Brodsky's biography is closely connected with Leningrad, where the future poet was born on May 24, 1940. The image of post-war Leningrad remained in the poet’s memory and influenced his work. Adult life for the writer began immediately after finishing 7th grade. He tried a lot of different professions: doctor, sailor, worker, geologist, but he was really interested in only one thing - literary creativity.
The beginning of a creative journey
According to his own statement, he wrote his first work at the age of 18 (although biographers and researchers have discovered earlier poems written by the poet at the age of 14-15). The first publication was published in 1962.
Idols and teachers
Brodsky read and studied a lot. He considered M. Tsvetaeva, A. Akhmatova his idols and real literary geniuses (interesting fact: a personal meeting between the young Brodsky and Akhmatova took place in 1961, Anna Akhmatova really liked the young poet, and she took him “under her wing”), Frost, B. Pasternak, O. Mandelstam, Cavafy, W. Auden. He was also influenced by his contemporaries (with whom he was personally acquainted), such as B. Slutsky, Ev. Rein, S. Davlatov, B. Okudzhava and others.
Harassment and arrest
The poet was arrested for the first time in 1960, but was quickly released, and in 1963 he began to be truly persecuted for dissident statements. In 1964, he was arrested for parasitism and in the same year, having suffered a heart attack, he was sent for compulsory treatment to a psychiatric hospital. After several court hearings, Brodsky was found guilty and sent to forced settlement in the Arkhangelsk region.
Release and deportation abroad
Many artists of that time (and not only the USSR) came to Brodsky’s defense: A. Akhmatova, D. Shostakovich, S. Marshak, K. Chukovsky, K. Paustovsky, A. Tvardovsky, Yu. German, Jean-Paul Sartre. As a result of a massive “attack” on the authorities, Brodsky was returned to Leningrad, but he was not allowed to publish. Over the course of several years, only 4 poems were published (although Brodsky was published a lot abroad).
In 1972, Brodsky was “offered” to leave, and he was forced to agree. On June 4, 1972, he was deprived of Soviet citizenship and he left for Vienna.
In exile
Since 1972, Brodsky worked at the University of Michigan, actively wrote and published, and became close acquaintances with such cultural figures as Stephen Spender, Seamus Heaney, and Robert Lowell. In 1979, he accepted American citizenship and began teaching at other educational institutions. In total, his teaching experience was more than 24 years.
In 1991, Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Personal life
A short biography of Joseph Brodsky would be incomplete without “love lines.” At the age of 22, Brodsky met his first love - Maria (Marianna) Basmanova. In 1967, the couple had a son. They were not married, but were on friendly terms and corresponded all their lives. In 1990, he married for the first time to Maria Sozzani, an Italian from an ancient family, but half Russian. In 1993, their daughter Anna was born.
Other biography options
- Interestingly, Brodsky received bad marks in a foreign language at school, although his mother was a professional translator. Having barely finished 7th grade, he independently and very quickly learned several foreign languages at once, spoke and wrote fluently in them.
- Brodsky died in 1996 in New York, where he was temporarily buried, and was buried in 1997 in the Venetian cemetery of San Michele. It was his wish (he wanted his body to rest between the bodies of S. Dyagelev and I. Stravinsky), and his will was fulfilled by his wife.
Joseph Brodsky is a Russian and American poet, essayist, playwright and translator. Considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.
He wrote poetry mainly in Russian, essays in English. In 1987, Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In this article we will tell you the features of the great poet, whose life was full of all kinds of adventures.
So, in front of you short biography of Joseph Brodsky ().
Biography of Brodsky
Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky was born on May 24, 1940 in. His father, Alexander Ivanovich, was a military photojournalist.
After the war, he worked as a reporter and photographer for various publishing houses. Mother, Maria Moiseevna, was an accountant.
Childhood and youth
In the early years of his biography, Joseph Brodsky experienced all the horrors of the siege of Leningrad, during which hundreds of thousands of people died. Their family, like many others, suffered from hunger, cold and other nightmares of war.
In the post-war years, the Brodsky family continued to experience financial difficulties, and therefore Joseph dropped out of school and began working at a factory as a milling machine operator.
Joseph Brodsky in his youth Soon he wanted to become a doctor. To do this, he even got a job in a morgue, but soon the medical career ceased to interest him.
Then Brodsky had to change many professions.
During this period of his biography, he studied continuously, reading in huge quantities. In particular, he really liked poetry and philosophy.
There was even an episode in his life when he, together with like-minded people, wanted to hijack a plane in order to leave the country. However, the idea remained unrealized.
Creative biography of Brodsky
According to Joseph Brodsky himself, he wrote the first poems in his biography at the age of 16.
When Joseph turned 21, he was lucky enough to meet Anna Akhmatova (see), who at that time was experiencing serious harassment from the authorities and many of her colleagues.
In 1958, Brodsky wrote the poems “Pilgrims” and “Loneliness”, as a result of which he also came under pressure from the authorities. Many publishing houses refused to print his works.
In the winter of 1960, Joseph Brodsky took part in the “Tournament of Poets.” He read his famous poem “The Jewish Cemetery,” which immediately caused a strong reaction in society. He heard a lot of unfair criticism and sarcastic accusations addressed to him.
Every day the situation became more and more tense. As a result, in 1964, the newspaper “Evening Leningrad” published letters from “dissatisfied citizens” who condemned the poet’s work.
