Joseph Brodsky biography complete. Brodsky I.A. Key dates of life and work. Release and expulsion abroad

   Brodsky Joseph Alexandrovich was born on May 24, 1940 in the city of Leningrad. Joseph Brodsky - Russian and American poet, essayist, playwright, translator, 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature, and US poet and laureate in 1991-1992. Joseph Brodsky wrote his poems mainly in Russian, and essays in English.

Biography of Joseph Brodsky

The father of Joseph Brodsky - Alexander Ivanovich Brodsky - was the captain of the Navy of the USSR. Born in 1903, died in 1984. He was also a military photojournalist. After the war, Alexander Brodsky entered the service of the photo laboratory of the Naval Museum, then worked as a photographer and journalist in the city newspapers of Leningrad. The mother of Joseph Brodsky - Maria Moiseevna Volpert - was an accountant, was born in 1905, died in 1983.

The early childhood of Joseph Brodsky passed during the war, the blockade of Leningrad and post-war poverty. In 1955, Joseph Brodsky dropped out of school and went to work at the Arsenal plant. He wanted to financially support the family, since his father was not around at this time. For some time he worked in a morgue, then as a stoker in a boiler room, a sailor in a lighthouse, and also as a worker in geological expeditions of NIIGA. In the summer of 1961, Brodsky suffered a first nervous breakdown, and he returned home to Leningrad.

In 1962, the young Joseph Brodsky met the young artist Marina (Marianna) Basmanova, the daughter of the artist. Marianna Basmanova, who had the initials “M. B. ”, many of his works were devoted. October 8, 1967 the couple had a son - Andrei Osipovich Basmanov.

On February 18, 1964, the court decided to send Brodsky to a forced examination. So, in a psychiatric hospital No. 2 in Leningrad, Joseph Brodsky spent three weeks and recalled the period as the worst time in his life. On March 13, 1964, at the second court hearing, Brodsky was sent to five years in a remote area for forced labor. But later Brodsky called this time the happiest in his life, since there he had the opportunity to study English poetry.

The trial of the poet became one of the factors that led to the emergence of a human rights movement in the USSR, as well as to increased attention abroad to the situation in the field of human rights in the USSR. With the active participation of the poetess Anna Akhmatova, a defensive campaign was going on for Joseph Brodsky. In September 1965, under pressure from the Soviet and world public, including after appealing to the Soviet government, Jean-Paul Sartre and many other foreign writers, the poet was reduced to exile, and Brodsky was able to return home to Leningrad.

In October 1965, Korney Chukovsky and Boris Vakhtin recommended that Joseph Brodsky join the Translation Group at the Leningrad branch of the USSR Writers Union. Brodsky followed the advice, which allowed him to avoid new accusations of parasitism in the future, but the KGB did not disregard his so-called “old client”. This was also influenced by the fact that Brodsky became a very popular poet among foreign journalists. But of course, they did not give him permission to leave the authorities. Meanwhile, beyond the borders of the Soviet space, Brodsky's work continues to go out in publications in both Russian and English, Polish and Italian. In 1971, Joseph Brodsky was elected a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.

On May 10, 1972, Brodsky was summoned to the OVIR (Department of Visas and Registration) and faced with a choice: immediate emigration or prisons and mental hospitals. By that time, he had already had to lie twice on the so-called “examination” in psychiatric hospitals, which, according to Brodsky, was worse than prison and exile. He decides to leave. On June 4, 1972, the poet, deprived of Soviet citizenship, flew from Leningrad along the route prescribed by Jewish emigration: to Vienna.

In July 1972, Brodsky moved to the United States and began teaching as a guest poet at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. From that moment, Brodsky leads the life of a university teacher, holding over the next 24 years professorships in total at six American and British universities, including Columbia and New York. Joseph Brodsky taught the history of Russian literature, Russian and world poetry, the theory of poetry, gave lectures and poetry at international literary festivals and forums, in libraries and universities in the United States, Canada, England, Ireland, France, Sweden and Italy.

Every year the poet's health deteriorated. Brodsky suffered four heart attacks - in 1976, 1985 and 1994. His parents applied for permission to see their son twelve times, the congressmen and prominent figures of culture of the USA addressed the Government of the USSR, but even after Joseph Brodsky underwent open heart surgery in 1978 and needed to be left, he parents were denied an exit visa. They never saw their son again. Brodsky's mother died in 1983, and a little more than a year later his father died. Both times Brodsky was not allowed to attend the funeral.

In 1990, Brodsky married Maria Sozzani, an Italian aristocrat, a Russian maternal. In 1993, their daughter Anna was born.

On January 27, 1996 in New York, Brodsky was preparing to go to South Headley, as the spring semester began on Monday. Wishing his wife good night, the poet went up to his office to work a little. In the morning, on the floor in the office, his wife found him. Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky died on the night of the 27th to the 28th of January 1996, four months before his 56th birthday. The cause of death was a sudden cardiac arrest.

Brodsky was temporarily buried in the cemetery at the Holy Trinity Church, on the banks of the Hudson River, where the body was stored until June 21, 1997. But according to Maria, Brodsky’s widow, one of the poet’s friends expressed the idea of \u200b\u200ba funeral in Venice. This is the city that, apart from Leningrad, Joseph loved most. June 21, 1997 at the San Michele cemetery in Venice, the reburial of the body of Joseph Brodsky took place. The resting place was marked with a wooden cross named Joseph Brodsky. A few years later, a tombstone was erected on the poet’s grave by the artist Vladimir Radunsky. On the back of the monument you can see an inscription in Latin: Letum non omnia finit - Not everything ends with death.

Creativity of Joseph Brodsky

According to Joseph Brodsky himself, he began to write poetry at the age of eighteen, but there are several poems dated 1956-1957. Marina Tsvetaeva, Eugene Baratynsky and Osip Mandelstam very much influenced the poet's work. Brodsky's first published poem was The Ballad of a Little Tug, which was published in the children's magazine Bonfire (No. 11, 1962). Brodsky's poems and their translations were published outside the USSR since 1964, when his name became widely known thanks to the publication of a record of the trial of the poet. Since his arrival in the West, his poetry has regularly appeared on the pages of publications of Russian emigration.

