2-8-2001

 

 

Joseph Brodsky 

 Иосиф Бродский 

(1940--1996)

 

 

  Joseh Brodsky foi um poeta russo-americano, nascido em Leninegrado (hoje, S. Petersburgo) em 24 de Maio de 1940 e falecido em Nova Iorque, em 28 de Janeiro de 1996. Em 1987, foi-lhe atribuído o Prémio Nobel, devido à sua importante obra lírica.

Brodsky abandonou a escola aos 15 anos de idade e começou então a escrever poesia, ao mesmo tempo que trabalhava nos mais variados empregos. O seu espírito rebelde e independente e a irregularidade da sua vida social levaram as autoridades soviéticas a acusá-lo de "parasitismo social", sendo condenado em 1964 a cinco anos de trabalhos forçados . A sentença foi comutada em 1965, na sequência dos vigorosos protestos de figuras literárias soviéticas. Exilado da União Soviética em 1972, Bodsky viveu daí em diante nos Estados Unidos, tendo-se naturalizado cidadão americano em 1977.

Foi poeta residente na Universidade de Michigan, Ann Arbor, de 1972 a 1980 e foi professor convidado de outras Escolas. Foi poeta laureado dos Estados Unidos em 1991-92.

Brodsky, que era judeu, escreveu tanto em russo como (mais tarde) em inglês. Ele mesmo traduziu muitas das suas poesias. Na sua juventude em S. Petersburgo privou e foi discípulo de Anna Akhmátova.

BIBLIOGRAFIA:

Poesia:

Stokhotvoreniya i poemy (Versos e poemas), 1965

Ostanovka v pustyne ("A Halt in the Wasteland"), 1970

Elegy for John Donne and Other Poems (1967)

A Part of Speech (1980)

To Urania (1988)

Selected Poems (1992)

So Forth (1996)

Collected Poems in English (2000) ed. Ann Kjellberg

Prosa:

Less Than One (1986)

Watermark (1992)

On Grief and Reason (1995)

Teatro:

Marbles (1989)

   

 

LINKS:

Obituary

Featured author

 

  INDICE:

 

Fin de siècle - em português

Fin de siècle - em russo

The funeral of Bobó - em russo e em inglês

No 100.º aniversário de Anna Akhmatova - em russo e em inglês

Bosnia Tune  - em inglês

ПАМЯТИ ОТЦА: АВСТРАЛИЯ e tradução portuguesa

To my daughter

Para a minha filha

 
   

 

 

Fin de siècle

 

O século está a finar-se, mas eu finar-me-ei primeiro.

Esta não é porém a mensagem do joelho a tremer.

Antes o efeito do não ser

 

sobre o ser. Do caçador, por assim dizer, sobre a narceja,

aorta ou parede de vermelho tijolo que seja.

Obsceno, o chicote estraleja:

 

ouvimo-lo e em vão procuramos os nomes dos que nos amaram,

amassados nas mãos gordurosas do curandeiro do lugar.

Mas o mundo perdeu o andar

 

de quando era um lugar onde um sofá, um fox-trot, o padrão creme

dum abat-jour, um corpete, uma piada atrevida reinavam supremos.

Quem podia adivinhar que a do tempo blasfema

 

borracha apagaria todas essas coisas como ilegível garatuja

num canhenho? Ninguém, nem uma bruxa.

Contudo, sem que o ritmo dos pés lhe fuja,

 

foi o que a sua dança arrastada fez. Censura-o, vá.

Hoje em todo lado há antenas, punks; cepos em vez

de árvores. Nem penses em surpreender no café

 

os amigos do peito destruídos pela malapata, no bar

o anjo do vestido de seda que não se conseguiu elevar

acima da sua pessoa e do cocktail de whiskey, açúcar,

 

limão e gelo. E em todo o lado gente que escurece a visão,

fazendo ora comprida fila, ora densa multidão.

O tirano já não é um papão,

 

mas uma mediocridade banal. O automóvel, do mesmo mo

do, não é um luxo, mas o meio de varrer o pó

da rua onde a perna pos

 

tiça do veterano de guerra para sempre se calou, sim senhor.

E o menino está convencido de que o lobo é pior

que os soldados ou os aviadores.

 

E sem saberes porquê, o lenço passa cada vez mais frequentemente ao lado

do nariz e assalta o olho, no ramalhar das folhas adestrado,

chamando a si o mais pequeno hiato

 

que se abra na sebe que isola o inominado,

os tempos em eu, tu, ou proclamando o passado,

o suspense cantado

 

numa voz de cuco. Hoje isto soa mais plebeu

do que, digamos, Cavaradossi. Mais ou menos como: "Olá, cá estou eu!",

ou na melhor das hipóteses: "Meu,

 

tens de deixar de beber", e escorrega-te a garrafa da mão morta,

embora não sejam padre nem rabi quem aqui bate à porta,

mas a era denominada "fin

 

de siècle." O preto está na moda: top, calcinhas, meias.

Mas quando, no fim, de tudo isso a desenleias,

a tua humilde morada de repente incendeias

 

com qualquer coisa como uns vinte watts.

E em vez dum exuberante "Vivat!",

os lábios deixam cair num baque

 

"Lamento". Tempos novos! Lamentáveis, tristes tempos!

Propondo diminutivos, as montras dos merceeiros

desafiam-nos a adivinhar os nomes inteiros

 

das coisas que derivam facilmente

daqueloutras que, atrasados tecnologicamente,

equiparamos actualmente

 

à velha demanda do homem não já do que permita poupar energia

como de uma espécie de escravo inanimado,

ou, generalizando, do anonimato

 

em segurança. E o lógico mas malquisto fim

de multiplicar tudo, da tendência demográfica cuja origem

não está no Oriente nem

 

no fecho éclair, mas na electricidade. O século está a ficar sem corda.

Exigindo ruínas, vítimas, o vórtice do tempo lança pela borda

Baalbek. E também o homem não o engorda.

 

Não, dai-lhe emoções! Dai-lhe ideias e um suplemento

de memórias. Tal é o do tempo, e lamento,

amoroso dente. Bom, problemas eu não levanto

 

e dou. Não me furto. Estou pronto, por mim,

a ser coisa do passado, se para ele é assim

tão interessante, enfim,

 

que olha de alto ou por cima do ombro a sua miserável presa -

que alguma agitação, mas pouco mais, ainda mostra,

e ao tacto ainda é quente.

 

Estou pronto a deixar-me cobrir pela areia mutável.

E a que um viajante de passo instável

não faça de mim o al

 

vo do vidrado olho da sua câmara, e a que

não lhe instile um qualquer sentimento forte a que

não resista. O que se passa é que

 

não suporto um tempo que passe. Tempo que não passa

ainda posso suportar. Como uma fachada compacta

cujo estilo repete ora um depósito de lata

 

ora um tabuleiro de xadrez. O século não foi assim tão mau, realmente.

Bom, talvez de mortos tenha havido excedente.

Mas de vivos igualmente.

 

Tantos são, de facto,

actualmente que podiam ser salgados, embalados,

e selados

 

a ver se se atraíam uns clientes siderais, conhecidos pela grande qualidade

dos seus magnos sistemas de ultracongelação. A não ser, é verdade,

que insistam no queijo. Que se pode, com a mesma facilidade,

 

arranjar; os buracos na memória colectiva são disso a prova.

Ao som de catástrofes aéreas em sítios não muito fora

de mão, o século chega ao fim. Um prof,

 

de dedo no ar, perora sobre as camadas da atmos

fera, explicando o calor e os medos correlatos,

mas não como se faz o trato

 

daqui até onde a maciça face das nuvens

se enche dos nossos "perdoa-me", e "não me aban

dones", que forçam

 

o raio solar a trocar por essa argêntea mancha espermática o seu ouro.

Contudo o século, às voltas no seu escritório,

acha até isso retro.

 

Bom, vejam esta pequena maravilha: quanto mais ele tica

e taca, quanto mais atarefadas estão as jovens pilas,

mais farto é o mercado das coisas antigas

 

e das relíquias, incluindo o planeta, espremi

do na sua órbita, a namorar, como um imbecil,

a trajectória em funil

 

dum cometa; incluindo as marcas de leitura do arquivo

dos gigantes caídos, já que as balas, num silvo,

voam do futuro, que bri

 

ga o seu urgente negócio com o presente e por isso precisa de espaço

já. Assim sendo, nenhum objecto herdado

fica à porta pousado

 

muito tempo. No Polo ladra um husky e uma bandeira ainda esvoaça.

No Oeste vigiam de punhos cerrados a leste a ameaça,

distinguido no má

 

ximo os quartéis, subitamente atacados de espertina. Assustadas

      pela floresta de punhos,

também as aves dão à asa e partem rapidamente, rumo ao sul

para os uedes, como é costume,

 

para os minaretes, turbantes e palmeiras - e mais para baixo rufam

os tam-tam. Mas quanto mais escrutares traços estra

nhos, mais eles se te colam. Concluis então

 

que, em todo o lado, a relação entre o simples borrão

e, digamos, uma grande tela de clássica demão

reside em que jamais deitarás a mão

 

a nenhum dos originais. Que a natureza - como o menestrel de antanho

suspirando pelo papel químico, como a câmara secreta guardando

amorosamente o papiro, como a abelha zumbindo

 

à volta da sua colmeia - aprecia verdadeiramente o múltiplo,

as grandes tiragens, tem horror ao único

e ao desperdício de energia, cujo

 

melhor guardião é o deixa andar. O espaço é habitado. O tempo

gosta de se roçar na sua nova superfície, tenho

a certeza, infinitamente. Mas mesmo

 

assim, as tuas pálpebras cerram-se. Só o mar, sem igual,

se mantém sereno e azul, declinando sempre "Vai",

que ao longe soa "Foi".

