Joseph Brodsky in Memoriam: The Russian Perspective

Abstract

members of the poetic establishment in Russia react to the news of his death? And what did they consider his legacy to Russia's already rich and long-standing poetic tradition-a tradition that includes among its ranks such exalted giants as Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov in the nineteenth century, and Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelstam, and Boris Pasternak in the twentieth century? Brodsky had not set foot on Russian soil since his exile in 1972, and the ban on his poetry was only lifted in 1987, under the more permissive and open climate accompanying the early years of perestroika and glasnost. Significantly, though, the Russian poetic community mourned his death too; in fact, after meeting with several members of Russia's poetic elite last May and June, it became all too obvious to me that many are still in mourning. Almost without exception, Brodsky's contemporaries remembered their former countryman as a friend; as an enormously gifted and original poet who has left his authorial stamp on the course and future development of Russian poetry; and, finally, as a nonconformist of legendary status in the scheme of Russian history and culture.