Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996), known as Joseph in English, was a Russian and American poet and essayist. He was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) in the Soviet Union. Brodsky had problems with Soviet officials and was told to leave the country in 1972. With the help of W. H. Auden and others, he moved to the United States. Later, he taught at Mount Holyoke College and universities such as Yale, Columbia, Cambridge, and Michigan. Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity." He was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1991.

According to Professor Andrey Ranchin of Moscow State University, "Brodsky is the only modern Russian poet whose work has been given the honor of being a classic. Brodsky's recognition as a classic is an unusual event. No other contemporary Russian writer has been the subject of as many memoirs or conferences." Daniel Murphy, in his important book Christianity and Modern European Literature, lists Brodsky as one of the most important Christian poets of the 20th century, along with T. S. Eliot, Osip Mandelstam, Anna Akhmatova (Brodsky's teacher for a time), and W. H. Auden (who supported Brodsky in the United States). Irene Steckler was the first to clearly say that Brodsky was "unquestionably a Christian poet." Before that, in July 1972, after leaving the Soviet Union, Brodsky said in an interview: "While I am connected to the Old Testament through family and the idea of justice, I consider myself a Christian. Not a good one, but I try to be." Viktor Krivulin, a contemporary Russian poet and fellow Acmeist, said that "Brodsky always saw his Jewish heritage as a religious part of himself, even though, in the end, he is a Christian poet."

Early years

Joseph Brodsky was born into a Russian Jewish family in Leningrad, which is now called Saint Petersburg. He was part of a long family of rabbis, and his direct ancestor was Joseph ben Isaac Bekhor Shor. His father, Aleksandr Brodsky, worked as a photographer in the Soviet Navy, and his mother, Maria Volpert Brodskaya, was a professional interpreter who often helped support the family. Brodsky and his family lived in shared apartments and faced poverty because of their Jewish background. As a young child, Brodsky survived the Siege of Leningrad, during which he and his parents nearly died from starvation. One of his aunts died from hunger during this time. Brodsky later experienced health problems linked to the siege. He said many of his teachers were anti-Jewish, and he felt like a dissident from an early age. He once said, "I began to despise Lenin, even when I was in the first grade, not so much because of his political ideas or actions… but because of his many images everywhere."

As a young student, Brodsky was described as "an unruly child" who often acted out in class. At fifteen, he left school and tried to join the School of Submariners but was not accepted. He later worked as a machine operator. After deciding to become a doctor, he worked at the morgue of Kresty Prison, where he cut and sewed bodies. Brodsky later held many different jobs, including work in hospitals, a ship's boiler room, and on geological expeditions. At the same time, he taught himself many subjects. He learned Polish to translate works by Polish poets like Czesław Miłosz and English to translate the writings of John Donne. Through this process, he developed a strong interest in classical philosophy, religion, mythology, and English and American poetry.

Career and family

For a long time, life had been shared together, so when snow began to fall, it seemed endless. To protect her eyes from the snowflakes, I would cover them with my hand. The snowflakes, pretending not to notice, would hit my palm like butterflies.

In 1955, Brodsky began writing poetry and translating literary works. He shared his writings secretly, and some were published in an underground journal called Sintaksis (Syntax, Russian: Си́нтаксис). His writings did not discuss politics. By 1958, he was already well known in literary circles for his poems The Jewish Cemetery near Leningrad and Pilgrims. When asked when he first felt called to poetry, he remembered, "In 1959, in Yakutsk, I walked into a bookstore and found a book of poems by Baratynsky. I had nothing to read, so I read that book and finally understood what I needed to do in life. Or at least, I became very excited. In a way, Evgeny Abramovich Baratynsky is responsible." His friend, Ludmila Shtern, recalled working with Brodsky on an irrigation project during his time as a geologist's assistant: "We traveled across the Leningrad Province, checking canals that were in poor condition. During these trips, I heard Brodsky read his poems The Hills and You Will Gallop in the Dark aloud to me between train cars as we traveled toward Tikhvin."