Venice and Brodsky

“She is so beautiful that you understand: you are not able to find in your life - and all the more you are not able to create yourself - anything that can be compared with this beauty. Venice is inaccessible. If there is a reincarnation, I would like to live my next life in Venice - to be there a cat, whatever, even a rat, but always in Venice ”- this is how the poet Joseph Brodsky wrote about Venice. According to him, in 1970 he had a real “idea-fix”. He dreamed of going to Venice, relocating, renting an entire floor in an old palazzo on the banks of a canal, sitting and writing, and throwing cigarette butts into the water and listening to them hiss.

Walks in Venice Brodsky: on the map  marked places where he lived and loved to be.

Where did Brodsky live in Venice? The first habitat of the poet in Venice was the Pension "Akkademia". He, by the way, is available today - about 170-200 euros is the number. In general, for the poet, Venice is primarily a place where "created by the hands of man can be much more beautiful than man himself." Writer and journalist Peter Weil, a friend of Joseph Brodsky, said that the last year did not go without a trip to Italy, sometimes he went there several times a year. Joseph Brodsky was very fond of winter Venice, when there are few tourists, but at the same time he always loved to watch people.

Brodsky has written a lot of poems about Italy: of the most famous - “Lagoon,“ Piazza Mattei ”,“ Embankment of the incurable ”,“ Dedicated to Marcus Aurelius ”. Stories about the “Embankment of the Incurable” need to be given special attention. More than five centuries ago, from the side of the Judecca Canal, there were hospital buildings where people lived terminally ill with the plague. They were brought to the embankment so that they could finally breathe air and say goodbye to this world. This embankment was called - Embankment incurable. True, it occurred to Joseph Brodsky to slightly correct this name poetically, and therefore she became the Embankment of the incurable. The hospital building now houses the Academy of Fine Arts.

Mikhail Baryshnikov and Brodsky

For the first time, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Joseph Brodsky met in 1974 in New York. Their acquaintance turned into a strong friendship. As soon as Mikhail Baryshnikov ended up in America, Joseph Brodsky became the closest person to him. It turned out that in Russia they all the time were somewhere nearby, but did not intersect. And when both lived in Leningrad, it turned out that they even looked after the same girl and could very well meet in some house or with common friends, but life turned out in such a way that they only met in America.

Mikhail Baryshnikov spoke of Brodsky as follows: “Of course, Joseph influenced me. He helped me just figure out some life situations. He showed me the decision making mechanism. How to do something, based on what considerations, from what ethical standards. I always take his advice, try on how he would do it. ”

Joseph Brodsky said of Baryshnikov like this: "Pure metaphysics of the body." And he wrote on a book donated to Mikhail Baryshnikov:

   “And yet I will not make a hand
   What he can do is with his foot! ”

Together with Joseph Brodsky, they opened the Russian Samovar restaurant. In it, guests can still meet and dine with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Joseph Brodsky died on the birthday of Mikhail Baryshnikov - January 27. Baryshnikov flew to a friend’s funeral in Venice. And once he even said that he believed that Joseph Brodsky still helps him live.

Personal life

In 1962, young Joseph Brodsky met the young artist Marina (Marianna) Basmanova, the daughter of the artist. Marianna Basmanova, who had the initials “M. B. ”, many of his works were devoted. October 8, 1967 their son was born - Andrei Osipovich Basmanov. In 1990, Joseph Brodsky married Maria Sozzani, an Italian aristocrat, a Russian mother. In 1993, their daughter Anna was born.

When Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1987, the climate of the Soviet Union had already begun to change. The country was gradually opening up to the world, but it still could not accept the fact that the Russian emigrant was awarded such a high prize. And Brodsky himself, answering questions about whether he misses his homeland, replied: "The best part of me is already there - my poetry."

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

Joseph Brodsky  dropped out of school after 8th grade, because he could not reconcile with the point of view imposed by Soviet teachers. Since he could not fight the system at that time, he simply decided to stay away: “I’ll 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. Already from 15 years old Joseph Brodskybegins to work at the 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 in public. While Joseph Brodsky  surprised his audience, first of all, by the unusual form and intonation of his poems. But, more importantly, he again discovered a certain spirituality in Russian poetry: "God is in each of us." Brodsky  gets acquainted with Anna Akhmatova, who highly appreciates the talent of the young poet; she becomes for him a kind of mentor. Official literary environment naturally Joseph Brodsky  he doesn’t accept, but among the underground he becomes a rising star, although he has never been attributed to poetic groups or dissidents.

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

With work at Brodsky at that time it was difficult, since out of all his poems only 11 were printed, and some of them in self-publishing. He was helped a lot by friends with whom he traveled almost the entire union. But the lack of a permanent job and the specifics of his poetry are of interest to the KGB. Since 1959, Joseph Brodsky  repeatedly invited for interrogations. He underwent three short-term arrests. Not wanting it myself Brodsky  It appears at the very center of the fight against the intelligentsia. In 1963, he even tried to hide in a psychiatric clinic, but could not stand the situation.

February 12, 1964 Joseph Brodsky  arrested in Leningrad. He falls into the center of the process to combat parasitism. Articles began to appear in the press under the title: “Near-Literary Drone,” “Parasitism Pays tribute” and others. And on March 13, 1964, the trial of the poet took place. Behind Joseph Brodsky  Akhmatova, Marshak, Shostakovich, Sartre interceded, and Frida Vigdorova managed to write down the whole process verbatim. During the trial, Anna Akhmatova said: “What a biography our redhead is doing!” - and she turned out to be right. Here is a small portion 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 poets?

Brodsky: None. (No call). And who ranked me as a human race?

