Brodsky's year of birth. Brodsky I.A. The main dates of life and creativity. The further fate of the poet

When Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1987, the climate in the Soviet Union had already begun to change. The country was gradually opening up to the world, but it still could not come to terms with the fact that a Russian emigrant was awarded such a high prize. And Brodsky himself, when asked if he misses his homeland, answered: “The best part of me is already there - my poetry.”

Joseph Brodsky was born on May 24, 1940 in Leningrad. His father, Alexander Ivanovich Brodsky, graduated from the Faculty of Geography Leningrad University and the School of Red Journalists. During the war he worked as a photojournalist, but in 1950 he was demobilized from Soviet army, in connection with the Jewish "purge". After that the father Brodsky worked for various newspapers. His mother, Maria Moiseevna Volpert, worked as an accountant all her life.

Joseph Brodsky left school after the 8th grade, because he could not come to terms with the point of view imposed by Soviet teachers. Since he could not fight the system at that time, he simply decided to stay on the sidelines: “I burn my uniform and break my saber,” as he writes Brodsky Later. The future poet decided to engage in self-education and independently learned English and Polish. Since 15 years Joseph Brodsky starts working at a factory, but soon quits and changes professions one after another.

Brodsky came to poetry in 1957. Then he first began to write poetry and read them publicly. While Joseph Brodsky surprised his audience, first of all, with the unusual form and intonation of his poems. But, more importantly, he rediscovered a certain spirituality in Russian poetry: "God is in each of us." Brodsky meets Anna Akhmatova, who highly appreciates the talent of the young poet; she becomes a mentor of sorts to him. The official literary environment, of course, Joseph Brodsky does not accept, but among the underground he becomes a rising star, although he has never been attributed to either poetic groups or dissidents.

Joseph Brodsky (photographer: Alexander Brodsky, Leningrad, 1958)

with work at Brodsky at that time it was difficult, because of all his poems, only 11 were printed, and even then, some in self-publishing houses. He was helped a lot by friends, with whom he traveled almost the entire union. But the absence permanent job and the specifics of his poetry are of interest to the KGB. Since 1959, Joseph Brodsky repeatedly invited for interrogation. He was subjected to three brief arrests. Without wanting it myself Brodsky finds himself at the very center of the struggle against the intelligentsia. In 1963, he even tries to hide in a psychiatric clinic, but can not stand the situation.

February 12, 1964 Joseph Brodsky arrested in Leningrad. He gets to the center of the process to combat parasitism. Articles began to appear in the press under the title: “Near-literary drone”, “The parasite is paid tribute” and others. And on March 13, 1964, the trial of the poet took place. Behind Joseph Brodsky Akhmatova, Marshak, Shostakovich, Sartre stood up, and Frida Vigdorova managed to write down the whole process verbatim. During the trial, Anna Akhmatova said: “What a biography they make for our redhead!”, And she turned out to be right. Here is a small selection of the notes in the courtroom:

"Judge: In general, what is your specialty?

Brodsky: Poet. Poet translator.

Judge: And who admitted that you are a poet? Who ranked you among the poets?

Brodsky: Nobody. (No call). And who ranked me among the human race?

Judge: Did you learn this?

Brodsky: For what?

Judge: To be a poet? They didn't try to graduate from the university where they cook... where they teach...

Brodsky: I didn't think that this comes from education.

Judge: What about?

Brodsky: I think this... (bewildered)... from God..."

Trial of a poet

Through this process Joseph Brodsky became known abroad, and at home his phrases literally became common nouns. But apart from fame, Brodsky was awarded a five-year exile in the Arkhangelsk region with mandatory involvement in physical labor. Thanks to the protests of the world community Brodsky he stayed there for only a year, and already in 1965 he was released with an even stronger worldview.

After the link Brodsky wrote many magnificent works (the cycle “Songs of a Happy Winter”, “Farewell Ode”, “Winter has come and everyone who could fly ...”, “Letter in a Bottle”, “New Stanzas for August”, “Two Hours in a Tank” ...). Brodsky begins to study English-language poetry in the original, as well as other works of world literature.

Poetry Joseph Brodsky, as before, no one published, and this lack of demand was strongly reflected in the work of the poet. Moreover, upon his return to Leningrad, his registration in a communal apartment was taken away from him and for a long time they did not want to register. Only thanks to the help of Dmitry Shostakovich, Brodsky still allowed to settle in his native city. But the calm did not last long. In the same year, a collection of poems was published in the USA Brodsky"Poems and Poems", and five years later, in 1970 - "Stop in the Desert". Even before the emigration, the main set of poems Joseph Brodsky was published abroad thanks to the help of his friends. In Russia, the four-volume collection of his works was never allowed to print.

Then Brodsky makes a difficult decision for himself - to leave his native country. He writes to Brezhnev these words: "in the flesh or on paper: ... even if my people do not need my body, my soul will still be useful to them ...". And, June 4, 1972 flies from the Soviet Union. The first destination was Vienna, where he was met by an old friend, the publisher Karl Proffer. Then he met W. H. Auden, communication with which became an important page for the poet in his life. This year Joseph Brodsky settled in New York for a long time.

