Iosif Alexandrovich Brodsky (May 24, 1940, Leningrad, USSR - January 28, 1996, New York, USA) - Russian and American poet, essayist, playwright, translator, Nobel Prize in Literature 1987, US Poet Laureate in 1991 -1992.

He wrote poetry mainly in Russian, essays - in English. One of the greatest Russian poets.

Joseph Brodsky was born on May 24, 1940 in Leningrad into a Jewish family. Father, Alexander Ivanovich Brodsky (1903-1984), was a military photojournalist, returned from the war in 1948 and went to work in the photographic laboratory of the Naval Museum. In 1950 he was demobilized, after that he worked as a photographer and journalist in several Leningrad newspapers. Mother, Maria Moiseevna Volpert (1905-1983), worked as an accountant. The mother's sister is an actress of the BDT and the Theater. V. F. Komissarzhevskaya Dora Moiseevna Volpert.

Joseph's early childhood fell on the years of war, blockade, post-war poverty and passed without a father. In 1942, after the blockade winter, Maria Moiseevna and Joseph left for evacuation to Cherepovets, returned to Leningrad in 1944. In 1947, Joseph went to school No. 203 on Kirochnaya Street, 8. In 1950, Joseph moved to school No. 196 on Mokhovaya Street, in 1953, Joseph went to the 7th grade to school No. 181 in Solyany Lane and stayed the following year for the second year. Applied to the naval school, but was not accepted. He moved to school number 276 on Obvodny Canal house number 154, where he continued his studies in the 7th grade.

In 1955, the family received "one and a half rooms" in the Muruzi House.

Brodsky's aesthetic views were formed in Leningrad in the 1940s and 1950s. Neoclassical architecture, badly damaged during the bombing, the endless vistas of the Leningrad outskirts, water, multiple reflections - the motifs associated with these impressions of his childhood and youth are invariably present in his work.

In 1955, at the age of less than sixteen, having finished seven classes and started the eighth, Brodsky left school and became an apprentice milling machine operator 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.

Since 1957, he was a worker in the geological expeditions of the NIIGA: in 1957 and 1958 - on the White Sea, in 1959 and 1961 - in Eastern Siberia and Northern Yakutia, on the Anabar shield. In the summer of 1961, in the Yakut village of Nelkan, during a period of forced idleness (there were no deer for a further hike), he suffered a nervous breakdown, and he was allowed to return to Leningrad.

At the same time, he read a lot, but chaotically - primarily poetry, philosophical and religious literature, began to study English and Polish.

In 1959 he met Evgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, Vladimir Uflyand, Bulat Okudzhava, Sergey Dovlatov.

On February 14, 1960, the first major public performance took place at the "poet tournament" 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.

During a trip to Samarkand in December 1960, Brodsky and his friend, former pilot Oleg Shakhmatov, considered a plan to hijack a plane to fly abroad. But they did not dare to do so. Later, Shakhmatov was arrested for illegal possession of weapons and informed the KGB about this plan, as well as about his other friend, Alexander Umansky, and his "anti-Soviet" manuscript, which Shakhmatov and Brodsky tried to pass on to an American they happened to meet. On January 29, 1961, Brodsky was detained by the KGB, but was released two days later.

In August 1961, in Komarov, Yevgeny Rein introduced Brodsky to Anna Akhmatova. In 1962, during a trip to Pskov, he met N. Ya. Mandelstam, and in 1963, at Akhmatova's, he met Lydia Chukovskaya. After the death of Akhmatova in 1966, with the light hand of D. Bobyshev, four young poets, including Brodsky, were often referred to in memoirs as "Akhmatova's orphans."

In 1962, the twenty-two-year-old Brodsky met the young artist Marina (Marianna) Basmanova, the daughter of the artist P. I. Basmanov. Since that time, Marianna Basmanova, hidden under the initials "M. B.", devoted to many works of the poet. "Poems Dedicated to M. B.“, occupy a central place in Brodsky’s lyrics not because they are the best - among them there are masterpieces and there are passing poems - but because these poems and the spiritual experience invested in them were the crucible in which his poetic personality was melted ” . The first verses with this dedication - "I hugged these shoulders and looked ...", "No longing, no love, no sadness ...", "The riddle of an angel" date back to 1962. The collection of poems by I. Brodsky “New Stanzas for August” (USA, Michigan: Ardis, 1983) is compiled from his poems of 1962-1982 dedicated to “M. B." The last poem with the dedication "M. B." dated 1989.

On October 8, 1967, a son, Andrei Osipovich Basmanov, was born to Marianna Basmanova and Joseph Brodsky. In 1972-1995. M. P. Basmanova and I. A. Brodsky were in correspondence.

In his own words, Brodsky began writing poetry at the age of eighteen, but there are several poems dated 1956-1957. One of the decisive impulses was the acquaintance with the poetry of Boris Slutsky. "Pilgrims", "Monument to Pushkin", "Christmas Romance" are the most famous of Brodsky's early poems. Many of them are characterized by pronounced musicality. So, in the poems “From the outskirts to the center” and “I am the son of the suburbs, the son of the suburbs, the son of the suburbs ...” one can see the rhythmic elements of jazz improvisations. Tsvetaeva and Baratynsky, and a few years later - Mandelstam, had, according to Brodsky himself, a decisive influence on him.

Of his contemporaries, he was influenced by Evgeny Rein, Vladimir Uflyand, Stanislav Krasovitsky.

Later, Brodsky called Auden and Tsvetaeva the greatest poets, followed by Cavafy and Frost, closing the personal canon of the poet Rilke, Pasternak, Mandelstam and Akhmatova.

It was obvious that the article was a signal for persecution and possibly arrest of Brodsky. Nevertheless, according to Brodsky, more than slander, subsequent arrest, trial and sentence, his thoughts were occupied at that time by a break with Marianna Basmanova. During this period, there is a suicide attempt.

On January 8, 1964, Vecherny Leningrad published a selection of letters from readers demanding that the "parasite Brodsky" be punished. On January 13, 1964, Brodsky was arrested on charges of parasitism. On February 14, he had his first heart attack in his cell. Since that time, Brodsky constantly suffered from angina pectoris, which always reminded him of a possible imminent death (which at the same time did not prevent him from remaining a heavy smoker). Largely from here "Hello, my aging!" at 33 and “What can I say about life? What turned out to be long ”at 40 - with his diagnosis, the poet was really not sure that he would live to see this birthday.

Two sessions of the trial of Brodsky (Judge of the Dzerzhinsky Court Savelyeva E.A.) were outlined by Frida Vigdorova and widely disseminated in samizdat.

Referee: What is your work experience?
Brodsky: About…
Referee: We are not interested in "approximately"!
Brodsky: Five years.
Referee: Where did you work?
Brodsky: At the factory. In geological parties...
Referee: How long did you work at the factory?
Brodsky: Year.
Referee: By whom?
Brodsky: Milling machine.
Referee: In general, what is your specialty?
Brodsky: Poet, poet-translator.
Referee: And who admitted that you are a poet? Who ranked you among the poets?
Brodsky: Nobody. (No call). And who ranked me among the human race?
Referee: Have you studied this?
Brodsky: What?
Referee: To be a poet? They didn’t try to graduate from a university where they train ... where they teach ...
Brodsky: I didn't think... I didn't think it was educated.
Referee: But what?
Brodsky: I think it's… (confused) from God…
Referee: Do you have any petitions to the court?
Brodsky: I would like to know: why was I arrested?
Referee: This is a question, not a petition.
Brodsky: Then I have no petition.

All prosecution witnesses began their testimony with the words: “I don’t personally know Brodsky ...”, echoing the wording of the times of persecution of Pasternak: “I have not read Pasternak’s novel, but I condemn it! ..”.

On March 13, 1964, at the second court session, Brodsky was sentenced to the maximum possible punishment under the decree on "parasitism" - five years of forced labor in a remote area. He was exiled (transported under escort along with criminal prisoners) to the Konoshsky district of the Arkhangelsk region and settled in the village of Norenskaya. In an interview with Volkov, Brodsky called this time the happiest in his life.

Along with extensive poetic publications in emigrant publications (Airways, New Russian Word, Sowing, Edges, etc.), in August and September 1965, two of Brodsky’s poems were published in the Konosha regional newspaper Call. .

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 court record made by Frida Vigdorova was published in influential foreign publications: New Leader, Encounter, Figaro Litteraire, and was read on the BBC. With the active participation of Akhmatova, a public campaign in defense of Brodsky was carried out in Russia. The central figures in it were Frida Vigdorova and Lydia Chukovskaya.