A month later, Joseph Brodsky was arrested on charges of parasitism.
Arrest
The day after he was arrested, Joseph Alexandrovich had a heart attack. He felt very painfully about everything that was happening around him.
During this period of his biography, he wrote the poems “What can I say about life?” and “Hello, My Aging,” in which he shared his emotions with readers.
Free again
Once free, Brodsky continued to hear endless criticism directed at him. At the same time, he broke up with his beloved girlfriend Marina Basmanova, after which his mental state noticeably worsened.
All this led Brodsky to attempt suicide, which fortunately ended in failure.
In 1970, another poem, “Don’t Leave the Room,” came from his pen. It talked about what place a person plays in the political system of the USSR.
Meanwhile, the persecution continued, and in 1972 Brodsky had to make a choice: go to a psychiatric hospital or leave the Soviet Union.
According to the poet, he had once been treated in a mental hospital, where his stay turned out to be much worse than in prison.
As a result, Joseph Brodsky decided to emigrate to, where in 1977 he was granted citizenship.
While abroad, he taught Russian literature at American universities and was also engaged in translation activities. For example, Brodsky translated poetry into English.
In 1987, a significant event occurred in Brodsky’s biography. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
When Brodsky came to power in the USSR, Brodsky’s works began to be published in various magazines, and books with his work began to appear on the shelves of Soviet stores.
Later he was invited to visit the Soviet Union, but the poet was in no hurry to go home.
In many ways, he did not want to be in the spotlight and communicate with the press. His emotional experiences associated with returning to his homeland were reflected in the poems “Letter to the Oasis” and “Ithaca.”
Personal life
In 1962, Joseph Brodsky met Marina Basmanova, with whom he immediately fell in love. As a result, they began to cohabit, and in 1968 their boy Andrei was born.
It seemed that the child would only strengthen their relationship, but everything turned out quite the opposite. The couple separated that same year.
In 1990, Brodsky met Maria Sozzani. She was an intelligent girl with Russian roots on her mother's side. The poet began to court her and soon they got married. In this marriage they had a girl, Anna.
Brodsky with his wife Maria Sozzani and son An interesting fact is that all his life Joseph Brodsky was a heavy smoker, as a result of which he had serious health problems.
He had to undergo 4 heart surgeries, but he was never able to quit his bad habit. When the doctors once again encouraged him to quit smoking, he said the following phrase: “Life is wonderful precisely because there are no guarantees, never ever.”
In many photographs, Joseph Brodsky can be seen with various people, whom he simply adored. In his opinion, these animals did not have a single ugly movement.
It is also worth noting that Joseph Brodsky was friends with, who was also a disgraced Soviet writer and lived in exile.
Joseph Brodsky and Vladimir Vysotsky Even more interesting is that the great Russian treated Brodsky with respect, and even tenderness. Here it is appropriate to quote Mikhail Shemyakin, Vysotsky’s closest friend (see):
“In New York, Volodya (Vysotsky) met Brodsky, who gave him a collection of his poems with a dedication: “To the great Russian poet Vladimir Vysotsky.” It should be noted that Volodya had a strong complex due to the fact that recognized Soviet poets treated his poems condescendingly, declaring that it was bad taste to rhyme “sticking out” and “screaming.” Volodya did not let go of the book given by Brodsky for a week: “Mish, look again, Joseph called me a great poet!”
Shortly before his death, Brodsky and his partners opened the Russian Samovar restaurant. Soon the establishment became one of the cultural centers of Russian emigration in New York.
Death
Brodsky had heart problems even before leaving the USSR. At the age of 38, he underwent his first heart surgery in the United States.
At the same time, the American hospital sent an official letter to the Soviet Union with a request to allow the poet’s parents to come to care for their son. The parents themselves tried more than 10 times to get permission to leave for America, but this did not give any results.
During the biography period 1964-1994. Joseph Brodsky suffered 4 heart attacks. On the eve of his death, he was working as usual in his office, which was located on the second floor of the house.
When his wife decided to go see him in the morning, she found him already dead, lying on the floor.
Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky died on January 28, 1996 at the age of 55. The cause of death was the fifth heart attack. He never got to see his parents.
An interesting fact is that a couple of weeks before his death, Brodsky acquired a place for himself in a cemetery not far from Broadway. He was buried there.
However, six months later Brodsky’s body was reburied in the San Michele cemetery. Joseph loved Venice most of all during his lifetime, not counting St. Petersburg.
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1940 , May 24 – born in Leningrad. His father, Alexander Ivanovich Brodsky, is a military photojournalist, and his mother, Maria Moiseevna, is a housewife.
1942 - after the blockade winter, Maria Moiseevna and Joseph left for evacuation to Cherepovets, returned to Leningrad in 1944.
1947 - enters school No. 203 on Kirochnaya Street, 8. In 1950 he moved to school No. 196 on Mokhovaya Street, in 1953 he went to the 7th grade of school No. 181 on Solyany Lane and stayed the next year for the second year. In 1954, he applied to the Second Baltic School (naval school), but was not accepted. He moved to school No. 276 on Obvodny Canal, house No. 154, where he continued his studies in the 7th grade.
1955
– leaves the 8th grade of secondary school No. 276, enrolling as a milling machine apprentice at the Arsenal plant. Changes many jobs.
The family gets "one and a half rooms" in the Muruzi House.
