Description
Book SynopsisBrodsky Through the Eyes of His Contemporaries combines biographical details about Joseph Brodsky with a collection of interviews that illuminate an intriguing contemporary phenomenon, along with a new and authoritative interpretation of the poetics, style, and ideas of one of the most influential poets to emerge in post-Stalinist Russia. Subtle, incisive, and rigorous in its critical evaluation, each discussion significantly advances our understanding of Brodsky’s complex poetic world. All discussions are linked by core questions that are carefully and sometimes provocatively formulated.
This book is a superb guide to further study of Brodsky’s work both for specialist scholars and general readers who are intoxicated by poetry.
Presented in two volumes, this is the second edition of a work first published in 1992; this edition is enlarged with new interviews and a series of previously unpublished unique photographs from the personal archives of the author and the interviewees.
Volume I offers a fascinating record of conversations with poets of various nationalities about Brodsky: Czeslaw Milosz, Roy Fisher, Lev Loseff, Bella Akhmadulina, Natalia Gorbanevskaya, Tomas Venclova, Viktor Krivulin, Alexander Kushner, and Elena Shvarts.
Volume II features eye-witness accounts of Joseph Brodsky’s friends and family members, publishers, editors, translators, students, and fellow poets including John Le Carre, Oleg Tselkov, Petr Vail, Bengt Jangfeldt, Susan Sontag, Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, and others.
Table of ContentsPhotographs in the inset. List of abbreviations. Preface. Acknowledgements. ANATOLY NAIMAN. A Coagulation of Linguistic Energy. YAKOV GORDIN. A Tragic Perception of the World. EVGENY REIN. The Introduction of the Prosaic into Poetry. NATALYA GORBANEVSKAYA. Subordination to the Language. BELL A AKHMADULINA. Perfection of Harmony . ELENA USHAKOVA. A Poet of Intense Thought. ALEKSANDR KUSHNER. The World’s Last Romantic Poet. L EV LOSEFF. A New Conception of Poetry. VLADIMIR UFLIAND. One of the Freest Men. DAVID SHRAYER-PETROV. He was a Universal Poet. MIKHAIL MEILAKH. Liberation from Emotionality. VIKTOR KRIVULIN. A Mask that’s Grown to Fit the Face. YURY KUBLANOVSKY. A Yankee in Russian Poetry. ELENA SHVARTS. Coldness and Rationality. OLGA SEDAKOVA. A Rare Independence. ALEKSEY PARSHCHIKOV. Absolute Tranquillity in the Face of Absolute Tragedy. TOMAS VENCLOVA. Development of Semantic Poetics. CEROY FISHER. A Noble Quixotic Sight. DEREK WALCOTT. A Merciless Judge. CZESLAW MILOSZ. A Huge Building of Strange Architecture. PETER VIERECK. Rhyme and Punishment. Valentina Polukhina Books. Name Index.