Judge: Have you studied this?

Brodsky: What?

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

Brodsky: I did not think that this is given by education.

Judge: But what?

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

  The trial of the poet

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

After link Brodsky  He wrote many magnificent works (the cycle “Songs of a happy winter”, “Farewell ode”, “Winter came and all who could fly ...”, “Letter in a bottle”, “New stanzas for Augustus”, “Two hours in the tank” ...). Brodsky begins to study English-language poetry in the original, as well as other creations of world literature.

Poems Joseph Brodsky as before, no one published, and this lack of demand greatly affected the poet's work. Moreover, upon returning to Leningrad, his residence registration in a communal apartment was taken from him and for a long time they did not want to register. Only thanks to the help of Dmitry Shostakovich, Brodsky  nevertheless, they gave me permission to settle in my hometown. But 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 emigration, the main set of verses 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 Brezhnev the following words: "in the flesh or on paper: ... even if my people do not need my body, my soul will still be useful to him ...". And, June 4, 1972 flies from the Soviet Union. The first destination was Vienna, where he was met by an old friend, publisher Karl Proffer. Then he met with W.H. Oden, communication with which became for the poet an important page in his life. This year Joseph Brodsky  already settled in New York for a long time.

The country of opportunity met him with open arms and immediately gave 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 began to appear, already translated into English (Selected Poems, New York, 1973). Karl Proffer, head of the Ardis Publishing House, who publishes poetry collections, helps him greatly in this. Joseph Brodsky.

In 1978 Joseph Brodsky  transfers the first heart operation, after which a whole year new verses do not appear. Despite a good knowledge of English, Brodsky  it’s hard to live in a new language environment. In the year 1980 Brodsky  receives American citizenship. Poetry poet still writes only in Russian. But, it begins to master new genres for itself: essay 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 released, which immediately receives a literary award. Many of his essays were autobiographical and related the life of a certain generation. He is published in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, participates in conferences, symposia and travels a lot around the world, which also greatly affects the content of his poems.

Thanks to English Prose Joseph Brodsky transformed 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 of mankind, and is fighting to ensure that "poetry collections lie on the bed next to the aspirin and the bible." Joseph Brodsky  He repeatedly emphasized that he did not consider poetry higher or better than prose; he simply saw his destiny only in writing poetry. His literary language is constantly changing under the influence of time, and events taking place in the world directly affect their subject.

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

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

“The writer of the poem writes it, primarily because versification is a tremendous accelerator of consciousness, thinking, attitude, 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 drug or alcohol. A person who is similarly dependent on language, I believe, is called a poet. ” He also talks about the importance of language for the poet: "Perhaps the most sacred thing that 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 the Joseph Brodsky  scattered a lot of all kinds of awards, but only for his English-language work. He is awarded the title "Poet Laureate of the United States" 1991-1992. In 1990 Brodsky  married Maria Sozzani, an Italian aristocrat, a Russian maternal. In 1993, their daughter Anna was born.

  Joseph Brodsky with his wife

Joseph Brodsky  transfers his second heart operation, and is waiting for a third. But the poet does not give up creativity, but on the contrary, anticipating the end, tries to tell this world as much as possible. Collected Works Joseph Brodsky  begin to appear in Russia: the first of them - “Edification”, “Autumn scream of a 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 poetic book, Landscape with the Flood, completes the poem with the lines:

“They accused me of everything, besides the weather ...

General, maybe non-existence armor

appreciates attempts to turn it into a sieve

and thank me for the hole. "

Joseph Brodskyi once said: “All my poems, more or less, about the same thing - about time. About what time does with a person. ” Life itself threw the poet to different places, but time did its job, 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.

In a conversation about the great poets of the 20th century, one cannot fail to mention the work of Joseph Brodsky. He is a very significant figure in the world of poetry. Brodsky had a difficult biography - persecution, misunderstanding, trial and exile. This prompted the author to leave for the USA, where he received public recognition.

The dissident poet Joseph Brodsky was born on May 24, 1940 in Leningrad. The boy's father worked as a military photographer, his mother as an accountant. When the Jews were “cleansed” in the ranks of officers in 1950, his father went to work as a photojournalist in a newspaper.

Joseph’s childhood coincided with the war, the blockade of Leningrad, and famine. The family survived, as did hundreds of thousands of people. In 1942, his mother took Joseph and was evacuated to Cherepovets. They returned to Leningrad after the war.

Brodsky dropped out of school, barely going to 8th grade. He wanted to financially help his family, so he went to work at the plant as an assistant to the milling machine operator. Then Joseph wanted to become a guide - it did not work. At one time he was eager to become a physician and even went to work in a morgue, but soon changed his mind. For several years, Joseph Brodsky changed many professions: all this time he drunkenly read poetry, philosophical treatises, studied foreign languages \u200b\u200band even planned to hijack a plane with his friends to escape from the Soviet Union. True, things didn’t go beyond plans.

Literature

Brodsky said that he began to write poetry at the age of 18, although there are several poems written at the age of 16-17. In the early period of his work, he wrote The Christmas Romance, The Monument to Pushkin, From the Outskirts to the Center, and other poems. Subsequently, poetry had a strong influence on the style of the author, and - they became the personal canon of the young man.

Brodsky met Akhmatova in 1961. She never doubted the talent of the young poet and supported the work of Joseph, believing in success. Brodsky himself was not particularly impressed with the verses of Anna Andreyevna, but the scale of the personality of the Soviet poetess delighted.

The first work that alerted the Power of the Soviets is dated 1958. The poem was called "Pilgrims." Following he wrote Loneliness. There, Brodsky tried to rethink what was happening to him and how to get out of this situation when newspapers and magazines closed the doors to the poet.

In January 1964 in the same “Evening Leningrad” letters were published of “indignant citizens” demanding to punish the poet, and on February 13 the writer was arrested for parasitism. The next day, he had a heart attack in the cell. Brodsky’s thoughts of that period are clearly guessed in the verses “Hello, my aging” and “What can I say about life?”.