1957 - worker in 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.
1959 – meets Evgeniy Rein, Anatoly Naiman, Vladimir Uflyand, Bulat Okudzhava, Sergei Dovlatov.
1960
, February 14 - the first major public performance 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.
December - during a trip to Samarkand, Brodsky and his friend, former pilot Oleg Shakhmatov, considered a plan to hijack a plane in order to fly abroad.
1961
, summer - returns from a geological expedition in Yakutia to Leningrad.
August - in the village of Komarovo near Leningrad, Evgeny Rein introduces Brodsky to Anna Akhmatova.
1962
- poem “From the outskirts to the center.” It begins with Pushkin’s reminiscence (“...Once again I visited / That corner of the earth...”). But the subject of Brodsky’s depiction is Leningrad, which is completely different from Pushkin’s Petersburg or even Dostoevsky’s Petersburg: not the city of Nevsky Prospect or even houses, Kolomna, but the area of outskirts, plants and factories, which in the nineteenth century simply did not exist, was not a city.
Twenty-two-year-old Brodsky meets the young artist Marina (Marianna) Basmanova, daughter of the artist P. I. Basmanov. From that time on, Marianna Basmanova, hidden under the initials “M. B.”, many of the poet’s works were dedicated. Poems dedicated to “M. B.“, occupy a central place in Brodsky’s lyrics.
1965
, October - Brodsky, on the recommendation of Korney Chukovsky and Boris Vakhtin, was accepted into the Group of Translators at the Leningrad branch of the Union of Writers of the USSR, which made it possible to subsequently avoid new accusations of parasitism.
Publication of the collection "Poems and Poems" in New York.
end of the year - Brodsky submits the manuscript of his book “Winter Mail (poems 1962–1965)” to the Leningrad branch of the publishing house “Soviet Writer”. A year later, the manuscript was returned by the publisher.
1966–1967 - 4 poems by the poet appeared in the Soviet press (not counting publications in children's magazines), after which a period of public muteness began.
1970 - “Stopping in the Desert” is published in New York, Brodsky’s first book compiled under his supervision.
1971 – Brodsky was elected a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.
1972
, June 4 – forced departure to emigrate.
end of June - together with W. Hugh Auden (Anglo-American poet), Brodsky takes part in the International Poetry Festival in London.
July – 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, until 1980.
1977
– collection “Part of Speech. Poems 1972–1976”.
Brodsky accepts American citizenship.
1982 - from this year until the end of his life he teaches in the spring semesters at the consortium of “five colleges”.
1986 – publication of essays written in English in the collection “Less than One.”
1987
– Nobel Prize in Literature. In the “Nobel Lecture” (1987), he remembered his predecessors, who could also be on this podium: Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, American poet Robert Frost (1874–1963), Anna Akhmatova, Anglo-American poet W. Auden (1907–1973) : “I named only five - those whose work and whose destinies are dear to me, if only because, without them, I would be worth little as a person and as a writer: in any case, I would not be standing here today.”
The beginning of Brodsky's publications in the USSR.
1991–1992 - title of Poet Laureate of the United States.
1990s- four books of new poems by Brodsky are 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.
1995 – Brodsky was awarded the title of honorary citizen of St. Petersburg. But he did not return to his homeland: “The best part of me is already there – my poems.”
“What a biography, however, they are making for our redhead!” - Anna Akhmatova joked sadly in the midst of the trial of Joseph Brodsky. In addition to the high-profile trial, the controversial fate prepared for the poet a link to the North and the Nobel Prize, incomplete eight years of education and a career as a university professor, 24 years outside his native language environment and the discovery of new possibilities of the Russian language.
Leningrad youth
Joseph Brodsky was born in Leningrad in 1940. 42 years later, in an interview with a Dutch journalist, he recalled his hometown like this: “Leningrad shapes your life, your consciousness to the extent that the visual aspects of life can influence us. It is a huge cultural conglomerate, but without bad taste, without confusion. An amazing sense of proportion, classical facades breathe peace. And all this influences you, makes you strive for order in life, although you realize that you are doomed. Such a noble attitude towards chaos, resulting in either stoicism or snobbery.".
In the first year of the war after the blockade winter of 1941–1942, Joseph's mother Maria Volpert took him for evacuation to Cherepovets, where they lived until 1944. Volpert served as a translator in a prisoner of war camp, and Brodsky’s father, naval officer and photojournalist Alexander Brodsky, participated in the defense of Malaya Zemlya and breaking the siege of Leningrad. He returned to his family only in 1948 and continued to serve as head of the photo laboratory of the Central Naval Museum. Joseph Brodsky remembered his entire life walking through the museum as a child: “In general, I have quite wonderful feelings towards the navy. I don’t know where they came from, but here is my childhood, and my father, and my hometown... As I remember the Naval Museum, St. Andrew’s flag - a blue cross on a white cloth... There is no better flag in the world!”
Joseph changed schools frequently; His attempt to enter the naval school after the seventh grade was also unsuccessful. In 1955, he left the eighth grade and got a job at the Arsenal plant as a milling machine operator. Then he worked as an assistant dissector in a morgue, as a fireman, and as a photographer. Finally, he joined a group of geologists and participated in expeditions for several years, during one of which he discovered a small uranium deposit in the Far East. At the same time, the future poet was actively engaged in self-education and became interested in literature. The poems of Evgeny Baratynsky and Boris Slutsky made a strong impression on him.
