, with the eyes of an angel ("Conversation ..."). This is an ideal, extremely objective point of view. Brodsky's self-removal is not enough. Between himself and life he places the phenomenon of death. The tragedy of the finiteness of being in the perception of Brodsky overshadows all the dramas he experiences. To endure the break with his beloved, parting with his homeland, he is helped by the consciousness that separation from the world awaits everyone. The greater horror overrides the lesser, to some extent neutralizes it and helps to endure it. Death, as an integral component of being, occupies a significant place in Brodsky's works. The epithet "black" is characteristic of the early period of his work. Brodsky endows death with a prosaic aspect. Time itself, according to Brodsky, was created by death. "Man is the end of himself and goes into time." Through the prism of finiteness, mortality, the poet evaluates the very phenomenon of life. "Life is only a conversation in the face of silence." An ordinary landscape at Brodsky's hand can develop into his philosophical reflections, in which the component of death will also be presented. The poet emphasizes that the soul, exhausted by experiences, seems to become thinner. The perception of life as a movement towards death imposes a shade of melancholy and some detachment from everyday life on Brodsky's poems. Brodsky seeks to look beyond the edge and suggest what awaits us after death. At first, the poet still admits the possibility of the existence of life beyond the grave. "Letter in a Bottle" (1965): "When on my modest ship ... I will go to the great maybe." He also has purely symbolic ideas about life as a dream within a dream, and death as a resurrection in another kingdom. Gradually, Brodsky begins to rationalize and interpret well-known religious and philosophical concepts.

"In memory of T. B.": "You were the first to go to that country ... where everyone - wise men, idiots - all look the same." Consequently, both recognition and meeting beyond the grave are impossible. Description afterlife countless doubles cannot help but make them shudder.

Hell and heaven are not interpreted by Brodsky in the traditional way. Hell is the totality of those torments and hardships that can befall a person in life itself. The image of paradise with the passage of time evolves towards an increasingly critical perception of the religious model of eternal life. Initially, this is a biblical idyll: "Abraham and Isaac" - an ideal landscape is recreated in which the god appears to the heroes in the form of a heavenly bush.

“The Cape Lullaby” is a supercritical assessment of paradise as a place of impotence and a dead end, because in paradise, as it is presented in the main mythologies, there is no development and creativity, and if a poet cannot be creative, then what kind of paradise is this for him? This main defect of the heavenly utopia devalues ​​it in the eyes of the poet, reveals its inferiority. Nyman characterizes Brodsky as "a poet without paradise."

Brodsky gives his own ideal model of being, which, in his opinion, is better than paradise. The most important features are infinity, spirituality, perfection, creative activity as the main form of life activity, and aspiration to the sky without limits. This other world exists in the mind of the poet and is more important for him than the earthly world. Figurative designations are metaphors for a star, “that country”, “there”. The poet feels like a citizen of "that country". In the poem "Sonnet" (1962), the lyrical hero lives simultaneously in the real and the ideal. Real world characterized by prison metaphors, and the ideal world is the world of sweetly sublime dreams. There, in a higher dimension, the soul of the lyrical hero strives:

And I'm delirious again

from interrogation to interrogation along the corridor

to that far country where there is no more

no January, no February, no March.

The hero goes beyond the boundaries of his "I" into the sphere of pure spirit. Striving for another world, when creative imagination merges with transcendence, figuratively recreates the "Great Elegy to John Donne". If we recall the words of Brodsky that a literary dedication is also a self-portrait of the writer, then it should be recognized that the description of the transcendental flight of the soul of John Donne simultaneously depicts the transcendental flight of the soul of the author of the work:

You were a bird and saw your people

everywhere, all, flew up over the slope of the roof.

You have seen all the seas, all the distant land.

And you have matured Hell - in yourself, and after - in reality.

You also saw clearly bright Paradise

in the saddest - of all passions - frame.

You saw: life, it is like your island.

And you met with this Ocean:

on all sides only darkness, only darkness and howling.

You circled God and rushed back.

