Joseph Brodsky

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Iosif Brodsky (24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996), a Russian poet and essayist, was a member of the Iosif Brodsky (24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996). Brodsky, who was born in Leningrad in 1940, was revolted by Soviet authorities and was barred ("strongly advised" to emigrate) from the Soviet Union in 1972, and settled in the United States with the support of W. H.

Auden and others are among Auden's supporters.

He taught at Mount Holyoke College and later at universities such as Yale, Columbia, Cambridge, and Michigan. "For an all-embracing authorship infused with wisdom and poetic ferocity," Brodsky was given the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987.

Brodsky, the only modern Russian poet whose body of work has already been recognized with the honorary title of a canonized masterpiece, according to Professor Andrey Ranchin of Moscow State University: "Brodsky's literary canonization is an extraordinary phenomenon.

No other modern Russian writer has been honoured as the author of such a number of memoir books; no other has had so many conferences devoted to them.

Early years

In Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), Brodsky was born into a Russian Jewish family. Joseph Bekhor Shor, a descendant of a prominent and ancient rabbinic family, is his direct male descendant. Aleksandr Brodsky, his father, a Soviet Navy photographer, and Maria Volpert Brodskaya, a licensed interpreter whose work often helped the family. They lived in communal apartments, homeless, and were marginalized due to their Jewish identity. Brodsky survived the Siege of Leningrad, where he and his parents practically died of starvation; one aunt did die of hunger. He recovered after suffering from a variety of health conditions caused by the siege. Brodsky said that several of his teachers were anti-Semitic and that he felt like a dissident from an early age. "I began to loove Lenin even when I was in the first grade, not necessarily because of his political philosophy or practice... but because of his omnipresent photographs."

Brodsky, a young student, was "an unruly boy" known for his misdeeds during classes. Brodsky left school and attempted to join the School of Submariners without success at fifteen. He went back to work as a milling machine operator. He worked at the Kresty Prison, cutting and sewing bodies later in life after deciding to become a physician. He later worked in hospitals, in a ship's boiler room, and on geological expeditions. Brodsky was also enrolling in a scheme of self-education at the same time. He learned Polish so he could translate poets like Czesz Miosz and English into Polish and English so he could translate John Donne. On the way, he developed a deep interest in classical philosophy, faith, mythology, and English and American poetry.

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Career and family

Brodsky began writing his own poetry and releasing literary translations in 1955. He circulated them in secrecy, and several were distributed in Sintaksis, an underground journal (Syntax), and others were announced by the underground journal Sintaksis (Syntax). His writings were apolitical. He was already well-known in literary circles by 1958 for his poems "The Jewish cemetery near Leningrad" and "Pilgrims." When asked when he first felt called to poetry, he recalled, "I went into a bookstore in 1959, in Yakutsk, when walking in that terrible city." I snagged a copy of Baratynsky's poems. I had nothing to read at the time. I read the book and knew what I needed to do in life. Or at least became ecstatic. So, in a sense, Evgeny Abramovich Baratynsky is "probably responsible." "We bounced around the Leningrad Province examining kilometers of canals, checking their embankments, which looked awful." Ludmila Shtern, a brother of a geologist's assistant, recalled working on an irrigation project. They were falling down and breaking apart, and had all sorts of strange things growing in them... I was fortunate to hear the poems "The Hills" and "You Will Gallop in the Dark" during these trips, but not in the Dark. As we were heading to Tikhvin, Brodsky read them out loud in two train cars to me.

The young Brodsky met Anna Akhmatova, one of the leading poets of the silver age in 1960. She praised his profession and promised to be his mentor, and she would continue to serve as his mentor. Anna Akhmatova, a young painter from an established artistic family who was drawing Akhmatova's portrait in 1962, introduced him to Marina Basmanova, a young painter from Leningrad. The two began a friendship, but Brodsky's then close friend and colleague, Dmitri Bobyshev, fell in love with Basmanova. The woman was spotted immediately as Bobyshev began to investigate Brodsky; the police jumped into action; Bobyshev was jailed for denouncing him. Marina Basmanova devoted a lot of love poetry to Brodsky:

A Leningrad newspaper, "pornographic and anti-Soviet," Brodsky's poetry was dubbed "pornographic and anti-Soviet" in 1963. His papers were confiscated, he was interrogated, twice put in a mental hospital, and then arrested. In a 1964 murder trial, he was charged with social parasitism by the Soviet authorities, finding that his collection of odd jobs and his position as a poet were not appropriate to society. He was described as "a pseudo-poet in velveteen trousers" who failed to fulfill his "constitutional responsibility to work diligently for the good of the motherland. "Who has identified you as a writer?" the trial judge wondered. Who has put you in the ranks of poets? "Who enrolled me in the ranks of the human race?" Brodsky replied, "No one."