Joseph Brodsky. Photo: yeltsin.ru
Joseph Brodsky with a cat. Photo: interesno.cc
Joseph Brodsky. Photo: dayonline.ru
In Leningrad, people started talking about Brodsky in the early 1960s, when he performed at a poetry tournament in the Gorky Palace of Culture. The poet Nikolai Rubtsov spoke about this performance in a letter:
“Of course, there were poets with a decadent flavor. For example, Brodsky. Taking the microphone stem with both hands and bringing it close to his mouth, he read loudly and liarly, shaking his head to the rhythm of the poetry:
Everyone has their own trash!
Everyone has their own grave!
There was noise! Some shout:
- What does poetry have to do with it?!
- Down with him!
Others scream:
- Brodsky, more!
At the same time, Brodsky began communicating with the poet Yevgeny Rein. In 1961, Rhine introduced Joseph to Anna Akhmatova. Although Brodsky's poetry is usually credited with the influence of Marina Tsvetaeva, whose work he first became acquainted with in the early 1960s, it was Akhmatova who became his personal critic and teacher. The poet Lev Losev wrote: “Akhmatova’s phrase “You yourself don’t understand what you wrote!” after reading “The Great Elegy to John Donne” it entered Brodsky’s personal myth as a moment of initiation.”.
Court and world fame
In 1963, after a speech at the plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, the first secretary of the Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev began to eradicate among young people "sloths, moral cripples and whiners", writing on “the bird jargon of idle people and half-educated people”. Joseph Brodsky, who by this time had been detained by law enforcement agencies twice, also became a target: the first time for publication in the handwritten journal “Syntax”, the second time based on the denunciation of an acquaintance. He himself did not like to remember those events, because he believed: the poet’s biography is only "in its vowels and sibilants, in its meters, rhymes and metaphors".
Joseph Brodsky. Photo: bessmertnybarak.ru
Joseph Brodsky at the Nobel Prize ceremony. Photo: russalon.su
Joseph Brodsky with his cat. Photo: binokl.cc
In the newspaper “Evening Leningrad” dated November 29, 1963, an article “Near-Literary Drone” appeared, the authors of which denounced Brodsky by quoting poems other than his and juggling fictitious facts about him. On February 13, 1964, Brodsky was arrested again. He was accused of parasitism, although by this time his poems were regularly published in children's magazines, and publishers ordered translations from him. The whole world learned about the details of the trial thanks to Moscow journalist Frida Vigdorova, who was present in the courtroom. Vigdorova's recordings were sent to the West and found their way into the press.
Judge: What do you do?
Brodsky: I write poetry. I'm translating. I believe…
Judge: No “I guess.” Stand fast! Don't lean against walls!<...>Do you have a regular job?
Brodsky: I thought it was a permanent job.
Judge: Answer exactly!
Brodsky: I wrote poetry! I thought they would be printed. I believe…
Judge: We are not interested in “I believe.” Tell me, why didn't you work?
Brodsky: I worked. I wrote poetry.
Judge: We are not interested in this...
Witnesses for the defense were the poet Natalya Grudinina and prominent Leningrad philologists and translators Efim Etkind and Vladimir Admoni. They tried to convince the court that literary work cannot be equated with parasitism, and that the translations published by Brodsky were performed at a high professional level. The prosecution witnesses were not familiar with Brodsky and his work: among them were a supply manager, a military man, a pipe-laying worker, a pensioner, and a teacher of Marxism-Leninism. A representative of the Writers' Union also spoke on the side of the prosecution. The sentence was harsh: deportation from Leningrad for five years with mandatory forced labor.
Brodsky settled in the village of Norenskaya, Arkhangelsk region. He worked on a state farm, and in his free time he read a lot, became interested in English poetry and began to learn English. Frida Vigdorova and the writer Lydia Chukovskaya worked hard for the poet’s early return from exile. The letter in his defense was signed by Dmitry Shostakovich, Samuil Marshak, Korney Chukovsky, Konstantin Paustovsky, Alexander Tvardovsky, Yuri German and many others. The “friend of the Soviet Union,” the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, also stood up for Brodsky. In September 1965, Joseph Brodsky was officially released.
Russian poet and American citizen
In the same year, the first collection of Brodsky’s poems was published in the United States, prepared without the author’s knowledge on the basis of samizdat materials sent to the West. The next book, Stopping in the Desert, was published in New York in 1970 - it is considered Brodsky's first authorized publication. After his exile, the poet was enrolled in a certain “professional group” at the Writers’ Union, which made it possible to avoid further suspicions of parasitism. But in his homeland, only his children's poems were published, and sometimes he was given orders for poetry translations or literary adaptations of film dubbing. At the same time, the circle of foreign Slavists, journalists and publishers with whom Brodsky communicated personally and by correspondence became increasingly wider. In May 1972, he was summoned to the OVIR and asked to leave the country to avoid new persecution. Usually, processing documents to leave the Soviet Union took from six months to a year, but Brodsky’s visa was issued in 12 days. On June 4, 1972, Joseph Brodsky flew to Vienna. His parents, friends, former lover Marianna Basmanova, to whom almost all of Brodsky’s love lyrics are dedicated, and their son remained in Leningrad.