For a year and a half, they tirelessly wrote letters in defense of Brodsky to all party and judicial authorities and attracted people who were influential in the Soviet system to defend Brodsky. Letters in defense of Brodsky were signed by D. D. Shostakovich, S. Ya. Marshak, K. I. Chukovsky, K. G. Paustovsky, A. T. Tvardovsky, Yu. P. German and others. After a year and a half, in September 1965, under pressure from the Soviet and world public (in particular, after an appeal to the Soviet government by Jean-Paul Sartre and a number of other foreign writers), the term of exile was reduced to actually served, and Brodsky returned to Leningrad. According to Y. Gordin: “The troubles of the luminaries of Soviet culture had no effect on the authorities. Decisive was the warning of the "friend of the USSR" Jean-Paul Sartre that at the European Writers' Forum the Soviet delegation could find itself in a difficult position because of the "Brodsky affair".

Brodsky resisted the image of a fighter against the Soviet regime imposed on him - especially by the Western media. A. Volgina wrote that Brodsky “did not like to talk in interviews about the hardships he endured in Soviet psychiatric hospitals and prisons, persistently moving away from the image of a “victim of the regime” to the image of a “self-made man””. In particular, he claimed: “I was lucky in every way. Other people got much more, it was much harder than me. And even: "... I somehow think that I generally deserved all this."

Brodsky was arrested and sent into exile at the age of 23, and returned as a 25-year-old poet. He was given less than 7 years to stay at home. Maturity has come, the time of belonging to one or another circle has passed. In March 1966, Anna Akhmatova died. Even earlier, the “magic choir” of young poets surrounding her began to disintegrate. Brodsky's position in official Soviet culture during these years can be compared to that of Akhmatova in the 1920s and 1930s or Mandelstam in the period leading up to his first arrest.

At the end of 1965, Brodsky handed over the manuscript of his book Winter Mail (poems 1962-1965) to the Leningrad branch of the Soviet Writer publishing house. A year later, after many months of ordeal and despite numerous positive internal reviews, the manuscript was returned by the publisher. “The fate of the book was not decided by the publisher. At some point, the regional committee and the KGB decided in principle to cross out this idea. In 1966-67, 4 poems of the poet appeared in the Soviet press (not counting publications in children's magazines), after which a period of public muteness began. From the reader's point of view, the only area of ​​poetic activity available to Brodsky was translations. “There is no such poet in the USSR,” the Soviet embassy in London declared in 1968 in response to an invitation sent to Brodsky to take part in the international poetry festival Poetry International.

Meanwhile, these were years filled with intense poetic work, the result of which were poems that were later included in books published in the United States: “A Stop in the Desert”, “The End of a Beautiful Age” and “New Stanzas for August”. In 1965-68, work was underway on the poem "Gorbunov and Gorchakov" - a work to which Brodsky himself attached great importance. In addition to infrequent public speaking and reading in the apartments of friends, Brodsky's poems were widely distributed in samizdat (with numerous inevitable distortions - copiers did not exist in those years). Maybe they got a wider audience thanks to the songs written by Alexander Mirzayan and Evgeny Klyachkin.

Outwardly, Brodsky's life developed relatively calmly during these years, but the KGB did not leave its "old client" behind. This was facilitated by the fact that “the poet is becoming extremely popular with foreign journalists, Slavic scholars who come to Russia. He is interviewed, he is invited to Western universities (naturally, the authorities do not give permission to leave), etc.” In addition to translations - which he took very seriously - Brodsky moonlighted in other ways available to a writer excluded from the "system": as a freelance reviewer in the Aurora magazine, random "hacks" at film studios, even starred (in the role of secretary of the city party committee ) in the film "Train to distant August".

Outside the USSR, Brodsky's poems continue to appear both in Russian and in translations, primarily in English, Polish and Italian. In 1967, an unauthorized collection of translations, Joseph Brodsky. Elegy to John Donne and Other Poems / Tr. by Nicholas Bethell. In 1970, Brodsky's first book, compiled under his supervision, was published in New York, Stop in the Desert. Poems and preparatory materials for the book were secretly exported from Russia or, as in the case of the poem "Gorbunov and Gorchakov", sent to the West by diplomatic mail.

On May 10, 1972, Brodsky was summoned to the OVIR and faced with a choice: immediate emigration or "hot days", which metaphor in the mouth of the KGB meant interrogations, prisons and mental hospitals. By that time, he had already twice - in the winter of 1964 - had to lie on the "examination" in psychiatric hospitals, which, according to him, was worse than prison and exile. Brodsky decides to leave. Having learned about this, Vladimir Maramzin suggested that he collect everything written for the preparation of a samizdat collected works. The result was the first and until 1992 the only collected works of Joseph Brodsky - of course, typewritten. Before leaving, he managed to authorize all 4 volumes. By choosing emigration, Brodsky tried to delay the day of departure, but the authorities wanted to get rid of the objectionable poet as quickly as possible. On June 4, 1972, Brodsky, deprived of Soviet citizenship, flew from Leningrad along the route prescribed for Jewish emigration: to Vienna. Three years later he wrote:

Blowing into a hollow pipe, that your fakir,
I went through the Janissaries in green,
sensing with eggs the cold of their evil axes,
like entering the water. And now, with salty
the taste of this water in your mouth,
I crossed the line...

Brodsky, who refused to dramatize the events of his life, recalled the subsequent events with considerable ease:

The plane landed in Vienna, and Karl Proffer met me there… he asked: “Well, Joseph, where would you like to go?” I said, "Oh my God, I have no idea" ... and then he asked: "How do you look at working at the University of Michigan?".

Two days later, upon arrival in Vienna, Brodsky goes to meet W. Oden, who lives in Austria. "He treated me with extraordinary sympathy, immediately took me under his wing ... undertook to introduce me into literary circles." Together with Auden, Brodsky takes part in the Poetry International in London at the end of June. Brodsky was familiar with the work of Auden from the time of his exile and called him, along with Akhmatova, a poet who had a decisive “ethical influence” on him. Then in London, Brodsky met Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell.

In July 1972, Brodsky moved to the United States and accepted the post of "invited poet" (poet-in-residence) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he taught, intermittently, until 1980. From that moment, he completed incomplete 8 classes in the USSR High school Brodsky leads the life of a university teacher, over the next 24 years holding professorships in a total of six American and British universities, including Columbia and New York. He taught the history of Russian literature, Russian and world poetry, the theory of verse, lectured and read poetry at international literary festivals and forums, in libraries and universities in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, France, Sweden, Italy.

Over the years, his health steadily deteriorated, and Brodsky, whose first heart attack occurred during his prison days in 1964, suffered 4 heart attacks in 1976, 1985 and 1994.

Brodsky's parents applied twelve times to be allowed to see their son, congressmen and prominent cultural figures of the United States addressed the USSR government with the same request, but even after Brodsky underwent open-heart surgery in 1978 and needed care, his parents was denied an exit visa. They never saw their son again. Brodsky's mother died in 1983, and his father died a little over a year later. Both times Brodsky was not allowed to come to the funeral. The book "Part of Speech" (1977), the poems "The thought of you is removed like a demoted servant ..." (1985), "In Memory of the Father: Australia" (1989), the essay "A Room and a Half" (1985) are dedicated to parents.

In 1977, Brodsky took American citizenship, in 1980 he finally moved from Ann Arbor to New York, and later divided his time between New York and South Hadley, a university town in Massachusetts, where from 1982 until the end of his life he taught spring semesters at a five-college consortium. In 1990, Brodsky married Maria Sozzani, an Italian aristocrat who was Russian on her mother's side. In 1993, their daughter Anna was born.

Brodsky's poems and their translations have been published outside the USSR since 1964, when his name became widely known thanks to the publication of a record of the poet's trial. From the moment he arrived in the West, his poetry regularly appears on the pages of publications of the Russian emigration. Almost more often than in the Russian-language press, translations of Brodsky's poems are published, primarily in magazines in the USA and England, and in 1973 a book of selected translations appeared. But new books of poetry in Russian were published only in 1977 - these are The End of a Beautiful Era, which included poems from 1964-1971, and Part of Speech, which included works written in 1972-1976. The reason for this division was not external events (emigration) - the understanding of exile as a fateful factor was alien to Brodsky's work - but the fact that, in his opinion, qualitative changes were taking place in 1971/72 in his work. On this turning point, "Still Life", "To a Tyrant", "Odysseus of Telemachus", "Song of Innocence, she is experience", "Letters to a Roman friend", "Bobo's Funeral" were written. In the poem "1972", begun in Russia and completed outside of it, Brodsky gives the following formula: "Everything that I did, I did not for my sake / fame in the era of cinema and radio, / but for the sake of native speech, literature ...". The name of the collection - "Part of Speech" - is explained by the same message, succinctly formulated in his Nobel lecture: "someone, but a poet always knows that not language is his tool, but he is a means of language."

In the 1970s and 1980s, Brodsky, as a rule, did not include in his new books of poems included in earlier collections. An exception is the book New Stanzas for August, published in 1983, composed of poems addressed to M. B. - Marina Basmanova. Years later, Brodsky spoke of this book: “This is the main work of my life, it seems to me that, as a result,“ New Stanzas for Augusta ”can be read as a separate work. Unfortunately, I did not write The Divine Comedy. And, apparently, I will never write it again. And then it turned out in some way a poetic book with its own plot ... ". "New Stanzas for August" became the only book of Brodsky's poetry in Russian, compiled by the author himself.

