"Elegy for John Donne"

Abstract

W E know tantalizingly little about Joseph Brodsky;butthe central facts about him are by now abundantly clear-he is a young poet of outstanding achievement and exceptional promise who has been brutally mishandled by the Soviet regime, both Khrushchevian and post-Khruschevian. Brodsky began writing poetry when he was eighteen; he is now twenty-five. He left school after the seventh grade, when he was fifteen. He comes from a family of Russian Jewish intellectuals or professional people; as of 1964 his parents were both retired and living on government pensions. Until his arrest Brodsky lived with them, contributing his meager literary earnings to the support of the family. From late December 1963 until January 5, 1964, he was a patient at the Kashchenko mental hospital in Moscow. At his trial medical testimony was introduced certifying that, despite certain psychopathic traits, Brodsky was capable of working normally and of doing forced manual labor in a remote area. His trial for social parasitism, under a Khrushchevian ukaz of 1961, was conducted in two sittings, on February 18 and March 13, 1964.1 His sentence read as follows: