Iosif Alexandrovich Brodsky was born on May 24, 1940 in Leningrad, in the family of a photojournalist for an army newspaper. The young man dropped out of high school early and began working (as a milling machine operator, geophysicist, fireman, assistant in the morgue). He completed his secondary education at an evening school.

In 1958, Joseph began to perform poetry readings in various literary associations. In 1962, Brodsky worked on Songs of a Happy Winter. Already in his youthful works, little by little, his unique, peculiar poetics took shape. The themes and motifs of his lyrics did not at all resemble official Soviet poetry. A close acquaintance (since 1961) with the great Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova had a great influence on the young author.

The increased fame of Brodsky seemed dangerous to the authorities. In November 1963, the Vecherniy Leningrad newspaper published an article directed against him, “Near-Literary Drone,” and in 1964 Joseph was arrested on charges of parasitism. The poet was expelled from Leningrad for forced labor in the Arkhangelsk region. According to the verdict of the court, the exile was to last five years, but due to the petitions of a number of prominent creative figures, Brodsky was allowed to return ahead of schedule a year later.

In 1966-1967, 4 poems of the poet appeared in the Soviet press, but his publications stopped there. Meanwhile, Brodsky at that time was actively creating, creating, among other things, such famous works, as “Farewell, Mademoiselle Veronica (1967), part of the cycle “The End of a Beautiful Era” (1969), “Autumn Drives Me Out of the Park” (1970), “Gorchakov and Gorbunov” (1965-68 ). But since 1967, his poems began to be published abroad. In 1971 he was even elected a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.

Brodsky's life in the USSR became more and more difficult. In 1972, under the influence of threats KGB the poet left his native country. A month later, he moved from Vienna to the USA. Brodsky's parents then applied twelve times with a request to be allowed to see their son abroad, but each time they were refused.

Joseph Brodsky. Return

Joseph Alexandrovich began teaching at the University of Michigan. Later he worked at Columbia and New York Universities, as well as at Queens College.

In 1972-76. he created the famous cycle "Part of Speech". The poet's works were published in English in the 1970s. Brodsky's essays were published in US newspapers and magazines.

In 1978, Brodsky became a member of the American Academy, as well as a doctorate from Yale University.

In 1986, Less Than One, a collection of essays, was published and won an award from the US National Council of Critics. In 1988, the collection "Urania: Selected Poems 1965 - 1985" appeared. This book contained not only translations, but also poems that were written in English.

In 1987 Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1988, Brodsky's works returned to perestroika Russia. In 1990, the collections "Edification" and "Autumn Cry of the Hawk" were published in the poet's homeland, and then others.

In 1990 Brodsky married Maria Sozani, in 1993 a daughter, Anna Maria Alexandra, was born. The "triple" name for the girl was given in honor of Anna Akhmatova, Brodsky's mother Maria Moiseevna and father Alexander Ivanovich. (The first son of Brodsky, from the artist Marianna Basmanova, was born in 1967).

“What a biography, however, they make our redhead!” - Anna Akhmatova joked sadly in the midst of litigation over Joseph Brodsky. In addition to a high-profile trial, a controversial fate prepared for the poet a link to the North and the Nobel Prize, incomplete eight classes of education and a career as a university professor, 24 years outside his native language environment and the discovery of new opportunities for the Russian language.

Leningrad youth

Joseph Brodsky was born in Leningrad in 1940. 42 years later, in an interview with a Dutch journalist, he recalled his hometown like this: “Leningrad shapes your life, your consciousness to the extent that the visual aspects of life can influence us. This is a huge cultural conglomerate, but without bad taste, without a hodgepodge. An amazing sense of proportion, classical facades breathe peace. And all this affects you, makes you strive for order in life, although you are aware that you are doomed. Such a noble attitude towards chaos, resulting in either stoicism or snobbery..

In the first year of the war after the blockade winter of 1941-1942, Joseph's mother, Maria Volpert, took him to Cherepovets for evacuation, where they lived until 1944. Volpert served as an interpreter in a prisoner of war camp, and Brodsky's father, a naval officer and photojournalist Alexander Brodsky, participated in the defense of Malaya Zemlya and the breaking of the blockade of Leningrad. He returned to his family only in 1948 and continued to serve as head of the photographic laboratory of the Central Naval Museum. Joseph Brodsky recalled walks around the museum as a child all his life: “In general, in relation to navy quite a wonderful feeling. I don’t know where they came from, but here is childhood, and father, and hometown ... As I remember the Naval Museum, St. Andrew's flag is a blue cross on a white cloth ... There is no better flag in the world!

Joseph often changed schools; was unsuccessful and his attempt to enter after the seventh grade in maritime school. In 1955, he left the eighth grade and got a job at the Arsenal plant as a milling machine operator. Then he worked as an assistant dissector in the morgue, a stoker, a photographer. Finally, he joined a group of geologists and participated in expeditions for several years, during one of which he discovered a small deposit of uranium at Far East. At the same time, the future poet was actively engaged in self-education, became interested in literature. The poems of Yevgeny Baratynsky and Boris Slutsky made a strong impression on him.