 

E quem ouviu tal, tem vontade de largar a pá e a enxada e apanhar

um vapor e navegar e navegar,

para no fim ir saudar

 

não a ilha, não o bicho por Lineu nunca encontrado,

não os feitiços de novas latitudes, mas o outro lado:

uma coisa sem importância.

 

1989

 

Tradução de Carlos Leite                    

em Paisagem com Inundação, edição bilingue, Cotovia, Lisboa, 2001, ISBN 972-795-019-1

             

 

 

     
 
 

Век скоро кончится, но раньше кончусь я.
Это, боюсь, не вопрос чутья.
Скорее - влиянье небытия
 

на бытие. Охотника, так сказать, на дичь -
будь то сердечная мышца или кирпич.
Мы слышим, как свищет бич,
 

пытаясь припомнить отечества тех, кто нас любил,
барахтаясь в скользких руках лепил.
Мир больше не тот, что был
 

прежде, когда в нем царили страх, абажур, фокстрот,
кушетка и комбинация, соль острот.
Кто думал, что их сотрет,
 

как резинкой с бумаги усилья карандаша,
время? Никто, ни одна душа.
Однако время, шурша,
 

сделало именно это. Поди его упрекни.
Теперь повсюду антенны, подростки, пни
вместо деревьев. Ни
 

в кафе не встретить сподвижника, раздавленного судьбой,
ни в баре уставшего пробовать возвыситься над собой
ангела в голубой
 

юбке и кофточке. Всюду полно людей,
стоящих то плотной толпой, то в виде очередей;
тиран уже не злодей,
 

но посредственность. Также автомобиль
больше не роскошь, но способ выбить пыль
из улицы, где костыль
 

инвалида, поди, навсегда умолк;
и ребенок считает, что серый волк
страшней, чем пехотный полк.
 

И как-то тянет все чаще прикладывать носовой
к органу зрения, занятому листвой,
принимая на свой
 

счет возникающий в ней пробел,
глаголы в прошедшем времени, букву "л",
арию, что пропел
 

голос кукушки. Теперь он звучит грубей,
чем тот же Каварадосси - примерно как "хоть убей"
или "больше не пей" -
 

и рука выпускает пустой графин.
Однако в дверях не священник и не раввин,
но эра по кличке фин-
 

де-сьекль. Модно все черное: сорочка, чулки, белье.
Когда в результате вы все это с нее
стаскиваете, жилье
 

озаряется светом примерно в тридцать ватт,
но с уст вместо радостного "виват!"
срывается "виноват".
 

Новые времена! Печальные времена!
Вещи в витринах, носящие собственные имена
делятся ими на
 

те, которыми вы в состоянии пользоваться, и те,
которые, по собственной темноте,
вы приравниваете к мечте
 

человечества - в сущности, от него
другого ждать не приходится - о нео-
душевленности холуя и о
 

вообще анонимности. Это, увы, итог
размножения, чей исток
не брюки и не Восток,
 

но электричество. Век на исходе. Бег
времени требует жертвы, развалины. Баальбек
его не устраивает; человек
 

тоже. Подай ему чувства, мысли, плюс
воспоминания. Таков аппетит и вкус
времени. Не тороплюсь,
 

но подаю. Я не трус; я готов быть предметом из
прошлого, если таков каприз
времени, сверху вниз
 

смотрящего - или через плечо -
на свою добычу, на то, что еще
шевелится и горячо
 

наощупь. Я готов, чтоб меня песком
занесло и чтоб на меня пешком
путешествующий глазком
 

объектива не посмотрел и не
исполнился сильных чувств. По мне,
движущееся вовне
 

время не стоит внимания. Движущееся назад
стоит, или стоит, как иной фасад,
смахивая то на сад,
 

то на партию в шахматы. Век был, в конце концов,
неплох. Разве что мертвецов
в избытке - но и жильцов,
 

исключая автора данных строк,
тоже хоть отбавляй, и впрок
впору, давая срок,
 

мариновать или сбивать их в сыр
в камерной версии черных дыр,
в космосе. Либо - самый мир
 

сфотографировать и размножить - шесть
на девять, что исключает лесть -
чтоб им после не лезть
 

впопыхах друг на дружку, как штабель дров.
Под аккомпанемент авиакатастроф,
век кончается. Проф.
 