The land of opportunity met him with open arms and immediately gave him the opportunity to teach at various universities (such as the University of Michigan, South Hadley Mount Holyoke College, Ann Arbor and others). Gradually, new collections of his poems begin to appear already with translation into English (“Selected Poems”, New York, 1973). In this he is greatly helped by Karl Proffer, the head of the Ardis publishing house, which publishes poetry collections. Joseph Brodsky.

In 1978 Joseph Brodsky undergoes the first operation on the heart, after which no new poems appear for a whole year. Despite good knowledge of English, Brodsky it is difficult to live in a new language environment. In 1980 Brodsky receives American citizenship. The poet still writes poetry only in Russian. On the other hand, he begins to master new genres for himself: essays and literary criticism. In these genres Brodsky begins to work in English, and soon, in 1986, the first collection of his prose "Less Than One: Selected Essays" is published, which immediately receives a literary award. Many of his essays were autobiographical and dealt with the life of a particular generation. He is published in The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, participates in conferences, symposiums and travels a lot around the world, which also greatly affects the content of his poems.

Thanks to English prose Joseph Brodsky turns from a Russian emigrant poet into a world-famous writer. But, he still believes that it is poetry that has some incredible saving power for all mankind, and fights to ensure that "collections of poems lie by the bed next to aspirin and the Bible." Joseph Brodsky repeatedly emphasized that he did not consider poetry higher or better than prose, he simply saw his purpose only in writing poetry. His literary language constantly changing under the influence of time, and events taking place in the world directly affect their subject matter.

Brodsky's parents tried for a long time to get permission to travel abroad, but they did not wait for him. Not seeing their son, they die in their native Leningrad. For the poet, this becomes a terrible blow, first of all, a blow to his native roots. These tragic notes will remain in the poet's work until the very end.

1987 is becoming a "holiday of justice", according to L. Losev. Creation Joseph Brodsky in a sense, he returns to his homeland - for the first time his poems are published in the "New World". But the most important for Brodsky this year is the awarding of the Nobel Prize to him. At the award ceremony, he reads his brilliant "Nobel Lecture":

“The writer of a poem writes it, first of all, because versification is a colossal accelerator of consciousness, thinking, worldview, having experienced this acceleration once, a person is no longer able to refuse to repeat this experience, he falls into dependence on this process, as they fall into dependence on drugs or alcohol. A person who is in such a dependence on language, I believe, is called a poet. He also talks about the importance of language for a poet: "Perhaps the most sacred thing we have is our language ...".

After that creativity Joseph Brodsky begins to arouse scientific interest. The first works on his poetics begin to appear. On Joseph Brodsky many various awards are showered, but only for his English-language work. He is honored with the title of "Poet Laureate of the United States" 1991-1992. In 1990 Brodsky married Maria Sozzani, an Italian aristocrat, Russian on her mother's side. In 1993, their daughter Anna was born.

Joseph Brodsky with his wife

Joseph Brodsky is undergoing his second heart surgery, and is awaiting a third. But the poet does not give up his work, but on the contrary, anticipating his death, he tries to tell this world as much as possible. Collections of essays Joseph Brodsky begin to appear in Russia: the first of them - "Edification", "Autumn Cry of the Hawk", "Poems".

Joseph Brodsky died on the night of January 27-28, 1996 in New York. By the will of the poet himself, his last poetry book"Landscape with a Flood" completes the poem with the lines:

“I was accused of everything except the weather ...

General, maybe non-existence armor

appreciates attempts to turn it into a sieve

and thank me for the hole.”

Joseph Brodsky He once said: “All my poems, more or less, are about the same thing - about time. About what time does to a person. Life threw the poet himself to different places, but time made its own, elevating him to the rank of classics of literature. May 24, 2015 Joseph Brodsky could have turned 75 years old, but fate decreed otherwise. But even in a short 55 years, he managed to say a lot with his poems.

“What a biography, however, they make our redhead!” - Anna Akhmatova joked sadly in the midst of litigation over Joseph Brodsky. Except for the loud court controversial fate prepared for the poet a link to the North and the Nobel Prize, incomplete eight classes of education and a career as a university professor, 24 years outside his native language environment and the discovery of new opportunities for 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. This is a huge cultural conglomerate, but without bad taste, without a hodgepodge. An amazing sense of proportion, classical facades breathe peace. And all this affects you, makes you strive for order in life, although you are aware 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 to Cherepovets for evacuation, where they lived until 1944. Volpert served as an interpreter 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 blockade of Leningrad. He returned to his family only in 1948 and continued to serve as head of the photographic laboratory of the Central Naval Museum. Joseph Brodsky recalled walks around the museum as a child all his life: “In general, in relation to navy quite a wonderful feeling. I don’t know where they came from, but here is childhood, and father, and hometown ... As I remember the Naval Museum, St. Andrew's flag is a blue cross on a white cloth ... There is no better flag in the world!

Joseph often changed schools; was unsuccessful and his attempt to enter after the seventh grade in maritime school. 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 the morgue, a stoker, a photographer. Finally, he joined a group of geologists and participated in expeditions for several years, during one of which he discovered a small deposit of uranium at Far East. At the same time, the future poet was actively engaged in self-education, became interested in literature. The poems of Yevgeny 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 spoke 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. Grasping the foot of the microphone with both hands and bringing it close to his very mouth, he loudly and burrily, shaking his head in time with the rhythm of the verses, read:
Everyone has their own shrine!
Everyone has their own coffin!
There was noise! Some shout:
- What does poetry have to do with it?
- Down with him!
Others yell:
- Brodsky, more!