Joseph Brodsky. Photo: yeltsin.ru

Joseph Brodsky with a cat. Photo: interesno.cc

Joseph Brodsky. Photo: dayonline.ru

In Leningrad, people started talking about Brodsky in the early 1960s, when he spoke at a poetry tournament in the Gorky Palace of Culture. The poet Nikolai Rubtsov spoke about this performance in a letter:

“Of course, there were poets with a decadent flavor. For example, Brodsky. Grasping the foot of the microphone with both hands and bringing it close to his very mouth, he loudly and burrily, shaking his head in time with the rhythm of the verses, read:
Everyone has their own shrine!
Everyone has their own coffin!
There was noise! Some shout:
- What does poetry have to do with it?
- Down with him!
Others yell:
- Brodsky, more!

Then Brodsky began to communicate with the poet Yevgeny Rein. In 1961, Rhine introduced Joseph to Anna Akhmatova. Although the influence of Marina Tsvetaeva, whose work he first became acquainted with in the early 1960s, is usually noticed in Brodsky's poetry, it was Akhmatova who became his full-time critic and teacher. The poet Lev Losev wrote: “Akhmatova’s phrase “You yourself do not understand what you wrote!” after reading "Great Elegy to John Donne" entered Brodsky's personal myth as a moment of initiation".

Judgment and World Glory

In 1963, after the speech at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the first secretary of the Central Committee, Nikita Khrushchev, among the youth began to eradicate "couch potatoes, moral cripples and whiners" writing on "Bird jargon of idlers and half-educated". Iosif Brodsky also became a target, who by this time had been detained twice by law enforcement agencies: the first time for publishing in the handwritten magazine Syntax, the second - at the denunciation of a friend. He himself did not like to recall those events, because he believed: the poet's biography is only "in his vowels and hissing, in his meters, rhymes and metaphors".

Joseph Brodsky. Photo: bessmertnybarak.ru

Joseph Brodsky at the Nobel Prize ceremony. Photo: russalon.su

Joseph Brodsky with his cat. Photo: binocl.cc

In the newspaper "Vecherny Leningrad" dated November 29, 1963, an article appeared "Near-literary drone", the authors of which stigmatized Brodsky, quoting not his poems and juggling fictitious facts about him. On February 13, 1964, Brodsky was arrested again. He was accused of parasitism, although by this time his poems were regularly published in children's magazines, publishing houses ordered translations from him. The whole world learned about the details of the process thanks to the Moscow journalist Frida Vigdorova, who was present in the courtroom. Vigdorova's notes were sent to the West and got into the press.

Judge: What are you doing?
Brodsky: I write poetry. I'm translating. I believe…
Judge: No "I guess." Stay right! Don't lean against the walls!<...>Do you have a permanent job?
Brodsky: I thought it was a permanent job.
Judge: Answer accurately!
Brodsky: I wrote poetry! I thought they would be printed. I believe…
Judge: We are not interested in "I suppose." Tell me why didn't you work?
Brodsky: I worked. I wrote poetry.
Judge: We are not interested...

The defense witnesses were the poet Natalya Grudinina and prominent Leningrad philologists and translators Yefim Etkind and Vladimir Admoni. They tried to convince the court that literary work cannot be equated with parasitism, and the translations published by Brodsky were made to a high standard. professional level. Witnesses for the prosecution were not familiar with Brodsky and his work: among them were the supply manager, a military man, a pipe-laying worker, a pensioner and a teacher of Marxism-Leninism. A representative of the Writers' Union also spoke on the side of the prosecution. The verdict was severe: deportation from Leningrad for five years with mandatory involvement in labor.

Brodsky settled in the village of Norenskaya, Arkhangelsk region. He worked on a state farm, free time read a lot, became interested in English poetry and began to teach English language. Frida Vigdorova and the writer Lydia Chukovskaya petitioned for the early return of the poet from exile. The letter in his defense was signed by Dmitry Shostakovich, Samuil Marshak, Korney Chukovsky, Konstantin Paustovsky, Alexander Tvardovsky, Yuri German and many others. The “friend of the Soviet Union” French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre also stood up for Brodsky. In September 1965, Joseph Brodsky was officially released.

Russian poet and American citizen

In the same year, the first collection of Brodsky's poems was published in the United States, prepared without the knowledge of the author on the basis of samizdat materials sent to the West. The next book, "Stop in the Desert", was published in New York in 1970 - it is considered the first authorized publication of Brodsky. After the exile, the poet was enrolled in a certain "professional group" at the Writers' Union, which made it possible to avoid further suspicions of parasitism. But at home, only his children's poems were printed, sometimes they gave orders for translations of poetry or literary processing of dubbing for films. At the same time, the circle of foreign Slavists, journalists and publishers with whom Brodsky communicated personally and by correspondence became wider and wider. In May 1972, he was summoned to the OVIR and offered to leave the country in order to avoid new persecution. Usually, paperwork to leave the Soviet Union took from six months to a year, but a visa for Brodsky was issued in 12 days. On June 4, 1972, Joseph Brodsky flew to Vienna. His parents, friends, former lover Marianna Basmanova, to whom almost all of Brodsky's love lyrics are dedicated, and their son, "a Russian poet, an English-speaking essayist and, of course, an American citizen" remained in Leningrad. The poems included in the collections "Part of Speech" (1977) and "Urania" (1987) became an example of his mature Russian-language creativity. In a conversation with Valentina Polukhina, a researcher of Brodsky's work, poetess Bella Akhmadulina explained the phenomenon of a Russian-speaking author in exile in this way.