Joseph Brodsky with Maria Sozzani. Photo: russalon.su
Joseph Brodsky with Maria Sozzani. Photo: feel-feed.ru
Joseph Brodsky with Maria Sozzani and one-year-old daughter Anna. 1994. Photograph: biography.wikireading.ru
In Vienna, the poet was met by the American publisher Karl Proffer. Through his patronage, Brodsky was offered a place at the University of Michigan. The position was called poet-in-residence (literally: “poet in the presence”) and involved communication with students as a guest writer. In 1977, Brodsky received American citizenship. During his lifetime, five collections of poetry were published, containing translations from Russian into English and poems written by him in English. But in the West, Brodsky became famous primarily as the author of numerous essays. He defined himself as "a Russian poet, an English-language essayist and, of course, an American citizen". An example of his mature Russian-language creativity were the poems included in the collections “Part of Speech” (1977) and “Urania” (1987). In a conversation with Valentina Polukhina, a researcher of Brodsky’s work, poetess Bella Akhmadulina explained the phenomenon of a Russian-speaking author in exile.
In 1987, Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature with the wording “For comprehensive literary activity, distinguished by clarity of thought and poetic intensity.” In 1991, Brodsky took the post of US poet laureate - consultant to the Library of Congress and launched the American Poetry and Literacy program to distribute cheap volumes of poetry to the population. In 1990, the poet married an Italian with Russian roots, Maria Sozzani, but their happy union lasted only five and a half years.
In January 1996, Joseph Brodsky passed away. He was buried in one of his favorite cities - Venice, in an ancient cemetery on the island of San Michele.
Joseph Aleksandrovich Brodsky (May 24, 1940, Leningrad, USSR - January 28, 1996, New York, USA) - Russian and American poet, essayist, playwright, translator, Nobel Prize laureate 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 war photojournalist, returned from the war in 1948 and went to work in the photo laboratory of the Naval Museum. In 1950 he was demobilized, after which he worked as a photographer and journalist in several Leningrad newspapers. Mother, Maria Moiseevna Volpert (1905-1983), worked as an accountant. Mother's sister is an actress of the BDT and the Theater named after. V. F. Komissarzhevskaya Dora Moiseevna Volpert.
Joseph's early childhood was spent during the years of war, blockade, post-war poverty and passed without a father. In 1942, after the blockade winter, Maria Moiseevna and Joseph went for evacuation to Cherepovets, returning 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 at school No. 181 on Solyanoy Lane and stayed the following year in the second year. He applied to the naval school, but was not accepted. He moved to school No. 276 on Obvodny Canal, house No. 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, heavily damaged during the bombing, endless vistas of the Leningrad outskirts, water, multiple reflections - motifs associated with these impressions of his childhood and youth are invariably present in his work.
In 1955, at less than sixteen years old, having completed seven grades and starting the eighth, Brodsky left school and became an apprentice milling machine operator at the Arsenal plant. This decision was related both to problems at school and to Brodsky’s desire to financially support his family. Tried unsuccessfully to enter submariner school. At the age of 16, he got the idea of becoming a doctor, worked for a month as an assistant dissector in a morgue at a 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 and as a sailor in a lighthouse.
Since 1957, he was a worker in 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. 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 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, and began to study English and Polish.
In 1959 he met Evgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, Vladimir Uflyand, Bulat Okudzhava, Sergei Dovlatov.
On February 14, 1960, the first major public performance took place 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.
During a trip to Samarkand in December 1960, Brodsky and his friend, former pilot Oleg Shakhmatov, considered a plan to hijack a plane in order to fly abroad. But they did not dare to do this. Shakhmatov was later arrested for illegal possession of weapons and reported this plan to the KGB, as well as about another friend of his, Alexander Umansky, and his “anti-Soviet” manuscript, which Shakhmatov and Brodsky tried to give to an American they met by chance. On January 29, 1961, Brodsky was detained by the KGB, but two days later he was released.
In August 1961, in Komarov, Evgeniy Rein introduces Brodsky to Anna Akhmatova. In 1962, during a trip to Pskov, he met N. Ya. Mandelstam, and in 1963, at Akhmatova’s, with Lydia Chukovskaya. After Akhmatova’s death 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, twenty-two-year-old Brodsky met the young artist Marina (Marianna) Basmanova, daughter of the artist P. I. Basmanov. From that time on, Marianna Basmanova, hidden under the initials “M. B.”, many of the poet’s works were dedicated. “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 passable poems - but because these poems and the spiritual experience invested in them were the crucible in which his poetic personality was smelted." . The first poems with this dedication - “I hugged these shoulders and looked ...”, “No longing, no love, no sadness ...”, “A riddle to an angel” date back to 1962. The collection of poems by I. Brodsky “New Stanzas for Augusta” (USA, Michigan: Ardis, 1983) is compiled from his poems of 1962-1982, dedicated to “M. B." The last poem with dedication “M. B." dated 1989.
On October 8, 1967, Marianna Basmanova and Joseph Brodsky had a son, Andrei Osipovich Basmanov. In 1972-1995. M.P. Basmanova and I.A. Brodsky were in correspondence.
According to his own words, Brodsky began writing poetry at the age of eighteen, but there are several poems dating from 1956-1957. One of the decisive impetuses 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. Thus, 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...” you 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.
Among 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, and Rilke, Pasternak, Mandelstam and Akhmatova closed the poet’s personal canon.
