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
california germany literature
When Thomas Mann arrived in California from Germany, they asked him about German literature. And he said, 'German literature is where I am.' It's really a bit grand, but if a German can afford it, I can afford it.
russia use interest
What's happening in Russia is devoid of autobiographical interest for me. Maybe it's egocentric. Whatever it is, feel free to use it.
mud slides want
I don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.
finding-yourself trying ridiculous
I'm not trying to be ridiculous or funny, but it was rather pleasant to find yourself in isolation, in solitary.
political lows conversation
I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.
principles nerves
I don't have principles. I have nerves.
opportunity civilization west
In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.
miserable i-can ifs
If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.
responsibility decision literature
It's partly the fault of the institutions of education. But it's partly the decision to be relieved of responsibility. Literature is simply the most focused form of the demands on the evolution of the species. It imposes a certain responsibility, moral, ethical and esthetic responsibility, and the species simply doesn't want to oblige.
jew
I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
reading perspective people
Literature sort of makes your daily operation, your daily conduct, the management of your affairs in the society a bit more complex. And it puts what you do in perspective, and people don't like to see themselves or their activities in perspective. They don't feel quite comfortable with that. Nobody wants to acknowledge the insignificance of his life, and that is very often the net result of reading a poem.
should-have wrecks apartment
If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck.
boys cities exhilarating-feeling
It's rather an exhilarating feeling. It's 6 or 7 when you get up and go out into the fields wearing your Wellingtons or high boots. You know that at this very hour half the nation does the same thing, which gives you, with the benefit of hindsight, a satisfaction in doing those things, too, a knowledge, a sense of the nation. I was a city boy until then.
writing views people
As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer's patriotism is not oaths from a high platform, but how he writes in the language of the people among whom he lives .