Since 1972, Brodsky has been actively turning to essays, which he does not leave until the end of his life. Three books of his essays are published in the USA: "Less Than One" (Less than one) in 1986, "Watermark" (Embankment of the incurable) in 1992 and "On Grief and Reason" (On sorrow and reason) in 1995. Most of the essay, included in these collections was written in English. His prose, at least as much as his poetry, made Brodsky's name widely known to the world outside the USSR. The American National Council of Literary Critics recognized Less Than One as the best literary-critical book in the United States for 1986. By this time, Brodsky was the owner of half a dozen titles of a member of literary academies and an honorary doctorate from various universities, was the winner of the MacArthur scholarship in 1981.

The next big book of poems - "Urania" - was published in 1987. In the same year, Brodsky won the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded to him "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity". In his Russian-written Nobel speech, in which he formulated his personal and poetic creed, the forty-seven-year-old Brodsky began with the words:

“For a private person who has preferred this whole life to any public role, for a person who has gone quite far in this preference - and in particular from his homeland, for it is better to be the last loser in democracy than a martyr or ruler of thoughts in despotism - to be suddenly on this podium - a great awkwardness and test.

In the 1990s, four books of Brodsky's new poems were published: "Notes of a fern", "Cappadocia", "In the vicinity of Atlantis" and the collection "Landscape with a Flood" published in Ardis after the poet's death and which became the final collection.

The undoubted success of Brodsky's poetry, both among critics and literary critics, and among readers, probably has more exceptions than would be required to confirm the rule. Reduced emotionality, musical and metaphysical complexity - especially the "late" Brodsky - repels some artists from him. In particular, one can name the negative work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose reproaches to the poet's work are largely ideological in nature. Almost verbatim, a critic from another camp echoes him: Dmitry Bykov, in his essay on Brodsky after the beginning: “I’m not going to rehash here the common platitudes that Brodsky is“ cold ”,“ monotonous ”,“ inhuman ”...”, - further does just that: “In the vast corpus of Brodsky’s writings, there are strikingly few living texts ... It is unlikely that today’s reader will effortlessly finish The Procession, Farewell, Mademoiselle Veronica, or The Letter in a Bottle - although, undoubtedly, he cannot help but appreciate the Part speech", "Twenty Sonnets to Mary Stuart" or "A Conversation with a Celestial": the best texts of the still alive, not yet petrified Brodsky, the cry of a living soul, feeling its ossification, glaciation, dying.

The last book, compiled during the life of the poet, ends with the following lines:

And if you don't expect thanks for the speed of light,
something common, maybe non-existence armor
appreciates attempts to turn her into a sieve
and thank me for the hole.

Peru Brodsky owns two published plays: "Marble", 1982 and "Democracy", 1990-92. He also owns translations of the plays by the English playwright Tom Stoppard "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" and the Irish playwright Brendan Bian's "Speaking of the Rope". Brodsky left a significant legacy as a translator of world poetry into Russian. Of the authors translated by him, one can name, in particular, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Richard Wilber, Euripides (from Medea), Konstantinos Cavafy, Constant Ildefons Galczynski, Czesław Milos, Thomas Venclova. Much less often Brodsky turned to translations into English. First of all, these are, of course, automatic translations, as well as translations from Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Wislava Szymborska and a number of others.

Susan Sontag, an American writer and close friend of Brodsky, says: “I am sure that he saw his exile as the greatest opportunity to become not only a Russian, but a world poet… I remember Brodsky saying, laughing, sometime in 1976-77: "Sometimes it's so strange for me to think that I can write whatever I want, and it will be printed. " Brodsky took full advantage of this opportunity. Since 1972, he has plunged headlong into social and literary life. In addition to the three books of essays mentioned above , the number of articles written by him, prefaces, letters to the editors, reviews of various collections exceeds one hundred, not counting the numerous oral presentations at the evenings of the work of Russian and English-speaking poets, participation in discussions and forums, magazine interviews. gives a review, the names of I. Lisnyanskaya, E. Rein, A. Kushner, D. Novikov, B. Akhmadulina, L. Losev, Y. Kublanovskiy, Y. Aleshkovsky, Vl. Derie howl, R. Wilber, C. Milos, M. Strand, D. Walcott and others. The largest newspapers in the world publish his appeals in defense of persecuted writers: S. Rushdie, N. Gorbanevskaya, V. Maramzin, T. Venclova, K. Azadovsky. "Besides, he tried to help so many people" - including letters of recommendation - "that recently there has been a certain devaluation of his recommendations."

The Library of Congress elects Brodsky Poet Laureate of the United States for 1991-1992. In this honorary, but traditionally nominal capacity, he developed an active work in the promotion of poetry. His ideas led to the creation of the American Poetry and Literacy Project (American Project: Poetry and Literacy), during which since 1993 more than a million free poetry books have been distributed in schools, hotels, supermarkets, train stations and so on. According to William Wadsworth, director of the American Academy of Poets from 1989 to 2001, Brodsky's inaugural speech as Poet Laureate "caused a transformation in America's view of the role of poetry in its culture." Shortly before his death, Brodsky was carried away by the idea of ​​founding the Russian Academy in Rome. In the autumn of 1995, he approached the mayor of Rome with a proposal to create an academy where artists, writers and scientists from Russia could study and work. This idea was realized after the death of the poet. In 2000, the Joseph Brodsky Memorial Scholarship Fund sent the first Russian poet-grant holder to Rome, and in 2003, the first artist.

In 1973, the first authorized book of translations of Brodsky's poetry into English was published - "Selected poems" (Selected poems) translated by George Kline and with a preface by Auden. The second collection in English, "A Part of Speech" (Part of speech), comes out in 1980; the third, "To Urania" (To Urania), - in 1988. In 1996, "So Forth" (So on) was released - the 4th collection of poems in English, prepared by Brodsky. The last two books include both translations and auto-translations from Russian, as well as poems written in English. Over the years, Brodsky trusted less and less translations of his poems into English to other translators; at the same time, he increasingly composed poetry in English, although, in his own words, he did not consider himself a bilingual poet and claimed that "for me, when I write poetry in English, it's more like a game ...". Losev writes: “Linguistically and culturally, Brodsky was Russian, and as for self-identification, in his mature years he reduced it to a lapidary formula, which he repeatedly used: “I am a Jew, a Russian poet and an American citizen.”

The 500-page collection of Brodsky's English-language poetry, released after the author's death, does not contain any translations made without his participation. But if his essays evoked mostly positive critical responses, the attitude towards him as a poet in the English-speaking world was far from unambiguous. According to Valentina Polukhina, “The paradox of Brodsky’s perception in England lies in the fact that with the growth of Brodsky’s reputation as an essayist, attacks on Brodsky as a poet and translator of his own poems became more severe.” The range of assessments was very wide, from extremely negative to laudatory, and probably a critical bias prevailed. The role of Brodsky in English-language poetry, the translation of his poetry into English, the relationship between Russian and English in his work are devoted, in particular, to Daniel Weissbort's essay-memoirs "From Russian with love".

Perestroika in the USSR and the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Brodsky, which coincided with it, broke through the dam of silence in his homeland, and soon the publication of Brodsky's poems and essays flooded in. The first (besides several poems leaked to the press in the 1960s) selection of Brodsky's poems appeared in the December 1987 issue of Novy Mir. Until that moment, the poet's work was known in his homeland to a very limited circle of readers thanks to lists of poems distributed in samizdat. In 1989, Brodsky was rehabilitated under the 1964 trial.

In 1992, a 4-volume collected works began to appear in Russia.

In 1995, Brodsky was awarded the title of honorary citizen of St. Petersburg.

Invitations to return to their homeland followed. Brodsky put off his arrival: he was embarrassed by the publicity of such an event, honoring, the attention of the press, which would inevitably accompany his visit. Health did not allow. One of the last arguments was: "The best part of me is already there - my poetry."

General view of Brodsky's grave in the cemetery of San Michele, Venice, 2004. People leave stones, letters, poems, pencils, photographs, Camel cigarettes (Brodsky smoked a lot) and whiskey. On the back of the monument there is an inscription in Latin - this is a line from the elegy Propertius lat. Letum non omnia finit - Not everything ends with death.

On Saturday evening, January 27, 1996, in New York, Brodsky was preparing to go to South Hadley and collected manuscripts and books in a briefcase to take with him the next day. Spring semester starts on Monday. Wishing his wife good night, Brodsky said that he still needed to work, and went up to his office. In the morning, his wife found him on the floor in his office. Brodsky was fully dressed. On the desk next to the glasses lay an open book, a bilingual edition of Greek epigrams. The heart, according to doctors, stopped suddenly - a heart attack, the poet died on the night of January 28, 1996.