Then Brodsky began to communicate with the poet Yevgeny Rein. In 1961, Rhine introduced Joseph to Anna Akhmatova. Although the influence of Marina Tsvetaeva, whose work he first became acquainted with in the early 1960s, is usually noticed in Brodsky's poetry, it was Akhmatova who became his full-time critic and teacher. The poet Lev Losev wrote: “Akhmatova’s phrase “You yourself do not understand what you wrote!” after reading "Great Elegy to John Donne" entered Brodsky's personal myth as a moment of initiation".

Judgment and World Glory

In 1963, after the speech at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the first secretary of the Central Committee, Nikita Khrushchev, among the youth began to eradicate "couch potatoes, moral cripples and whiners" writing on "Bird jargon of idlers and half-educated". The target was also Joseph Brodsky, who by this time had been detained twice. law enforcement: for the first time for the publication in the handwritten journal "Syntax", the second - on the denunciation of a friend. He himself did not like to recall those events, because he believed: the poet's biography is only "in his vowels and hissing, in his 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: binocl.cc

In the newspaper "Vecherny Leningrad" dated November 29, 1963, an article appeared "Near-literary drone", the authors of which branded Brodsky, quoting not his poems 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, publishing houses ordered translations from him. The whole world learned about the details of the process thanks to the Moscow journalist Frida Vigdorova, who was present in the courtroom. Vigdorova's notes were sent to the West and got into the press.

Judge: What are you doing?
Brodsky: I write poetry. I'm translating. I believe…
Judge: No "I guess." Stay right! Don't lean against the walls!<...>Do you have a permanent job?
Brodsky: I thought it was a permanent job.
Judge: Answer accurately!
Brodsky: I wrote poetry! I thought they would be printed. I believe…
Judge: We are not interested in "I suppose." Tell me why didn't you work?
Brodsky: I worked. I wrote poetry.
Judge: We are not interested...

The defense witnesses were the poet Natalya Grudinina and prominent Leningrad philologists and translators Yefim Etkind and Vladimir Admoni. They tried to convince the court that literary work cannot be equated with parasitism, and the translations published by Brodsky were made to a high standard. professional level. Witnesses for the prosecution were not familiar with Brodsky and his work: among them were the 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 verdict was severe: deportation from Leningrad for five years with mandatory involvement in labor.

Brodsky settled in the village of Norenskaya, Arkhangelsk region. He worked on a state farm, free time I read a lot, became interested in English poetry and began to learn English. Frida Vigdorova and the writer Lydia Chukovskaya petitioned for the early return of the poet 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” 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 knowledge of the author on the basis of samizdat materials sent to the West. The next book, "Stop in the Desert", was published in New York in 1970 - it is considered the first authorized publication of Brodsky. After the 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 at home, only his children's poems were printed, sometimes they gave orders for translations of poetry or literary processing of dubbing for films. At the same time, the circle of foreign Slavists, journalists and publishers with whom Brodsky communicated personally and by correspondence became wider and wider. In May 1972, he was summoned to the OVIR and offered to leave the country in order to avoid new persecution. Usually, paperwork to leave the Soviet Union took from six months to a year, but a visa for Brodsky was issued in 12 days. On June 4, 1972, Joseph Brodsky flew to Vienna. His parents, friends, former lover Marianna Basmanova remained in Leningrad, to whom almost all love lyrics Brodsky, and their son.

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. Photo: biography.wikireading.ru

In Vienna, the poet was met by the American publisher Karl Proffer. Under his patronage, Brodsky was offered a place at the University of Michigan. The position was called poet-in-residence (literally: "a poet in the presence") and involved communication with students as a guest writer. In 1977, Brodsky received American citizenship. During his lifetime, five poetry collections 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-speaking essayist and, of course, an American citizen". The poems included in the collections "Part of Speech" (1977) and "Urania" (1987) became an example of his mature Russian-language creativity. 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 this way.

In 1987 Joseph Brodsky was awarded Nobel Prize in Literature with the wording "For a comprehensive literary activity, distinguished by clarity of thought and poetic intensity." In 1991, Brodsky took over as 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 public. In 1990, the poet married an Italian with Russian roots, Maria Sozzani, but their happy union was only five and a half years away.

In January 1996, Joseph Brodsky died. He was buried in one of his favorite cities - Venice, in an ancient cemetery on the island of San Michele.

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 describe the features of the great poet, whose life was full of all sorts of adventures.

So in front of you short biography Joseph Brodsky ().

Biography of Brodsky

Joseph Aleksandrovich Brodsky was born on May 24, 1940 in. His father, Alexander Ivanovich, was a military photojournalist.

IN postwar period he worked as a reporter and photographer for various publishing houses. Mother, Maria Moiseevna, was an accountant.

Childhood and youth

IN early years In his biography, Joseph Brodsky experienced all the horrors of the blockade 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, in connection with which Joseph dropped out of school and began working at the 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 the morgue, but soon the medical career ceased to interest him.

Then Brodsky had to change many professions.

During this period of biography, he was constantly engaged in reading in huge quantities. In particular, he was very fond of poetry and philosophy.

There was even an episode in his life when, together with like-minded people, he wanted to hijack a plane in order to leave the limits. 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 was 21 years old, he was lucky to meet Anna Akhmatova (see), who at that time was experiencing serious harassment from the authorities and many colleagues in the shop.