бубнит, тыча пальцем вверх, о слоях земной
атмосферы, что объясняет зной,
а не как из одной
 

точки попасть туда, где к составу туч
примешиваются наши "спаси", "не мучь",
"прости", вынуждая луч
 

разменивать его золото на серебро.
Но век, собирая свое добро,
расценивает как ретро
 

и это. На полюсе лает лайка и реет флаг.
На западе глядят на Восток в кулак,
видят забор, барак,
 

в котором царит оживление. Вспугнуты лесом рук,
птицы вспархивают и летят на юг,
где есть арык, урюк,
 

пальма, тюрбаны, и где-то звучит там-там.
Но, присматриваясь к чужим чертам,
ясно, что там и там
 

главное сходство между простым пятном
и, скажем, классическим полотном
в том, что вы их в одном
 

экземпляре не встретите. Природа, как бард вчера -
копирку, как мысль чела -
букву, как рой - пчела,
 

искренне ценит принцип массовости, тираж,
страшась исключительности, пропаж
энергии, лучший страж
 

каковой есть распущенность. Пространство заселено.
Трению времени о него вольно
усиливаться сколько влезет. Но
 

ваше веко смыкается. Только одни моря
невозмутимо синеют, издали говоря
то слово "заря", то - "зря".
 

И, услышавши это, хочется бросить рыть
землю, сесть на пароход и плыть,
и плыть - не с целью открыть
 

остров или растенье, прелесть иных широт,
новые организмы, но ровно наоборот;
главным образом - рот.
 

1989

 

 

 

Похороны Бобо 

 

- 1 - 

 

Бобо мертва, но шапки не долой. 

Чем объяснить, что утешаться нечем. 

Мы не приколем бабочку иглой 

Адмиралтейства - только изувечим. 

 

Квадраты окон, сколько ни смотри 

по сторонам. И в качестве ответа 

на "Что стряслось" пустую изнутри 

открой жестянку: "Видимо, вот это". 

 

Бобо мертва. Кончается среда. 

На улицах, где не найдёшь ночлега, 

белым-бело. Лишь чёрная вода 

ночной реки не принимает снега. 

 

 

- 2 - 

 

Бобо мертва, и в этой строчке грусть. 

Квадраты окон, арок полукружья. 

Такой мороз, что коль убьют, то пусть 

из огнестрельного оружья. 

 

Прощай, Бобо, прекрасная Бобо. 

Слеза к лицу разрезанному сыру. 

Нам за тобой последовать слабо, 

но и стоять на месте не под силу. 

 

Твой образ будет, знаю наперёд, 

в жару и при морозе-ломоносе 

не уменьшаться, но наоборот 

в неповторимой перспективе Росси. 

 

 

- 3 - 

 

Бобо мертва. Вот чувство, дележу 

доступное, но скользкое, как мыло. 

Сегодня мне приснилось, что лежу 

в своей кровати. Так оно и было. 

 

Сорви листок, но дату переправь: 

нуль открывает перечень утратам. 

Сны без Бобо напоминают явь, 

и воздух входит в комнату квадратом. 

 

Бобо мертва. И хочется,уста 

слегка разжав, произнести: "Не надо". 

Наверно, после смерти - пустота. 

И вероятнее, и хуже Ада. 

 

 

- 4 - 

 

Ты всем была. Но, потому что ты 

теперь мертва, Бобо моя, ты стала 

ничем - точнее, сгустком пустоты. 

Что тоже, как подумаешь, немало. 

 

Бобо мертва. На круглые глаза 

вид горизонта действует, как нож, но 

тебя, Бобо, Кики или Заза 

им не заменят. Это невозможно. 

 

Идёт четверг. Я верю в пустоту. 

В ней как в Аду, но более херово. 

И новый Дант склоняется к листу 

и на пустое место ставит слово. 

 

1972

 

The Funeral of Bobó

 

1

 

Bobó is dead, but don't take off your hat.

You can't explain why there's no consolation.

We cannot pin a butterfly upon

the Admiralty spire -- we'd only crush it.

 

 

 

The squares of windows no matter where

one looks on every side. And as reply

to `what happened?' you open up

an empty can: `Apparently, this did.'

 

Bobó is dead. Wednesday ends.

On streets devoid of spots to spend the night

it's white, so white. Only the black water

in the night river does not retain the snow.

 

 

2

 

Bobó is dead -- a line containing grief.

The squares of windows, archways' semicircle.

Such freezing frost that if one's to be killed,

then let it be from firearms.

 

Farewell, Bobó, my beautiful Bobó.

My tear would suit sliced cheese.

We are too frail to follow after you,

nor are we strong enough to stay in place.

 

In heat-waves and in devastating cold

I know beforehand, your image will

not diminish -- but quite to the contrary --

in Rossi's inimitable prospect.

 

3

 

Bobó is dead. This is a feeling which can

be shared, but slippery like soap.