The space of the poem is the space of culture, spirituality. And here, through the centuries, one poet hears another poet, in whose torment he recognizes his own. Brings together one and the other mourning the mortal lot of man. If, according to Donn, earthly life is hell, then Brodsky likens it to the terrible judgment already underway, which people manage to sleep through. The motive of deep sleep, which covers literally everything on earth, is a cross-cutting one. It is no coincidence that even the living in the author's description do not differ from the dead. Both good and evil sleep, and God fell asleep - everything sleeps, and snow falls over the earth, covering the earth as if with a white shroud. The only being who, according to Brodsky, does not sleep at this time is the poet (John Donne), whose goal is to create an ideal world, more beautiful than anything ever imagined. As long as poetry is being written on earth, Brodsky emphasizes, life is not destined to end.

The feeling of being at a great height, in the world of pure spirit, gives a great lift to the lyrical hero, this is the sweetest form of detachment that Brodsky resorts to in life and work. The other world is the reality of his consciousness. Nowhere does he write that, perhaps, he will fall into it after death. Over time, a non-illusory view of things is affirmed in the verses (“The Funeral of the Gods”, “The Song of Innocence, she is experience”). In the latter case, Brodsky uses the form of a chorus, giving the floor to "innocent" and "experienced" mass people, that is, optimists and pessimists. The serene view of the first on the future, according to Brodsky, borders on idiocy, the view of others - on nihilism and death of the spirit. The consumer attitude to the world makes them both related.

1: "The nightingale will sing to us in the green thicket, // we will not think about death more often, // than the crows in the sight of garden scarecrows."

2: “Emptiness is more likely and worse than hell, // we don’t know who to tell, don’t.”

Both points of view, according to Brodsky, are abnormal. The irony prevails towards those who have not tried to create anything that would outlive them.

A person who leaves behind not a void, but a cultural heritage - this problem appears in the poems on the death of Thomas Stearns Eliot. The poem begins as a mournful requiem and ends with a solemn apotheosis to a man who has done so much for two cultures. Two homelands are depicted by Brodsky in the form of tombstones petrified by grief, which stand on the sides of the grave.

You went to others, but we

call the kingdom of darkness

According to Brodsky, Eliot went into the world of culture, which continues to exist even after his physical death. The poet's soul avoids corruption.

Brodsky "trying on" his own death. This experience gives rise to the understanding that death can be overcome by the symbolic immortality of the spirit. Immortality for Brodsky is the justification of life. If you stayed, then you created something very important and valuable. The means of achieving immortality is poetry. “A strange metamorphosis takes place ... and only a part of a person remains - a part of speech.” “We will go with you separately” (address to verses). In his poems, Brodsky put all the best he possessed:

You are better and kinder. you are harder

my body. You are easier

my bitter thoughts - which is also

will give you a lot of strength, power.

It turns out that any person lays the foundations of his immortality on earth, if he lives a full-fledged creative life, he prepares his own immortality in some form. The categories of life and death for Brodsky, as well as for Tsvetaeva, are deprived of their traditional meaning: these are various forms of immortality.

Right, the thicker the scattering

black on the sheet

the more indifferent

to the past, to the void

in future. their neighborhood,

little other good

only speeds up the run

on pen paper.

Brodsky considers the creation of temporary, transient - timeless values ​​to be the most important. The mature Brodsky has the psychology of the son of eternity. He looks at himself including from the future. The future is also a mirror that does not lie. For Brodsky, looking at himself from the distant future is fundamentally important. “In those days I lived in the country of dentists” (about the first period of emigration). We are talking about today, but the form of the past tense is used, as if for the poet it is the past. "They (the angels) enjoy the drama of the life of dolls, which we actually were in our time."

Such a view allows you to soberly evaluate not only yourself, but also modern world and your age. The poet's vigilance is demonstrated by the anti-totalitarian poems of the late 1960s and early 1970s. They show in the lyrical hero a man who was ahead of his time and who has the courage to make his opinions public. These are the texts of the so-called "Roman cycle" - "Anno Domini", "Post aetatem nostram", "Letters to a Roman friend", in which, by bringing together the orders that prevailed in Rome with those that prevail in the Soviet Union, Brodsky exposes the imperial character USSR policy. Rome is a metaphor for the USSR, rooted in the idea of ​​Russia as the third Rome. Brodsky recognizes himself as a Roman, that is, not least, a Stoic and a patrician of the spirit. A kind of diptych is formed by the poems "Anno Domini" and "Post aetatem nostram". (“Our era” and “After our era.”) An indication of the allegorical nature: Brodsky wants to say that Soviet Union returned to pre-Christian times and discarded the values ​​created by mankind under the influence of Christianity.