It was obvious that the article was a signal for persecution and, possibly, the arrest of Brodsky. However, according to Brodsky, more than the slander, the subsequent arrest, trial and sentence, his thoughts were occupied at that time by the break with Marianna Basmanova. During this period there was a suicide attempt.
On January 8, 1964, “Evening 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. From that time on, Brodsky constantly suffered from angina pectoris, which always reminded him of a possible imminent death (which, however, did not prevent him from remaining a heavy smoker). This is largely where “Hello, my aging!” at 33 years old and “What can I say about life? What turned out to be long” at 40 - with his diagnosis, the poet really wasn’t 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 recorded by Frida Vigdorova and were widely disseminated in samizdat.
Judge: What is your work experience?
Brodsky: Approximately…
Judge: We are not interested in “approximately”!
Brodsky: Five years.
Judge: Where did you work?
Brodsky: At the factory. In geological parties...
Judge: How long did you work at the factory?
Brodsky: Year.
Judge: By whom?
Brodsky: Milling machine operator.
Judge: In general, what is your specialty?
Brodsky: Poet, poet-translator.
Judge: Who admitted that you are a poet? Who classified you as a poet?
Brodsky: Nobody. (No call). And who ranked me among the human race?
Judge: Have you studied this?
Brodsky: Why?
Judge: To be a poet? Didn’t try to graduate from a university where they prepare... where they teach...
Brodsky: I didn't think... I didn't think that this comes from education.
Judge: And what?
Brodsky: I think this... (confused) from God...
Judge: Do you have any petitions to the court?
Brodsky: I would like to know: why was I arrested?
Judge: 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 formulation of the times of persecution of Pasternak: “I haven’t read Pasternak’s novel, but I condemn it!..”.
On March 13, 1964, at the second court hearing, 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”, “Posev”, “Grani”, etc.), in August and September 1965, two of Brodsky’s poems were published in the Konosha regional newspaper “Prazyv” .
The trial of the poet became one of the factors that led to the emergence of the human rights movement in the USSR and to increased attention abroad to the situation in the field of human rights in the USSR. The recording of the trial, 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 had influence 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 community (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 the one actually served, and Brodsky returned to Leningrad. According to Y. Gordin: “The efforts of the luminaries of Soviet culture did not have any impact on the authorities. Decisive was the warning of “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 case.”
Brodsky resisted the image of a fighter against Soviet power imposed on him, especially by the Western media. A. Volgina wrote that Brodsky “did not like to talk in interviews about the hardships he suffered 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 stated: “I was lucky in every way. Other people got it much more, had it much harder than me.” And even: “... I think that I actually deserve all this.”
Brodsky was arrested and sent into exile as a 23-year-old youth, and returned as a 25-year-old established poet. He was given less than 7 years to remain in his homeland. Maturity has arrived, the time of belonging to one circle or another has passed. Anna Akhmatova died in March 1966. Even earlier, the “magic choir” of young poets that surrounded her began to disintegrate. Brodsky's position in official Soviet culture during these years can be compared with the position of Akhmatova in the 1920-1930s or Mandelstam in the period preceding 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 publishing house “Soviet Writer”. 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 publishing house. At some point, the regional committee and the KGB decided, in principle, to cross out this idea.” In 1966-67, 4 poems by 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 remained translations. “Such a poet does not exist 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: “Stopping in the Desert,” “The End of a Beautiful Era,” and “New Stanzas for Augusta.” 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 appearances and readings at the apartments of friends, Brodsky’s poems were distributed quite widely in samizdat (with numerous inevitable distortions - copying equipment did not exist in those years). Maybe they received a wider audience thanks to songs written by Alexander Mirzayan and Evgeny Klyachkin.
Outwardly, Brodsky’s life during these years was relatively calm, but the KGB did not ignore its “old client.” This was also facilitated by the fact that “the poet is becoming extremely popular with foreign journalists and Slavic scholars who come to Russia. They interview him, invite him to Western universities (naturally, the authorities do not give permission to leave), etc.” In addition to translations - work on which he took very seriously - Brodsky earned extra money in other ways available to a writer excluded from the “system”: as a freelance reviewer for the Aurora magazine, as occasional “hack jobs” at film studios, and even acted (as the 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 translation, primarily in English, Polish and Italian. In 1967, an unauthorized collection of translations “Joseph Brodsky” was published in England. Elegy to John Donne and Other Poems / Tr. by Nicholas Bethell." In 1970, “Stop in the Desert” was published in New York, 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.
On May 10, 1972, Brodsky was summoned to the OVIR and given a choice: immediate emigration or “hot days,” which was a metaphor in the mouth of the KGB that meant interrogations, prisons and mental hospitals. By that time, twice already - in the winter of 1964 - he had to undergo “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 he had written to prepare a samizdat collection of works. The result was the first and, until 1992, the only collected works of Joseph Brodsky - typewritten, of course. Before leaving, he managed to authorize all 4 volumes. Having chosen to emigrate, Brodsky tried to delay the day of departure, but the authorities wanted to get rid of the unwanted 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. 3 years later he wrote:
Blowing into the hollow pipe that is your fakir,
I walked through the ranks of Janissaries in green,
feeling the cold of their evil axes with your eggs,
like when entering water. And so, with salty
the taste of this water in my mouth,
I crossed the line...
Brodsky, who refused to dramatize the events of his life, recalled what followed 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 said, “How would you like to work at the University of Michigan?”