In 1987, Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature with the wording "For a comprehensive literary activity, distinguished by clarity of thought and poetic intensity." In 1991, Brodsky took over as US Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress and launched the American Poetry and Literacy Program to distribute cheap volumes of poetry to the public. In 1990, the poet married an Italian with Russian roots, Maria Sozzani, but their happy union was only five and a half years away.

In January 1996, Joseph Brodsky died. He was buried in one of his favorite cities - Venice, in an ancient cemetery on the island of San Michele.

This man during his lifetime was called the last genius of Russian poetry. The first part of the statement is, of course, controversial. But highest degree He certainly had talent. It is enough to read just one of his poems. It is hard to believe that The Pilgrims was written by an eighteen-year-old boy with an incomplete secondary education. Not all venerable poets are familiar with the work of Guillaume Apollinaire, but here there is no doubt an echo with one of his poems. The epigraph from William Shakespeare also speaks volumes. The famous accusation of Joseph Aleksandrovich Brodsky of parasitism is doubly absurd. From a very young age, he was a hard worker, which are few.

Interesting facts from the biography of Brodsky, the personal life of the poet will be presented to your attention further.

War

The war with Finland has recently ended, less than a month remained before the defeat of France by the Germans. In such, to say the least, alarming situation, on May 24, 1940, a son was born in the family of a Leningrad photographer and accountant. A little more than a year remained before the start of the Great Patriotic War. Then he yearned all his life for the childhood that she had deprived him of. In a letter from Stockholm to Yakov Gordin, he called the situation there with skerries and steamers darting between them his childhood, but vice versa.

The space of tragedy - this is how he perceived the world. It seems that it comes from there, from the first years of life. He hardly remembered them, but he spent the first months of the blockade with Maria Moiseevna, his mother, in the besieged city. Fortunately, with great difficulty, they managed to evacuate. Cherepovets became the place of temporary residence. Perhaps it can be considered a mockery of fate that his mother, who knew German, began working as an interpreter in a camp for failed invaders. He has been there with her several times. He remembered how they were ferried there on a boat by an old man in a raincoat. This image, if desired, can also be found in the later work of Brodsky.

Return from evacuation

His memories of his return to the city on the Neva have been preserved. Blue sky, white clouds and a red car on which people hang. There were not enough places, and they used any ledge to cling to the train. Here an old man catches up with the car, clings to something, and a woman in a headscarf pours boiling water from a kettle on his bald head. Steam is coming.

Alexander Ivanovich, Joseph's father, went through all the wars, starting with the Finnish one, as a war correspondent. He was a journalist and a photographer at the same time. He recorded the last battles in China, returning from there after the defeat of Japan. Subsequently, the bronze junk he brought from there stood for a long time on the poet's desk.

Searching for yourself

After returning to a half-starved, gloomy city that had not yet come to its senses after the blockade, the search for his place in life began. They were short in time, but intense. A brief biography of Joseph Brodsky testifies that he has changed four schools since 1944. In the last of them, located in Salt Lane, I stayed for the second year in the seventh grade. He applied to the naval school, but was not accepted. This was followed by a short-lived proletarian episode of his biography: Joseph works at the Arsenal plant as a milling machine apprentice. His attempt to enter the school of submariners was also unsuccessful. Apparently, his father's naval past affected. Then comes the idea of ​​becoming a doctor. To get practice, he enters the morgue as an assistant dissector. Anatomizing the dead, apparently, turned out to be an unattractive business, so it lasted only a month. A stoker, a sailor at a lighthouse ... Short-term stability came when Joseph began to travel around the USSR on geological expeditions, working. For two seasons it was the White Sea, then - Northern Yakutia, Eastern Siberia, and other regions of the Arctic. A nervous breakdown in Yakutia completed the epic.

Poetic vigils

It was already 1961. All of the above was only the outer canvas of life. By that time, Joseph was already familiar with Yevgeny Rein, a friend before last days life, Sergei Dovlatov, Bulat Okudzhava. The performance in the winter of 1960 with the reading of the poem "Jewish Cemetery" at the "tournament of poets" in Leningrad caused a scandal, perhaps serving as the first reason to draw attention to it for the "competent authorities". The poet is an incredible reader. For Soviet people in the thaw years, the work of many poets of Europe of the 20th century became available. Vitezslav Nezval, Paul Eluard, Federico Garcia Lorca, and many others. They became for him a breath of fresh air in the atmosphere of the country of the Soviets. Of course, jazz had a huge influence on the style and especially on the rhythm of Brodsky's poetry. But Russian, Soviet poetry was also close. He actively assimilated, processing, the experience of Bagritsky, was an admirer of Boris Slutsky. He named Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelstam and Boris Pasternak in his Nobel speech among the elect, as well as Winsten Auden and Robert Frost. At the same time, Joseph begins to study English and Polish on his own. Of course, his reverence for Anna Andreevna Akhmatova deserves a separate discussion.

