Marina Vraciu, „De la mlaştinile baltice pînă la continentul ţintuit în cow-boys“. Întîlniri cu Iosif Brodski
From the Baltic marshland to the cowboy-studded continent
Encounters with Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky’s self-definition as ’a Jew, a Russian poet and an America citizen’ introduces a well-known poet and essayist, playwright and translator, Nobel-prize laureate and American Poet Laureate through. Brodsky’s essays collected by the poet himself (Less Than One, 1986) have established him as a master of the English language. This article traces the space-time-language continuum as a structuring force in Brodsky’s first collection of essays, which is used in the poet’s own intention of presenting himself as an heir of both the Russian and English literary traditions. A ’room and a half’, the poet’s address in his native Leningrad has become a metaphoric location within the highly conceptualized Petersburg text of the Russian culture, central to Brodsky’s poetics and aesthetics.
Keywords: the Petersburg text of Russian culture, Russian poetry, Joseph Brodsky, literary exile, essays
- Iosif Brodski. Sobranie socinenii v 7-mi tomah, Puşkinskii Fond, Sankt-Peterburg, MMI / Joseph Brodsky’s collected works in 7 vols. Volum V in this edition includes eighteen essays; among which: In A Room and a Half, Of Grief and Reason, A Guide to a Renamed City (1979), Flight from Byzantium (“The New Yorker”, 1985) To Please a Shadow / Poklonitsja teni (1983), A Keening Muse (1982).
- Joseph Brodsky. Watermark, Farrar, Straus&Giroux, 1992.
- Iosif Brodski. Din nicăieri, cu dragoste, traducere şi postfaţă de Emil Iordache, Timpul, 1995 (Brodski 1995) / Joseph Brodsky. From nowhere, with love. Translation into the Romanian and an Afterword by Emil Iordache.
- Joseph Brodsky. Collected Poems in English, 1972-1999, edited by Ann Kjellberg, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
- Joseph Brodsky: Conversations. edited by Cynthia L. Haven.
- Dialogi s Iosifom Brodskim (Eksmo, Moskva, 2002) / Dialogues with Joseph Brodsky.
- Anna Ahmatova. Poeme. Proze, Editura Universităţii Al.I.Cuza din Iaşi, 2004. / Poems. Essays.
- David Bethea. Joseph Brodsky and the Making of Exile, Princeton, 1994.
- Efim G. Etkind. Tam, vnutri. Russkaya poezis dvadtsatogo veka / There, Within. Russian Poetry in the Twentieth Century, Maksima, Sankt-Peterburg, 1997.
- Mikhail Kreps. Poetika Brodskogo / Brodsky’s Poetics, Ardis, New York, 1984.
- Viktor Кulle. Tvorchestvo Brodskogo v Rossii, 1996 / Brodsky’s work in Russia (PhD thesis, unpublished).
- Lev Losev. Iosif Brodski. Opyt literaturnoi biografii, Molodaia gvardia, Moskva, 2006, în limba engleză, Joseph Brodsky: A Literary Life, transl. Jane Ann Miller. Yale University, 2011.
- Lev Losev, Valentina Polukhina, eds. Kak rabotaet stikhotvorenie Brodskogo: Iz issledovanii slavistov na Zapade. Мoskva: NLO, 2002./ How does a Brodsky poem mean? Studies by Western Slavicists.
- Iuri M. Lotman, М.I. Lotman. Iz nabliudenii nad poetikoi sbornika Iosifa Brodskogo Urania, v. I. M. Lotman, în O poetah i poezii. Sankt-Peterburg. Iskusstvo-SPb, p.294-307 / Some notes on the poetics of Joseph Brodsky’s volume To Urania.
- Valentina Poluhina. Bolshaia kniga interviu 2000, 2004, 2007, Zaharov, Moskva / The Great Book of Interviews.
- Valentina Poluhina. Iosif Brodski. Jizn, trudy, epoha. S-Peterburg, Jurnal “Zvezda”, 2008. / Iosif Brodsk: Life, Works, Times.
- Valentina Poluhina. Joseph Brodsky. A Poet of Our Time, 1986.
- Stanislav A. Savitski. Andergraund. Istoria i mifî leningradskoi neofiţialnoi kulturî, Helskinki, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, Моskva, 2002. / Undergound. The history and myths of the unoffical Leningrad culture.
- Literatura russkogo zarubezh’ya (1920-1990). Pod red. A.I. Smirnovoi, Flinta-Nauka, Moskva, 2006/ The Literature of the Russian Exile. A.I. Smirnova, ed.
- Gerald Smith. Vygl’yad iyvne. Stat’i o russkoj poezii i poetike, Studia poetica, Jazyki slav’yanskoj kul’tury. 2002. /A look from the outside. Studies in Russian Poetry and Poetics. Ch.5. Brodsky, pp. 417-500.
- Susan Sontag. On Photography. Penguin. London. 1977.
- Vladimir Toporov. Peterburgskii tekst russkoi literarury. SPb., Iskusstvo, 2003 / The Petersburg text of Russian Literature.
- Sanna Turomaa. Poet kak odinokii turist: Brodskii, Venetsia i putevîe zametki, trad. de E. Kanişcev, NLO, 2004, nr. 67 / The poet as a lonely tourist: Brodski, Venice and travel notes.
- Vail Piotr şi Aleksandr Genis. Оt mira – k Rimu // Poetika Brodskogo, sb.statei pod red.prof. L. Loseva, Tenafly, N.J.: Hermitage, 1986, p. 198-206./ From the world to Rome. Brodsky’s Poetics.
- Volkov Solomon Volkov. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky. A poet s Journey through the Twentieth Century (translated by Marian Schwatz with photographs by. Marianna Volkov. The Free Press, 1998).