On February 1, a funeral service was held at the Episcopal Parish Church of Grace in Brooklyn Heights, not far from Brodsky's house. The next day, a temporary burial took place: the body in a coffin, upholstered in metal, was placed in a crypt in the cemetery at the Trinity Church Cemetery, on the banks of the Hudson, where it was stored until June 21, 1997. The proposal sent by a telegram from the deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation G. V. Starovoitova to bury the poet in St. Petersburg on Vasilyevsky Island was rejected - "this would mean solving the question of returning to his homeland for Brodsky." A memorial service was held on March 8 in Manhattan at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. There were no speeches. Poems were read by Cheslav Milosh, Derek Walcott, Sheimas Heaney, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Lev Losev, Anthony Hecht, Mark Strand, Rosanna Warren, Evgeny Rein, Vladimir Uflyand, Thomas Venclova, Anatoly Naiman, Yakov Gordin, Maria Sozzani-Brodskaya and others. The music of Haydn, Mozart, Purcell sounded. In 1973, in the same cathedral, Brodsky was one of the organizers of the memorial service in memory of Wystan Auden.

Two weeks before his death, Brodsky bought himself a place in a small chapel in a New York cemetery next to Broadway (that was his last will). After that, he made a fairly detailed will. A list of people was also compiled to whom letters were sent in which Brodsky asked the recipient of the letter to sign that until 2020 the recipient would not talk about Brodsky as a person and would not discuss his private life; it was not forbidden to talk about Brodsky the poet.

Most of the claims made by Kutik are not supported by other sources. At the same time, E. Schellberg, M. Vorobieva, L. Losev, V. Polukhina, and T. Venclova, who knew Brodsky closely, issued denials. In particular, Schellberg and Vorobyova stated: “We want to assure you that the article about Joseph Brodsky, published under the name of Ilya Kutik on page 16 of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, dated January 28, 1998, is 95 percent fiction.” Losev expressed his sharp disagreement with Kutik's story, testifying, among other things, that Brodsky did not leave instructions regarding his funeral; did not buy a place in the cemetery, etc. According to Losev and Polukhina, Ilya Kutik was not present at the funeral of Brodsky described by him.

The decision on the final resting place of the poet took more than a year. According to Brodsky's widow Maria: “The idea of ​​a funeral in Venice was suggested by one of his friends. This is the city that, apart from St. Petersburg, Joseph loved the most. Besides, speaking selfishly, Italy is my country, so it was better that my husband was buried there. It was easier to bury him in Venice than in other cities, for example, in my hometown of Compignano near Lucca. Venice is closer to Russia and is a more accessible city.” Veronica Schilz and Benedetta Craveri agreed with the authorities of Venice about a place in an ancient cemetery on the island of San Michele. The desire to be buried in San Michele is found in Brodsky's 1974 comic message to Andrey Sergeev:

Although the insensible body
decay everywhere,
devoid of native clay,
it is in the alluvium of the valley
Lombard rot is not averse. Ponezhe
their continent and worms are the same.
Stravinsky sleeps on San Michele...

On June 21, 1997, the reburial of the body of Joseph Brodsky took place at the San Michele cemetery in Venice. Initially, the poet's body was planned to be buried in the Russian half of the cemetery between the graves of Stravinsky and Diaghilev, but this turned out to be impossible, since Brodsky was not Orthodox. The Catholic clergy also refused to be buried. As a result, they decided to bury the body in the Protestant part of the cemetery. The resting place was marked with a modest wooden cross bearing the name of Joseph Brodsky. A few years later, a tombstone was erected on the grave by the artist Vladimir Radunsky.

Joseph Brodsky was born May 24, 1940 in Leningrad. Father, Captain of the Navy of the USSR Alexander Ivanovich Brodsky (1903-1984), was a military photojournalist, after the war he went to work in the photo laboratory of the Naval Museum. In 1950 he was demobilized, after that he worked as a photographer and journalist in several Leningrad newspapers. Mother, Maria Moiseevna Volpert (1905-1983), worked as an accountant. The mother's sister is an actress of the BDT and the Theater. V.F. Komissarzhevskaya Dora Moiseevna Volpert.

Joseph's early childhood fell on the years of war, blockade, post-war poverty and passed without a father. In 1942 after the blockade winter, Maria Moiseevna and Joseph left for evacuation to Cherepovets, returned to Leningrad in 1944. In 1947 Joseph went to school number 203 on Kirochnaya Street, 8. In 1950 moved to school number 196 on Mokhovaya street, in 1953 I went to the 7th grade at school No. 181 in Solyany Lane and stayed the next year for the second year. In 1954 applied to the Second Baltic School (naval school), but was not accepted. He moved to school number 276 on Obvodny Canal house number 154, where he continued his studies in the 7th grade.

In 1955 the family receives "one and a half rooms" in the Muruzi House.

In 1955, in less than sixteen years, having finished seven classes and starting the eighth, Brodsky left school and entered the Arsenal plant as an apprentice milling machine operator. 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.

Since 1957 was a worker in the geological expeditions of NIIGA: in 1957 and 1958- on the White Sea, in 1959 and 1961- in Eastern Siberia and Northern Yakutia, on the Anabar shield. Summer 1961 in the Yakut village of Nelkan, during a period of forced idleness (there were no deer for a further hike), he had a nervous breakdown, and he was allowed to return to Leningrad.

At the same time, he read a lot, but chaotically - primarily poetry, philosophical and religious literature, began to study English and Polish.

In 1959 meets Evgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, Vladimir Uflyand, Bulat Okudzhava, Sergey Dovlatov.

February 14, 1960 the first major public performance took place at the "tournament of poets" in the Leningrad Palace of Culture named after Gorky with the participation of A.S. Kushner, G.Ya. Gorbovsky, V.A. Sosnory. The reading of the poem "Jewish Cemetery" caused a scandal.

During a trip to Samarkand in December 1960 Years Brodsky and his friend, former pilot Oleg Shakhmatov, considered a plan to hijack the plane in order to fly abroad. But they did not dare to do so. Later, Shakhmatov was arrested for illegal possession of weapons and informed the KGB about this plan, as well as about his other friend, Alexander Umansky, and his "anti-Soviet" manuscript, which Shakhmatov and Brodsky tried to pass on to an American they happened to meet. January 29, 1961 Brodsky was detained by the KGB, but was released two days later.

In August 1961 in Komarov, Yevgeny Rein introduces Brodsky to Anna Akhmatova. In 1962 during a trip to Pskov, he meets N.Ya. Mandelstam, and in 1963 at Akhmatova's - with Lydia Chukovskaya. After the death of Akhmatova in 1966 with the light hand of D. Bobyshev, four young poets, including Brodsky, were often referred to in memoir literature as "Akhmatov's orphans."

In 1962 In the year twenty-two, Brodsky met the young artist Marina (Marianna) Basmanova, the daughter of the artist P.I. Basmanov. Since that time, Marianna Basmanova, hidden under the initials "M. B.", devoted to many works of the poet. The last poem with the dedication "M. B." dated 1989 .

October 8, 1967 Marianna Basmanova and Joseph Brodsky had a son, Andrey Osipovich Basmanov. In 1972-1995 M.P. Basmanov and I.A. Brodsky were in correspondence.

In his own words, Brodsky began writing poetry at the age of eighteen, but there are several poems dated 1956-1957 years. One of the decisive impulses was the acquaintance with the poetry of Boris Slutsky. "Pilgrims", "Monument to Pushkin", "Christmas Romance" are the most famous of Brodsky's early poems. Many of them are characterized by pronounced musicality. Tsvetaeva and Baratynsky, and a few years later - Mandelstam, had, according to Brodsky himself, a decisive influence on him. Of his contemporaries, he was influenced by Evgeny Rein, Vladimir Uflyand, Stanislav Krasovitsky.

January 8, 1964 Vecherny Leningrad published a selection of letters from readers demanding that the "parasite Brodsky" be punished. January 13, 1964 Brodsky was arrested on charges of parasitism. The 14th of February he had his first heart attack in his cell. Since that time, Brodsky constantly suffered from angina pectoris, which always reminded him of a possible imminent death (which at the same time did not prevent him from remaining a heavy smoker.

February 18, 1964 the court decided to send Brodsky to a compulsory forensic psychiatric examination. Brodsky spent three weeks at Pryazhka (Psychiatric Hospital No. 2 in Leningrad). The conclusion of the examination read: “He has psychopathic character traits, but he is able to work. Therefore, administrative measures can be applied.” This was followed by a second session of the court.

Two sessions of the trial of Brodsky (Judge of the Dzerzhinsky Court Savelyeva E.A.) were outlined by Frida Vigdorova and widely disseminated in samizdat.