The persecution that had begun placed a heavy burden on the poet. The situation worsened due to a break in relations with her lover Marina Basmanova. As a result, Brodsky made an attempt to die, but unsuccessfully.

The persecution continued until May 1972, when Brodsky was given the choice of a psychiatric hospital or emigration. Joseph Alexandrovich had already been to a psychiatric hospital, and, as he said, she was much worse than a prison. Brodsky chose emigration. In 1977, the poet accepted American citizenship.

Before leaving his native country, the poet tried to stay in Russia. He sent the letter himself asking for permission to live in the country, at least as a translator. But the future Nobel laureate was never heard.

Joseph Brodsky participated in the International Poetry Festival in London. Then he taught the history of Russian literature and poetry at the University of Michigan, Columbia and New York. In parallel, he wrote essays in English and translated poems into English. In 1986, Brodsky's collection “Less than One” was released, and the following year he received the Nobel Prize in literature.

In the period 1985-1989, the poet wrote “In memory of his father”, “Presentation” and the essay “One and a half rooms”. In these verses and prose - all the pain of a person who was not allowed to carry his parents on the last journey.

When perestroika began in the USSR, the poems of Joseph Alexandrovich actively published literary magazines and newspapers. In 1990, the poet’s books began to be published in the Soviet Union. Brodsky received invitations from his homeland more than once, but he constantly delayed this visit - he did not want the attention of the press and publicity. The complexity of the return was reflected in the verses of Ithaca, Letter to the Oasis, and others.

Personal life

The first great love of Joseph Brodsky was the artist Marina Basmanova, whom he met in 1962. They met for a long time, then lived together. In 1968, Marina and Joseph had a son, Andrei, but with the birth of a child, relations worsened. In the same year they broke up.

In 1990, he met Maria Sozzani, an Italian aristocrat with Russian roots on her maternal side. In the same year, Brodsky married her, and three years later they had a daughter, Anna. Unfortunately, Joseph Brodsky was not destined to see how his daughter was growing.

The poet is known as a famous smoker. Despite four heart surgeries, he never quit smoking. Doctors strongly advised Brodsky to engage in addiction, to which he replied: "Life is wonderful precisely because there are no guarantees, no, and never."

Even Joseph Brodsky adored cats. He claimed that these creatures did not have a single ugly movement. In many photos, the creator is shot with a cat in his arms.

With the support of the writer, the Russian Samovar restaurant opened in New York. Co-owners of the institution were Roman Kaplan and. Joseph Brodsky invested part of the money from the Nobel Prize in this project. The restaurant has become a tourist attraction of the "Russian" New York.

Death

He suffered from angina pectoris before emigration. The health status of the poet was unstable. In 1978, he underwent heart surgery, an American clinic sent an official letter to the USSR asking him to allow Joseph's parents to leave to care for his son. Parents themselves filed a petition 12 times, but each time they were refused. From 1964 to 1994, Brodsky suffered 4 heart attacks, he never again saw his parents. The writer’s mother died in 1983, and a year later his father died. The Soviet authorities refused him a request to come to the funeral. The death of parents crippled the poet's health.

On January 27, 1996, in the evening, Joseph Brodsky put down his briefcase, wished his wife good night and went up to his office - he had to work before the start of the spring semester. On the morning of January 28, 1996, the wife found the spouse without any signs of life. Doctors ascertained death from a heart attack.

Two weeks before his death, the poet bought a place in a cemetery in New York, near Broadway. He was buried there, following the last will of the dissident poet, who until his last breath loved his homeland.

In June 1997, the body of Joseph Brodsky was reburied in Venice at the San Michele cemetery.

In 2005, the first monument to the poet was opened in St. Petersburg.

Bibliography

• 1965 - "Poems and poems"
• 1982 - Roman Elegy
• 1984 - Marble
• 1987 - Urania
• 1988 - Desert Stop
• 1990 - Fern Notes
• 1991 - "Poems"
• 1993 - Cappadocia. Poems"
• 1995 - “In the vicinity of Atlantis. New poems "
• 1992-1995 - “Works of Joseph Brodsky”

Brodsky Joseph

(24.05.1940 - 28.01.1996)

Joseph A. Brodsky - the only child in the family of Leningrad intellectuals - was born on May 24, 1940 in Leningrad. Father, Alexander Ivanovich Brodsky (1903-1984), was a professional photographer, during the war he was a war correspondent on the Leningrad front, after the war he served in the navy (captain of the 3rd rank), mother, Maria Moiseevna Volpert (1905-1983), during the war, as a translator, she helped to receive information from prisoners of war, after the war she worked as an accountant.

Brodsky reluctantly recalled his childhood: “The Russians do not attach much importance to childhood. At least I don’t attach. Ordinary childhood. I don’t think that childhood experiences play an important role in further development. ”

Already in adolescence, his independence, determination, and firm character were manifested. In 1955, having not finished school, he entered the war factory as a milling machine operator, choosing for himself self-education, mainly reading: “It began as an accumulation of knowledge, but turned into the most important occupation for which you can sacrifice everything. Books became the first and only reality ”(I. Brodsky). In 1956, for the first time, like many at his age, he tried to rhyme.

He experienced a strong influence of Lermontov in his youth. Often changed places and types of work (the most unexpected combinations - eight years later, in March 1964 at the court (accusation of parasitism!) 13 professions he tested were announced: milling machine operator, geophysicist (according to L. Stern, 1959-1961) years; geography - Yakutia, Tien Shan, Kazakhstan, White Sea coast), orderly, fireman, photographer, translator, etc.), trying to find such earnings that would leave more time for reading and writing: on a geological trip to Yakutsk in 1959, he purchased in a bookstore the volume of poems by E.A. Baratynsky in a series "Poet's Library" reading that, finally strengthened in the desire to be a poet, "I had nothing to read, and when I found this book and read it, then that I realized that what needs to be addressed.

He intensively studied new languages \u200b\u200b(primarily English, Polish), attended lectures at the philological faculty of Leningrad State University, studied the history of literature, began to translate (from the beginning of the 60s he entered into agreements with publishing houses and worked as a professional poet-translator), and he wrote continuously their own, original verses - not trying to please the social order, completely rejecting all sorts of banality, but daring to constantly look for a new topic, fresh intonation and sound, an unexpected (often semantic) rhyme, a strong, memorable image. Quickly overgrown with a huge number of friends of different ages (“fifty thousand acquaintances”, L. Stern), on whom he rolled all his new “poems, poems”.

In typewritten and handwritten lists, from hand to hand, in the midst of poetry-reading intelligentsia, quickly spread wonderful, unlike anyone else, distinguished by their early maturity, vigilance, recognizable individuality and sharpness of writing, confessional openness, lyrical piercing, amazing subtle mastery of cutting poems and poems of Joseph Brodsky, unknown to the majority of Leningraders - “Christmas Romance”, “Procession”, “Pilgrims”, “Poems under the epigraph” (“Everyone is naked before God ...”), “Loneliness”, “Eleg Iya ”,“ Now more and more often I feel tired ... ”,“ Romance ”,“ Fly from here, a white moth ... ”,“ Guest ”,“ In memory of E.A. Baratynsky ”,“ Leave, leave, leave, leave .. . ”,“ Petersburg novel ”,“ July Intermezzo ”,“ I do not ask for immortality at death ... ”,“ Roosters will shout and slam ... ”,“ Stances to the city ”(“ It will not be allowed to die far from you. ..") and many others.

Despite the absence of significant publications, Joseph Brodsky had a scandalous for that time the widest fame of the best, most famous poet samizdat.

The early period of Joseph Brodsky’s creativity is extremely productive: actively mastering and assimilating the best examples of domestic and foreign poetry, he clearly formulated for himself the principle of the need for his constant spiritual growth and the recipe for sculpting an individual, easily recognizable poetic masterpiece: compactness, power, novelty, informativeness, Aesopian allegorism , aphorism, skill, harmony. He early recognized the necessity of synthesizing continuity (Russian poetry of the 19th-20th centuries) and reforming the Russian classical verse, revealing its new expressive possibilities.

With sadness, I saw that the overwhelming majority of contemporaries were not just not up to the task, but even unknown: “It is impossible to fall behind. Overtaking is only possible. ” His social circle is very wide, but most often about poetry in 1960-1964. he talked with the same young poets, students of the Technological Institute, Eugene Rein, Anatoly Naiman, Dmitry Bobyshev. It was Rhine who introduced him to Anna Andreevna Akhmatova, who confidently distinguished Brodsky from his entourage, endowed him with friendship and predicted a brilliant poetic future for him.

In 1963, his relations with the authorities in Leningrad escalated. “Despite the fact that Brodsky did not write direct political verses against the Soviet regime, the independence of the form and content of his verses plus the independence of personal behavior annoyed ideological overseers” (E. Evtushenko).

November 29, 1963 in the newspaper "Evening Leningrad" signed by A. Ionin, Y. Lerner, M. Medvedev, the libel "Near-Literature Drone" on Brodsky was published, where the following was said about him and his immediate circle:

“... A few years ago a young man appeared in the literary circles of Leningrad, who called himself a poet.<...>  His friends called him easily - Osei. In other places he was called his full name - Joseph Brodsky.<...>  What did this self-confident youth want to come to literature with? On his account there were a dozen or two poems rewritten in a thin notebook, and all these poems testified that the author’s worldview was clearly flawed.

He imitated poets who preached pessimism and disbelief in man, his poems are a mixture of decadent, modernism and ordinary gibberish. Brodsky's miserable imitative attempts looked pitiful. However, he could not create something independent: the strength was not enough. Lacked knowledge, culture. And what kind of knowledge can a dropout who has not even graduated from high school have? As you can see, this pygmy, confidently climbing to Parnassus, is not so harmless. Admitting that he “loves a stranger’s homeland”, Brodsky was extremely frank. He really does not love his Fatherland and does not hide it. Furthermore! For a long time they had hatched plans for treason. ”

At the end of the article, there was a direct appeal to the authorities to protect Leningrad and Leningrad from a dangerous drone:

“Obviously, we must stop babysitting with the literary parasite. Such as Brodsky, no place in Leningrad.<...>  Not only Brodsky, but everyone around him is following the same dangerous path as he is.<...>  Let the literary loafers like Joseph Brodsky get the sharpest rebuff. May it be unfair to them to stir up water! ”

Organized bullying grew; staying in Leningrad Brodsky was dangerous; in order to avoid arrest, his friends took the poet to Moscow in December 1963.

On January 2, 1964, in the apartment of E. Rein who moved to Moscow on Kirovskaya, Brodsky learned from L. Stern that his fiancée Marina Pavlovna Basmanova (the parents of young people on both sides had a sharp negative attitude towards their meetings) celebrated New Year with D. Bobyshev at the cottage of the friends of the Sheinins in Zelenogorsk (near Leningrad). The poet, full of misgivings, urgently returned to Leningrad, where he found out about the betrayal of the bride and the lowly, everyday betrayal of his friend.

Twenty-three-year-old Brodsky was extremely difficult to survive this double nasty blow from people close to him (perhaps the exceptional strength of these experiences that he endured within himself greatly aggravated his heart disease, which caused his premature death).

Soon another trouble awaited him: on the evening of February 13, 1964, Joseph Brodsky was unexpectedly arrested on the street.

After the first closed trial on February 18 in a district court on Vosstaniya Street, the poet was placed in a judicial psychiatric hospital (“psychiatric hospital”), “where he was subjected to mocking experiments for three weeks, but was recognized as mentally healthy and able-bodied” (L. Stern).

The second, open, trial took place on March 13, 1964. The decision of the court was expulsion for 5 years, with mandatory involvement in physical labor.

The poet was serving a link in Konoshsky district of the Arkhangelsk region, in the village of Norinsky. Y. Gordin recalls: “The village is located thirty kilometers from the railway, surrounded by marshy northern forests. Joseph did all kinds of physical work there. When the writer Igor Efimov and I came to him in October of the sixty-fourth year, he was assigned to the granary - to shovel the grain so that it would not get warm. They treated him well in the village, completely unaware that this polite and calm parasite would take their village with him into the history of world literature. ”

After reconciliation, M. Basmanova came to Brodsky in Norinskaya, giving birth to his son Andrei in 1967 (despite Brodsky's protests, Andrei was recorded in metrics by Osipovich with the surname Basmanov).

During the period of exile, he wrote such famous poems as “To One Poetess”, “I am Infected with Normal Classicism”, “Two Hours in a Reservoir”, “New Stanzas for Augustus”, “Northern Post”, “Letter in a Bottle”, “Wander in a thinning forest ... "," You, when my voice rings out ... "," Orpheus and Artemis "," Carnation "," Prophecy "," 24.5.65 bullpen "," In the ditch goose, like a stereo pipe ... " , "In the village, God does not live in the corners ...", "A bowl with a snake", "In a village lost in the woods ...", "Northern Territory, hide ...",

“With sadness and tenderness” and others.

In 1965, under pressure from the world community, by the decision of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR, the expulsion period was reduced to actually served (1 year, 5 months).

In 1965, the first book of Joseph Brodsky in Russian, "Poems and Poems," was published in New York. The poet in 1972 spoke of this event as follows: “I remember very well my feelings from my first book, which was published in Russian in New York. I had a sense of some ridicule of what had happened. I never understood what happened and what kind of book it was. ”

He studied hard and hard on samples, analyzed the successes and failures of other poets, mastered new rhythms and stanza, worked extremely creatively, wrote original poems, translated, read poems and translations at literary evenings. Occasions and creative business trips led him from Leningrad to Moscow, Palanga, Yalta, Gurzuf ...

His interest in poetic borderline - the junction of white verse and rhythmic prose - led to the creation of the famous poem “Stop in the Desert", which later gave the name to his first poetic collection, published in 1972 abroad.

Its mastered and fixed genre becomes an easily recognizable long elegy, a kind of semi-poem - aphoristic, sadly sad, ironically reflective, with brittle, like mica, language and syntax, bearing (no less than content) the function of refreshment and so much desired novelty . As an example, “Farewell, Mademoiselle Veronica”, “Fountain”, “In memory of TB”, built on a chopped rhythm, uniform army messages and army conclusions “Letter to General Z”, “Stanzas”, “Elegy”, the poem "Gorbunov and Gorchakov" (a special poetic task - an interactive form), "Dedicated to Yalta" (special task - updated syntax), "Overlooking the Sea", "The End of a Beautiful Era", "From" School Anthology "," Conversation with celestial ”,“ Singing without music ”,“ POST AETATEM NOSTRAM ”,“ Lithuanian divertissement ”,“ Still life ”, etc. others.

For some ten years or more, Brodsky grew extremely quickly into a virtuoso master of Russian verse and the work of creating another masterpiece obviously brought him enormous creative satisfaction.

When trying to publish poetry, Brodsky was faced with severe pressure from censorship, destroying all the originality of his poems and all the titanic work done; the poet did not accept all attempts at censorship in any form.

In the meantime, Russian special agencies were rapidly preparing to expel the uncomfortable, unbroken, uncompromising poet Joseph Brodsky abroad.

Early in the morning of June 4, 1972, leaving the country, as it turned out, forever gathering at Pulkovo Airport, Joseph Brodsky wrote a letter to the CPSU Secretary General Leonid Brezhnev, in which he expressed the hope that he would be allowed to publish in Russian magazines and books: " Dear Leonid Ilyich, leaving Russia not of his own free will, as you may know, I decide to turn to you with a request, the right to which gives me a firm sense that everything that I have done over 15 years of literary work serves and still serve only to the glory of p sskoy culture, nothing else.

I want to ask you to give me the opportunity to preserve my existence, my presence in the literary process. At least as a translator - in the quality in which I still performed. I dare to think that my work was a good job, and I could continue to be useful. In the end, a hundred years ago this was practiced. I belong to Russian culture, I recognize myself as a part of it, and no change of place on the final result can affect it. Language is an older and more inevitable thing than a state.

I belong to the Russian language, and as for the state, from my point of view, the measure of the writer’s patriotism is how he writes in the language of the people among whom he lives, and not vows from the rostrum. I am bitterly leaving Russia. I was born here, raised, lived, and everything that I have for my soul, I owe it to her. All the bad things that fell to my lot more than overlapped with the good, and I never felt offended by the Fatherland. I don’t feel it now. For, ceasing to be a citizen of the USSR, I do not cease to be a Russian poet. I believe that I will return; poets always return: in the flesh or on paper.

I want to believe in both. People came from the age when he was strong. There are too many weak people in this world. The only rightness is kindness. From evil, from anger, from hatred - even called the righteous - no one benefits. We are all sentenced to the same thing: to death. I die, writing these lines, you die, reading them. Our affairs will remain, but they will also be destroyed. Therefore, no one should interfere with each other to do his work. The conditions of existence are too difficult to complicate.

I hope you understand me correctly, understand what I ask. I ask you to give me the opportunity to continue to exist in Russian literature, on Russian soil. I think that I’m not guilty of anything in front of my Motherland. On the contrary, I think that he is in many ways right. I do not know what your answer to my request will be, whether it will take place at all. It’s a pity that I didn’t write to you earlier, but now there’s no time left. But I’ll tell you that in any case, even if my people don’t need my body, my soul will still be useful to him. "

Brodsky recalled his stay in Vienna: “I remember very clearly the first days in Vienna. I wandered the streets, looking at the shops. In Russia, the items displayed in the windows are separated by gaping gaps: one pair of shoes is almost a meter away from the other, and so on ... When you walk along the street here, the crowdingness prevailing in the windows, the abundance of the items displayed in them is striking. And I was not struck at all by the freedom that the Russians are deprived of, although this too, but the real matter of life, its materiality.

I immediately thought about our women, imagining how confused they would be at the sight of all these belongings. And one more thing: once I sailed from England to Holland and saw on the ship a group of children traveling on an excursion. What a joy it would be for our children, I thought then, and it was stolen from them forever. Generations grew, grew old, died, without seeing anything ... "

A month after arriving in the United States, July 9, 1972 Brodsky arrived in Ann Arbor, where he took up the position of visiting professor at the faculty of Slavic studies (tenured professor in the Slavic Department) of the University of Michigan, where he held this position for nine years until his departure for permanent residence to New York in 1981. He lectured on the history of Russian poetry, 20th century Russian poetry, poetry theory, led seminars, and took exams for future American Slavists.

In the same place, in Ann Arbor in 1972, he published his collection of Russian poems and poems “Stop in the Desert” - the first independent collection of Joseph Brodsky, in the compilation of which he showed extreme pickiness and high exactingness. In 1973, a volume of selected poems by Joseph Brodsky was published, translated into English by Professor George Klein. Already in the year of his arrival in America, Brodsky gave the first memorable interviews.

The American interlocutors, as a rule, did not feel at all that they were dealing with self-taught, with the help of self-education far beyond the university horizons: "Brodsky demonstrated unlimited knowledge in world literature, art, music and other areas of interest to him" (Ann-Marie Bramm).

In 1975, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the USA, a program poem “Lullaby of the Cod Cape” was written (with a dedication to AB, son Andrei). In 1977, Joseph Brodsky wrote a review of Geography of Evil on the book by A. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago.

In 1978, after a trip to Brazil, Brodsky wrote an essay “After a Trip, or Dedicated to the Spine”. In July 1989, before the graduates of Dartmouth College, he delivered a speech “Praise to Boredom”, which was included in the book of selected essays “On Sorrow and Reason” (1995). Brodsky was accepted as an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts, from which he left in protest against the admission of Yevgeny Yevtushenko to it.

In 1977, Ardis Publishing House in Ann Arbor published two of the most important collections of poems by Joseph Brodsky, “The End of a Beautiful Era. Poems 1964-71 / Comp. V. Maramzin and L. Losev ”and“ Part of speech. Poems 1972-76 / Comp. V. Maramzin and L. Losev. "

In the reply letter to A. I. Solzhenitsyn Brodsky received on May 14, 1977, in the very first paragraph, admiration was expressed for the poet’s professional work: “I don’t miss your poems in any Russian magazine, I don’t cease to admire your brilliant mastery. Sometimes I’m afraid that you are somehow destroying a verse, but you do it with incomparable talent. ”

By May 24, 1980, i.e. to Brodsky’s fortieth anniversary, his friends published the part of speech almanac, which included, in particular, Brodsky’s poems dedicated to M. Basmanova: “You, a guitar-like thing with a tangled web / strings ...”, his essay “Leningrad”, written in English and translated into Russian by L. Losev, Brodsky’s interview with Solomon Volkov entitled “New York: the poet’s soul”.

In 1980, Brodsky received American citizenship ("I became an American citizen in Detroit. It was raining, it was early morning, we were about seventy-eighty people gathered in the courthouse, we took the oath in bulk. There were immigrants from Egypt, Czechoslovakia, Zimbabwe, Latin America, Sweden ... The judge who attended the ceremony made a short speech and said: when you take the oath, you will not renounce the bonds that bind you to your former homeland, you will no longer belong to it politically, but the United States will become richer if you save your crops emotional and emotional connections. Then it touched me very much - I am touched even now, when I remember that moment. ”- IB).

In 1981, he underwent heart surgery (bypass surgery). Doctors forbade him to smoke a lot, but he continued to do this, without fail breaking off filters from strong cigarettes.

"In 1981, he<...>  He lived for several months at the American Academy in Rome, and this time proved to be very fruitful for him ”(M. Brodskaya).

In 1983, Ardis Publishing House in Ann Arbor published Joseph Brodsky’s book of lyrics, New Stanzas for Augusta. Poems to M.B. 1962-82. " In 1984, Brodsky's play Marble was published at the same publishing house.

In 1986, his English book Less then one was recognized as America's Best Literary Critical Book of the Year.

The name of Joseph Brodsky’s poetic collection of 1987 "Urania" is, according to his testimony, a tribute to Baratynsky ("Fans of Urania cold ...").

During his life in America, Brodsky was worried about constant heart problems. By May 1987, the poet suffered three heart attacks. Heart attacks were healed at the Presbyterian Hospital (New Jersey).

In 1987, the poet praised his exile as follows: “Those fifteen years that I spent in the USA were extraordinary for me, because everyone left me alone. I led a life that I believe a poet should lead - not yielding to public temptations, living in solitude. Perhaps exile is the natural condition for the existence of the poet, in contrast to the novelist, who should be inside the structures of the society he describes.

I felt a certain advantage in this coincidence of my conditions of existence and my studies. And now, because of all these “changes for the better,” there is a feeling that someone wants to invade my life by force.<...>  As if you are in the market, a gypsy comes up to you, grabs your hand, stares into your eyes and says: “Now I’ll tell you what will happen ...” I’m used to living on the sidelines and don’t want to change that. I have been living away from my homeland for so long, my view is a view from the outside, and that’s all; what happens there, I don’t feel with my skin ... They will print me - well, they will not print me - also not bad. Read the next generation. It’s absolutely all the same to me ... Almost all the same. ”

In December 1987, at the age of forty-seven, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (following Bunin and Pasternak, he became the third Russian poet to receive the Nobel Prize): “for all-encompassing authorship, full of clarity of thought and poetic depth” (Brodsky - one of the youngest Nobel Prize winners in all the years of its award).