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 publish his works.

In the winter of 1960, Joseph Brodsky took part in the "Poet Tournament". 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 tense. As a result, in 1964, letters from “dissatisfied citizens” condemning the poet’s work were published in the Vecherny Leningrad newspaper.

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 was very painfully worried about everything that happened 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 still heard endless criticism against him. At the same time, he broke up with his girlfriend Marina Basmanova, after which his mental state deteriorated markedly.

All this led Brodsky to attempt suicide, which, fortunately, ended in failure.

In 1970, another poem "Don't leave the room" came out from under his pen. It talked about what place a person plays in political system THE USSR.

Meanwhile, the persecution continued, and in 1972 Brodsky had to make a choice: go to a psychiatric hospital or leave Soviet Union.

According to the poet, he had already once been treated in a mental hospital, the stay in which 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.

During his stay abroad, he taught Russian literature at American universities, and also studied translation activities. So, for example, Brodsky translated poems into English.

In 1987, a landmark event took place in Brodsky's biography. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

When he came to power in the USSR, Brodsky's works began to be published in different 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, whom he immediately fell in love with. 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 the same year.

In 1990, Brodsky met Maria Sozzanni. 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, their daughter Anna was born.

Brodsky with his wife Maria Sozzanni 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 ended bad habit he couldn't. When doctors once again encouraged him to quit smoking, he said the following phrase: "Life is wonderful precisely because there are no guarantees, no, never."

In many photographs of Joseph Brodsky you can see with different 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. It is appropriate to quote Mikhail Shemyakin, Vysotsky's closest friend (see):

“In New York, Volodya (Vysotsky) met Brodsky, who presented him with a collection of his poems with a dedication: “To the great Russian poet Vladimir Vysotsky.” It should be noted that Volodya was very complex due to the fact that recognized Soviet poets treated his poems condescendingly, stating that it was bad taste to rhyme “stick out” and “shout”. 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, together with partners, opened the Russian Samovar restaurant. Soon the institution became one of the cultural centers 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 look after their son. The parents themselves tried more than 10 times to get permission to travel to America, but this did not give any results.

During the biography of 1964-1994. Joseph Brodsky suffered 4 heart attacks. On the eve of his death, he worked as usual in his office, which was located on the second floor of the house.

When his wife decided to visit 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 bought a place for himself in a cemetery, not far from Broadway. There he was buried.

However, six months later, Brodsky's body was reburied in the cemetery of San Michele. Venice, not counting St. Petersburg, Joseph loved most of all during his lifetime.

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Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (May 24, 1940, Leningrad, USSR - January 28, 1996, New York, USA; buried in Venice) - Russian and American poet, essayist, playwright, translator, Nobel Prize in Literature 1987, US Poet Laureate in 1991-1992. He wrote poetry mainly in Russian, essays - in English.

Childhood and youth

Joseph Brodsky was born on May 24, 1940 in Leningrad. Father, Captain of the Navy of the USSR Alexander Ivanovich Brodsky (1903-1984), was a military photojournalist, after the war he went to work in the photo laboratory of the Naval Museum. In 1950 he was demobilized, after that he worked as a photographer and journalist in several Leningrad newspapers. Mother, Maria Moiseevna Volpert (1905-1983), worked as an accountant. The mother's sister is an actress of the BDT and the Theater. V. F. Komissarzhevskaya Dora Moiseevna Volpert.

Joseph's early childhood fell on the years of war, blockade, post-war poverty and passed without a father. In 1942, after the blockade winter, Maria Moiseevna and Joseph left for evacuation to Cherepovets, returned to Leningrad in 1944. In 1947, Joseph went to 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 at school No. 181 in Solyany Lane and stayed the following year for the second year. In 1954 he applied to the Second Baltic School (naval school), but was not accepted. He moved to school number 276 on Obvodny Canal house number 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, badly damaged during the bombing, the endless vistas of the Leningrad outskirts, water, multiple reflections - the motifs associated with these impressions of his childhood and youth are invariably present in his work.
In 1955, at the age of less than sixteen, having finished seven classes and started the eighth, Brodsky left school and became an apprentice milling machine operator at the Arsenal plant. This decision was due both to problems at school and to Brodsky's desire to financially support his family. Unsuccessfully tried to enter the school of submariners. At the age of 16, he set about becoming a doctor, worked for a month as an assistant dissector in the morgue at the regional hospital, dissected corpses, but eventually refused medical career. In addition, for five years after leaving school, Brodsky worked as a stoker in a boiler room, as a sailor at a lighthouse.

Since 1957, he was a worker in the geological expeditions of the 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 trip), he had 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, began to study English and Polish.
In 1959 he met Evgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, Vladimir Uflyand, Bulat Okudzhava, Sergey Dovlatov.
On February 14, 1960, the first major public performance took place at the "poet tournament" in the Leningrad Gorky Palace of Culture 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 to fly abroad. But they did not dare to do so. Later, Shakhmatov was arrested for illegal possession of weapons and informed the KGB about this plan, as well as about his other friend, Alexander Umansky, and his "anti-Soviet" manuscript, which Shakhmatov and Brodsky tried to pass on to an American they happened to meet. On January 29, 1961, Brodsky was detained by the KGB, but was released two days later.
In August 1961, in Komarov, Yevgeny Rein introduced Brodsky to Anna Akhmatova. In 1962, during a trip to Pskov, he met N. Ya. Mandelstam, and in 1963, at Akhmatova's, he met Lydia Chukovskaya. After Akhmatova's death in 1966, light hand D. Bobyshev, four young poets, including Brodsky, were often referred to in memoirs as "Akhmatov's orphans."