March 13, 1964 at the second court session, Brodsky was sentenced to the maximum possible punishment under the Decree on "parasitism" - five years of forced labor in a remote area. He was exiled (transported under escort along with criminal prisoners) to the Konoshsky district of the Arkhangelsk region and settled in the village of Norinskaya. In an interview with Volkov, Brodsky called this time the happiest in his life. In exile, Brodsky studied English poetry, including the work of Wystan Auden.

With the active participation of Akhmatova, a public campaign was carried out in defense of Brodsky. The central figures in it were Frida Vigdorova and Lydia Chukovskaya. After a year and a half, in September 1965 years, under pressure from the Soviet and world public (in particular, after an appeal to the Soviet government by Jean-Paul Sartre and a number of other foreign writers), the term of exile was reduced to actually served, and Brodsky returned to Leningrad.

Late 1965 Brodsky handed over to the Leningrad branch of the publishing house "Soviet Writer" the manuscript of his book "Winter Mail (poetry 1962-1965)". A year later, after many months of ordeal and despite numerous positive internal reviews, the manuscript was returned by the publisher. “The fate of the book was not decided by the publisher. At some point, the regional committee and the KGB decided in principle to cross out this idea.

In 1966-1967 4 poems of the poet appeared in the Soviet press (not counting publications in children's magazines), after which a period of public muteness began.

These were years filled with intense poetic work, the result of which were poems that were later included in books published in the United States: "Stop in the Desert", "The End of a Beautiful Era" and "New Stanzas for August". In 1965-1968 work was underway on the poem "Gorbunov and Gorchakov".

Outwardly, Brodsky's life developed relatively calmly during these years, but the KGB did not leave its "old client" behind.

Outside the USSR, Brodsky's poems continue to appear both in Russian and in translations, primarily in English, Polish and Italian. In 1967 in England, an unauthorized collection of translations “Joseph Brodsky. Elegy to John Donne and Other Poems / Tr. by Nicholas Bethell. In 1970 in New York, "Stop in the Desert" is published - Brodsky's first book, compiled under his supervision. Poems and preparatory materials for the book were secretly exported from Russia or, as in the case of the poem "Gorbunov and Gorchakov", sent to the West by diplomatic mail.

In 1971 Brodsky was elected a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.

May 10, 1972 Brodsky was summoned to the OVIR and faced with a choice: immediate emigration or "hot days", which metaphor in the mouth of the KGB could mean interrogations, prisons and mental hospitals. By that time, he had already twice - winter 1964- I had to lie on the "examination" in psychiatric hospitals, which, according to him, was worse than prison and exile. Brodsky decides to leave. June 4, 1972 Brodsky, deprived of Soviet citizenship, flew from Leningrad along the route prescribed for Jewish emigration: to Vienna.

Two days later, upon arrival in Vienna, Brodsky goes to meet W. Oden, who lives in Austria. Together with Auden, Brodsky takes part in the Poetry International in London at the end of June.

In July 1972 Brodsky moves to the USA and accepts the post of "guest poet" (poet-in-residence) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he teaches, intermittently, before 1980. From that moment on, Brodsky, who completed an incomplete 8th grade of high school in the USSR, leads the life of a university teacher, holding professorial positions at a total of six American and British universities over the next 24 years, including Columbia and New York. He taught the history of Russian literature, Russian and world poetry, the theory of verse, lectured and read poetry at international literary festivals and forums, in libraries and universities in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, France, Sweden, Italy.

Over the years, his health steadily deteriorated, and Brodsky, whose first heart attack occurred during his prison days in 1964, suffered 4 heart attacks. in 1976, 1985 and 1994.

I. Brodsky dedicated the book “Part of Speech” to his parents ( 1977 ), the poem "The thought of you is removed, like a demoted servant ..." ( 1985 ), In Memory of a Father: Australia ( 1989 ), essay "One and a half rooms" ( 1985 ).

In 1977 Brodsky accepts American citizenship, in 1980 finally moves from Ann Arbor to New York, further dividing his time between New York and South Hadley, a university town in Massachusetts, where since 1982 For the remainder of his life, he taught spring semesters at a five-college consortium. In 1990 Brodsky married Maria Sozzani, an Italian aristocrat who was Russian on her mother's side. In 1993 they had a daughter, Anna.

Since 1972 Brodsky actively turns to essays, which he does not leave until the end of his life. Three books of his essays are published in the USA: "Less Than One" (Less Than One) in 1986, "Watermark" (Embankment of the incurable) in 1992 and "On Grief and Reason" (On Grief and Reason) in 1995. Most of the essays included in these collections were written in English. The American National Council of Literary Critics recognized Less Than One as the best literary-critical book in the United States for 1986. By this time, Brodsky was the owner of half a dozen titles of a member of literary academies and an honorary doctorate from various universities, was the winner of the MacArthur scholarship. 1981 of the year.

The next big book of poems - "Urania" - was published in 1987. In the same year, Brodsky won the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded to him "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity".

In the 1990s four books of Brodsky's new poems were published: "Notes of the fern", "Cappadocia", "In the vicinity of Atlantis" and published in Ardis after the death of the poet and which became the final collection "Landscape with a flood".

The Library of Congress elects Brodsky as Poet Laureate of the United States for 1991-1992. In this honorary, but traditionally nominal capacity, he developed an active work in the promotion of poetry. His ideas led to the creation of the American Poetry and Literacy Project (American Project: "Poetry and Literacy"), during which since 1993 more than a million free poetry books were distributed in schools, hotels, supermarkets, railway stations and so on.

Perestroika in the USSR and the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Brodsky, which coincided with it, broke through the dam of silence in his homeland, and soon the publication of Brodsky's poems and essays flooded in. The first (besides several poems leaked to the press in the 1960s) selection of Brodsky's poems appeared in the December issue of Novy Mir. for 1987. Until that moment, the poet's work was known in his homeland to a very limited circle of readers thanks to lists of poems distributed in samizdat. In 1989 Brodsky was rehabilitated in the 1964 trial.

In 1992 in Russia, a 4-volume collection of works begins to appear.

In 1995 Brodsky was awarded the title of honorary citizen of St. Petersburg.

Invitations to return to their homeland followed. Brodsky put off his arrival: he was embarrassed by the publicity of such an event, honoring, the attention of the press, which would inevitably accompany his visit. Health did not allow. One of the last arguments was: "The best part of me is already there - my poetry."

Saturday night January 27, 1996 in New York, Brodsky was preparing to go to South Hadley and collected manuscripts and books in a briefcase to take with him the next day. Spring semester starts on Monday. Wishing his wife good night, Brodsky said that he still needed to work, and went up to his office. In the morning, his wife found him on the floor in his office. Brodsky was fully dressed. On the desk next to the glasses lay an open book, a bilingual edition of Greek epigrams. The heart, according to doctors, stopped suddenly - a heart attack, the poet died on the night of January 28, 1996

Keywords: Joseph Brodsky, biography of Joseph Brodsky, download a detailed biography, free download, Russian literature of the 20th century, Russian writers of the 20th century, life and work of Joseph Brodsky, emigrant writers

Modern Russian literature

Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky

Biography

BRODSKY, IOSIF ALEKSANDROVICH (1940−1996), poet, translator, prose writer, playwright.

Brodsky was born on May 24, 1940 in Leningrad. He, perhaps the most "non-Soviet" subject of the USSR, was named Joseph in honor of Stalin. Already from an early age in Brodsky's life, much is symbolic. He spent his childhood in a small apartment in the same “St. Petersburg” house where D. S. Merezhkovsky and Z. N. Gippius lived before the revolution and from where they went into exile. Alfred Nobel once studied at the school that Brodsky attended: in 1986 Brodsky would become a Nobel laureate. He reluctantly recalled his childhood: “A normal childhood. I don't think childhood experiences play an important role in later development."

In adolescence, his independence and obstinacy manifested itself. In 1955, without completing his studies, Brodsky went to work at a military factory as a milling machine operator, choosing for himself self-education, mainly reading. Wishing to become a surgeon, he goes to work as an assistant dissector in the mortuary of the hospital at the Leningrad prison "Crosses", where he helps to dissect corpses. For several years, he has tried more than a dozen professions: a geophysicist, a nurse, a stoker, a photographer, etc. He is looking for a job that can be combined with creativity. I tried to write poetry for the first time at the age of 16. I was prompted to write the impression of reading the collection of Boris Slutsky. The first poem was published when Brodsky was seventeen years old, in 1957: Farewell / forget / and do not blame me. / And burn the letters, / like a bridge. / May your path be courageous / may it be straight / and simple ...

At the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, he studied foreign languages ​​(English and Polish), attended lectures at the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad State University. In 1959, he got acquainted with a collection of poems by E. A. Baratynsky, after which he finally strengthened his desire to become a poet: “I had nothing to read, and when I found this book and read it, then I understood everything what I had to do ...”.