In 1960, Brodsky met Anna Akhmatova, a famous poet from the Silver Age. She supported his work and became his mentor. In 1962, Akhmatova introduced Brodsky to Marina Basmanova, a young painter from an artistic family who was drawing Akhmatova's portrait. Brodsky and Basmanova began a relationship. However, Brodsky's close friend and fellow poet, Dmitri Bobyshev, was in love with Basmanova. When Bobyshev pursued Basmanova, the authorities began targeting Brodsky. Bobyshev was believed to have denounced Brodsky. Brodsky wrote many love poems to Basmanova, including:
"I was only that which you touched with your palm over which, in the deaf, raven-black night, you bent your head… I was practically blind. You, appearing, then hiding, taught me to see."

In 1963, a Leningrad newspaper criticized Brodsky's poetry as "pornographic and anti-Soviet." His papers were taken, he was interrogated, placed in a mental institution twice, and then arrested. In 1964, Soviet authorities charged Brodsky with "social parasitism" because his odd jobs and role as a poet were not seen as enough contributions to society. They called him "a pseudo-poet in velveteen trousers" who failed to fulfill his "constitutional duty to work honestly for the good of the motherland." The trial judge asked, "Who has recognized you as a poet? Who has enrolled you in the ranks of poets?" Brodsky replied, "No one. Who enrolled me in the ranks of the human race?"

For his "parasitism," Brodsky was sentenced to five years of hard labor and spent 18 months on a farm in Norenskaya, a village in the Arkhangelsk region, 350 miles from Leningrad. He lived in a small cottage without plumbing or heating, which was considered a luxury at the time. Basmanova, Bobyshev, and Brodsky's mother, among others, visited him. Brodsky wrote on his typewriter, chopped wood, hauled manure, and read English and American poetry, including works by W. H. Auden and Robert Frost. His friend and biographer, Lev Loseff, wrote that while his time in the mental hospital and trial were difficult, the 18 months in the Arctic were among the best times of Brodsky's life. Brodsky's mentor, Anna Akhmatova, laughed at the KGB's actions. "What a biography they're creating for our red-haired friend!" she said. "It's as if he hired them to do it on purpose."

Brodsky's sentence was reduced in 1965 after protests by prominent Soviet and foreign cultural figures, including Evgeny Evtushenko, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as Akhmatova. Brodsky became a symbol of artistic resistance in the West after a secret transcription of trial minutes was smuggled out of the country.

Since poetry requires words, I, a sad, deaf, and balding representative of a small nation within a powerful country, wishing to protect my aging mind, dress myself and head to the main street for the evening paper.

Brodsky's son, Andrei, was born on October 8, 1967, and Basmanova ended their relationship. Andrei was registered under Basmanova's surname because Brodsky did not want his son to face the political attacks he endured. Marina Basmanova was threatened by Soviet authorities, preventing her from marrying Brodsky or joining him when he was exiled. After their son's birth, Brodsky continued writing love poems to Basmanova. In 1989, Brodsky wrote his final poem to "M.B.," reflecting on their life in Leningrad:
"Your voice, your body, your name mean nothing to me now. No one destroyed them. It's just that, to forget one life, a person needs to live at least one other life. And I have served that portion."

Brodsky returned to Leningrad in December 1965 and continued writing for the next seven years. Many of his works were translated into German, French, and English and published abroad. Verses and Poems was published in Washington in 1965, Elegy to John Donne and Other Poems in London in 1967, and A Stop in the Desert in New York in 1970. Only four of his poems were published in Leningrad anthologies in 1966 and 1967, with most of his work appearing outside the Soviet Union or circulated secretly (samizdat) until 1987. Persecuted for his poetry and Jewish heritage, Brodsky was denied permission to travel. In 1972, while considering Brodsky's exile, authorities consulted mental health expert Andrei Snezhnevsky, a proponent of the false medical diagnosis of "paranoid reformist delusion," a tool used to imprison dissenters. Without examining Brodsky, Snezhnevsky diagnosed him with "sluggishly progressing schizophrenia," concluding he was "not a valuable person at all and may be let go." In 1971, Brodsky was invited twice to emigrate to Israel

Work

Joseph Brodsky was born and raised in the Baltic marshland near the gray waves that always moved in pairs. He is best known for his poetry collections, A Part of Speech (1977) and To Urania (1988), and his essay collection, Less Than One (1986), which received an award from the National Book Critics Circle. Other important works include the play Marbles (1989) and Watermark (1992), a prose piece about Venice. Throughout his career, Brodsky wrote in Russian and English, translating his own work and collaborating with well-known poet-translators.