Acquaintance with Akhmatova

They were introduced at the end of the summer of 1961 by Evgeny Rein. Joseph was 21 years old. Their friendship is considered by many to be the most sincere affection of the two poets. Strangely, they had little interest in each other's poetry. No discussions, no arguments about the poetic tastes of people belonging to different generations. There was something different between them, which Brodsky himself did not like to talk about. You can’t say it briefly, it’s long and complicated. This is how he responded to requests. As for Anna Andreevna, she quickly understood the level of her new acquaintance. He was young and did not yet realize his strength. "Great elegy to John Donne" caused her to say that Joseph himself did not understand what he had written. And he recalled that they did not go to her in order to read their opuses or listen to her poems. In short, they learned to be poets from her, they breathed a different air in her house. He hardly knew that Akhmatova was comparing her acquaintance with her son, and not in favor of the latter.

fatal love

These years were the most difficult in his life. This is due primarily to unhappy love. It can be called romantically-poetically: fatal. Maria Basmanova was an unusual girl and did not change with time. The daughter of a famous artist, a cold, silent, seemingly shy beauty. They met in March 1962 and were never seen apart again. We walked the streets for hours. He read his poems, she listened. But the novel was not approved by either him or her parents. Soon, the lovers began to quarrel frequently, each time parting forever. Severe depression and suicide attempts - these were the consequences of these disagreements for him. Friends often saw bandages with traces of blood on his wrists. And the final break is the result of the most ordinary, banal love triangle. One of Joseph's closest friends of that time, Dmitry Bobyshev, took the girl to friends during the period when Brodsky was hiding from the police, already fearing prosecution for parasitism. There they got together. Joseph came to sort it out, but did not have time to talk to her. Arrest and trial followed. And that's a completely different story.

Arrest, psychiatric hospital

In the year of the break with Marina, on January 8, a selection of letters from "simple Leningraders" was published, which demanded the condemnation of the parasite Brodsky. Five days later, he ended up in a prison cell, where on February 14 he had his first serious heart attack. Despite everything, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Three weeks proved to be the worst time of his life. Most often, the so-called trick was applied to the patient under examination. A person was awakened late at night, put in a bath filled with ice water, and then wrapped in a wet sheet. In this form, they were placed to a hot battery. The fabric quickly dried up, crashing into the body painfully. Having mocked like that, the punishing doctors recognized the poet as an able-bodied psychopath.

Link

At the second court session, of course, he had a lawyer, but this did not play any role. They were sentenced to the most severe punishment: five years of forced labor. But just the time spent in the Arkhangelsk region, he recalled with gratitude. Having worked out the allotted time with the village peasants, he studied the literature of Great Britain and his beloved Auden in the evenings. Two of his poems, published in the regional newspaper, became perhaps the only publication of the poet during his life in the Soviet Union. She came to Norinskaya and Maria, even lived for a long time. He forgave, then doubted, especially since Bobyshev appeared after him. Nevertheless, it was then that the best of the poems dedicated to the beloved were written. A young man with a huge talent recognized by everyone arrived in the northern wilderness, and an established poet left the Arctic with his own unique style, rhythm and intonation. After all, it is known that it is impossible to imitate Brodsky. Secondary is noticeable from the first line.

"Great" poet returned from exile

In the struggle for the return of Joseph Brodsky, whose biography and work became the subject of our review, very powerful people. First, of course, A. A. Akhmatova. The transcript of the court session by Frida Vigdorova played an important role. It has been published in many media Western Europe. Together with Anna Andreevna, Lidia Chukovskaya wrote countless letters to the party and judicial authorities. Shostakovich, Tvardovsky, Paustovsky, Marshak. This is far from all the people who then took part in his fate. On the eve of the European "Writers' Forum," Jean-Paul Sartre warned of the dire situation that the Soviet delegation might find itself in because of the Brodsky affair. Most likely, this played a decisive role. So that the poet would not be subjected to such accusations in the future, he was registered as a translator at the Leningrad branch of the Writers' Union. Having left his hometown at 23, he returned at 25 and immediately found himself in a very strange, limbo state. There was no poet with such a surname in the USSR. This is exactly what the employees of the Soviet embassy in London answered when he was invited to the international poetry festival. Three years later, Joseph Alexandrovich was elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bavaria.