In 1962, the twenty-two-year-old Brodsky met the young artist Marina (Marianna) Basmanova, the daughter of the artist P. I. Basmanov. Since that time, Marianna Basmanova, hidden under the initials "M. B.", devoted to many works of the poet. "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 passing poems - but because these poems and the spiritual experience invested in them were the crucible in which his poetic personality was melted. The first verses with this dedication - "I hugged these shoulders and looked ...", "No longing, no love, no sadness ...", "The riddle of an angel" date back to 1962. The collection of poems by I. Brodsky “New Stanzas for August” (USA, Michigan: Ardis, 1983) is compiled from his poems of 1962-1982 dedicated to “M. B." Last poem with dedication "M. B." dated 1989.
On October 8, 1967, a son, Andrei Osipovich Basmanov, was born to Marianna Basmanova and Joseph Brodsky. In 1972-1995. M. P. Basmanova and I. A. Brodsky were in correspondence.

Early poems, influences

In his own words, Brodsky began writing poetry at the age of eighteen, but there are several poems dated 1956-1957. One of the decisive impulses 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. So, 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 ...” one 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.
Of his contemporaries, he was influenced by Evgeny Rein, Vladimir Uflyand, Stanislav Krasovitsky.

Brodsky later called the greatest poets Oden and Tsvetaeva, followed by Cavafy and Frost, closed the personal canon of the poet Rilke, Pasternak, Mandelstam and Akhmatova.
Brodsky's first published poem was "The Ballad of a Little Tugboat", published in an abridged form in the children's magazine "Bonfire" (No. 11, 1962).

Persecution, trial and exile

It was obvious that the article was a signal for persecution and possibly arrest of Brodsky. Nevertheless, according to Brodsky, more than slander, subsequent arrest, trial and sentence, his thoughts were occupied at that time by a break with Marianna Basmanova. During this period, there is a suicide attempt.

On January 8, 1964, Vecherny 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. Since that time, Brodsky constantly suffered from angina pectoris, which always reminded him of a possible imminent death(which at the same time did not prevent him from remaining a heavy smoker). Largely from here "Hello, my aging!" at 33 and “What can I say about life? What turned out to be long ”at 40 - with his diagnosis, the poet was really not sure that he would live to see this birthday.

On February 18, 1964, the court decided to send Brodsky to a compulsory forensic psychiatric examination. At the "Buckle" (psychiatric hospital No. 2 in Leningrad), Brodsky spent three weeks and subsequently noted: "... it was the worst time in my life." According to Brodsky, in a psychiatric hospital they used a “trick” to him: “In the dead of night they woke up, immersed in an ice bath, wrapped in a wet sheet and placed next to the battery. From the heat of the batteries, the sheet dried up and crashed into the body. The conclusion of the examination read: “He has psychopathic character traits, but he is able to work. Therefore, administrative measures can be applied.” This was followed by a second session of the court.
Two sessions of the trial of Brodsky (Judge of the Dzerzhinsky Court Savelyeva E.A.) were outlined by Frida Vigdorova and widely disseminated in samizdat.

Brodsky's lawyer said in her speech: “None of the prosecution witnesses knows Brodsky, he has not read his poems; Witnesses for the prosecution testify on the basis of some strangely obtained and unverified documents and express their opinion, making accusatory speeches.”

On March 13, 1964, at the second hearing of the court, 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 Norinskaya. In an interview with Volkov, Brodsky called this time the happiest in his life. In exile, Brodsky studied English poetry, including the work of Wystan Auden.
Along with extensive poetic publications in emigrant publications (Airways, New Russian word”, “Sowing”, “Frontiers”, etc.), in August and September 1965, two of Brodsky’s poems were published in the Konosha district newspaper “Call”.

The trial of the poet was one of the factors that led to the emergence of the human rights movement in the USSR and to increased attention abroad to the human rights situation in the USSR. The court record made by Frida Vigdorova was published in influential foreign publications: New Leader, Encounter, Figaro Litteraire, and was read on the BBC. At active participation Akhmatova led a public campaign in defense of Brodsky. 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 have influence in Brodsky to defend Brodsky. Soviet system. 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 public (in particular, after an appeal to the Soviet government by Jean-Paul Sartre and a number of others foreign writers) the term of exile was reduced to actually served, and Brodsky returned to Leningrad. According to Y. Gordin: “The troubles of the luminaries of Soviet culture had no effect on the authorities. Decisive was the warning of the "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 affair".

In October 1965, Brodsky, on the recommendation of Korney Chukovsky and Boris Vakhtin, was accepted into the Group Committee of Translators at the Leningrad branch of the Writers' Union of the USSR, which made it possible to avoid new accusations of parasitism in the future.
Brodsky resisted what was being imposed on him - especially by Western means. mass media- the image of a fighter with Soviet power. A. Volgina wrote that Brodsky “did not like to talk in interviews about the hardships he endured 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 claimed: “I was lucky in every way. Other people got much more, it was much harder than me. And even: "... I somehow think that I generally deserved all this."