In the introduction to Selected Poems (1973), W. H. Auden described Brodsky as a poet who focused on traditional themes, such as nature, the human experience, death, and the meaning of life. Brodsky explored many topics, including literature from Mexico and the Caribbean, and poetry from ancient Rome. He combined ideas about the physical world and more abstract thoughts, as well as places and ideas about them, and the past, present, and future. Critic Dinah Birch noted that Brodsky’s first poetry collection in English, Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems (1973), showed his ability to write in a dry, thoughtful style while also being skilled in many different poetic forms.

To Urania: Selected Poems 1965–1985 includes translations of older works and new poems written during Brodsky’s time in the United States. These poems reflect on themes like memory, home, and loss. His two essay collections include studies of poets such as Osip Mandelshtam, W.H. Auden, Thomas Hardy, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Robert Frost, as well as personal reflections and sketches of his contemporaries, including Akhmatova, Nadezhda Mandelshtam, and Stephen Spender.

A common theme in Brodsky’s writing is the relationship between poets and society. He believed that literature could positively influence people and help develop the language and culture around it. He argued that the Western literary tradition helped the world overcome major 20th-century challenges, such as Nazism, Communism, and the two World Wars. As Poet Laureate, Brodsky promoted sharing the poetic traditions of England and America with more people by distributing free poetry books in public places like hotels, airports, hospitals, and supermarkets. Librarian of Congress James Billington wrote:

Joseph Brodsky found it difficult to understand why poetry did not attract large audiences in the United States as it did in Russia. He was proud to become an American citizen in 1977 (after the Soviet Union made him stateless in 1972) and valued the freedoms in the United States. However, he believed poetry was "language's highest degree of maturity" and wanted everyone to appreciate it. As Poet Laureate, he suggested making inexpensive collections of American poetry available in public spaces. He thought people who felt lonely or stressed might pick up poetry and find comfort in knowing others had experienced similar feelings and used them to celebrate life. His idea was carried out, and thousands of books were placed in public areas.

Brodsky’s belief in the importance of poetry is clear in his remarks as U.S. Poet Laureate in 1991. He said, "By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior ways of expressing ideas, such as those used by politicians or salespeople. … It loses its ability to grow and improve. What makes us different from other animals is speech. … Poetry is not just entertainment or art, but it is our goal as a species, our guide in language." This idea is repeated in his work. In an interview with Sven Birkerts in 1979, Brodsky said:

In the work of great poets, it feels as if they are not speaking to people or even to spiritual beings, but rather responding to language itself, reflecting beauty, wisdom, and meaning. Poetry is more than art; it is our genetic and cultural purpose. If speech is what makes us human, then poetry, the highest form of language, is our goal. Seeing poetry as entertainment is like committing a crime against ourselves.

Librarian of Congress Dr. James Billington wrote:

Joseph Brodsky was a favorite student of Anna Akhmatova, a famous Russian poet. Hearing him read Akhmatova’s poems in Russian at the Library of Congress was a powerful experience, even for those who did not understand the language. Brodsky represented the hopes of Akhmatova and Nadezhda Mandelshtam, the wife of another great poet, Osip Mandelshtam. Both saw Brodsky as a guiding light who might help Russia return to its cultural roots.

Brodsky was also influenced by English poets like John Donne and W.H. Auden. Many of his works were dedicated to other writers, including Tomas Venclova, Octavio Paz, Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, and Benedetta Craveri.

Brodsky’s work was greatly supported by skilled translators. His second major collection in English, A Part of Speech (1980), includes translations by Anthony Hecht, Howard Moss, Derek Walcott, and Richard Wilbur. Critic and poet Henri Cole noted that Brodsky’s own translations have been criticized for being overly complex and lacking the musical quality of native language.

After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Brodsky’s poem On the Independence of Ukraine (written in the 1990s but never published) was shared widely

In music

The 2011 contemporary classical album Troika features Eskender Bekmambetov's highly praised song cycle titled "there …," which includes music set to five Russian-language poems by Joseph Brodsky and translations of those poems into English. Victoria Poleva composed Summer music (2008), a chamber cantata based on Brodsky's verses for violin solo, children's choir, and strings. She also created Ars moriendi (1983–2012), a collection of 22 monologues about death for soprano and piano, two of which are based on Brodsky's poems titled "Song" and "Empty circle."