The Nobel Lecture he read became (and remains) an intellectual and aesthetic bestseller, interpreting the problem of the independence of the creative person from the social environment, the spirit of continuity and moral obligations, the tragedy of life and the lessons of history for future generations.

In December 1988, Brodsky delivered the famous “Speech at the Stadium” to graduates of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, wishing the young people accuracy in language, love for parents, modesty, lack of complaints, ignoring enemies, etc.

In July 1989, before the graduates of Dartmouth College, he delivered a speech “Praise to Boredom”, which was included in the book of selected essays “On Sorrow and Reason” (1995).

On October 11, 1990, he delivered at the British Academy the first annual lecture, The Times Literary Supplement, which formed the basis of the published essay Altra Ego. In 1991, at the University of Leiden, he gave the Hoising lecture, "Profile of Clio." In the same year he wrote an essay "Collector's copy".

In Paris in 1991, Joseph Brodsky met the Italian aristocrat Maria Sozzani and married her. In 1993, the couple had a daughter, Anna Alexandra Maria.

In 1991, he became a professor of literature at Mount Hollyoc College in South Headley, Massachusetts (Andrew Mellon Professor of Literature at Mount Holyoke College).

From May 1991 to May 1992 he was appointed Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress of the USA, which required his almost constant presence in Washington. Brodsky did not like the city, which he reflected in his poem “View from the Hill”, decoding in it a line with the dates (“For two years lived here”) as follows: “this is nominal: the 91st and 92nd years. The laureate year is one, but the calendar was two years. ” On October 2, 1991, Brodsky delivered a lecture in the Library of Congress at the Indiscreet Proposal, which was included in the book of selected essays.

On September 9, 1993, at the Gothenburg Book Fair, Joseph Brodsky and the American poet Derek Walcott held a conversation entitled The Power of Poetry.

On April 9, 1995, Brodsky spent the last author's evening for Russian immigrants at the Morse Auditorium at Boston University.

Another important detail - Joseph Brodsky was against publishing a consolidated volume of his interviews. And here's why: “Joseph was against such a book. And before his death, he wrote a letter to Professor Polukhina, in which he asked her not to do this. We do not know why he was against this particular project - then he did not tell us anything about it. But I know for sure that the interview as a form of printed expression annoyed him very much. First of all, because the person being interviewed usually does not have the ability to control the translation and the final text, often edited by journalists, and as a result, his words are often significantly distorted ”(M. Brodskaya).

“Brodsky’s aesthetics turns out to be not so much the mathematical sum of modernity, postmodern and traditionalism as integration of all these art systems, extraction of the common artistic and philosophical root for them. This integral or “root”, on the one hand, has revealed a deep affinity with the aesthetics of Baroque; and on the other, he proved his viability by how organically he accepted Brodsky's "grafted" sprouts of antiquity, metaphysical tradition, twentieth-century English poetry (Eliot, Auden, Frost), almost futuristic language freedom, Oberiut absurdism, and much more. Brodsky is considered to be the completion of the twentieth century, but his aesthetic experiment created a lively and fruitful soil that forms the general basis for a new variety of literature in the next century. ”

Parents

In the Soviet social structure, the Brodsky family was average, belonged to the category of “employees”. Alexander Ivanovich Brodsky (1903–1984) worked as a photojournalist, Maria Moiseevna Volpert (1905–1983) as an accountant. Joseph was their late and only child. Apparently, it was not easy for his mother, and therefore she gave birth not in an ordinary hospital, but in a specialized clinic.

Material conditions were “like everyone else”. They lived closely, the three of us in a sixteen-meter room, then in another communal apartment a little more spacious - parents in the entrance room are larger, son in the front of the small room, and behind, behind the closet, the father showed and printed his photos. The rooms were closely crammed with old furniture. The clothes were also worn old, she was constantly repaired and changed. The family didn’t have to starve, but there wasn’t enough money all the time, the earnings of the parents were small (“... at home, as far as I remember, the monetary discords did not stop”). The first years of Joseph’s life were in the time of deprivation - the war and the meager post-war years until 1948. He was too small to remember the horrors of the Leningrad blockade, but, like most peers, in childhood he knew only poor life, barely above the level of hunger.

Brodsky's parents did not belong to the intellectual elite of the city, the circle of scientists and writers, but they were not alien to cultural interests: they constantly read books, listened to classical music, and occasionally went to the theater. Both in childhood received a good education. Their speech was literate, free from dialectic impurities, the dictionary is rich. Alexander Ivanovich, the son of the owner of a small printing house in St. Petersburg, graduated from the Department of Geography of Leningrad University. Maria Moiseevna was born in Dvinsk (Daugavpils in modern Latvia) in the family of a Baltic agent of the American sewing machine company Singer. She spent most of her childhood in Lithuania, near Šiauliai. For the Baltic middle-bourgeois families, bilingualism was characteristic, Maria Moiseevna from childhood owned German. The languages \u200b\u200bof Joseph, however, were not taught at home. As he later guessed, parents tried, whenever possible, to hide their "bourgeois origin", one of the signs of which was knowledge of foreign languages. Although Joseph's parents themselves were not affected by the Stalinist terror, they were careful in their statements. Under normal conditions, family tradition comes into the child’s mind early and largely determines self-determination, but Brodsky inherited it fragmentarily. Later, he could only fantasize about his ancestors in Lithuania and in Galicia, where his roots went, judging by the surname originating from the city of Brody. In Brodsky’s sixteen-meter-long family space, the signs of social mimicry are remembered: the black plaster bust of Lenin on the stove, in less dangerous times giving way to the marble bust of “some woman in a cap with shuttlecocks, which are often in the commissaries,” and the photo of Stalin above his bed is obviously , designed to hint to a random visitor in whose honor the boy was given a name.