The most important feature of these texts is their duality, when modern life emerges through the image of imperial Rome. The meaning of history is in the essence of structures, and not in the decorum, Brodsky emphasizes. He writes on behalf of an ancient Roman poet of the Silver Latin era and recreates the celebration of Christmas in one of the provinces. Separate pictures are written out as if by a painter. The work, which in fact does not criticize anything, is imbued with a terrible longing for the glassy-empty eyes of the mob and the obsequious eyes of the elite groveling before the governor.

Brodsky is much more critical in Post aetatem nostram, where he describes imperial rituals symbolizing subservience and readiness for betrayal. Equally ironic is the enthusiasm of the masses, joyfully welcoming their despot. There is a lot of melancholy in this work. Brodsky refutes the myth of moving forward and uses the metaphor of a trireme stuck in a ditch. The motif of life stopped in its movement appears, which develops in other texts (“The End of a Beautiful Era”), where Brodsky already refuses the Roman entourage. The vices of the system are presented visually, in generalized allegorical images, the poet gives a group portrait of moral monsters and freaks and allegorically depicts the Soviet Union as a country of fools.

In 1972, Brodsky completed Letters to a Roman Friend. This is a spiritual survival program for those who are not damaged in mind and have retained a sound mind and a sense of human dignity. Brodsky uses the literary mask of the ancient Roman poet Martial, who became famous for his satirical causticity and the polished laconicism of his epigrams. Martial had a conflict with the authorities, and in his old age he returned to the outback, choosing the lifestyle of a private person who prefers obscurity to humiliation. The mask of a middle-aged, wise man, chosen by the 32-year-old Brodsky, is one of the means of self-distance. In fact, Brodsky's ethical and philosophical observations, accumulated over his lifetime, are cast here in the form of maxims and remarks. The author uses the epistolary form, which makes it possible to fasten diverse material into a single whole. A sober-skeptical view of things does not negate a grateful attitude towards what makes life beautiful. The love look of the hero is turned to the sea, mountains, trees, the book of Pliny the Elder. Understanding the highest value of life permeates the entire work.

Brodsky indulges in ironic philosophizing, asking his friends whom he addresses on behalf of Martial. It is felt that he is not very worried about what is happening in the capital, since he knows what tyrants and their obsequious minions are. In fact, the hero of the poem is most concerned about the question of death on the verge of death. Initially, these arguments arise in the story of a visit to a cemetery. The hero is trying to imagine what will happen in the world after he dies? Everything will remain in its place, mountains, sea and trees, and even a book. Brodsky reveals the tragic background of human existence, regardless of where a person lives and who he is. The feeling of universal solidarity, based on the awareness of the common tragedy under which a person exists, should, according to the poet, contribute to progress on earth. Until such unity has occurred, the poet teaches how to live in conditions of lack of freedom.

Along with the image of a Stoic Roman, the image of a Greek also appears. Initially, this is Theseus (“To Lycomedes on Skyros”), who entered the fight with the Minotaur. Further - the image of a Greek who, living in the Roman Empire, does not want to be either a fool or a stoic. There is an escape motive.

In 1972, Brodsky was summoned to the OVIR and there it was announced to him that he would either leave for the west or be sent to the east. Brodsky was perceived as the informal leader of forbidden literature. All documents for departure were issued in three days, which means that the action was planned in advance. (Like other opposition authors, Brodsky was expelled.)

In the first article published abroad (“Look Back Without Anger”), Brodsky, in his own words, refuses to smear the gates of his homeland with tar. He says that he not only experienced a lot of bad things in his country, but also a lot of good things: love, friendship, discoveries in the field of art. He has a negative attitude towards the regime, not the fatherland. Brodsky compares the position of an unofficial, independently thinking artist in the USSR and in the West and comes to the conclusion that they are both trying to break through the wall. In the USSR, the wall responds in such a way that it endangers the life of the artist. Here, in the West, Brodsky shows, the wall does not react at all, which has a very painful effect on the psyche of the creator. "I'll tell you the truth, I don't know which is worse." Brodsky again needs to win over an audience that is alien and not very interested in poetry. To write well, Brodsky emphasized, one must know the language in which one writes perfectly. In emigration, the replenishment of the language element stops, a person who breaks away from the country runs the risk of becoming old-fashioned.

