Joseph Brodsky
Russian poet (1940 - 1996)
- || At The Bottom
1964 -- At the age of 24, a young, barely-published poet named Joseph Brodsky learned a brutal lesson about the willingness of the Soviet Union to tolerate artistic independence. Brodsky had not been widely published, and (even worse from the perspective of the authorities) he shirked "useful work" in the pursuit of his art. Born into a Jewish family in Leningrad at a time when anti-Semitism was rife throughout Soviet society, Brodsky and his family were poor and lived in a cramped one room apartment. Brodsky left school at the age of 15 and embarked on a decade of completely unsuccessful efforts to find work he enjoyed. He took jobs as a milling machine operator, a morgue attendant, as a boilerman on a Soviet ship, and as a hospital orderly. He began writing poems as a teenager and taught himself what he wished to learn. He read widely in philosophy, religion, and poetry, getting books wherever he could find them (including garbage dumpsters). He began publishing poems in samizdat journals -- underground, typewritten publications that usually expressed ideas not permitted in state-run media. His poetry had just begun to receive some critical attention when the Soviet authorities intervened and charged him with "having a worldview damaging to the state, decadence and modernism, failure to finish school, and social parasitism." At his trial, the judge asked him where he had received permission to become a poet. Brodsky replied that his calling had come "from God." He was convicted of "social parasitism" and sentenced to five years of hard labor.
- || At The Top
1987 -- As he accepted the 1987 Nobel Prize for Literature, Joseph Brodsky took a moment to reflect on the writer's need to be alert to dangers posed by government censorship of the arts. With his own ordeal in mind, Brodsky explained to the audience that "as long as the state permits itself to interfere with the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of the state." By 1987, Brodsky had not only become one of the great poets of his generation, but he was also a symbol and example of the relationship between artistic expression and political freedom, arguing on many occasions that Western literature in particular had helped the world recover from and make sense of the horrors of Nazism, Communism and world war. (Moreover, his best work was written in English, a language he had taught himself during his teenage years.) A professor at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, Brodsky had received some of the most prestigious awards in American letters. In the 1980s alone, he received a MacArthur "genius" grant, a Guggenheim fellowship, an honorary doctorate in literature from Oxford, and the National Book Award for a collection of essays titled Less Than One.
- || The Comeback
Brodsky's trial and sentence had received a great deal of international attention from artists and writers, and it marked a turning point in the emerging dissident movement within the Soviet Union. International pressure helped lead to Brodsky's early release, but Soviet authorities continued to hound him; as his work received greater attention from literary critics in Western Europe and the United States, the Soviet Union at last expelled him in 1972. With the help of Carl Proffer, a Slavic language specialist at the University of Michigan, Brodsky came to the United States to teach and write. Though Soviet officials likely assumed he would be less interesting and relevant as an exile from his homeland, Brodsky entered into the most creative period of his life. He published several volumes of poetry as well as several plays and books of essays that earned him a growing array of honors. In spite of his obvious grievance against the Soviet state, Brodsky never relinquished his pride in the Russian culture and history. Like many communist dissidents, Brodsky was able to distinguish between the Russian people and the government that had censored and harassed him. He was also grateful for the opportunities he'd received as an "exile" in the West, and he was (along with his literary allies) able to make the best possible play out of the hand he'd been dealt. After receiving word of his Nobel award in 1987, he said "I'm the happiest combination you can think of. I'm a Russian poet, an English essayist, and an American citizen!"
