NEWS FOCUS NOBEL PRIZE WINNER FOR LITERATURE Exiled Russian poet a “hero” in his time
JOSEPH BRODSKY winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize for Literature is one of the great poets of the 20th century. Sydney writer RENEE BITTOUN pays tribute to Brodsky, a Russian ...
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NEWS FOCUS

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER FOR LITERATURE

Exiled Russian poet

a “hero” in his time

JOSEPH BRODSKY winner of the 1987 Nobel

U Prize for Literature is one of the great poets

of the 20th century. Sydney writer RENEE

BITTOUN pays tribute to Brodsky, a Russian

Jew who has lived in the West since his

expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1972.

"Because the art of poetry makes words necessary;

I, one of the deaf, baldingf dismal emissaries

of a second-rate power, caught up in this

and not wishing to do violence to my brain,

am outfitting myself and heading down to the kiosk

to see what the evening papers contain,

The poem, The End of a Beautiful

Era’, written by Brodsky in his home

city of Leningrad in 1969 a few years

before his enforced exile in 1972, is

typical of Brodsky’s style; rich, lively,

sadly humorous and often self

deprecating, traditional poetry

marked by today’s political

experiences.

Although he is a hero to many Soviet

Jews, Brodsky is almost unknown

outside literary circles in the United

States and Europe.

In Australia, few of his poems or

essays have been available until recently.

But with the release of some of his

work this month, Australians will have

an opportunity to read some stimulating

essays by this exile.

He stands with compatriots Anna

Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, as

amongst the foremost poets of this

• century.

Brodsky, who was expelled from the

USSR in 1972, lives now in the USA.

His story of political and racial

persecution is not new, nor is his forced

exile. But his capacity to view both sides,

the passion for his home and its people

is evident, and the loathing of its

political system is viewed with an

equally critical eye on new-found

western values.

Born an only child Brodsky grew up

in a one and a half room flat in

Leningrad, the city he felt to be the

source of great Russian literature, “the

capital of Russian letters” and whose

legacy today he has inherited. His

parents were secular Jews-, his father a

naval journalist and his mother a clerk.

Although both had university educations

there were no career advancements for

either due to their Jewish “nationality”

and their non-party membership.

Of his parents, Brodsky has written:

“lam grateful to my mother and father

not only for giving me life but also for

failing to bring up their child as a slave.

They tried the best they could — if only

to safeguard me against the social reality

I was bom into-to turn me into the state's

obedient, loyal member”. Autodidactic

in nature Brodsky left school at 15,

taught himself English and Polish and

began by translating poems from these

languages into Russian.

In 1964, at the age of 24, Joseph

Brodsky already noticed and accredited

with great talent by his peers, was

brought to an ugly trial, at a court where

the entrance sign read “Trial of the

Parasite, Brodsky”.

He was charged with laziness, and

stood accused before judges who decreed

that writing and translating poetry did

not constitute real work.

Abstracts from his trial read like a

Kafkaesque nightmare. None of the

witnesses called to testify against him

had ever met him nor read his work yet

claimed he was “a parasite, an oaf, a

ruffian, an ideologically filthy

individual” and called for his detention.

The diary he wrote as a 16-year-old

was produced as evidence against him .

and none of his contemporary work was

presented. This vile anti-Semitic and

anti-intellectual trial led to Brodsky’s

internal exile for 5 years. He continued

to write and translate poetry and in June,

1972 he was forcibly spirited out of

Russia. His immediate residence was in

Austria at the home of W.H. Auden,

whose works he had translated.

He then went on to positions as

visiting professor and Poet in Residence

at many American Universities. He was

awarded an Honorary Doctorate of

letters at Yale University in 1978.

Much of his work today is written in

English. As he explains: “Even if I had

written all this in Russian, these words

wouldn’t see the light of day under the

Russian sky. Who would read them

then? A handful of emigres whose

parents either have died or will die under

similar circumstances? They know this

story only too well. They know what it •

feels like not to be allowed to see their

mothers of their fathers on their

deathbed; the silence that follows their

request for an emergency visa to attend

a relative’s funeral. And then it’s too late,

and a man or a woman puts the receiver

down and walks out the door into the

foreign afternoon feeling something

neither language has words for, and for

which no howl will suffice,

either. . . ”?

In the latest collection of his essays

published here, Less Than One*,

Brodsky ranges from nostalgia over

Leningrad to the futility of passive

resistance.

He offers warm and sensitive

descriptions of poets and writers who

have impressed him and from whose

readings he has been rewarded

spiritually and technically; the works of

Auden (’’the greatest mind of the 20th

century”) Dostoevsky, Tblstoy and the

poetess TSvestaeva.

• Joseph Brodsky (right) soviet-born winner of the 1987 Nobel Literature prize, hugs his publisher Roger Strauss in London as he hears news of his Nobel prize. Help

• Joseph Brodsky (right) soviet-born winner of the 1987 Nobel Literature prize,

hugs his publisher Roger Strauss in London as he hears news of his Nobel prize.

There is the bitter reality of the loss

of continuum in great Russian literature,

the legacy stripped by political realism.

In Catastrophes in the Air, Brodsky

describes contemporary Russian writing

as reduced to “tantalising hors d’oeuvres

on the empty table of a lean nation”, and

bemoans the loss of the one writer he

believed to have transcended “the vast,

corpse-strewn, treachery-ridden

historical vista”, the untranslated,

ostracised Andrei Platonov.

These are essays of an intellect

refreshingly open and forthright, critical

and caring.

They are essential reading for those in

search of the lost art of the learned essay.

Perhaps now that Brodsky has

achieved the Nobel prize for literature

his works will become available in

Australia. It is a sorry state of affairs

that a poet of his grace and aptitude

is unavailable to the reading public

until the status of prize winner is

achieved.

How many other gifted writers of non

English language prose, poetry and

literature must go unpublished and

therefore unread and unloved in his

country?