Brodsky was sentenced to five years of hard labour and 18 months on a farm in the village of Norenskaya, 350 miles from Leningrad, with the intention of "parasitism" Brodsky. He rented his own small cottage, but although it was without plumbing or central heating, having one's own, private space was taken to be a great luxury at the time. Basmanova, Bobyshev, and Brodsky's mother, among others, were among others present in the visit. He wrote on his typewriter, chopped wood, hauled manure, and read his anthologies of English and American poetry at night, which included a lot of W. H. Auden and Robert Frost. Though confinement in the mental hospital and the trial were troubling, Brodsky's close friend and biographer Lev Loseff writes that the 18 months in the Arctic were among the best times of Brodsky's life. Anna Akhmatova, Brodsky's mentor, scoffed the KGB's shortsightedness. "They're making a biography for our red-haired friend." "She wrote, "She said, "I am convinced" she said. "It's as if he'd recruited them to do it on purpose."

After widespread Soviet and international cultural figures' demonstrations in 1965, Brodsky's term was commuted (see Alexandra Raskina). "Frida Vigdorova's Transcript of Joseph Brodsky's Trial: Myths and Reality" Journal of Modern Russian History and Historiography, 7 (2014), 144–180), Vol. 1: "Intuitive Aspect, Evgeny Evtushenko, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as Akhmatova. Brodsky became a cause célèbre in the West as a result of a unethical transcription of trial minutes smuggled out of the country, making him a symbol of cultural resistance in a totalitarian society, much like his mentor, Akhmatova.

Andrei was born on October 8, 1967, and Basmanova broke off the family immediately after. Andrei was registered under Basmanova's surname because Brodsky did not want his son to be exposed to the political strifes that he endured. Marina Basmanova was threatened by the Soviet authorities, who barred her from marrying Brodsky or joining him when he was exiled from the country. Brodsky continued to dedicate love poems to Basmanova after the birth of their son. Brodsky wrote his last poem to "M.B." in 1989. "In Leningrad, the narrator describes himself recalling their lives:

Brodsky returned to Leningrad in December 1965 and went on to write for the next seven years, with some of his books converting into German, French, and English, as well as published elsewhere. In 1965, Inter-Language Literary Associates in Washington, Washington, published a book entitled "Verses and Poems. Elegy to John Donne and Other Poems, published in London, and Chekhov Publishing in New York published A Stop in the Desert in 1970. Only four of his poems were published in Leningrad anthologies in 1966 and 1967, the bulk of his writing was not published outside of the Soviet Union or circulated in secrecy (samizdat) until 1987. He was refused admission for traveling because of his poetry and his Jewish roots. The authorities hired psychologist Andrei Snezhnevsky, a leading promoter of the widely regarded pseudo-medical diagnosis of "paranoid reformist delusion," when Brodsky was being considered for exile in 1972. The state was able to lock up dissenters in psychiatric hospitals indefinitely thanks to this political device. Brodsky was "sluggishly progressing schizophrenia," without knowing him personally, and Snezhnevsky said he was "not a valuable person and could not be discharged." Brodsky was sent twice by Israel in 1971. When called to the Ministry of Interior in 1972 and asked why he had not accepted, he said he wanted to stay in the country. He was arrested, took his papers, and was flying to Vienna, Austria, within ten days. Basmanova never returned to Russia and never saw him again. "The Last Judgement is the Last Judgement," Brodsky later wrote, but a human being who lived in Russia must be admitted without hesitation into Paradise.

He met Carl Ray Proffer and Auden in Austria, who facilitated Brodsky's transit to the United States and was instrumental in Brodsky's career. Proffer, a professor at the University of Michigan and one of Ardis Publishers' co-founders, became Brodsky's Russian publisher from this point onward. Brodsky wrote a post in Vienna that recalled his landing.

Although Brodsky was welcomed back to his country after the Soviet Union's demise, he never returned to his country.