Today I dreamed that I was lying

upon my bed. And so it was in fact.

 

Tear off a page, correct the date:

the list of losses opens with a zero.

Dreams without Bobó suggest reality.

A square of air comes in the window vent.

 

Bobó is dead. And, one's lips somewhat

apart, one wants to say `it shouldn't be'.

No doubt it's emptiness that follows death.

Both far more probable, and worse than Hell.

 

4

You were everything. But because you are

dead now, my Bobó, you have become

nothing -- more precisely, a glob of emptiness. 

Which, if one considers it, is quite a lot.

 

Bobó is dead. On rounded eyes

the sight of the horizon is like a knife,

but neither Kiki nor Zaza, Bobó,

will take your place. That is impossible.

 

Thursday is coming. I believe in emptiness.

It's quite like Hell there, only shittier.

And the new Dante bends toward the page,

and on an empty spot he sets a word.

 

January-March 1972

Translated by Carl R. Proffer

 

 

НА СТОЛЕТИЕ АННЫ АХМАТОВОЙ 

 

Страницу и огонь, зерно и жернова, 

секиры острие и усеченный волос - 

Бог сохраняет все; особенно - слова 

прощенья и любви, как собственный свой голос. 

 

В них бьется ровный пульс, в них слышен костный хруст, 

и заступ в них стучит; ровны и глуховаты, 

поскольку жизнь - одна, они из смертных уст 

звучат отчетливей, чем из надмирной ваты. 

 

Великая душа, поклон через моря 

за то, что их нашла, - 

тебе и части тленной, что спит в родной земле, тебе благодаря 

обретшей речи дар в глухонемой Вселенной. 

1989

 

 

On the 100th Anniversary of Anna Akhmatova

The fire and the page, the hewed hairs and the swords,

The grains and the millstone, the whispers and the clatter --

God saves all that -- especially the words

Of love and pity, as His only way to utter.

 

The harsh pulse pounds and the blood torrent whips,

The spade knocks evenly in them, by gentle muse begotten, For life is so unique, they from the mortal lips

Sound more clear than from the divine wad-cotton.

 

Oh, the great soul, I'm bowing overseas

To you, who found them, and that, your smoldering portion, 

Sleeping in the homeland, which, thanks to you, at least,

Obtained the gift of speech in the deaf-mute space ocean.

 

Translated by Alex Sitnitsky     

 

 

   
 
 

     As you pour yourself a scotch,
     crush a roach, or check your watch,
     as your hand adjusts your tie,
     people die.

     In the towns with funny names,
     hit by bullets, caught in flames,
     by and large not knowing why,
     people die.

     In small places you don't know

     of, yet big for having no

     chance to scream or say good-bye,

     people die.

 
     People die as you elect

     new apostles of neglect,

     self-restraint, etc.-whereby

     people die.

 
 
     Too far off to practice love

     for thy neighbor/brother Slav,

     where your cherubs dread to fly,

     people die.

 
     While the statues disagree,

     Cain's version, history

     for its fuel tends to buy

     those who die.

 
     As you watch the athletes score,

     check your latest statement, or

     sing your child a lullaby,

     people die.

 
     Time, whose sharp blood-thirsty quill

     parts the killed from those who kill,

     will pronounce the latter tribe

     as your type.

Escrito em inglês pelo autor

 

   

 

ПАМЯТИ ОТЦА: АВСТРАЛИЯ

Ты ожил, снилось мне, и уехал
в Австралию. Голос с трехкратным эхом
окликал и жаловался на климат
и обои: квартиру никак не снимут,
жалко, не в центре, а около океана,
третий этаж без лифта, зато есть ванна,
пухнут ноги, "А тапочки я оставил" -
прозвучавшее внятно и деловито.
И внезапно в трубке завыло "Аделаида! Аделаида!"
загремело, захлопало, точно ставень
бился о стенку, готовый сорваться с петель.

Все-таки это лучше, чем мягкий пепел
крематория в банке, ее залога -
эти обрывки голоса, монолога
и попытки прикинуться нелюдимом

в первый раз с той поры, как ты обернулся дымом.

1989

 

EM MEMÓRIA DE MEU PAI: AUSTRÁLIA

 

 

No meu sonho estavas outra vez vivo e tinhas

ido para a Austrália. A tua voz, triplicada pelo eco,

interpelava-me, queixavas-te do clima

e do apartamento, há que o alugar, tem de ser,

pena não seja no centro mas à beira-mar,

um terceiro andar sem elevador mas com banheira,

tenho os pés inchados, não sei onde deixei as cuecas

- tudo isto claramente, num tom prático.

E logo a seguir o receptor uiva: “Adelaide, Adelaide!”,

em estouros e estalos, como uma porta

a bater contra a parede, prestes a saltar dos gonzos.

