Стратегии восприятия стихотворения Иосифа Бродского «Стансы»

Abstract

The paper offers an analysis of the famous poem by Joseph Brodsky “Stanzas (‘I don’t want to choose a country or a churchyard...’)”, which is very popular among fans of the Nobel Laureate’s work (1987), but very rarely turns out to be the subject of literary reflection, predominant interpretation of which is inclusion in general reviews. The study shows that the text of “Stanzas” generates controversy and that the practice of its perception is dual. Some researchers (e. g., A. Izmailov) refer the poem to love lyrics — on the grounds that it initially represents a text “in an album” and includes a dedication to the author’s girl-friends (E.V., A.D.). Other researchers (including the authors of this article) analyze the mechanism of the love text growing into a meditative, philosophical one and identify artistic strategies that allow moving to a different (not intimate) level of perception of Brodsky’s “Stanzas”. The authors show that the metaphysics of the space modeled by Brodsky overcomes the scale of the real geographical coordinates of the strict streets-lines of Vasilyevsky Island of Leningrad, but reveals the multidimensionality of the philosophical vector-gaze of the lyrical hero of “Stanzas”. The sphere of the lyrical character’s presence is not Vasilyevsky Island, but the mystical and mythological boundless Universe. The contrast of universality and particularity, boundlessness and concreteness, demonstrated by Brodsky, introduces tension and drama into the narrative, marks the acuteness of the internal conflict of the poetic plot, allowing to overcome the author’s public “dislike” for one of his most intimate poems.