Gleb Morev. Postscript to the anniversary

Postscript to the anniversary
Gleb Morev

Publication date: June 1, 2000

Joseph Brodsky's sixtieth birthday passed surprisingly calmly in Russia. If we remember that five years ago, when the poet was still alive, a similar, but not round, anniversary was celebrated not only by holding a scientific conference, but also by the opening of busts of Brodsky in St. Petersburg and Amsterdam, then the course of current events is striking in its regularity. Several moderately irritably ironic articles by newspaper and online critics, a TV movie on ORT, another scientific conference in St. Petersburg. In the name of the latter, only the definition “scientific” seems premature - judging by the emotions that have spread throughout the Russian media, and also by the pathos of some of the speeches made in St. Petersburg, which is inappropriate for academic discourse, our attitude towards the late classical poet is far from the impartiality on which it is so declaratively insists M.L. Gasparov, considering it the foundation of philology.

Brodsky's death in New York in 1996 did little to change the perception of his figure in Russia. He received the status of a great poet during his lifetime and remains unchanged. His physical absence in Russia since the seemingly truly prehistoric June of 1972 turned his departure only into an occasion for touching sentiments in poetry and memoir prose, but it did not allow this tragic event to become that existential Rubicon, “a moment of consciousness,” in the words of Boris Eikhenbaum , as the no less tragically sudden departure of Blok and Gumilyov appeared to contemporaries in 1921, irrevocably marking a change in historical eras. For the overwhelming majority of authors and/or readers living in Russia, the living Brodsky was not a true contemporary, being rather the hero of a biographical myth, the recipient of poetic dedications and the subject of memories (as well as sculptural images) during his lifetime. I think that for Brodsky himself this dominant perception of him in Russia was obvious, and it was precisely his conscious reluctance to destroy this state of affairs that explains his constant refusal to visit Russia after 1987.

In this sense, with the death of Brodsky, little has changed in the perception of him in Russia. His texts are still not properly published and not commented on (do not consider the amateur collected works published by the Pushkin Foundation to be such a publication), have not been read and cannot be read by the “general reader” (which is not surprising: unlike early - late Brodsky is very difficult to understand). The subject of everyone's attention, whether fascinated or irritated, is still his literary status. The status of a great poet in an era of extreme devaluation of the poetic word and the collapse of the figure of the Poet as such.

This status is truly indisputable (which is confirmed by the abundance of responses to the anniversary, and the abundance of speakers and, importantly, listeners at the St. Petersburg conference dedicated to Brodsky). Its components are not indisputable. Kommersant columnist Grigory Revzin, wittily analyzing the nature of the irritation of the “advanced” part of domestic criticism regarding Brodsky’s anniversary, names two components of the figure of the Great Russian Poet: language reform and persecution of the poet by the authorities. “There is evidence that both conditions are met,” Revzin states. He is right; however, if the situation with Brodsky’s status was determined by precisely these two factors, Brodsky would have long ago moved from the sphere of the topical, accompanied by non-academic emotions, into the realm of classics that do not bother anyone and would hardly have attracted the attention of the same Revzin.

This did not happen precisely because Brodsky filled the vacancy of the great (and so far the last great) Russian poet, having managed to radically change the traditional components of success in emigration. There is no doubt that the persecution by the authorities, which played a huge role in his poetic biography, is now supplanted in the mass consciousness by the social success that Brodsky achieved in the West, unprecedented for the Russian literary tradition and a hundred times more relevant for it today. He managed to break a centuries-old tradition and transform the Russian poet from a slave of honor, a slandered exile, a madman and a victim into a victorious trendsetter of intellectual fashion, a wealthy traveler, a university professor, a laureate of all possible prizes, including the Nobel Prize, and the owner of an honestly and worthily earned Mercedes. Right now, this new image is more attractive than ever for new Russian literature, frustrated in the new sociocultural situation. It is not without reason that all the irritation with Brodsky (cf. the words of Lev Rubinstein, quoted by Revzin: “What do I need Brodsky? Someone else’s boss”), as well as the enchanted admiration for him, is focused on this unconventional personal image and, unfortunately, is alien to the analytics that can be subjected to behavioral strategy of the late poet.

Strictly speaking, not a traditional search for subtexts or an analysis of Brodsky’s relationships with his predecessors and contemporaries, but the creation of a detailed literary biography of him, re- and deconstructing the mechanisms of his writing career, would allow us to talk about a “science of Brodsky,” the beginning of which is somewhat premature, in my opinion , stated Yakov Gordin, opening the St. Petersburg conference.

For now we have to be content with little. , collected by Valentina Polukhina, was published in Moscow Brodsky's Big Book of Interviews - an almost complete collection of Brodsky's conversations with journalists and writers. In addition to the texts, many of which are published in Russian for the first time (and some for the first time in full), the book contains rare photographs of Brodsky from different years. One in particular caught my attention - from 1972. Made in London, at the prestigious international poetry festival, which Brodsky attended thanks to the efforts of W. H. Auden a few weeks after his departure from Leningrad, it captured the poet surrounded by new and famous friends - Auden and Stephen Spender. The photograph is striking in its specifically visual psychological authenticity: surrounded by animatedly chatting Englishmen, coquettishly akimbo Auden and Spender relaxedly listening to him, Brodsky is gloomy, tense, unsure of himself and somewhat awkward; his gaze expresses more a desire to understand than an understanding of his interlocutors.

The last photograph in the book was taken four months before Brodsky’s death, in Italy: he looks ironically and condescendingly into the lens, raising his hand with a cigarette over a cup of what appears to be cappuccino. There are twenty-three years between these photographs. The same is true between the latest Russian exile and the latest poet who continues to intrigue Russia.