 

 

No entanto, antes isto que a urna com as macias

cinzas no banco como garantia –

antes estes fiapos de voz, esta fala,

este arremedo de misantropia

 

 

pela primeira vez desde que te transformaste em fumo.

 

1989

 

Tradução de Carlos Leite

em Paisagem com Inundação, edição bilingue, Cotovia, Lisboa, 2001, ISBN 972-795-019-1

 

 

 

 

To my daughter

 

 

Give me another life, and I'll be singing

in Caffè Rafaella. Or simply sitting

there. Or standing there, as furniture in the corner,

in case that life is a bit less generous than the former.

 

Yet partly because no century from now on will ever manage

without caffeine or jazz. I'll sustain this damage,

and through my cracks and pores, varnish and dust all over,

observe you, in twenty years, in your full flower.

 

On the whole, bear in mind that I'll be around. Or rather,

that an inanimate object might be your father,

especially if the objects are older than you, or larger.

So keep an eye on them always, for they no doubt will judge you.

 

Love those things anyway, encounter or no encounter.

Besides, you may still remember a silhouette, a contour,

while I'll lose even that, along with the other luggage.

Hence, these somewhat wooden lines in our common language.

 

1994

 

 

 

 

 

PARA A MINHA FILHA

 

Dai-me outra vida e estarei no Caffè Rafaella

a cantar. Ou estarei sentado a uma mesa,

simplesmente. Ou de pé, como um móvel no corredor,

caso essa vida seja menos generosa que a anterior.

 

Contudo, em parte porque nenhum século daqui em diante

conseguirá passar sem jazz nem cafeína, aguentarei esse desplante,

e pelas minhas rachas e poros, verniz e todo de pó coberto,

observarei, daqui a vinte anos, como a tua flor se terá aberto.

 

De um modo geral, lembra-te de que estou por ali. Ou melhor, que

um objecto inanimado pode ser o teu pai, sobretudo se

os objectos forem mais velhos do que tu, ou maiores. Não

os percas de vista, pois, sem dúvida, te julgarão.

 

Seja como for, ama essas coisas, haja ou não encontro.

Além disso, pode ser que ainda te lembres duma silhueta, dum contorno,

ao passo que eu até isso perderei, juntamente com a restante bagagem.

Daí estes versos, algo toscos, na nossa comum linguagem.

 

1994

 

Tradução de Carlos Leite

em Paisagem com Inundação, edição bilingue, Cotovia, Lisboa, 2001, ISBN 972-795-019-1 

 

The TLS n.º 5431    May 4, 2007

 

Biography

 

First person

Romanticism and Russia in the life of Joseph Brodsky

Andrew Kahn

 

 

Lev Losev

IOSIF BRODSKY

Opyt literaturnoi biografii

Лев ЛОСЕВ

ИОСИФ БРОДСКИЙ

Опыт литературной биографии

   

(Essay in literary biography)

447 pp. Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya. 428  roubles

978 5 235 02935 4

 

Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987, Joseph Brodsky was recognized in his lifetime as one of Russia’s great modern poets. But in the English-speaking world his reputation has languished since his early death in 1996. Lev Losev’s new study is the best single literary biography of the writer yet to have appeared in any language. A friend of the poet nearly from cradle to grave — and the splendid choice of photographs has him popping up at the poet’s side in Russia and Stockholm — he is a meticulous and objective chronicler. His account of Brodsky’s trial corrects legendary versions of the exchange between Brodsky and the State Prosecutor, and is just one example of Losev’s subtle tactics in setting the record straight. This is not a complete documentary biography, and treatment of Brodsky’s life from the mid-1980s is thinner than that given to earlier decades. But Losev gets us closer to his subject than any other account by integrating a reliable narrative of the facts (enhanced by useful chronologies at the back of the book) and a penetrating study of Brodsky’s poetry and prose. The publication of such a volume in a series of “Great Lives” founded by Maxim Gorky and generally known for its biographies of Soviet heroes and generals would have amused Losev’s subject, who was one of a famous generation of Soviet exiles that included the likes of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the late Mstislav Rostropovich and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

Brodsky was born in Leningrad in 1940 to educated but socially modest parents (the description of his childhood is a helpful supplement to his celebrated autobiographical essay ‘A Room and a Half’). Driven from an early age by a profound belief in individual self-determination that exposed Soviet conformity, Brodsky seems to have discovered poetry and his talent for it almost by chance. A strong-willed autodidact, he quickly developed his poetic gift and mastery of verse form, and learned enough English and Polish to work as a literary translator.

