In a bright shadow

In the English magazine Spectator, I read the poem of the modern poet Christopher James "Brother." The main character of the poem is the brother of the three sisters of Bronte (writers of Charlotte, Emily and Ann) Brenuel Bronte. I will retell the poem in my own words and will reduce it selflessly:

Brenell Bronte, death did not knock you down,

Although whiskey and genius muddied your gift.

You served as an assistant to the station caretaker

But at the ticket office he translated "Odes" Horace

And he announced the arrival and departure of trains in Latin.

He worked as a tutor, but was seduced by the mother of a pet,

Mrs. Robinson, and burned in her passion.

On Sundays, you undressed naked

He drank tea and in the bath leafed through a volume of Kitsa.

He ran away, grabbing a brush, from the tenacious paternal love

And the chatter of the sisters is on nature.

In the peak of talent, you washed off

He snapped himself to become invisible.

Brenell Bronte, hiding in the shadow of history,

You smoked opium, but heart pain and suspicion

In their own mediocrity, a buzz was broken.

How sisters love you, a brilliant boy,

who never sparkled!

In my opinion, this is a touching poem. Brenell Bronte, the only son in the family, was a gifted artist and poet, but in the history of English culture he remained a loser, the shadow of the sisters. The feeling of doom literally ate him. In 1835, he wrote a self -portrait with the sisters, but subsequently erased himself, although his silhouette still appears on the canvas. A strange - or not strange way, he was unable to hide behind the sisters and fall into a historical sediment. The feature film (1967) was shot about his love novel with Mrs. Robinson. He is one of the main characters of the play "Martha Storm Winds" (1987). He was passionate about the classic of the Gothic prose of the twentieth century Daphne Du Morieurus, who wrote the documentary novel "Infernal World Brenuella Bronte" (1960). And Daphne Daphna Morye Brenuelle inspired another British writer Justein Picardi to compose a book about the nature of the inhabitations of Daphne (2008). The case of Brenuella is complex, as the British say, Sophisticated. Christopher James in his poem is ironically hinting: genius can be destructive for talent.

In the history of Russian literature, there are also intricate stories on the topic "in the shadow of the tape." In the poem of Osip Mandelstam "Charlie Chaplin" (1937) there are such lines:

And your wife

Blind shadow.

Nadezhda Mandelstam accepted these lines at her own expense and was seriously offended by her husband (the poet Anatoly Nayman, who knew N. Ya. Mandelstam, told me about this). In the sixties of the last century, Nadezhda Mandelstam wrote the first volume of "memoirs." This book in the West was read and read more willing than the "twilight" verses of her husband. Nevertheless, having read the “second book” of the memoirs of Nadezhda Mandelstam, the writer V. Kaverin exclaimed: “Shadow, in place!”

But there are not cases of so Sophisticated. The shadow of the genius highlights everyone who is nearby. The maid of Marseille Proust Celeste hardly dictated memoirs about her relationship with the writer if the Proust had no reputation of the genius. The eternal brides of Franz Kafka would remain at best in family albums of loved ones, if not for the diaries and letters of the writer.

Immortality is a funnel. She sucks not only geniuses, but his whole world - with wives, mistresses, households, classmates, even caressed cats and dogs. From this ticket you will not turn into immortality.