Interview with Iosif Brodsky

Abstract

Iosif Brodsky, despite his youth ( he is thirty-two years old), is widely considered today to be the best living Russian poet. He began writing in 1958 and was quickly recognised by the doyenne of Russian poets, Anna Akhmatova, to have exceptional promise. Brodsky found it virtually impossible, however, to get his work into print, particularly since he was not a member of the Writers’ Union. In 1963 he was arrested and in 1964 was sentenced to five years’ exile for ’ parasitism ’, the judge maintaining that it was impossible for Brodsky to be a writer without being a member of the Union — therefore he must be unemployed and a parasite. Fortunately, after eighteen months of being employed on physical labour, Brodsky was allowed to return to his native city of Leningrad and resume work as a poet and translator. In subsequent years he found it equally difficult to have his original work published ( only four of his poems were printed in the Soviet Union), but continued to write prolifically and to be translated and published abroad. Last June he suddenly left the Soviet Union under the dispensation granted to many Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel. Having been already offered a post at Michigan University in the USA, and having been invited to take part in the London Poetry Festival of 1972, he came first to England, where he gave the following interview to INDEX.