Joseph Brodsky

A Famous Russian poet

“For a writer, only one form of

patriotism exists: his attitude
toward language.”
― Joseph Brodsky
 Joseph Brodsky
Born :-Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky
Died:-28 January 1996 (aged 55)
New York City, New York, U.S
Spouse:- Maria Sozzani (m. 1990)
Children:-Andrei Basmanov (born 1967)
Anastasia Kuznetsova (born 1972)
Anna Brodskaya (born 1993)
 Early Life
• Joseph Brodsky was born in Leningrad on May 24,
1940.
• His father, Aleksandr Brodsky, was a professional
photographer in the Soviet Navy and his mother, Maria
Volpert Brodsky, was a professional interpreter.
• He left school at the age of fifteen, taking jobs in a
morgue, a mill, a ship’s boiler room, and a geological
expedition
 Early years
• In 1955, Brodsky began writing his own poetry and producing
literary translations. He circulated them in secret, and some were
published by the underground journal Sintaksis (Syntax).
• In 1960, the young Brodsky met Anna Akhmatova, one of the
leading poets of the silver age. She encouraged his work, and would
go on to become his mentor.
• In 1963, Brodsky's poetry was denounced by a Leningrad
newspaper as "pornographic and anti-Soviet".
• Brodsky's sentence was commuted in 1965 after protests by
prominent Soviet and foreign cultural figures, including Evgeny
Evtushenko, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Jean-Paul Sartre as well as
Akhmatova.
Joseph Brodsky during his
childhood
 Career
•In 1972, Brodsky was diagnosed with "sluggishly progressing
schizophrenia".
• Within 10 days officials broke into his apartment, took his papers,
and on 4 June 1972 put him on a plane for Vienna, Austria.
• Brodsky received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 "for an all-
embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic
intensity". It also called his writing "rich and intensely vital",
characterized by "great breadth in time and space".
• In addition to teaching positions at Columbia University and Mount
Holyoke College, where he taught for fifteen years, Brodsky served as
Poet Laureate of the United States from 1991 to 1992.
Plaque marking where
Brodsky stayed in Vilnius.
 Denunciation Or Exile
•In 1964, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison for "
social parasitism “and his works were denounced as
‘anti-Soviet’.
• He was placed in Kretsy(a famous Soviet Union
prison) before his sentence was commuted.
• He was exiled from the U.S.S.R. in 1972, and he went
to the United States, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1977.
• In the U.S. he worked as a visiting professor at several
colleges and universities.
 After Exile
•In the U.S. he worked as a visiting professor at several
colleges and universities.
•He wrote his first bit of poetry in Russian, but he later
switched it into English.
• His first collection was Bolshaja Elegua Dzonu Donnu.
This was published when he was 23 years old.
• He was named poet laureate of the United States
in1991.
Famous book of Joseph Brodsky. It is combination of his
poems .
 Influences
•He was the favored protégé of the great lady of Petersburg,
Anna Akhmatova, and to hear him read her poems in
Russian in the Library of Congress was an experience to
make one's hair stand on end even if one did not
understand the Russian language.
• Many works were dedicated to other writers such
as Tomas Venclova, Octavio Paz ,Robert Lowell, Derek
Walcott, and Benedetta Craveri.
 Famous Poem And Books of Joseph Brodsky
A Part of Speech (1977) and To Urania (1988) and the
essay collection Less Than One (1986), which won the
National Book Critics Circle Award. The Polar Explorer
Other notable works include the play Marbles (1989)
and Watermark, a prose collection (1992).Throughout
his career he wrote in Russian and English, self-
translating and working with eminent poet-
translators.
 Famous Poem of Joseph Brodsky
A Polar Explorer In Vietnamese language
All the huskies are eaten. There is no space
left in the diary, And the beads of quick Một thám hiểm vùng cự
words scatter over his spouse's sepia- Tất cả các huskies được
shaded face ăn. Không còn chỗ trống
adding the date in question like a mole to trong cuốn nhật ký Tiếp
her lovely cheek. theo, ảnh chụp của em
Next, the snapshot of his sister. He doesn't gái anh. Anh ta không tha
spare his kin: cho người thân của mình:
what's been reached is the highest possible những gì đạt được là vĩ
latitude! độ cao nhất có thể! Và,
And, like the silk stocking of a burlesque giống như chiếc vớ lụa
half-nude của một nữ hoàng nửa
queen, it climbs up his thigh: gangrene. khỏa thân khôi hài, nó
trèo lên đùi anh: hoại thư.
 Theme
This was a harrowing nightmare, reminds me of all those tales of
polar explorers that met their untimely demises trying to reach the
passage, which no doubt this was inspired by. Brodsky does an
admirable job of going through the inner psyche of a man who is
on the edge of death, and all the images and dreams he sees, then
it all comes crashing down, with the
scintillating detail of a pleasurable image of a burlesque queen
turns into the repulsive image of gangrene. The mans fate is
written, in horrifying detail. The imagery and mores ending are
enough to leave an impact on this reader.
 Personal Life & Legacy
In 1962, Joseph Brodsky met Marina Basamanova, a painter
and began a relationship with her. On 8 October 1967, their
son Andrei was born. Political pressure and threats
prevented them from marrying each other and subsequently
they broke their relationship. He continued to dedicate
poems to her after the birth of their son.
In 1990, Joseph Brodsky married Russian-Italian student
Maria Sozzani. They had a daughter named Anna.
He died of a heart attack on 28 January 1996, in New York
City, at the age of 55
 Awards & Achievements
•In 1978, he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at
Yale University.
• He won the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s
“genius” award in 1981.
• He won the National Book Critics Award for his collection of essays
‘Less Than One’.
• In 1987, Joseph Brodsky won the ‘Nobel Prize in Literature’ for ‘all-
embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic
intensity’.
• Joseph Brodsky was announced the United States Poet Laureate of
1991. The same year he was awarded the Struga Poetry Evenings
Golden Wreath Award.
 Interesting Fact
The ‘A Room And a Half’ directed by
Andrey Khrzhanovsky is based his
life