Brodsky's reader impressions of this time are unsystematic, but fruitful for the development of a poetic voice. Brodsky's first poems, according to his own vocation, arose "from non-existence": "We came to literature from God knows where, practically only from the fact of our existence, from the bowels" (Brodsky's conversation with J. Glad). The restoration of cultural continuity for the Brodsky generation meant, first of all, an appeal to the Russian poetry of the Silver Age. However, here too Brodsky stands apart. By his own admission, he did not "understand" Pasternak until the age of 24, until the same time he did not read Mandelstam, he almost did not know (before personal acquaintance) Akhmatova's lyrics. For Brodsky, from the first independent steps in literature to the end of his life, the work of M. Tsvetaeva had unconditional value. Brodsky identifies himself more with the poets of the early 19th century. In Stans to the City (1962) he correlates his fate with the fate of Lermontov. But here, too, a characteristic feature of the poet is felt: the fear of being like someone else, of dissolving one's individuality in other people's meanings. Brodsky defiantly prefers the lyrics of E. Baratynsky, K. Batyushkov and P. Vyazemsky to Pushkin's traditions. In the 1961 poem The Procession, Pushkin's motifs are presented deliberately aloof, detached, and placed by the author in an alien context, they begin to sound frankly ironic. Brodsky's creative preferences were determined not only by the desire to avoid banality. The aristocratic balance of the "enlightened" Pushkin's muse was less close to Brodsky than the tradition of Russian philosophical poetry. Brodsky adopted a meditative intonation, a penchant for the poetics of reflection, and the drama of thought. Gradually, he goes further into the past of poetry, actively absorbing the legacy of the 18th century - Lomonosov, Derzhavin, Dmitriev. Mastering the pre-Pushkin layers of Russian literature allows him to see vast areas of poetic language. Brodsky realized the need to synthesize continuity and identify new expressive possibilities of Russian classical verse. Since the early 1960s, he began working as a professional translator under a contract with a number of publishing houses. Then he got acquainted with the poetry of the English metaphysical poet John Donne, to whom he dedicated the Great Elegy to John Donne (1963). Brodsky's translations from Donn are often inaccurate and not very successful. But Brodsky's original work became a unique experience of introducing the Russian word to the hitherto alien experience of baroque European poetry of the "metaphysical school". Brodsky's lyrics will absorb the basic principles of "metaphysical" thinking: the rejection of the cult of experiences of the lyrical "I" in poetry, the "dry" courageous intellectuality, the dramatic and personal situation of the lyrical monologue, often with a tense feeling of the interlocutor, colloquial tone, the use of "non-poetic" vocabulary ( vernacular, vulgarisms, scientific, technical concepts), the construction of the text as a series of evidence in favor of some statement. Brodsky inherits from Donn and other metaphysical poets and the "calling card" of the school - the so-called. “concetti” (from Italian - “concept”) is a special kind of metaphor that brings together concepts and images that are far from each other, which, at first glance, have nothing in common with each other. And the poets of the English Baroque in the 17th century, and Brodsky in the 20th century. used such metaphors to repair broken bonds in a world that seems to them tragically broken. Such metaphors are at the heart of most of Brodsky's works. Brodsky's metaphysical flights and metaphorical frills coexisted with a fear of lofty words, a feeling of often bad taste in them. Hence his desire to balance the poetic with the prosaic, to "underestimate" lofty images, or, as the poet himself put it, "targeting at a 'descending metaphor'". It is significant how Brodsky describes his first religious experiences associated with reading the Bible: “At the age of 24 or 23, I don’t remember exactly, I read the Old and New Testament for the first time. And this made on me, perhaps, the strongest impression in my life. That is, the metaphysical horizons of Judaism and Christianity made quite a strong impression. It was difficult to get a Bible in those years - I first read the Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata, and only after that I fell into the hands of the Bible. Of course, I realized that the metaphysical horizons offered by Christianity are less significant than those offered by Hinduism. But I made my choice in the direction of the ideals of Christianity, if you will... I would, I must say, use the expression Judeo-Christianity more often, because one is inconceivable without the other. And, in general, this is approximately the sphere or those parameters that determine my, if not necessarily intellectual, then at least some kind of spiritual activity. From now on, almost every year the poet created poems about Christmas on the eve or on the very day of the holiday. His "Christmas Poems" formed a certain cycle, the work on which went on for more than a quarter of a century. In the early 1960s, Brodsky's social circle was very wide, but he was closest of all with the same young poets, students of the Technological Institute E. Rein, A. Naiman and D. Bobyshev. Rein introduced Brodsky to Anna Akhmatova, whom she endowed with friendship and predicted a brilliant poetic future for him. She forever remained a moral standard for Brodsky (the poems of the 1960s are dedicated to her Morning mail for A. A. Akhmatova from the city of Sestroretsk, Roosters will crow and clap ..., Candlemas, 1972, On the centenary of Anna Akhmatova, 1989 and the essay Muse of Lamentation, 1982) . Already by 1963, his work was becoming more famous, Brodsky's poems began to actively go to manuscripts. Despite the lack of significant publications, Brodsky had a scandalous for that time and the fame of the poet "samizdat". November 29, 1963 in the newspaper "Vecherniy Leningrad" signed by A. Ionin, Y. Lerner, M. Medvedev published a letter against Brodsky Near-literary drone. In 1964 he was arrested. After the first closed trial, the poet was placed in a judicial psychiatric hospital, where he stayed for three weeks, but was declared mentally healthy and capable of work. The second, open, trial in the case of Brodsky, who was accused of parasitism, took place on March 13, 1964. The court decision was expulsion for 5 years with mandatory involvement in physical labor. He served a link in the village of Norinsk, Arkhangelsk region. There was enough free time here, and it is completely filled with creativity. Here he created the most significant works of the pre-emigrant period: One Poet, Two Hours in a Tank, New Stanzas for August, Northern Post, Letter in a Bottle, etc. Brodsky was released ahead of schedule. Instead of five, he spent a year and a half in exile and then received permission to return to Leningrad. “What a biography they make for our redhead!” - exclaimed A. Akhmatova at the height of the campaign against Brodsky, anticipating what service his persecutors would render him, endowing him with a martyr's halo. In 1965, on a wave of indignation and persecution of the poet, Brodsky's first book, Poems and Poems, was published in New York. In his work of these years, experimentation based on the classical tradition gives more and more interesting results. So, in 1966 experiments with syllabic verse of the 18th century. clothed in dense manner of writing Imitation of the satyrs composed by Cantemir. Brodsky transforms the syllabo-tonic system of versification, classical for Russian poetry, from two sides: not only through an appeal to the past experience of two hundred years ago, but also through ultra-modern exercises at the junction of blank verse and rhythmic prose - for example, Stop in the Desert (1966), which later gave its name to a collection of poetry published in 1972 in the United States. The main genre in Brodsky's work is the easily recognizable long elegy, a kind of semi-poem - aphoristic, melancholic, ironically reflective, with brittle syntax, striving to update a stable language. Brodsky can also update the language, like the futurist poets, through experiments with stanza and “typesetting” (i.e. play with the "appearance" of the printed text and the associations it evokes). Thus, in the poem 1967 Fountain, thanks to a special stanza and the distribution of words across the space of the page, the printed text resembles a multi-tiered park fountain in outline. In the pre-emigrant period of Brodsky's work, tragic irony is invariably set off by a generous perception of the world and emotional openness. In the future, the proportions between these principles will change significantly. Emotional openness will go away, its place will be taken by the willingness to stoically accept the tragedy of life. In 1972 Brodsky left the USSR. He leaves on an Israeli visa, but settles in the United States, where until the end of his days he teaches Russian literature at various universities. From now on, Brodsky, in his own words, is doomed to a "fictitious situation" - a poetic existence in a foreign language environment, where a narrow circle of Russian-speaking readers is balanced by international recognition. Leaving his homeland, Brodsky writes a letter to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU L. I. Brezhnev: “Dear Leonid Ilyich, leaving Russia not of my own free will, which you may be aware of, I decide to turn to you with a request, the right to which gives me a firm consciousness that everything that I have done in 15 years of literary work serves and will serve only for the glory of Russian culture, nothing else. I want to ask you to give me the opportunity to preserve my existence, my presence in the literary process. At least as an interpreter - in the capacity in which I have acted so far. However, his request went unanswered. Even Brodsky's parents were not allowed to go to their son at the request of the doctors (Brodsky, as a core, needed special care). They did not allow him to come to Leningrad for the funeral of his mother (1983) and father (1985). This largely affected his later reluctance to visit his hometown in the 1990s. In the US, Brodsky began to write in English. His English-language work was expressed, first of all, in the essay genre (collections Less than one (Less than one), 1986, On grief and reason (On sorrow and reason), 1995). Basically, Brodsky's essays consisted of articles written by order as prefaces to editions of works by Russian and Western classics (A. Akhmatova, M. Tsvetaeva, W. Auden, K. Cavafy, etc.). On his own initiative, as he admitted, he wrote only 2 or 3 articles. In 1980 Brodsky received US citizenship. In 1977, the Ardis publishing house published two collections of Brodsky's poems The End of a Beautiful Era. Poems 1964−71 and Part of speech. Poems 1972−76. These books captured a new stage in the poet's creative maturity. "The biography of a poet is in the cut of his language." This postulate of Brodsky determines the evolution of his lyrics. By the mid-1970s, Brodsky's lyrics were enriched with complex syntactic constructions, constant so-called. "enjambements" (i.e. the transfer of thought, the continuation of the phrase to the next line or stanza, the mismatch between the boundaries of the sentence and the line). Contemporaries testified to the poet's invariable desire to read his poems aloud, even when the situation did not favor it. The poet has almost no simple sentences. Endless complex sentences imply the endless development of thought, its test for truth. Brodsky the poet takes nothing on faith. Each statement clarifies and "judges" itself. Hence the innumerable "but", "although", "therefore", "not so much ... as" in his poetic language. The experience of the “mature” Brodsky is the experience of a deep experience of the tragedy of existence. Brodsky often violates grammar, resorts to shifted, incorrect speech, conveying tragedy not only in the subject of the image, but above all in the language. The abandoned Fatherland is gradually elevated in Brodsky's poetic consciousness into a grandiose surrealistic image of the empire. This image is wider than the real Soviet Union. It becomes a global symbol of the decline of world culture. Giving a clear account of the meaninglessness of life (Mexican Romancero, 1976), Brodsky's lyrical hero, like the ancient Stoics, tries to find support in the higher principles of the universe indifferent to man. Such a higher principle, in general, replacing God, appears in the poetry of Brodsky Time. “All my poems, more or less, are about the same thing: about Time,” the poet said in an interview. But at the same time, in his poetic universe there is another universal category that is able to curb Time, defeat it. This is the Language, the Word (Fifth Anniversary, 1978). The process of poetic creativity becomes the only way to overcome Time, and therefore death, a form of victory over death. Lines prolong life: ... I don’t know in which land I will lie down. / Squeak, squeak the pen! Translate Paper (Fifth Anniversary, 1977). For Brodsky, "a poet is an instrument of language". It is not the poet who uses language, but language expresses itself through the poet, who has only to tune his ear correctly. But at the same time, this tool is saving, and completely free. Left alone with Language and Time, Brodsky's lyrical hero loses all emotional ties with the world of things, as if he leaves his body and rises to an almost airless height (Autumn Cry of a Hawk, 1975). From here, however, he continues with clarity and indifference to distinguish the details of the world left below. Brodsky's verbosity, his unthinkable lengths are due to the desire to curb Time with the Language. In 1978, Brodsky became an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts, from which, however, he left in protest against the election of Yevgeny Yevtushenko as an honorary member of the Academy. In 1983, another collection of lyrics, New Stanzas for Augusta, was published in Ardis. Poems for M.B., 1962−82; in 1984 Brodsky's play Marble was released. In 1986, the collection Less than one was recognized as the best literary-critical book of the year in the United States. In December 1987, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for a comprehensive authorship full of clarity of thought and poetic depth," according to the official ruling of the Nobel Committee. The Nobel Prize brought material independence and new troubles. Brodsky devotes a lot of time to arranging numerous immigrants from Russia in America. From May 1991 to May 1992 Brodsky received the title of Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress. Since the late 1980s, Brodsky's work has gradually returned to his homeland, but he himself invariably rejects offers to even come to Russia for a while. At the same time, in exile, he actively supports and promotes Russian culture. In 1995 Brodsky was awarded the title of honorary citizen of St. Petersburg. Joseph Brodsky died in New York from a heart attack in 1996, in his sleep, on the night of January 28th. He was 55 years old. He was buried in the Protestant part of the cemetery on the island of San Michele in Venice.

