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| Brodsky | |
|---|---|
| Name | Joseph Brodsky |
| Birth date | 24 May 1940 |
| Birth place | Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Death date | 28 January 1996 |
| Death place | New York City, United States |
| Occupation | Poet, essayist, translator |
| Nationality | Soviet → American |
| Notable works | "A Part of Speech"; "Less Than One"; "Watermark" |
| Awards | Nobel Prize in Literature (1987); Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1987) |
Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky was a Russian-American poet and essayist whose work bridged Russian literature and Anglo-American literature. Renowned for his mastery of sonnet and for essays on figures such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, and Marina Tsvetaeva, he became a central literary figure after his exile from the Soviet Union and subsequent emigration to the United States. Brodsky's career encompassed roles in academia, translations, and public intellectual life in cities including New York City, Venice, and Moscow.
Born in Leningrad in 1940 in the midst of World War II, he spent early childhood in Arkhangelsk and later returned to Leningrad after the Siege of Leningrad. His family background connected to Arts and Jewish heritage, and his formal schooling included attendance at technical institutes and evening classes rather than conservatory study. Influenced by the libraries of Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, and translations of William Butler Yeats, he pursued largely autodidactic education in Russian literature, Italian literature, and English literature while working in factories and on research assignments at institutions such as the Leningrad State University archives.
Brodsky began publishing poetry in samizdat and small periodicals influenced by Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Osip Mandelstam. His style combined formal metrical techniques—particularly sonnet forms and blank verse—with intertextual references to John Milton, Dante Alighieri, and T. S. Eliot. Critics compared his verbal precision to Boris Pasternak and his aphoristic essays to Vladimir Nabokov; translators such as George L. Kline and David McDuff rendered his work into English language contexts. Brodsky cultivated an erudite persona evident in lectures at institutions like Harvard University, Princeton University, and Wesleyan University.
Major collections include Poems and translations leading to books such as "A Part of Speech", "Less Than One", and essay collections like "Watermark" which meditates on Venice. Recurring themes are exile and belonging, mortality and time, the role of the poet in society, and dialogues with predecessors including Anna Akhmatova, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and John Donne. His translations and essays engaged with William Shakespeare plays and the sonneteers such as Petrarch, while poems often invoked landscapes of St. Petersburg, Venice, and New York City. Brodsky's oeuvre spans lyric sequences, dramatic monologues, and long narrative poems attending to figures like Nikolai Gogol and events such as the Great Patriotic War.
Brodsky received international recognition culminating in the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987 and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1987 for "A Part of Speech". Other honors included fellowships and visiting professorships at University of Michigan, Columbia University, and Mount Holyoke College, as well as awards from institutions such as the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. His lectures and readings at venues like The New York Public Library and appearances on broadcasts connected him with audiences across Europe and North America.
Critical of Soviet cultural policy and accused of "parasitism" in a widely publicized 1964 trial in Leningrad, he was sentenced to internal exile before being expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and stripped of citizenship. After exile he settled in Vienna briefly and then in New York City, where he became a naturalized citizen of the United States and engaged with émigré circles including figures from Russian emigration and Western intellectuals. He wrote essays on liberty and responsibility that addressed events like the dissident movement and commented on leaders such as Mikhail Gorbachev and institutions like Human Rights Watch.
Brodsky maintained friendships and rivalries with poets and critics including Anna Akhmatova, Andrei Voznesensky, contemporaries—noting: per rules, avoid linking variants—W. H. Auden, Seamus Heaney, and translators such as George L. Kline. He formed significant relationships with family members and partners while teaching at Columbia University and living in Brooklyn. Personal correspondences with figures such as Marina Basmanova and exchanges with editors at The New York Review of Books illustrate his social networks across Europe and America.
Brodsky's legacy endures through continued translations, scholarly studies at centers like the Hoover Institution and university programs in Slavic studies, and influence on poets including contemporary writers—avoid linking to forbidden constructs—Billy Collins, Adrienne Rich, and W. S. Merwin. His arrest and exile figure in histories of Soviet dissidence and his lectures on Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri inform curricula worldwide. Annual readings, translated editions, and archival collections at institutions such as the Library of Congress and Yale University preserve manuscripts and correspondence, securing Brodsky's place among twentieth-century poets.
Category:Russian poets Category:American poets