In the future, other emigrants who came from Russia began to play the role of the street near Brodsky. "Earlier in St. Petersburg, I would not have let half of them on the threshold." Now he began to communicate with visitors only in order to capture the peculiarities of their language.

For a writer, according to Brodsky, only one form of patriotism is possible - his attitude to the language. The creator of bad literature in this sense is a traitor, and a real poet is a patriot. Brodsky's article ends with the assertion that by changing one place for another, a person changes one type of tragedy for another.

Abroad, at the invitation of Karl Proffer, Brodsky settled in Ann Arbor, improved his English and worked as a poet at the University of Michigan. Only the richest universities in the world could afford to maintain this position (“no country is stupid enough not to grow its own cultural elite, and some US universities have such a position”). The poet meets with students once a week and communicates with them in a very free manner. He reads to them his poems, old or new, poems of other poets whom the students do not know enough, lectures on literature, Russian or American, or just chats. Usually very significant figures are invited to such a position, allowing the student's personality to grow. Russian remains the main language for Brodsky, but over time he improved his English so much that he was able to write in English. He became a Russian-American author. In English, prose, essays, and articles predominate. He saves Russian for poetry. This is now the main means of self-identification, and now the Russian language in the English-speaking community plays the role of a means of removing Brodsky.

The first years were the most painful. Brodsky of these years resembles a plant that has taken root in the ground, and it was torn out and transplanted to another soil, and it is not clear whether it will take root. Outwardly, the prosperous course of the poet's life contrasts sharply with the state of emotional and psychological coma, which Brodsky recreated for the first time in world literature. Metaphorically speaking, the poet feels as if he is dead. In the poem "1972": "This is not the mind, but only blood." The poet likens himself to the shadow that remains of a person. Emigration brought with it not only freedom, but also the breaking of all habitual ties. Everything that was dear to a person was taken away from him. Brodsky had a feeling of hanging in the void, and this shock was so exorbitant that it led to a temporary paralysis of the soul. The closest thing to what happened to Brodsky was Lurie, who said that the poetry of the emigrant Brodsky was the notes of a man who committed suicide. Skoropanova believes that it is more correct to talk about the murder. "Severe pain, having killed on this one, the world continues on the next one." The poet is stunned, killed, feels nothing, this highest degree suffering, when a person suffers so much that he loses the ability to express it emotionally. Self-alienation, the use of metaphors with the meaning of immobility, deadness, when Brodsky looks at himself from the side and only fixes movements in space. Often he writes about himself in the third person, as in the poem "Laguna": "A guest carrying grappa in his pocket is absolutely nobody, a man, like everyone else, who has lost his memory, his homeland ..." Overwork from nervous shock. Brodsky separates own body from the heart and makes him an independent character: "The body in a cloak settles in spheres where Love, Hope, Faith have no future." This is not the same person who was in his youth, this is a poet who has suffered and continues to painfully realize himself. It is no coincidence that in one of the poems the lyrical hero looks in the mirror and sees the clothes, but not the face.

Brodsky often uses the metaphor of ruins, ruins, debris. The temple of his soul is compared with ruins, fragments. Suffering is compared either with concussion during a bombardment, or with radiation sickness. Sometimes Brodsky likens his face to a ruin. Everyone who knew him noted that Brodsky grew old very quickly. From here comes the great place of gray in Brodsky's work of the 1970s. The gray color has an anti-aesthetic status. In addition, the motif of cold, glaciation penetrates Brodsky's works, as if he is always cold. The motif of cold is organically intertwined with the motif of loneliness, which has an exceptional place in Brodsky's emigrant work: in the collections "Part of Speech" (1975-76), " autumn cry hawk" (1976-83), "To Urania" (1984-87), "Life in diffused light" (1985-86). Wherever the lyrical hero is shown, he is always alone. There is no one to share "a slice of a cut off poem" with. If in Russia there was a response to his poems (Limonov recalls how in Kharkov students learned Brodsky by heart overnight so that they would not find texts), then abroad - total alienation. Brodsky also has a “top secret” thought about death, about suicide, his moral and psychological state was so difficult. Barbizon Terrace describes the poet's visit to a small American town. He checks into a hotel, unpacks his things, and suddenly, suddenly exhausted, looks for a chandelier hook with his eyes. Emptiness becomes the adequate of that psychological vacuum in which the poet feels himself. The image of the desert undergoes such a transformation in later works. "My speech is addressed ... to that void, whose edges are the edges of a vast desert." Emptiness is also a metaphor for life in the USA. The poet does not idealize this life at all and depicts the USA as an empire of impersonal masks. Of course, the Americans do not lead the same empty life as the Soviet people, they are more prosperous, but even there "behind today is a motionless tomorrow." Changes are brought only by the change of seasons. About how he exists in this vacuum, in this soulless environment, Brodsky told in many poems, including "Quintet" (1977):

Now imagine absolute emptiness.