Brodsky settled in Ann Arbor, with the support of writers Auden and Proffer, and became poet-in-residence at the University of Michigan for a year. Brodsky went on to become a visiting professor at Queens College (1973–74), Smith College, Columbia University, and Cambridge University, later returning to the University of Michigan (1974–80). At Mount Holyoke College, he was the Andrew Mellon Professor of Literature and Five College Professor of Literature. Brodsky was given the Doctor of Letters degree at Yale University in 1978, and he was inducted as a member of the American Academy and Institute of Letters on May 23, 1979. In 1980, he moved to Greenwich Village in New York, where he was given the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "genius" award in 1981. He was also a winner of The International Center in New York for Excellence. Less Than One's collection of essays won the National Book Critics Award for Criticism in 1986, and he was given an honorary doctorate of literature from Oxford University.

He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987, becoming the fifth Russian-born writer to do so. "You are an American citizen who is receiving the Prize for Russian-language poetry," he said in an interview.

Who are you, an American or a Russian?"

"I'm Jewish; an English essayist; and, of course, an American citizen," he replied. The Academy said they had been rewarded for his "all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic vigor." It also said that his writing is "rich and vital," which is characterized by "an unprecedented breadth in time and space." It was "a big step for me and a small step for mankind," he joked. The award coincided with the first legal publication in Russia of Brodsky's poetry as an exilé.

Brodsky, the United States' Poet Laureate, was born in 1991. Brodsky was "the open-ended interest in American life" that immigrants have inherited, according to the Librarian of Congress. This is a reminder that so much of American creativity comes from people who were not born in America." In Poetry Review, his inaugural address was included. Brodsky earned an honorary degree from the University of Silesia, Poland, and was an honorary member of the International Academy of Science. In 1995, Gleb Uspensky, a senior editor at Valiant Press, asked Brodsky to return to Russia for a tour, but he refused. Brodsky's life was viewed with increasing resistance by those who perceived him as a "fortune maker" for the last ten years. He was a highly respected scholar who was on first name with many large publishing companies and was linked to many famous figures of American literature. Many Russian intellectuals in both Russia and America thought his fame was unshakeable, and that a nod from him could guarantee them a book contract, a teaching position, or a scholarship, according to his friend, who was pleasantly surprised that a glittering career was in his gift. A helping hand or a refusal of a petition for assistance may cause a riot in Russian literary circles, which Shtern says became personal at times. His success as a lauded émigré and Nobel Prize winner angered critics and stoked resentment, as well as the political aspects, which, she claims, made him "deathly tired" of it all coming to an end.

Brodsky married Maria Sozzani, a young woman with a Russian-Italian origin, in 1990; they had one daughter, Anna Brodsky, who was born in 1993.

Marina Basmanova lived in fear of the Soviet authorities before the 1991 break of the Soviet Union; only after that was their son Andrei Basmanov allowed to join his father in New York. Brodsky invited Andrei to visit him in New York for three months, and the two father-son relationship continued until Brodsky's death. Andrei married in the 1990s and had three children, some of whom were recognized and rewarded by Brodsky as his grandchildren; Marina Basmanova, Andrei, and Brodsky's grandchildren all live in Saint Petersburg; Brodsky's grandchildren are also in Saint Petersburg. In a Brodsky film, Andrei gave readings of his father's poetry. Brodsky's poems dedicated to Marina Basmanova, which were published between 1961 and 1982, are included in the film.

Brodsky died of a heart attack at his apartment in Brooklyn Heights, a borough of New York City, on January 28, 1996. He had open-heart surgery in 1979 and then two bypass surgeries, but he was still in poor health following that date. He was buried in a non-Catholic section of the Isola di San Michele cemetery in Venice, Italy, as well as Ezra Pound and Igor Stravinsky's resting place. In 1997, a plaque was unveiled in St. Petersburg, with his portrait in relief and the words "In this house from 1940 to 1972 lived the great Russian poet Iosif Brodsky." In his collection The Prodigal, Brodsky's close friend, Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, commemorated him.

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Awards and honors

• 1978 – Honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, Yale University
• 1979 – Fellowship of American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
• 1981 – John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation award
• 1986 – Honorary doctorate of literature from Oxford University
• The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence
• 1986 – National Book Critics Award for Criticism, for Less Than One (essay collection)
• 1987 – Nobel Prize
• 1989 – Honorary doctorate from the University of Essex
• 1989 – Honorary degree from Dartmouth College
• 1991 – honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Humanities at Uppsala University, Sweden
• 1991 – United States Poet Laureate
• 1991 – Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath Award
• 1993 – Honorary degree from the University of Silesia in Poland
• Honorary member of the International Academy of Science, Munich