Underground poet

In the homeland for all these years, 4 of his poems were published. A few more missed the press as nursery rhymes. The source of money was mainly translations, reviews in the magazine "Aurora" and hack work at various film studios. In Brodsky's luggage there is even a role in one of the films that went unnoticed. But you can't hide such talent. Brodsky's poems were distributed more and more widely in samizdat. He wrote constantly. Much of what was written during these years was later included in all his collections. Increasingly, Brodsky's poems appear in magazines in Western Europe and the United States. The first book compiled under the supervision of the author was Desert Stop, published in New York in 1970. All large quantity journalists seek to interview the poet, he is invited by universities. Naturally, the KGB did not leave such a "client" unattended. But on the whole, his life in the USSR proceeded quite calmly, except for two examinations in mental hospitals.

Emigration

IN short biography Joseph Brodsky contains information that the turning point came in 1972. In OVIR, the poet is offered a choice: emigration or hot days, as they put it, in mental hospitals and prisons. Actually, there was nothing to choose from, although he tried to delay the day of departure until the last. Time was also needed to prepare the first collected works. Samizdatovsky, of course. But still, already deprived of Soviet citizenship, on June 4 he flew on the route Moscow - Vienna. Two days later, in Austria, he already met his beloved W. Auden. And in general, actively, without delay, joined the poetic life of Europe.

As evidenced by the biography, the poet Brodsky was in many ways an unusual emigrant. To his credit, he did not like it when he was ranked among the victims of the Soviet regime. He even considered himself worthy of all his ordeals. With the Motherland, he cut off all ties, not only forcedly. Even when he underwent open-heart surgery, the father was not allowed to fly to the US to care for his son. All subsequent requests also failed. Parents died one year apart, in 1983 and 1984. But he himself never came to his native city, even when it became possible. All the requests of friends came across one answer in different variations: they say that they do not return to the place of love. It is not known what he meant more: relations with Basmanova or with Leningrad. They, too, were intimate to him in many ways.

last love

If we continue the topic of Brodsky's personal life, whose biography is interesting to many contemporaries, then many noted his cynicism in relation to women after emigration. The poet stopped believing in love. Everything changed after meeting Maria Sozzani, an Italian aristocrat with whom Brodsky lived. last years life. Anna Alexandra Maria. So they named their daughter.

To mention in conclusion the work of a great poet is a thankless task. It is necessary to devote years to this, and to write a multi-volume study. His attitude is ambiguous. There are people, there are many of them, and they deserve the deepest respect, who cannot stand Brodsky's poetry. She is considered, especially in her later samples, cold, devoid of life. But it is difficult to deny her, albeit cold, impeccability. In exile, Joseph Alexandrovich immediately turned to the genre of essays and wrote them until the end of his life. And in his speech, which is traditionally given by Nobel Prize winners, he again emphasized that he considers poetry to be a purely individual matter, and himself as a private person.

He lies in Venice

Like this interesting biography Brodsky. He was emphatically a lonely person and did not feel unhappy in this state. It remained so even after death. This happened on January 28, 1996. Still, my heart couldn't take it. The grave of the great worker and poet Joseph Brodsky is located in Venice at the cemetery of San Michele. He loved this city no less than his native Leningrad.

Joseph Brodsky was born May 24, 1940 in Leningrad. Father, Captain of the Navy of the USSR Alexander Ivanovich Brodsky (1903-1984), was a military photojournalist, after the war he went to work in the photo laboratory of the Naval Museum. In 1950 he was demobilized, after that he worked as a photographer and journalist in several Leningrad newspapers. Mother, Maria Moiseevna Volpert (1905-1983), worked as an accountant. The mother's sister is an actress of the BDT and the Theater. V.F. Komissarzhevskaya Dora Moiseevna Volpert.

Joseph's early childhood fell on the years of war, blockade, post-war poverty and passed without a father. In 1942 after the blockade winter, Maria Moiseevna and Joseph left for evacuation to Cherepovets, returned to Leningrad in 1944. In 1947 Joseph went to school number 203 on Kirochnaya Street, 8. In 1950 moved to school number 196 on Mokhovaya street, in 1953 I went to the 7th grade at school No. 181 in Solyany Lane and stayed the next year for the second year. In 1954 applied to the Second Baltic School (naval school), but was not accepted. He moved to school number 276 on Obvodny Canal house number 154, where he continued his studies in the 7th grade.

In 1955 the family receives "one and a half rooms" in the Muruzi House.

In 1955, in less than sixteen years, having finished seven classes and starting the eighth, Brodsky left school and entered the Arsenal plant as an apprentice milling machine operator. This decision was due both to problems at school and to Brodsky's desire to financially support his family. Unsuccessfully tried to enter the school of submariners. At the age of 16, he set about becoming a doctor, worked for a month as an assistant dissector in the morgue at the regional hospital, dissected corpses, but eventually abandoned his medical career. In addition, for five years after leaving school, Brodsky worked as a stoker in a boiler room, as a sailor at a lighthouse.

Since 1957 was a worker in the geological expeditions of NIIGA: in 1957 and 1958- on the White Sea, in 1959 and 1961- in Eastern Siberia and Northern Yakutia, on the Anabar shield. Summer 1961 in the Yakut village of Nelkan, during a period of forced idleness (there were no deer for a further hike), he had a nervous breakdown, and he was allowed to return to Leningrad.

At the same time, he read a lot, but chaotically - primarily poetry, philosophical and religious literature, began to study English and Polish.