A place without time. Actually air. That

both on the other side and on the third side. Simply Mecca

air. Oxygen, hydrogen. And in it

small twitches day by day

lonely eyelid.

As a result of his experiences, Brodsky developed a nervous tic, which he writes about quite detachedly, although this physical reaction body to the pain of the soul. Brodsky expresses the experiences of the soul by indirect means. One can speak of the dignity with which Brodsky endures his pain. However, in some texts, as in "From Nowhere with Love", the pain breaks out, and the hero screams, as it were, with a scream.

Real relief does not bring Brodsky and a change of place. He visited several dozen countries of the world and creates, as it were, portraits of many major cities and countries. In their totality, they form the image of a modern urban civilization, increasingly unifying and cosmopolitan (the same airports, hotels) and yet carrying with it alienation. Brodsky remarks: "The world merges into a long street where others live." Characteristic of Brodsky's work of this type is the almost complete absence of human figures in them, if it appears, then the lyrical hero himself. The image of the inanimate prevails: houses, asphalt, barges. The living, if it appears, often in the image of Brodsky does not differ from the dead. It's also bad that people essentially do not differ from each other. Their individuality is not developed or killed. Perhaps for this reason, the lack of communication is very strong.

“In a lonely room, a white (dark-skinned) simply nude crumples a sheet.”

The inspirituality, inanimateness of the Western world is revealed as its defining feature. The concept of emptiness is of fundamental importance in Brodsky's works. “Probably, after death, emptiness” (before) - and now emptiness has become an analogue of intravital death. The poet correlates his life with the eternal categories of being. The flow of time, which has no beginning and end, was, is and will be. Modernity is only a condensation of time into objects of the material world. It turns out that every person, living in modern times, exists in eternity, but not everyone has the psychology of a son of eternity. "Centaurs": in every person there are two hypostases, material and spiritual, present and future, life and death. According to Brodsky, the categories of eternity should be decisive for a person. Brodsky compares a man to the sun, which, even if it goes out, will send its rays to other corners of the universe for millions of years.

In his own way, Brodsky refracts the position of the philosophy of Heidegger, the founder of existentialism, which greatly influenced world philosophy and literature. According to Heidegger's philosophy, the focus on the future gives the person a true existence, while the preponderance of the present leads to the fact that the world of things outweighs the consciousness of man's finiteness. "Nothing on earth is longer than life after us." Brodsky wants a person to imagine his existence in the world process, to act not as a puppet of his time.

In Heidegger, Brodsky took the idea of ​​language as the house of being, which speaks to us through poets, being the historical horizon of understanding. Poetry owns intuitive and transcendental ways of cognition. According to Brodsky, the poet's dependence on language is absolute and at the same time liberating. “Language has an enormous centrifugal potential. The poet is the means of the existence of language. The irony for the indifference shown by poetry to the state, often to politics, is the indifference of the future, which is always poetry, to the past. "The philosophy of the state, its ethics, not to mention aesthetics, are always yesterday." Through language, the poet creates a category of beauty that "does not bite, it is a cast of self-preservation from the human instinct." Brodsky devotes his life to the creation of more perfect forms of being, primarily spiritual being, so that the historical process is not disturbed and the human psyche is not masturbated.

Of everything that Brodsky owned, only talent, the ability to create beauty, was not taken away from him. And abroad, in a foreign place, in front of him is the same sheet of paper. “This white, empty sheet of paper is filled with lines. Emptiness is conquered by creativity.” Here is Brodsky's formula for fighting emptiness. Genuine being is pushing non-being, rushing into eternity. Creativity was the only thread connecting Brodsky with reality, and it was creativity, as we learn in the poem " New life"(1988, after the Nobel Prize), helps him avoid disaster. Brodsky, however, evaluates himself and what he has done quite critically. Apparently, his creativity did not have such power to wipe out all evil from the face of the earth. Brodsky's judgment on himself is much stricter than anyone else's judgment. Maybe the author himself is disappointed with the very texts that we like. This is inevitable for a thinking person who makes high demands on himself. In an article dedicated to Dostoevsky, Brodsky notes that all creativity begins as a desire for self-improvement, ideally for holiness. But at a certain stage, the artist of the word notices that his pen has achieved greater success than his soul. And then he sets the task of minimizing the gap between creativity and personality. Thus, the problem of moral self-improvement comes to the fore. "What are you working on now?" - "I'm working on myself".