On the subject of Brodsky’s early development, Losev writes with an insider’s expert knowledge of the Soviet Union’s literary system. We are given a portrait of the budding poet in this milieu, surveying avant-garde circles and assessing his distant relationship to groups like the Philological Poets. Among the most important early influences on him was Evgenii Rein, whose mastery of poetic form and elegiac psychology had a lasting impact. Losev gives due credit to Anna Akhmatova’s authority, as felt more in Brodsky’s sense of poetic identity than in his poetic technique. Losev revisits the question of why the example of Boris Slutsky, ostensibly a highly “Soviet” poet, inspired Brodsky to try his hand at poetry.

Central to Brodsky’s life and poetry in the mid-1960s Was Marina Basmanova. The daughter of a painter and herself au artist, Basmanova inspired many of his greatest lyric poems, including the cycle “New Stanzas to Augusta’. Which are among the most self-revealing confessional lyrics in Russian poetry, some written during difficult moments in their relationship (candidly and un ensoriously described here). She continued to haunt his late poetry. Losev is particularly perceptive in identifying the impact of the Basmanovs on Brodsky’s use of colour symbolism, and especially on the significance of white, in his poetry.

After Brodsky’s arrest and trial on charges of “parasitism” in 1964, Akhmatova famously commented that redhead is making quite a biography for himself’. The remark was prescient. In a detailed treatment of the accusations, trial and sentence Losev argues persuasively that Brodsky, whose poetry had scarcely made it into official or even samizdat print, was a most unlikely target for persecution. In the back-lash against Khrushchev’s short-lived thaw, as Losev explain, KGB lackeys were quick to exploit opportunities for advancement. Brodsky fell victim to the careerist ambitions of one lowly operative who orchestrated the charges that led to his conviction (after two harrowing incarcerations in psychiatric hospitals) and internal exile (after passage through two notorious prisons) to a tiny village in the Archangel region. Exile turned out to be the start of a formative creative period in which Brodsky countered isolation by steeping himself in English and American poets such as Hardy, Frost, Auden and Eliot: all masters of the first-person voice that Bodsky would soon make his own. Although Brodsky’s poetry always seemed to be evolving in new directions, Losev observes that the essays on Frost, Rilke, Tsvetaeva and Pasternak that Brodsky published from the 1980s on were based on work undertaken some thirty years earlier.

In some of the early interviews that he gave after being forced to leave the USSR in 1972, Brodsky speculated that he posed a threat to the authorities not because his poetry was political - in fact, he saw political poetry as something of a betrayal of artistic independence — but because, as be said, “a man who sets out to create his own independent world within himself is bound sooner or later to become a foreign body in society and then he becomes subject to all the physical laws of pressure, compression and extrusion” (quoted in Joseph Brodsky: Conversations,  edited by Cynthia L. Haven, 2002, where readers can experience Brodsky in full flow, at times testy and at times modest, he comes across as incisive, thoughtful and even charming). Losev convincingly demolishes unfounded claims that Brodsky courted trouble in order to enjoy the limelight of a dissident. In fact, Brodsky comes across as an often bemused observer of the twists and turns of his life. Once his first collection Ostanovka v pustyne (“A Halt in the Desert”, 1970) was published in New York to acclaim by émigré readers, the Soviet authorities concluded that Brodsky was an embarrassment, to be solved by “allowing” him to emigrate to Israel along with thousands of other Soviet Jews. In the event, Brodsky landed in Austria, where he was met by his publisher and friend, the American scholar Carl Proffer, who drove Brodsky to meet W. H. Auden, one of his idols and the subject of one of his best-known pieces of literary criticism (“On ‘September 1, 1939’ by W. H. Auden”). Resettled in America, Brodsky embarked on a distinguished career as a university teacher, first in Michigan and finally at top liberal arts colleges iii western Massachusetts. He quickly improved his rudimentary English and eventually became a bilingual writer, publishing several major collections of poetry in Russian and a large, often distinguished body of essays in both languages as well as translations of his own poetry.

Losev’s book lives up to its subtitle as “an essay in literary biography” by giving equal weight to Brodsky’s moral and literary profile, and five of the ten chapters offer an interlocking set of essays and poetic commentaries devoted to aesthetic and philosophical issues. Losev’s Love and understanding of Brodsky’s poetry inform a literary criticism that is also as objective as possible about Brodsky’s immense accomplishments as a thinker and writer and his sometimes glaring shortcomings, especially in English. His intellectual independence emerges as one of Losev’s main themes. For all his attentiveness to Brodsky’s wit, he clearly places great emphasis on the notion of Brodsky’s sincerity and commitment to truth as fundamental tenets of his poetic art and moral posture. While Brodsky was capable of great irony, he associated it with evasiveness. Losev is convinced that Bodsky’s lyric “I” speaks for the man himself, achieving a fusion of lived experience and aesthetic identity that puts Brodsky in the tradition of the Romantics. Aware of the biographical fallacy, Losev is not a naive literalist, and the Romantic unity of life and work makes sense of poems where Brodsky explores changes in his own identity, brought about by exile or by emotional circumstance, and projects his personality through literary personae such as Odysseus or Byron. All the same, some readers may also detect more self-irony and witty self-mockery than Losev accommodates in this portrait.