In 1959 meets Evgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, Vladimir Uflyand, Bulat Okudzhava, Sergey Dovlatov.

February 14, 1960 the first major public performance took place at the "tournament of poets" in the Leningrad Palace of Culture named after Gorky with the participation of A.S. Kushner, G.Ya. Gorbovsky, V.A. Sosnory. The reading of the poem "Jewish Cemetery" caused a scandal.

During a trip to Samarkand in December 1960 Years Brodsky and his friend, former pilot Oleg Shakhmatov, considered a plan to hijack the plane in order to fly abroad. But they did not dare to do so. Later, Shakhmatov was arrested for illegal possession of weapons and informed the KGB about this plan, as well as about his other friend, Alexander Umansky, and his "anti-Soviet" manuscript, which Shakhmatov and Brodsky tried to pass on to an American they happened to meet. January 29, 1961 Brodsky was detained by the KGB, but was released two days later.

In August 1961 in Komarov, Yevgeny Rein introduces Brodsky to Anna Akhmatova. In 1962 during a trip to Pskov, he meets N.Ya. Mandelstam, and in 1963 at Akhmatova's - with Lydia Chukovskaya. After the death of Akhmatova in 1966 with the light hand of D. Bobyshev, four young poets, including Brodsky, were often referred to in memoir literature as "Akhmatov's orphans."

In 1962 In the year twenty-two, Brodsky met the young artist Marina (Marianna) Basmanova, the daughter of the artist P.I. Basmanov. Since that time, Marianna Basmanova, hidden under the initials "M. B.", devoted to many works of the poet. The last poem with the dedication "M. B." dated 1989 .

October 8, 1967 Marianna Basmanova and Joseph Brodsky had a son, Andrey Osipovich Basmanov. In 1972-1995 M.P. Basmanov and I.A. Brodsky were in correspondence.

In his own words, Brodsky began writing poetry at the age of eighteen, but there are several poems dated 1956-1957 years. One of the decisive impulses was the acquaintance with the poetry of Boris Slutsky. "Pilgrims", "Monument to Pushkin", "Christmas Romance" are the most famous of Brodsky's early poems. Many of them are characterized by pronounced musicality. Tsvetaeva and Baratynsky, and a few years later - Mandelstam, had, according to Brodsky himself, a decisive influence on him. Of his contemporaries, he was influenced by Evgeny Rein, Vladimir Uflyand, Stanislav Krasovitsky.

January 8, 1964 Vecherny Leningrad published a selection of letters from readers demanding that the "parasite Brodsky" be punished. January 13, 1964 Brodsky was arrested on charges of parasitism. The 14th of February he had his first heart attack in his cell. Since that time, Brodsky constantly suffered from angina pectoris, which always reminded him of a possible imminent death (which at the same time did not prevent him from remaining a heavy smoker.

February 18, 1964 the court decided to send Brodsky to a compulsory forensic psychiatric examination. Brodsky spent three weeks at Pryazhka (Psychiatric Hospital No. 2 in Leningrad). The conclusion of the examination read: “He has psychopathic character traits, but he is able to work. Therefore, administrative measures can be applied.” This was followed by a second session of the court.

Two sessions of the trial of Brodsky (Judge of the Dzerzhinsky Court Savelyeva E.A.) were outlined by Frida Vigdorova and widely disseminated in samizdat.

March 13, 1964 at the second court session, Brodsky was sentenced to the maximum possible punishment under the Decree on "parasitism" - five years of forced labor in a remote area. He was exiled (transported under escort along with criminal prisoners) to the Konoshsky district of the Arkhangelsk region and settled in the village of Norinskaya. In an interview with Volkov, Brodsky called this time the happiest in his life. In exile, Brodsky studied English poetry, including the work of Wystan Auden.

With the active participation of Akhmatova, a public campaign was carried out in defense of Brodsky. The central figures in it were Frida Vigdorova and Lydia Chukovskaya. After a year and a half, in September 1965 years under pressure from the Soviet and world public (in particular, after an appeal to the Soviet government by Jean-Paul Sartre and a number of others foreign writers) the term of exile was reduced to actually served, and Brodsky returned to Leningrad.

Late 1965 Brodsky handed over to the Leningrad branch of the publishing house " Soviet writer» the manuscript of his book «Winter Post (poems 1962-1965)». A year later, after many months of ordeal and despite numerous positive internal reviews, the manuscript was returned by the publisher. “The fate of the book was not decided by the publisher. At some point, the regional committee and the KGB decided in principle to cross out this idea.

In 1966-1967 4 poems of the poet appeared in the Soviet press (not counting publications in children's magazines), after which a period of public muteness began.

These were years filled with intense poetic work, the result of which were poems that were later included in books published in the United States: "Stop in the Desert", "The End of a Beautiful Era" and "New Stanzas for August". In 1965-1968 work was underway on the poem "Gorbunov and Gorchakov".

Outwardly, Brodsky's life developed relatively calmly during these years, but the KGB did not leave its "old client" behind.