Over the years, Brodsky is more clearly aware of the socio-historical significance of the work to which he devoted himself. “In the history of our species, the book is an anthropological phenomenon... The book is a means of moving through the space of experience at the speed of turning a page. This movement becomes ... an escape from the common denominator ... towards the individual, towards the particular. Hence Brodsky's attitude to literature as the highest goal of our species, for it stimulates the transformation of man from a social animal into a personality. And the writer contrasts the dominance of the faceless mass with the “apotheosis of particles” of free individuals, carriers of the fullness of human potentialities. WITH great strength the tragedy of the individual is expressed in the era of the mass totalitarian system. The role of culture and art as a stimulus for self-development, self-creation, self-improvement is revealed.

Five books of Brodsky's poems have been translated into English, and books of essays have been published. Researchers note that the circle of readers abroad is not very wide, but among its readers there are very large and significant figures of world culture. Indeed, over time, Brodsky begins to be perceived as the most major poet Russia in the second half of the century.

For the last 17 years, Brodsky has been living in New York, in Greenwich Village, and every spring he teaches a course in literature. The poet married and named his daughter Anna-Marina in honor of Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva. Brodsky responded positively to the events of the collapse of totalitarianism in the USSR and said that for the first time he was not ashamed of his former homeland. At the same time, the farce of perestroika forced him to create a postmodern ironic text based on the materials of the Soviet press Perestroika.

Brodsky became the main figure in the poetry of the third emigrant wave.

It must be said that among the representatives of the Russian diaspora, Brodsky did not overshadow all the talented poets. These are Naum Korzhavin, Yuri Tuganovsky, Bakhyt Kenzheev, Dmitry Bobyshev, Lev Losev. Among them, as well as among the poets of the metropolis, there are realists, modernists, postmodernists. In their work, the archetype of the house, as the archetype of the abandoned homeland, occupies the largest place. For example, Naum Korzhavin's book is called Letter to Moscow. The poet admits that he writes not for a Western reader, not for a foreign one. He thinks and feels in his former homeland, and everything that he creates during the years of emigration, he perceives as a letter to the Russian reader, he hopes that his texts will be needed for something, help to survive and take shape.

Tuganovsky calls his cycle of poems "Dedicated to the Motherland." Tuganovsky was a deeply religious man, he was in contact with Solzhenitsyn and adopted from him the soil ideology. He sees the future of Russia in soil terms. Whatever it is, Tuganovsky wishes Russia happiness.

Bakhyt Kenzheev ("Autumn in America") shows that any immigrant writer is very lonely. Kenzheev lived in Canada in seclusion. He emphasizes the alienation of the people of the world, proves that it is insurmountable, and calls himself in connection with this "brother of world sorrow." In one of his poems, he depicts himself as a man sitting in a tavern, looking at the ocean, whose only companion is silence. It would seem that such a separation from the homeland, such loneliness - and life should seem meaningless, but this does not happen. This coldness, this emptiness, he tries to warm with his breath through poetry. He is sure that through creativity he builds up a layer of culture, erects a kind of moral barrier that will not allow the new Cain to kill the new Abel. The literature of the Russian diaspora as a whole is characterized by historical and cultural motifs. If native home far away, which house is close? For many emigrants, Russian culture has become such a home. Many appeal to her. Sometimes this leads to the deconstruction of the cultural intertext. This happened in Dmitry Bobyshev's "Russian Tertsina". He says that Blok was able to see how the Russian people "gobbled" (revolution, Civil War), but then the people again fell into slavery. “Will we see him in spiritual power?” Even if many in the USSR are deceived by propaganda, Bobyshev shows, there are righteous people in Russia (a reference to Solzhenitsyn and the proverb “A village cannot stand without a righteous man”). Calling himself a native son of Russia, Bobyshev is trying to tell the truth about the twentieth century.