Exploring Brodsky’s early affinities with existentialist writers such as Camus and Lev Shestov, Losev identifies what would be a theme in his poetry for decades: the opposition between aesthetic fullness that is realized in poetry, and emptiness, which took the form of various bleak images in his poems such as deserted rooms, deadened organic matter, disembodied light. How Brodsky carne to develop an attitude to Fate is a related strand in Losev’s narrative. Part-Cicero, part-Camus and part Steve McQueen (an actor whom he admired, particularly for his performance in The Magnificent Seven), Brodsky was taught by life to brace himself for the accidents of circumstance beyond individual control, and found in art types of ordering and control that had an autonomous beauty. The interviews in Havens collection and Losev’s analysis in Iosif Brodsky make clear that for Brodsky the limitless intricacies of composition rather than the limited stock of subject matter (death, love, parting) were the true expression of creative genius because they captured the movements of the soul. For this reason he adored the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva, whose heartbreaking emotionality fuelled extraordinary feats of linguistic innovation; yet he was equally drawn to the less histrionic Auden, in whom he admired a differently voiced commitment to ethics. As a poet who wrote about sin and forgiveness, Auden also strengthened Brodsky’s attraction to aspects of Christianity. Losev is particularly illuminating on the numerous poems, including the seminal lyric “Anno Domini”, which treat values that Brodsky identified as specifically Christian. That said, Brodsky never thought of himself as other than a Jew - his Soviet passport would have recorded his nationality as Jewish and Losev takes him to be a polytheist by nature.

At the end of his life, Brodsky was an American citizen, the country’s first foreign-born Poet Laureate, a powerful and acclaimed essayist, and an English-language poet. He earned the admiration of many other poets, but also provoked hostile reactions from respected critics, including Craig Raine and Christopher Reid, who attacked Brodsky’s verbosity and specious logic, and somehow smelt a fraud. It is certainly the case that Brodsky’s legacy in English is important — he remains an admired essayist — but it is also highly uneven, with eloquence and common sense doing battle with sporadic fits of fuzzy thinking, garbled syntax and pseudophilosophical pronouncements. Always a creative critic, Brodsky was at his exhilarating best when examining individual poems. Hut he was less persuasive when expatiating on cultural politics, and he misjudged sensitivities in his public statements about race and religion, further irritating some readers. Losev does not flinch from an even-handed discussion of the charges. A poet of philosophical depth (if no philosopher), Brodsky had a penchant for syllogisms and propositions over which he sometimes seemed to lose control. As Losev sympathetically suggests, some of this opaqueness stemmed from the haphazard nature of his education. But temperament and conviction also played a part. Brodsky found in language a solution to his horror vacui. The more substantial the verbal structures fie created in describ­ing absence and nothingness, the greater his psychological sense of mastery. When restricted to smaller lyric forms, Brodsky in Russian was inventive and musical, emotionally direct (sometimes brutal) and memorably aphoristic. His last poems are the equal of his earliest for their eloquence and capacity to move. Genuine problems arise, however, for readers who depend on English translations.

Daniel Weissbort’s searching chronicle of his own experiences in rendering Brodsky’s poems, From Russian with Love: Joseph Brodsky in English (2004), is worth reading for its views on Brodsky and on translation more generally. Yet despite the benefit that Brodsky had of working with distinguished poet-translators, the worst traitor among translators was Brodsky himself. While he proved to be a stern taskmaster regarding others — examples of his capacity for gracious collaboration and intimidation crop up in Weissbort’s gripping memoir-cum-study — his own versions are extensive and badly distorted rewritings. It is often the case that the closer he thought he came to the original, the more distorted the English idiom sounds. In part, the results reflect Brodsky’s enthusiastic ambition to make English work as Russian does; and in part they capture his tone-deafness to the intonational patterns of English verse. Anyone who has heard recordings of Brodsky reading English poetry will wonder about the exaggerated style in which he hammers out rhythm. Time will tell whether Losev’s discussion of Brodsky’s work as translator and essayist will provoke a critical reconsideration by Brodsky’s detractors. The publication of this well-researched, moderate and thoughtful book by a distinguished poet with an impeccable knowledge of Russian literature is a major event. A translation of Losev’s book into English would do a great deal to reveal to the large public the true quality of Brodsky’s genius and to explain his stature as a major poet.

 

THE NEW REPUBLIC

The Art of the Temporary

By ADAM KIRSCH
Issue Date: 10.09.00
Post Date: 10.02.00




Collected Poems in English
by Joseph Brodsky
edited by Ann Kjellberg
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 540 pp
(Click
here to buy this book)

Read this article,  here