Outside the USSR, Brodsky's poems continue to appear both in Russian and in translations, primarily in English, Polish and Italian. In 1967 in England, an unauthorized collection of translations “Joseph Brodsky. Elegy to John Donne and Other Poems / Tr. by Nicholas Bethell. In 1970 in New York, "Stop in the Desert" is published - Brodsky's first book, compiled under his supervision. Poems and preparatory materials for the book were secretly exported from Russia or, as in the case of the poem "Gorbunov and Gorchakov", sent to the West by diplomatic mail.

In 1971 Brodsky was elected a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.

May 10, 1972 Brodsky was summoned to the OVIR and faced with a choice: immediate emigration or "hot days", which metaphor in the mouth of the KGB could mean interrogations, prisons and mental hospitals. By that time, he had already twice - winter 1964- I had to lie on the "examination" in psychiatric hospitals, which, according to him, was worse than prison and exile. Brodsky decides to leave. June 4, 1972 Brodsky, deprived of Soviet citizenship, flew from Leningrad along the route prescribed for Jewish emigration: to Vienna.

Two days later, upon arrival in Vienna, Brodsky goes to meet W. Oden, who lives in Austria. Together with Auden Brodsky at the end of June takes part in International Festival poetry (Poetry International) in London.

In July 1972 Brodsky moves to the USA and accepts the post of "guest poet" (poet-in-residence) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he teaches, intermittently, before 1980. From that moment on, he completed incomplete 8 classes in the USSR high school Brodsky leads the life of a university teacher, over the next 24 years holding professorships in a total of six American and British universities, including Columbia and New York. He taught the history of Russian literature, Russian and world poetry, the theory of verse, lectured and read poetry at international literary festivals and forums, in libraries and universities in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, France, Sweden, Italy.

Over the years, his health steadily deteriorated, and Brodsky, whose first heart attack occurred during his prison days in 1964, suffered 4 heart attacks. in 1976, 1985 and 1994.

I. Brodsky dedicated the book “Part of Speech” to his parents ( 1977 ), the poem "The thought of you is removed, like a demoted servant ..." ( 1985 ), In Memory of a Father: Australia ( 1989 ), essay "One and a half rooms" ( 1985 ).

In 1977 Brodsky accepts American citizenship, in 1980 finally moves from Ann Arbor to New York, further dividing his time between New York and South Hadley, a university town in Massachusetts, where since 1982 For the remainder of his life, he taught spring semesters at a five-college consortium. In 1990 Brodsky married Maria Sozzani, an Italian aristocrat who was Russian on her mother's side. In 1993 they had a daughter, Anna.

Since 1972 Brodsky actively turns to essays, which he does not leave until the end of his life. Three books of his essays are published in the USA: "Less Than One" (Less Than One) in 1986, "Watermark" (Embankment of the incurable) in 1992 and "On Grief and Reason" (On Grief and Reason) in 1995. Most of the essays included in these collections were written in English. The American National Council of Literary Critics recognized Less Than One as the best literary-critical book in the United States for 1986. By this time, Brodsky was the owner of half a dozen titles of a member of literary academies and an honorary doctorate from various universities, was the winner of the MacArthur scholarship. 1981 of the year.

Next big Book poems - "Urania" - was published in 1987. In the same year, Brodsky won the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded to him "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity".

In the 1990s four books of Brodsky's new poems were published: "Notes of the fern", "Cappadocia", "In the vicinity of Atlantis" and published in Ardis after the death of the poet and which became the final collection "Landscape with a flood".

The Library of Congress elects Brodsky as Poet Laureate of the United States for 1991-1992. In this honorary, but traditionally nominal capacity, he developed an active work in the promotion of poetry. His ideas led to the creation of the American Poetry and Literacy Project (American Project: "Poetry and Literacy"), during which since 1993 more than a million free poetry books were distributed in schools, hotels, supermarkets, railway stations and so on.

Perestroika in the USSR and the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Brodsky, which coincided with it, broke through the dam of silence in his homeland, and soon the publication of Brodsky's poems and essays flooded in. The first (besides several poems leaked to the press in the 1960s) selection of Brodsky's poems appeared in the December issue of Novy Mir. for 1987. Until that moment, the poet's work was known in his homeland to a very limited circle of readers thanks to lists of poems distributed in samizdat. In 1989 Brodsky was rehabilitated in the 1964 trial.

In 1992 in Russia, a 4-volume collection of works begins to appear.

In 1995 Brodsky was awarded the title of honorary citizen of St. Petersburg.

Invitations to return to their homeland followed. Brodsky put off his arrival: he was embarrassed by the publicity of such an event, honoring, the attention of the press, which would inevitably accompany his visit. Health did not allow. One of the last arguments was: "The best part of me is already there - my poetry."