Joseph Aleksandrovich Brodsky - Russian poet, was born on May 24, 1940 in Leningrad. Brodsky's parents gave the name in honor of Joseph Stalin. His childhood was ordinary without special impressions. With age, the young Brodsky manifests independence and obstinacy.

In 1955, without education, Brodsky started working as a milling machine operator at a military factory. As a self-education, he intensively engaged in reading. Wanting to become a surgeon, Brodsky gets a job in the mortuary of the hospital at the Leningrad prison "Crosses", where he participates in the dissection of corpses. Over the course of several years, in search of a job related to creativity, he tried more than a dozen professions, such as a fireman, physicist, orderly, photographer and many others.

Joseph Brodsky began to write his first poems when he was 16 years old. In the 1950s and 1960s, he intensively studied foreign languages, attending lectures at the Faculty of Philology of Leningrad State University. Brodsky travels a lot, leading a free "outlaw" lifestyle. In 1964, in Leningrad, the poet was arrested on charges of parasitism. The trial of him becomes the property of the world community, making Joseph Brodsky famous. Thanks to the support of world famous personalities, the poet was released ahead of schedule.

In 1972, Joseph Brodsky moved to the United States for permanent residence. In his poems, there is a comprehension of the world as a single cultural whole. Distinctive features of the poet's style were rigidity, irony and breakdown. In 1987, Iosif Alexandrovich Brodsky won the Nobel Prize, and also became a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and the owner of the Oxford Honori Causa Prize.

In the 1980s, Brodsky's work gradually returned to Russia, however, despite this, he himself rejects offers to even come to his homeland for a while. At the same time, being in exile, he continues to actively support and promote Russian culture. Joseph Aleksandrovich Brodsky died of a heart attack in New York in 1996. Death came to him in a dream, on the night of January 28 at the age of 55. Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky was buried in the cemetery of the island of San Michele in Venice.

Name: Joseph Brodsky

Age: 55 years

Place of Birth: St. Petersburg

A place of death: New York, USA

Activity: poet, essayist, playwright, translator

Family status: was married

Joseph Brodsky - Biography

The poet, translator, playwright Joseph Brodsky belonged to the category of dissident poets. His works have recently entered the school curriculum. His lyrics could have been in demand even earlier, if they did not see political themes in it. How many more people who graduated from school would be familiar with Brodsky's work.

Childhood, the poet's family

Joseph was born just before the war in a Jewish family. My father was first a war photographer, then moved to the newspaper as a simple photojournalist. The blockade of Leningrad, the horror and hunger, the Brodsky family experienced firsthand. From his hometown, Joseph and his mother were evacuated to Cherepovets. After the end of the war, my father worked at the Naval Museum in a photo laboratory. Mother has always worked as an accountant.

Returning to Leningrad before the end of the Great Patriotic War, the boy changes one school after another for various reasons. He dreams of the sea, of the school, but they don’t take him there. Without finishing the eighth grade of the school, the guy began to work as a milling machine operator at the factory in order to somehow help the family. But fate had a difficult biography.

He was very fond of nature, changed many professions. He wanted to become a doctor - he got a job as an assistant dissector in the morgue. He worked at the lighthouse as a sailor, in the boiler room as a stoker. He even went on expeditions together with the geologists of the Research Institute as a worker. I learned Siberia, visited Yakutia, saw the White Sea.

Joseph Brodsky - poetry

But his passion for reading never left him, he chose mostly poetry, along the way he studied foreign languages ​​​​(Polish and English). Joseph himself tried to write poetry from the age of sixteen. Of course, at the beginning of his work, he imitated Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelstam,. The poem that first saw the light of day was "The Ballad of the Little Tugboat." It was published in one of the issues of the magazine "Bonfire".

Brodsky's performance at the "Poet Tournament" in Leningrad turned the whole life of the future poet upside down. From the text of his poems, which he recited there, they chose a few lines and accused Joseph of loving a foreign homeland. The outraged public demanded punishment. Suddenly, a whole selection of letters from ordinary citizens appeared abruptly, worried that the poet was not working anywhere, and “ordinary citizens” wrote in a competent literary language.

And the authorities could not think of a better way to arrest the poet as a parasite. He suffered a heart attack in the cell. Brodsky was an unrecognized genius. The country's leadership offered the poet a choice: emigration or a mental hospital. The poet leaves for America, taking the citizenship of that country. Here it is, the American page of Brodsky's biography.

The further fate of the poet

Abroad, Joseph Brodsky does not stop writing poetry. He actively takes part in many poetry festivals. He teaches the history of Russian literature at leading universities. She translates from her native language into English. He publishes collections of his own poems. Receives the Nobel Prize in Literature. He writes essays where he asks questions and answers them himself.

perestroika

The nineties touched not only the political side of life in the Soviet Union, but also the literary one. The poems of Joseph Brodsky began to be published in magazines and newspapers, and the poet's books were published. Many times he received an invitation to come to his homeland. But he didn’t want any extra noise around his person and constantly put off a trip to the Soviet Union.

Joseph Brodsky - biography of personal life

The first love was big and bright. The native daughter of the artist and graphic artist Pavel Basmanov conquered the passionate poetic nature of the poet. He dedicated many poems to his muse. The young artist Marina Basmanova was also in love with a young man, meetings began, a civil marriage, the birth of her son Andrei.