Two days after his arrival in Vienna, Brodsky went to meet W. Auden, who lived in Austria. “He treated me with extraordinary sympathy, immediately took me under his wing... undertook to introduce me to literary circles.” Together with Auden, Brodsky takes part in the International Poetry Festival in London at the end of June. Brodsky was familiar with Auden’s work from the time of his exile and called him, along with Akhmatova, a poet who had a decisive “ethical influence” on him. At the same time in London, Brodsky met Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell.
In July 1972, Brodsky moved to the USA and accepted the post of “guest poet” (poet-in-residence) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he taught, intermittently, until 1980. From that moment on, he completed incomplete 8 grades in the USSR Brodsky led the life of a university teacher over the next 24 years, holding professorships at a total of six American and British universities, including Columbia and New York University. He taught the history of Russian literature, Russian and world poetry, the theory of verse, and gave lectures and poetry readings at international literary festivals and forums, in libraries and universities in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, France, Sweden, and Italy.
Over the years, his health steadily deteriorated, and Brodsky, whose first heart attack occurred during his prison days in 1964, suffered four heart attacks in 1976, 1985 and 1994.
Brodsky’s parents submitted an application twelve times asking for permission to see their son; congressmen and prominent US cultural figures made the same request to the USSR government, 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 Moves Away, Like a Disgraced Servant...” (1985), “In Memory of the Father: Australia” (1989), and the essay “A Room and a Half” (1985) are dedicated to the parents.
In 1977, Brodsky accepted American citizenship, in 1980 he finally moved from Ann Arbor to New York, and subsequently 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 the Five Colleges 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 recording of the poet's trial. Since his arrival 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 his work in 1971/72. “Still Life”, “To a Tyrant”, “Odysseus to Telemachus”, “Song of Innocence, also known as Experience”, “Letters to a Roman Friend”, “Bobo’s Funeral” are written on this turning point. In the poem “1972,” begun in Russia and completed abroad, Brodsky gives the following formula: “Everything that I did, I did not for the sake of / fame in the era of cinema and radio, / but for the sake of my native speech, literature...”. The title of the collection - “Part of Speech” - is explained by the same message, lapidarily formulated in his Nobel lecture: “everyone, but a poet always knows that it is not language that is his instrument, but he is the means of language.”
In the 1970s and 1980s, Brodsky, as a rule, did not include poems included in earlier collections in his new books. An exception is the book “New Stanzas for Augusta”, published in 1983, composed of poems addressed to M. B. - Marina Basmanova. Years later, Brodsky spoke about this book: “This is the main work of my life, it seems to me that in the end “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 here it turned out to be a kind of poetic book with its own plot...” “New Stanzas for Augusta” became the only book of Brodsky’s poetry in Russian, compiled by the author himself.
Since 1972, Brodsky has been actively turning to essay writing, which he does not abandon until the end of his life. Three books of his essays are published in the United States: Less Than One in 1986, Watermark in 1992, and On Grief and Reason in 1995. Most of the essays, 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 Board of Book Critics recognized the collection “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 member of literary academies and honorary doctorates from various universities, and was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981.
The next large 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.” Forty-seven-year-old Brodsky began his Nobel speech, written in Russian, in which he formulated a personal and poetic credo:
“For a private person who has preferred this particularity all his life to some kind of 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 a democracy than a martyr or ruler of thoughts in a despotism - find himself suddenly on this podium there is great awkwardness and testing.”
In the 1990s, four books of new poems by Brodsky 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. The reduced emotionality, musical and metaphysical complexity - especially of 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. He is echoed almost verbatim by a critic from another camp: Dmitry Bykov in his essay about Brodsky after the opening: “I’m not going to repeat here the common platitudes that Brodsky is ‘cold’, ‘monotonous’, ‘inhuman’...”, further does just that: “In the huge corpus of Brodsky’s works there are strikingly few living texts... It is unlikely that today’s reader will finish reading “Procession”, “Farewell, Mademoiselle Veronica” or “Letter in a Bottle” without effort - although, undoubtedly, he cannot help but appreciate “Part speeches", "Twenty Sonnets to Mary Stuart" or "Conversation with a Celestial": the best texts of the still living, not yet petrified Brodsky, the cry of a living soul, feeling its ossification, glaciation, dying."
The last book, compiled during the poet’s lifetime, ends with the following lines:
And if you don’t expect thanks for the speed of light,
then the general, maybe, armor of non-existence
appreciates attempts to turn it into a sieve
and will thank me for the hole.
Brodsky wrote two published plays: “Marble”, 1982 and “Democracy”, 1990-92. He also translated the plays by English playwright Tom Stoppard “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” and Irishman Brendan Behan’s “Speaking of Rope.” Brodsky left a significant legacy as a translator of world poetry into Russian. Among the authors he translated, we can name, in particular, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Richard Wilbur, Euripides (from Medea), Konstantinos Cavafy, Constant Ildefons Galczynski, Czeslaw Milosz, Thomas Wenclow. Brodsky turned to translations into English much less often. First of all, these are, of course, self-translations, as well as translations from Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Wislawa 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, somewhere in 1976-77: “Sometimes it’s so strange for me to think that I can write whatever I want, and it will be published." Brodsky took full advantage of this opportunity. Since 1972, he has plunged headlong into social and literary life. In addition to the three above-mentioned books, essays , the number of articles, prefaces, letters to the editor, reviews of various collections he wrote exceeds one hundred, not counting numerous oral presentations at evenings of creativity of Russian and English-language 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. Kublanovsky, Y. Aleshkovsky, V. Uflyand, V. Gandelsman, A. Naiman, R. Derieva, 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. Ventslov, K. Azadovsky. “In addition, he tried to help so many people” - including through letters of recommendation - “that recently there has been a certain devaluation of his recommendations.”