Last years at home

Brodsky was arrested and sent into exile at the age of 23, and returned as a 25-year-old poet. He was given less than 7 years to stay at home. Maturity has come, the time of belonging to one or another circle has passed. In March 1966, Anna Akhmatova died. Even earlier, the “magic choir” of young poets surrounding her began to disintegrate. Brodsky's position in official Soviet culture during these years can be compared to that of Akhmatova in the 1920s and 1930s or Mandelstam in the period leading up to 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 Soviet Writer publishing house. 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 publisher. At some point, the regional committee and the KGB decided in principle to cross out this idea.

In 1966-1967, 4 poems of 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 was translations. “There is no such poet 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: "Stop in the Desert", "The End of a Beautiful Era" and "New Stanzas for August". In 1965-1968, work was underway on the poem "Gorbunov and Gorchakov" - a work to which Brodsky himself attached great great importance. In addition to infrequent public speaking and reading in the apartments of friends, Brodsky's poems were widely distributed in samizdat (with numerous inevitable distortions - copiers did not exist in those years). Perhaps they got a wider audience thanks to the songs written by Alexander Mirzayan and Evgeny Klyachkin.

Outwardly, Brodsky's life developed relatively calmly during these years, but the KGB did not leave its "old client" behind. This was facilitated by the fact that “the poet is becoming extremely popular with foreign journalists, Slavic scholars who come to Russia. He is interviewed, he is invited to Western universities (naturally, the authorities do not give permission to leave), etc.” In addition to translations - which he took very seriously - Brodsky worked in other ways available to a writer excluded from the "system": as a freelance reviewer in the Aurora magazine, random "hacks" at film studios, even starred (in the role of 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 translations, primarily in English, Polish and Italian. In 1967, an unauthorized collection of translations, Joseph Brodsky. Elegy to John Donne and Other Poems / Tr. by Nicholas Bethell. In 1970, Brodsky's first book, compiled under his supervision, was published in New York, Stop in the Desert. 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.
In 1971 Brodsky was elected a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.

In exile

On May 10, 1972, Brodsky was summoned to the OVIR and faced with a choice: immediate emigration or "hot days", which metaphor in the mouth of the KGB could mean interrogations, prisons and mental hospitals. By that time, he had already twice - in the winter of 1964 - had to lie on the "examination" in psychiatric hospitals which was, according to him, scarier than prison and links. Brodsky decides to leave. Having learned about this, Vladimir Maramzin suggested that he collect everything written for the preparation of a samizdat collected works. The result was the first and until 1992 the only collected works of Joseph Brodsky - of course, typewritten. Before leaving, he managed to authorize all 4 volumes. By choosing emigration, Brodsky tried to delay the day of departure, but the authorities wanted to get rid of the objectionable poet as quickly as possible. On June 4, 1972, deprived of Soviet citizenship, Brodsky flew from Leningrad along the route prescribed for Jewish emigration: to Vienna.

Two days later, upon arrival in Vienna, Brodsky goes to meet W. Oden, who lives in Austria. "He treated me with extraordinary sympathy, immediately took me under his wing ... undertook to introduce me into literary circles." Together with Auden, Brodsky takes part in the Poetry International in London at the end of June. Brodsky was familiar with the work of Auden from the time of his exile and called him, along with Akhmatova, a poet who had a decisive “ethical influence” on him. Then in London, Brodsky met Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Seamus Heaney and Robert Lowell.

life line

In July 1972, Brodsky moved to the United States 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, he completed incomplete 8 classes in the USSR high school Brodsky leads the life of a university teacher, over the next 24 years holding professorships in a total of six American and British universities, including Columbia and New York. He taught the history of Russian literature, Russian and world poetry, the theory of verse, lectured and read poetry at international literary festivals and forums, in libraries and universities in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, France, Sweden, Italy.

Over the years, his health steadily deteriorated, and Brodsky, whose first heart attack occurred during his prison days in 1964, suffered 4 heart attacks in 1976, 1985 and 1994.
Brodsky's parents applied twelve times to be allowed to see their son, congressmen and prominent US cultural figures made the same request to the Soviet government, but even after Brodsky underwent open-heart surgery in 1978 and needed care, his parents were 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 is removed like a demoted servant ..." (1985), "In Memory of the Father: Australia" (1989), the essay "A Room and a Half" (1985) are dedicated to parents.

In 1977, Brodsky takes American citizenship, in 1980 he finally moves from Ann Arbor to New York, and then divides his time between New York and South Hadley, a university town in Massachusetts, where from 1982 until the end of his life he taught in the spring semesters at a consortium of "five colleges". In 1990, Brodsky married Maria Sozzani, an Italian aristocrat who was Russian on her mother's side. In 1993, their daughter Anna was born.