The poet Lev Losev comprehends his time through the classics. He appeals to Pushkin. "Song of the Prophetic Oleg" - a new version history, where Russia is the birthplace of not only Russians, but also the Khazars, and Tatars, and all the others, who became Russified with the passage of time. Continuing Pushkin, the poet, whose lyrical hero is the Khazar, says that prophetic Oleg although he is going to burn villages and fields, but maybe it wouldn’t be worth it? In the work “Mayakovsky”, Losev partially quotes in his own way the poem “The Story of the Caster Kozyrev”. The notion that every person in the USSR has a separate apartment is refuted. An apartment "in which you can freely make love" is the dream of a Soviet person. Only after this has been done will it be possible to say that Soviet country- A suitable place to live. With the help of the classics, Losev debunks myths.

The works of emigrants built up that cultural layer, without which a genuine renewal of life is impossible. They came to the domestic reader in the 1990s.

Along with the existential forms of modernism, avant-gardism is also being developed.

Brodsky Joseph Alexandrovich- without the slightest doubt, one of the largest Russian poets of the past century, in his very short life, by today's standards, erected a gigantic palace of poems, poems, as well as works of a specific, personally created subgenre - "great poems". True to the depths of his soul to the established traditions of Russian classics - Pushkin, Lermontov - he immediately expanded the field of his fruitful creative work.

Born on the Vyborg side in the family of a military photojournalist. Named in honor of Joseph Stalin. Brodsky's father served in the Navy, then worked as a photographer and journalist in several Leningrad newspapers, Brodsky's mother was an accountant. The early childhood of Joseph Brodsky fell on the years of the war, the blockade, then - post-war poverty and crowding. In 1942, after the blockade winter, mother and Joseph left for evacuation to Cherepovets.

In 1955, after finishing seven grades and starting the eighth grade, Iosif Brodsky dropped out of school and enrolled as a milling machine apprentice at the Arsenal plant. This decision was due both to problems at school and to Brodsky's desire to financially support his family. Unsuccessfully tried to enter the school of submariners. At the age of 16, he set about becoming a doctor, worked for a month as an assistant dissector in the morgue at the regional hospital, dissected corpses, but eventually abandoned his medical career. In addition, for five years after leaving school, Brodsky worked as a stoker in a boiler room, as a sailor at a lighthouse, and as a worker on five geological expeditions. At the same time, he read a lot, but chaotically - primarily poetry, philosophical and religious literature, began to study English and Polish, translate Polish poets. He began writing poetry in 1956-1957. One of the decisive impulses was the acquaintance with the poetry of Boris Slutsky. Despite the fact that Brodsky did not write direct political poetry against the Soviet regime, the independence of the form and content of his poems, plus the independence of personal behavior, irritated the ideological overseers.

In 1958, Brodsky and his friends considered the possibility of fleeing the USSR by hijacking an aircraft, but then abandoned this plan. This daring plan of the future Nobel laureate and two of his comrades was born within the walls of the editorial office of Smena. In 1959 he met Evgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, Vladimir Uflyand, Bulat Okudzhava.

On February 14, 1960, the first major public speaking Joseph Brodsky 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.

In August 1961, in Komarovo, Yevgeny Rein introduced Brodsky to Anna Akhmatova. Together with Naiman and Rein, Brodsky was part of the last environment of Anna Akhmatova, called the "Akhmatova orphans." In 1962, during a trip to Pskov, he met N. Ya. Mandelstam, and in 1963, at Akhmatova's, he met Lidia Chukovskaya.

In 1962, Brodsky met the young artist Marina (Marianna) Basmanova. The first verses with the dedication "M. B." - “I hugged these shoulders and looked ...”, “No longing, no love, no sadness ...”, “The riddle of an angel” date from the same year. They finally broke up in 1968 after the birth of their common son Andrei Basmanov.

On January 8, 1964, Vecherny Leningrad published a selection of letters from readers demanding that the "parasite Brodsky" be punished. On February 13, 1964, Brodsky was arrested on charges of parasitism. Two sessions of the trial of Brodsky were outlined by Frida Vigdorova and formed the content of the White Paper distributed in samizdat. All witnesses for the prosecution began their testimony with the words: “I don’t personally know Brodsky ...”, echoing the exemplary formulation of Pasternak’s persecution: “I have not read Pasternak’s novel, but I condemn! ..”.