Saturday night January 27, 1996 in New York, Brodsky was preparing to go to South Hadley and collected manuscripts and books in a briefcase to take with him the next day. Spring semester starts on Monday. Wishing his wife good night, Brodsky said that he still needed to work, and went up to his office. In the morning, his wife found him on the floor in his office. Brodsky was fully dressed. On the desk next to the glasses lay an open book, a bilingual edition of Greek epigrams. The heart, according to doctors, stopped suddenly - a heart attack, the poet died on the night of January 28, 1996

Keywords: Joseph Brodsky, biography of Joseph Brodsky, download a detailed biography, free download, Russian literature of the 20th century, Russian writers of the 20th century, life and work of Joseph Brodsky, emigrant writers

Name: Joseph Brodsky

Age: 55 years

Place of Birth: Saint Petersburg

A place of death: New York, USA

Activity: poet, essayist, playwright, translator

Family status: was married

Joseph Brodsky - Biography

The poet, translator, playwright Joseph Brodsky belonged to the category of dissident poets. His works have recently entered the school curriculum. His lyrics could have been in demand even earlier, if they did not see political themes in it. How many more people who graduated from school would be familiar with Brodsky's work.

Childhood, the poet's family

Joseph was born just before the war in a Jewish family. My father was first a war photographer, then moved to the newspaper as a simple photojournalist. The blockade of Leningrad, the horror and hunger, the Brodsky family experienced firsthand. From hometown Joseph and his mother were evacuated to Cherepovets. After the end of the war, my father worked at the Naval Museum in a photo laboratory. Mother has always worked as an accountant.

Returning before the end of the Great Patriotic War to Leningrad, the boy changes one school after another for various reasons. He dreams of the sea, of the school, but they don’t take him there. Without finishing the eighth grade of the school, the guy began to work as a milling machine operator at the factory in order to somehow help the family. But fate had a difficult biography.

He was very fond of nature, changed many professions. He wanted to become a doctor - he got a job as an assistant dissector in the morgue. He worked at the lighthouse as a sailor, in the boiler room as a stoker. He even went on expeditions together with the geologists of the Research Institute as a worker. I learned Siberia, visited Yakutia, saw the White Sea.

Joseph Brodsky - poetry

But his passion for reading never left him, he chose mostly poetry, along the way he studied foreign languages(Polish and English). Joseph himself tried to write poetry from the age of sixteen. Of course, at the beginning of his work, he imitated Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelstam,. The poem that first saw the light of day was "The Ballad of the Little Tugboat." It was published in one of the issues of the magazine "Bonfire".

Brodsky's performance at the "Poet Tournament" in Leningrad turned the whole life of the future poet upside down. From the text of his poems, which he recited there, they chose a few lines and accused Joseph of loving a foreign homeland. The outraged public demanded punishment. Suddenly, a whole collection of letters appeared from ordinary citizens, concerned that the poet was not working anywhere, and "ordinary citizens" wrote literate literary language.

And the authorities could not think of a better way to arrest the poet as a parasite. He suffered a heart attack in the cell. Brodsky was an unrecognized genius. The country's leadership offered the poet a choice: emigration or a mental hospital. The poet leaves for America, taking the citizenship of that country. Here it is, the American page of Brodsky's biography.

The further fate of the poet

Abroad, Joseph Brodsky does not stop writing poetry. He actively takes part in many poetry festivals. He teaches the history of Russian literature at leading universities. Engaged in translations from mother tongue to English. He publishes collections of his own poems. Receives Nobel Prize in the field of literature. He writes essays where he asks questions and answers them himself.

perestroika

The nineties touched not only the political side of life in the Soviet Union, but also the literary one. The poems of Joseph Brodsky began to be published in magazines and newspapers, and the poet's books were published. Many times he received an invitation to come to his homeland. But he didn’t want too much noise near his person and constantly put off a trip to Soviet Union.

Joseph Brodsky - biography of personal life

The first love was big and bright. The native daughter of the artist and graphic artist Pavel Basmanov conquered the passionate poetic nature of the poet. He dedicated many poems to his muse. The young artist Marina Basmanova was also in love with a young man, meetings began, a civil marriage, the birth of her son Andrei.

Relations somehow changed dramatically after the baby was born, the couple broke up with each other. After the break, Brodsky was seriously carried away by the ballerina. Maria Kuznetsova was graceful and pretty. The girl born from this love received the name Anastasia. For a very long time, Joseph does not dare to get acquainted with someone.

But Maria Sozzani won the heart of the poet. True, she was 29 years younger than her chosen one, but this age difference did not bother anyone at that time. In the early nineties, he proposed to her, and three years later Maria gave birth to her husband's daughter Anna. Joseph had heart problems: angina pectoris, surgery, 4 heart attacks. Worries about the death of parents were added to health problems. Brodsky applied to come to the Soviet Union for the funeral, but the government refused the request.

The spring semester began after the next vacation, Brodsky decided to work in the office, prepare for a meeting with students. In the morning he did not go to work, his wife found him dead of a heart attack. Quietly the last page of the biography of the great poet turned over.

Joseph Brodsky - bibliography, poetry

Stop in the desert
- Cappadocia. Poetry
- Roman Elegies
- fern notes
- New stanzas for August
- Landscape with flood
- Exile from Paradise: Selected Translations
- Urania
- Marble
- Works of Joseph Brodsky