Poet and essayist

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 record of the poet's trial. From the moment he arrived 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 1971/1972. On this turning point, "Still Life", "To a Tyrant", "Odysseus of Telemachus", "Song of Innocence, she is experience", "Letters to a Roman friend", "Bobo's Funeral" were written. In the poem "1972", begun in Russia and completed outside of it, Brodsky gives the following formula: "Everything that I did, I did not for my sake / fame in the era of cinema and radio, / but for the sake of native speech, literature ...". The name of the collection - "Part of Speech" - is explained by the same message, succinctly formulated in his Nobel lecture: "someone, but a poet always knows<…>that language is not his instrument, but he is the means of language.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Brodsky, as a rule, did not include in his new books of poems included in earlier collections. The exception is the book New Stanzas for August, published in 1983, composed of poems addressed to M. B. - Marina Basmanova. Years later, Brodsky said of this book: “This is the main work of my life.<…>It seems to me that in the end the New Stanzas to Augusta can be read as a separate work. Unfortunately, I didn't write Divine Comedy“. And, apparently, I will never write it again. And then it turned out in some way a poetic book with its own plot ... ". "New Stanzas for August" became the only book of Brodsky's poetry in Russian, compiled by the author himself.

Since 1972, Brodsky has been actively turning to essays, which he does not leave 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 were written in English. His prose, at least no less than his poetry, made Brodsky's name widely known to the world outside the USSR. The American National Council of Literary Critics recognized 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 a member of literary academies and an honorary doctorate from various universities, was the winner of the MacArthur scholarship in 1981.

The next big 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".
In the 1990s, four books of Brodsky's new poems 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. Reduced emotionality, musical and metaphysical complexity - especially the "late" Brodsky - repel some artists. In particular, one can name the work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose reproaches to the poet's work are largely ideological in nature. Almost word for word, a critic from another camp echoes him: Dmitry Bykov, in his essay on Brodsky after the beginning: “I’m not going to rehash here the commonplace platitudes that Brodsky is “cold”, “monotonous”, “inhuman” ... ”, - then he does exactly this: “In the huge corpus of Brodsky’s works, there are strikingly few living texts ... Mademoiselle Veronika" or "Letter in a Bottle" - although, of course, he cannot but appreciate "Part of Speech", "Twenty Sonnets to Mary Stuart" or "A Conversation with a Celestial": the best texts of the still alive, not yet petrified Brodsky, the cry of a living soul, feeling its ossification, glaciation, dying.

Playwright, translator, writer

Peru Brodsky owns two published plays: "Marble", 1982 and "Democracy", 1990-1992. He also owns translations of the plays Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by the English playwright Tom Stoppard and Speaking of the Rope by the Irish playwright Brendan Biehn. Brodsky left a significant legacy as a translator of world poetry into Russian. Of the authors translated by him, one can name, in particular, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Richard Wilber, Euripides (from Medea), Konstantinos Cavafy, Ildefons Galczynski's Constant, Czesław Milos, Thomas Venclova. Much less often Brodsky turned to translations into English. First of all, these are, of course, automatic translations, as well as translations from Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Wislava Szymborska and a number of others.

Susan Sontag, an American writer and close friend of Brodsky, says: "I'm sure 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 1976-1977: 'Sometimes it's so strange to me to think that I can write whatever I want and it will be printed.' Brodsky took full advantage of this opportunity. Since 1972, he plunged headlong into social and literary life. In addition to the three books of essays mentioned above, the number of articles written by him, prefaces, letters to the editor, reviews of various collections exceeds one hundred, not counting numerous oral presentations at the evenings of creativity of Russian and English-speaking poets, participation in discussions and forums, magazine interviews. In the list of authors on whose work he gives a review, the names of I. Lisnyanskaya, E. Rein, A. Kushner, D. Novikov, B. Akhmadulina, L. Losev, Yu. Kublanovsky, Yu. Aleshkovsky, Vl. Uflyand, V. Gandelsman, A. Nyman, 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. Venclova, K. Azadovsky. "Besides, he tried to help so many people" - including letters of recommendation - "that in Lately there has been some devaluation of his recommendations.”
Relative financial well-being (at least by the standards of emigration) gave Brodsky the opportunity to provide more material assistance.

The Library of Congress elects Brodsky Poet Laureate of the United States for 1991-1992. In this honorary but traditionally nominal capacity, he developed vigorous activity for the promotion of poetry. His ideas led to the creation of the American Poetry and Literacy Project (American Project: "Poetry and Literacy"), during which since 1993 more than a million free poetry collections have been distributed in schools, hotels, supermarkets, train stations and so on. According to William Wadsworth, director of the American Academy of Poets from 1989 to 2001, Brodsky's inaugural speech as Poet Laureate "caused a transformation in America's view of the role of poetry in its culture." Shortly before his death, Brodsky was carried away by the idea of ​​founding the Russian Academy in Rome. In the autumn 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 death of the poet. In 2000, the Joseph Brodsky Memorial Scholarship Fund sent the first Russian poet-grant holder to Rome, and in 2003, the first artist.

English-speaking poet

In 1973, the first authorized book of translations of Brodsky's poetry into English was published - "Selected poems" (Selected poems) translated by George Kline and with a preface by Auden. The second collection in English, "A Part of Speech" (Part of speech), comes out in 1980; the third, "To Urania" (To Urania), - in 1988. In 1996, "So Forth" (So on) was released - the 4th collection of poems in English, prepared by Brodsky. The last two books include both translations and auto-translations from Russian, as well as poems written in English. Over the years, Brodsky trusted the translations of his poems into English to other translators less and less; at the same time, he increasingly composed poetry in English, although, in his own words, he did not consider himself a bilingual poet and claimed that "for me, when I write poetry in English, it's more like 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.

