Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky; 24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996) was a Russian and American poet and essayist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 May 1940
CountryUnited States of America
literature form treason
Bad literature is a form of treason.
education inspiration book
Man is what he reads.
journey doctrine departure
For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey.
boys opening-up skulls
I had this fantasy of becoming a neurosurgeon. You know, the normal Jewish boy fantasy, but I wanted to be a neurosurgeon for some reason. So I started in this unpleasant way. I was an assistant to the coroner, opening up corpses, taking the innards out, opening skulls, taking the brains out.
fake-people life-is-hard masters
After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.
despair form snobbery
Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.
evil political eating
Russian talk of political evil is as natural as eating ...
reading writing thinking
When I'm not writing or reading, I'm thinking about both.
government serious consideration
The government, the state, they're just objects of jokes rather than serious consideration. I can't possibly take them seriously.
uprising glowing firsts
This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.
way caught proletariat
I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.
faster surface bottom
In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface.
writing democracy want
I didn't want to be either the cre`me de la cre`me or a martyr. I'd rather be a novelty, especially in a democracy that doesn't understand the language I write in.
language ancient states
A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state.