Mandelstam was, one is tempted to say, a modern Orpheus: sent to hell, he never returned, while his widow dodged across one-sixth of the earth's surface, clutching the saucepan with his songs rolled up inside, memorizing them by night in the event they were found by Furies with a search warrant.

Brodsky is at his best when speaking about the greats, Tsvetaeva, Mandestam, Auden, Frost. He drifts into crank-ness when speaking philosophically, which he is wont to do in these pages, about Tyranny, Civilization or Evil.

Throughout one’s life, time addresses man in a variety of languages: in those of innocence, love, faith, experience, history, fatigue, cynicism, guilt, decay, etc. Of those, the language of love is clearly the lingua franca.

There is a great deal of longing here, for Petersburg, his parents, for a time when life was free from sweeping definitions of Guilt or Innocence. Yet the pull is too strong. Brodsky sees Evil looming, He asserts that poetry precedes prose, that empires are built on language. He champions Platonov and finds Auden the greatest mind of the 20C. He offers extremely close readings of poems, ones which both dazzle and confront. He is betrays periodically his surprise fortune and then just as deftly leaps form the guilt, if only he could.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPmMFbCI_f0

Keep this in mind when pondering judgement. ( )

Brodski é cativante quando conta suas histórias de vida, a infância marginal na União Soviética, a perseguição, a emigração e os problemas dos pais; e também em seus ensaios sobre história e literatura. Ao mesmo tempo que sua história é trágica e comovente, ele nos faz rir, como quando descreve os estranhos trabalhos que teve, ainda na União Soviética. Seus ensaios mostram sua veneração por alguns autores, e excitam, deixam o leitor curioso, louco para ler mais do que os versos que ele apresenta. Ensaios como “A Guide to a Renamed City” ou “Footnote to a Poem” são tão maravilhosos que senti pena quando terminaram. Adoro como ele fala de como a literatura russa escolheu seguir o caminho de Tolstói, não as grandiosidades de Dostoiévski. ( )

This collection of Brodsky's essays displays the full range of interests; poetic, literary, political and historical. Essays on writers deal with Akhmatova, Tsvetneva and Madlestam, as well as western poets like Auden, Montale, Cavafy and Derek Walcott. In "Catalogues in the Art", Brodsky addresses the history and future of Russian prose, and in "On Tyranny" and "Flight from Byzantium", he offers meditations on history and the modern age.

found among Pop's books