The 500-page collection of Brodsky's English-language poetry, released after the author's death, does not contain any translations made without his participation. But if his essays 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 lies in the fact that with the growth of Brodsky’s reputation as an essayist, attacks on Brodsky as a poet and translator of his own poems became more severe.” The range of assessments was very wide, from extremely negative to laudatory, and probably a critical bias prevailed. The role of Brodsky in English poetry, the translation of his poetry into English, the relationship between Russian and English Daniel Weissbort's essay-memoirs "From Russian with love" are devoted to his work.

Return

Perestroika in the USSR and the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Brodsky, which coincided with it, broke through the dam of silence in his homeland, and soon the publication of Brodsky's poems and essays flooded in. The first (besides several poems leaked to the press in the 1960s) selection of Brodsky's poems appeared in the December 1987 issue of Novy Mir. Until that 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 under the 1964 trial.

In 1992, a 4-volume collected works began to appear in Russia.
In 1995, Brodsky was awarded the title of honorary citizen of St. Petersburg.
Invitations to return to their homeland followed. Brodsky put off his arrival: he was embarrassed by the publicity of such an event, honoring, the attention of the press, which would inevitably accompany his visit. Health did not allow. One of the last arguments was: "The best part of me is already there - my poetry."

Death and burial

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. Spring semester starts on Monday. 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 his 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, 1996, a funeral service was held at Grace Episcopal Parish Church in Brooklyn Heights, not far from Brodsky's house. The next day, a temporary burial took place: the body in a coffin, upholstered in metal, was placed in a crypt in the cemetery at the Trinity Church Cemetery, on the banks of the Hudson, where it was stored until June 21, 1997. Deputy proposal sent by telegram State Duma RF G. V. Starovoitova to bury the poet in St. Petersburg on Vasilyevsky Island was rejected - "this would mean to decide 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 Cheslav Milosh, Derek Walcott, Sheimas Heaney, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Lev Losev, Anthony Hecht, Mark Strand, Rosanna Warren, Evgeny Rein, Vladimir Uflyand, Thomas Venclova, Anatoly Naiman, Yakov Gordin, Maria Sozzani-Brodskaya and others. The music of Haydn, Mozart, Purcell sounded. In 1973, in the same cathedral, Brodsky was one of the organizers of the memorial service in memory of Wystan Auden.

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 the most. Besides, speaking selfishly, 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 authorities of Venice about a place in an ancient cemetery on the island of San Michele.

On June 21, 1997, the reburial of the body of Joseph Brodsky took place at the San Michele cemetery in Venice. Initially, the poet's body was planned to be buried 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 to be buried. As a result, they decided to bury the body in the Protestant part of the cemetery. The resting place was marked with a modest wooden cross bearing the name of Joseph Brodsky. A few years later, a tombstone was erected on the grave by the artist Vladimir Radunsky.

1940 , May 24 - was born in Leningrad. Father, Alexander Ivanovich Brodsky, is a military photojournalist, and mother, Maria Moiseevna, is a housewife.

1942 - after the blockade winter, Maria Moiseevna and Joseph leave 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 in Solyany Lane and stayed the following year for the second year. In 1954 he applied to the Second Baltic School (naval school), but was not accepted. Moves to school number 276 on Obvodny Canal house number 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 receives "one and a half rooms" in the Muruzi House.

1957 - a worker in the geological expeditions of the 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 Evgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, Vladimir Uflyand, Bulat Okudzhava, Sergey 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 the 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 ("... Again I visited / That corner of the earth ..."). But the subject of Brodsky’s image is Leningrad, which is completely different from Pushkin’s Petersburg or even Dostoevsky’s Petersburg: not the city of Nevsky Prospekt or even houses, Kolomna, but the area of ​​​​the outskirts, plants and factories, which simply did not exist in the nineteenth century, was not a city.
Twenty-two-year-old Brodsky meets the young artist Marina (Marianna) Basmanova, the daughter of the artist P. I. Basmanov. Since that time, Marianna Basmanova, hidden under the initials "M. B.", devoted to many works of the poet. 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 Committee of Translators at the Leningrad branch of the Writers' Union of the USSR, which made it possible to avoid new accusations of parasitism in the future.
Publication in New York of the collection Poems and Poems.
end of the year - Brodsky submits to the Leningrad branch of the publishing house "Soviet Writer" the manuscript of his book "Winter Mail (poems 1962-1965)". A year later, the manuscript was returned by the publisher.

1966–1967 - 4 poems of the poet appeared in the Soviet press (not counting publications in children's magazines), after which a period of public muteness began.

1970 - in New York, "Stop in the Desert" is published - 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 emigration.
end of June - together with Wisten Hugh Auden (Anglo-American poet), Brodsky takes part in the International Poetry Festival (Poetry International) 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 a 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 recalled his predecessors, who could also be on this podium: Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, the American poet Robert Frost (1874–1963), Anna Akhmatova, the Anglo-American poet Wisten Auden (1907–1973): “I named only five - those whose work and whose fates are dear to me, if only because, if it were not for them, I would be worth little as a person and as a writer: in any case, I would not be standing here today.
Beginning of Brodsky's publications in the USSR.

1991–1992 - Poet Laureate of the United States.

1990s- four books of Brodsky's new poems are published: "Notes of a fern", "Cappadocia", "In the vicinity of Atlantis" and published in "Ardis" after the death of the poet and which became the final collection "Landscape with a flood".

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."