The Library of Congress elects Brodsky as Poet Laureate of the United States for 1991-1992. In this honorable, but traditionally nominal capacity, he developed active efforts to promote poetry. His ideas led to the creation of the American Poetry and Literacy Project, which since 1993 has distributed more than a million free poetry books to schools, hotels, supermarkets, train stations, and more. According to William Wadsworth, who served as director of the American Academy of Poets from 1989 to 2001, Brodsky's inaugural address as Poet Laureate "caused a transformation in America's view of the role of poetry in its culture." Shortly before his death, Brodsky became interested in the idea of founding a Russian Academy in Rome. In the fall 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 poet's death. In 2000, the Joseph Brodsky Memorial Scholarship Fund sent the first Russian poet-scholar 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”, translated by George Cline and with a foreword by Auden. The second collection in English, A Part of Speech, was published in 1980; the third, “To Urania” (To Urania), - in 1988. In 1996, “So Forth” (So on) was published - the 4th collection of poems in English, prepared by Brodsky. The last two books included both translations and auto-translations from Russian, as well as poems written in English. Over the years, Brodsky trusted other translators less and less to translate his poems into English; at the same time, he increasingly wrote poetry in English, although, in his own words, he did not consider himself a bilingual poet and argued that “for me, when I write poetry in English, it’s more of 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.”
In the five-hundred-page collection of Brodsky's English-language poetry, published after the author's death, there are no translations made without his participation. But if his essayism 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 is that with the growth of Brodsky’s reputation as an essayist, attacks on Brodsky the poet and translator of his own poems intensified.” The range of assessments was very wide, from extremely negative to laudatory, and a critical bias probably prevailed. The role of Brodsky in English-language poetry, the translation of his poetry into English, and the relationship between the Russian and English languages in his work are discussed, in particular, in Daniel Weissbort’s essay-memoir “From Russian with love.”
Perestroika in the USSR and the concurrent awarding of the Nobel Prize to Brodsky broke the dam of silence in his homeland, and soon the publication of Brodsky’s poems and essays began to pour in. The first (besides several poems leaked to print in the 1960s) selection of Brodsky’s poems appeared in the December 1987 issue of Novy Mir. Until this 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 following the 1964 trial.
In 1992, a 4-volume collected works began to be published in Russia.
In 1995, Brodsky was awarded the title of honorary citizen of St. Petersburg.
Invitations to return to their homeland followed. Brodsky postponed his visit: he was embarrassed by the publicity of such an event, the celebration, and the media attention that would inevitably accompany his visit. My health didn’t allow it either. One of the last arguments was: “The best part of me is already there - my poems.”
General view of Brodsky's grave at the San Michele cemetery, Venice, 2004. People leave pebbles, 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 of 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. The spring semester began on Monday. After 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 the 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 Grace Episcopal Parish Church in Brooklyn Heights, not far from Brodsky's home. The next day, a temporary burial took place: the body in a coffin lined with metal was placed in a crypt in the cemetery at the Trinity Church Cemetery, on the banks of the Hudson, where it was kept until June 21, 1997. The proposal sent by telegram from State Duma deputy G.V. Starovoytova to bury the poet in St. Petersburg on Vasilievsky Island was rejected - “this would mean deciding for Brodsky the issue of returning to his homeland.” 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 Czeslaw Milosz, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Lev Losev, Anthony Hecht, Mark Strand, Rosanna Warren, Evgeniy Rein, Vladimir Uflyand, Thomas Venclova, Anatoly Naiman, Yakov Gordin, Maria Sozzani-Brodskaya and others. The music of Haydn, Mozart, and Purcell was played. In 1973, in the same cathedral, Brodsky was one of the organizers of the memorial service in memory of Wisten Auden.
Two weeks before his death, Brodsky bought himself a place in a small chapel in a New York cemetery next to Broadway (this was his last will). After this, he drew up a fairly detailed will. A list was also compiled of people 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. Shellberg, M. Vorobyova, L. Losev, V. Polukhina, T. Ventslova, who knew Brodsky closely, issued refutations. In particular, Shellberg and Vorobyova stated: “We would like 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 the testimony of Losev and Polukhina, Ilya Kutik was not present at the funeral of Brodsky that he described.
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 most. Besides, selfishly speaking, 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 Venetian authorities about a place in the ancient cemetery on the island of San Michele. The desire to be buried on San Michele is found in Brodsky’s 1974 comic message to Andrei Sergeev:
Although the unconscious body
equally decay everywhere,
devoid of native clay,
it is in the alluvium of the valley
Lombard rot is not averse. Ponezhe
its continent and the same worms.
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, it was planned to bury the poet’s body 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 burial. As a result, they decided to bury the body in the Protestant part of the cemetery. The resting place was marked by a modest wooden cross bearing the name Joseph Brodsky. A few years later, a tombstone by the artist Vladimir Radunsky was installed on the grave.