The trial of the poet was one of the factors that led to the emergence of the human rights movement in the USSR and to increased attention abroad to the human rights situation in the USSR. The transcript of Frida Vigdorova was published in several influential foreign media: New Leader, Encounter, Figaro Litteraire. At the end of 1964, letters in defense of Brodsky were sent by D. D. Shostakovich, S. Ya. Marshak, K. I. Chukovsky, K. G. Paustovsky, A. T. Tvardovsky, Yu. P. German.

On March 13, 1964, at the second hearing of the court, Brodsky was sentenced to the maximum possible punishment under the decree on "parasitism" - five years of exile with mandatory labor under the Decree "On liability for parasitism." Brodsky was exiled to the Konoshsky district of the Arkhangelsk region and settled in the village of Norenskaya. In exile, Brodsky continues to write: “The sound of a downpour ...”, “Song”, “Winter mail”, “One poetess” were written during these years. studies English poetry. Several poems by Joseph Brodsky were published in the Konosha district newspaper "Call".

A year and a half later, the punishment was canceled under pressure from the world community (in particular, after an appeal to the Soviet government by Jean-Paul Sartre and a number of others foreign writers). In September 1965, on the recommendation of Chukovsky and Boris Vakhtin, Brodsky was admitted to the trade union group of writers at the Leningrad branch of the Union of Writers of the USSR, which made it possible to avoid accusations of parasitism in the future. Brodsky begins to work as a professional translator under a contract with a number of publishing houses.

In 1965, a large selection of Brodsky's poems and a transcript of the trial were published in the almanac "Airways-IV" (New York). In his interviews, Brodsky resisted the image of a fighter against Soviet power. He made statements like, “I was lucky in every way. Other people got much more, it was much harder than me.

On May 12, 1972, Brodsky was summoned to the OVIR of the Leningrad police and was given a choice: emigration or prisons and mental hospitals. On June 4, Joseph Brodsky was forced to leave his homeland. He leaves for the USA, where he receives recognition and normal conditions for literary work. Brodsky began working as a visiting professor at the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor: he taught the history of Russian literature, Russian poetry of the 20th century, and the theory of verse. In 1981 he moved to New York. Brodsky, who did not even finish school, worked in a total of six American and British universities including Columbia and New York.

In the West, eight books of poetry by Brodsky were published in Russian: Poems and Poems (1965); Desert Stop (1970); "In England" (1977); "The end of a beautiful era" (1977); "Part of Speech" (1977); "Roman Elegies" (1982); "New Stanzas for August" (1983); "Urania" (1987); drama "Marble" (in Russian, 1984). Brodsky received wide recognition in the scientific and literary circles of the United States 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 into English - Nabokov's poems.

In 1990, Brodsky married the Russian-Italian translator Maria Sozzani. With their common daughter, he spoke English.

Joseph Brodsky died of a heart attack on the night of January 28, 1996 in New York. He was buried in one of his favorite cities - Venice - in the cemetery of the island of San Michele.

Yevgeny Klyachkin, Alexander Mirzayan, Alexander Vasiliev, Svetlana Surganova, Diana Arbenina, Pyotr Mamonov and other authors wrote songs to the verses of I. A. Brodsky.

Fondamenta degli incurabili (Promenade of the Incurables). fb2
Democracy! . fb2
From a book of essays. fb2
Favorites. fb2
Interview with Joseph Brodsky. fb2
How to read a book. fb2
Collection copy. fb2
The end of a wonderful era. fb2
Less than one. fb2
Marble. fb2
On the side of Cavafy. fb2
Parting words. fb2
Nobel lecture. fb2
New stanzas for August. fb2
About Dostoevsky. fb2
About one poem. fb2
Stop in the desert. fb2
Landscape with flood. fb2
Half a room. fb2
Dedicated to the spine. fb2
Afterword to "The Foundation Pit" by A. Platonov. fb2
Praise boredom. fb2
Bobo's funeral. fb2
Poet and prose. fb2
Prose and essay. fb2
Guide to the renamed city. fb2
Travel to Istanbul. fb2
Collected works. fb2
Works of Joseph Brodsky. Volume VI. fb2
Works of Joseph Brodsky. Volume VII. fb2
Poems (2). fb2
Poems (3). fb2
Poems (4). fb2
Poems. fb2
Poems and poems. fb2
Trophy. fb2
Urania. fb2
Part of speech. fb2
Procession. fb2