Relations somehow changed dramatically after the baby was born, the couple broke up with each other. After the break, Brodsky was seriously carried away by the ballerina. Maria Kuznetsova was graceful and pretty. The girl born from this love received the name Anastasia. For a very long time, Joseph does not dare to get acquainted with someone.

But Maria Sozzani won the heart of the poet. True, she was 29 years younger than her chosen one, but this age difference did not bother anyone at that time. In the early nineties, he proposed to her, and three years later Maria gave birth to her husband's daughter Anna. Joseph had heart problems: angina pectoris, surgery, 4 heart attacks. Worries about the death of parents were added to health problems. Brodsky applied to come to the Soviet Union for the funeral, but the government refused the request.

The spring semester began after the next vacation, Brodsky decided to work in the office, prepare for a meeting with students. In the morning he did not go to work, his wife found him dead of a heart attack. Quietly the last page of the biography of the great poet turned over.

Joseph Brodsky - bibliography, poetry

Stop in the desert
- Cappadocia. Poetry
- Roman Elegies
- fern notes
- New stanzas for August
- Landscape with flood
- Exile from Paradise: Selected Translations
- Urania
- Marble
- Works of Joseph Brodsky

One of the most important and significant figures in the world of modern poetry is undoubtedly Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky. For more than a quarter of a century, his work has enjoyed the widest popularity and is highly valued in the literary circles of countries around the world, since many of his works have been translated into ten languages. The life path of the poet was full of surprises, dramatic turns and events, a long and painful search for himself and his place in this world.

The poet was born on May 24, 1940 in the city on the Neva- Leningrad and it is with this place that his first poetic undertakings are connected.

Ros Brodsky is in the family of a professional photographer who happened to serve in the Navy and a translator.Him, almost the veryThe Soviet "subject of the USSR was named Joseph in honor of Stalin.

Already from an early age in Brodsky's life, much is symbolic. He spent his childhood in a small apartment in the same "Petersburg" house where D.S. Merezhkovsky and Z.N. Gippius lived before the revolution and from where they went into exile. ATschool attended by BRodsky, Alfred Nobel once studied: in 1986 Brodsky will become a Nobel laureate. He reluctantly recalled his childhood: “A normal childhood. I don't think childhood experiences play an important role in later development."

Despite the fact that Brodsky had to endure all the horrors of the blockade, later on he never, unlike many fellow workers, wrote about those times with sentimental pathos. After an unsuccessful attempt to enroll in a special school for submariners, after studying for several years at an ordinary educational institution, he goes to work as a milling machine operator at a military plant. Brodsky was actively engaged in self-education, preferring it to the imposed school curriculum. The beginning of a serious poetic search coincided with the work in the mortuary of the hospital belonging to the Kresty prison, whereJoseph Alexandrovich practiced, dreaming of becoming a doctor. He startsHe refuses to learn Polish and tries to translate some Polish poets.

Early period of creativity

In typewritten and handwritten lists, from hand to hand, among the intelligentsia reading poetry, wonderful, unlike anyone, distinguished by early maturity, vigilance, recognizable individuality and sharpness of writing, confessional openness, lyrical poignancy, amazing finest skill of cutting, quickly spread poems and poems by Joseph Brodsky, unknown to most Leningraders - “Christmas romance”, “Procession”, “Pilgrims”, “Poems under the epigraph” (“Everyone is naked before God ...”), “Loneliness”, “Elegy”, “Now everything more often I feel tired ... ”,“ Romance ”,“ Fly away from here, white moth

ylek...”, “Guest”, “In memory of E.A. Baratynsky”, “Leave, leave, leave...”, “Petersburg Romance”, “July Intermezzo”, “I don’t ask death from death...” , “The roosters will crow and clap ...”, “Stances to the city” (“Let it not be given to me to die far from you ...”) and many others.

"Akhmatov's orphans"

Together with Rein and Naiman, Brodsky falls into the inner circle

Anna Akhmatova, who in the early sixties calls him her direct literary follower and successor.

Despite the fact that Iosif Aleksandrovich did not make any direct political statements, and histhe poems did not directly concern the higher authorities, their independent content and form, together with the same independent behavior of the poet, irritated the guardians of ideological loyalty a lot, endangering Brodsky's future work and life itself.

And in 1964, in the one Leningrad is undergoing an unfair trial of the poet, where he is condemned

as a "parasite". Despite the ugly course of the trial, Brodsky behaves extremely dignified,

defending and upholding the right to independence of poetic creativity. After the verdict was passed, he was sent to the Arkhangelsk region for five years.

However, these sad events to some extent had a positive effect on the future fate of the poet. Thanks to the courageous and courageous journalist Vigdorova Frida, who made a transcript of the trial, shameful for the Soviet authorities, the name of Joseph Alexandrovich became widely known in the circles of foreign and domestic intelligentsia, and many Soviet writers came out in defense of Brodsky. As a result of such a response to the actions of the authorities, as well as the sudden help of the secretary of the local district committee, who, as it is now known, visited Brodsky, the poet receives permission to return to Leningrad. This was in 1965. In fact, it was this trial that laid the foundation for the entire Soviet human rights movement, and also contributed to the increased attention of foreign countries to human rights in the USSR. In the same 1965, Brodsky received a seat on the Writers' Council, which allowed him to avoid further charges.

Creation

an easily recognizable long elegy becomes a mastered and consolidated genre, a kind of semi-poem - aphoristic, sad and sad,ironically reflective, with language and syntax brittle as mica, carrying (no less than content) the function of refreshment and sodesired novelty. As an example, one can cite “Farewell, Mademoiselle Veronica”, “Fountain” (in this poem, a stanza, layout in the center, emphasizing the given external form of the poem, resembling a multi-tiered park fountain in outline), “In memory of T.B.”, built on chopped rhythm, monotonous army appeals and army conclusions “Letter to General Z ”,“ Stanzas ”,“ Elegy ”,“ Gorbunov and Gorchakov ”poem (special poetic task - dialogue form),“ Dedicated to Yalta ”(special task - updated syntax),“ Overlooking the sea ”,“ The end of a beautiful era ”,“ From the “School Anthology”, “Conversation with a Celestial”, “Singing without Music”, “ POST AETATEM NOSTRAM ”, “Lithuanian Divertissement”, “Still Life” and others.

On his fortieth birthday, Brodsky wrote a wonderful poem summing up the past and assessing the future:

I entered instead of a wild beast in a cage,

burned out his term and klikuhu with a nail in the barracks,

lived by the sea, played roulette,

dined with the devil knows whom in a tailcoat.
From the height of the glacier I looked around half the world,

drowned three times, ripped open twice.

I left the country that fed me.

From those who have forgotten me, you can make a city.

I wandered in the steppes, remembering the cries of the Hun,

put on what is becoming fashionable again,

sowed rye, covered the threshing floor with black roofing felt

and did not drink only dry water.

I let into my dreams the blued pupil of the convoy,

ate the bread of exile, leaving no crusts.

He allowed his cords all sounds, except for howling;

changed to a whisper. Now I'm forty.

What can I say about life? Which turned out to be long.

Only with grief I feel solidarity.

But until my mouth is filled with clay,

from it will be distributed only gratitude

May 24, 1980

When trying to publish his poems, Brodsky faced severe pressure from censorship, which destroyed all the originality of his poems and all the titanic work done; the poet did not accept all attempts at censorship interference in any form.

Moving to the USA

In 1987, Iosif Aleksandrovich became a Nobel Prize laureate "for his comprehensive creativity, saturated withclarity of thought and passion of poetry. After I. Bunin, B. Pasternak, M. Sholokhov and A. Solzhenitsyn, he became its fifth Russian laureate.

After Vladimir Nabokov, Brodsky is the second Russian writer who began to write in English as his native language. He, like no one else, did a lot to bring English and Russian literature closer together, and by this he adequately continued the tradition of national culture, interrupted during the years of Soviet power. At the awards ceremony in Stockholm, answering interview questions, Brodsky says the phrase that has become popular: "I am an English essayist, a Russian poet and a Jew." So Brodsky becomes the third Russian poet to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.citizen, he is invited to return to Leningrad, which had already become St. Petersburg by that time. But Brodsky is embarrassed by the raised hype around the hypothetical visit, and he postpones it, while the theme of non-return and return is clearly visible in his works of that period.

Joseph Brodsky died in New York from a heart attack in 1996, in his sleep, on the night of January 28th. He was 55 years old. He was buried in the Protestant part of the cemetery on the island of San Michele in Venice.With his work, Joseph Brodsky achieved his goal - the reorganization of the structure of time within the poetic language. In his works, more Russian than many written throughout the entire post-Soviet space, he opens up another sphere that is different from the usual outlook on life, leaving readers with an understatement, with all the fullness of expression.