BRODSKY, Joseph (Brodsky Joseph)

(1940-1996)
Expanding the boundaries of traditional Russian poetry experiments with strofikoy, rhyme, genres and sizes, he was able to update and transform them, while remaining within the framework of classical forms.
Joseph Brodsky was born May 24, 1940 in Leningrad. In 15 years, leaving school, he worked at the factory and in the morgue. By 1963, when his manuscript for five years went to the 'samizdat', it was highlighted by Anna Akhmatova and won recognition readership, proclaiming him the leading lyric poet of his generation. Official, the authorities pursued him: in 1964, Brodsky was arrested and tried for the 'parasitism' and he was sentenced to five years of exile from the obligation to work. After twenty months of his release, but in 1972 was forced to leave the country. Brodsky emigrated to the U.S.. His first post - a teacher at the University of Michigan. He then moved to New York and taught at Columbia University, College of New York and New England. In 1987, Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1991 became the poet laureate of the U.S.

. When Brodsky's poetry was first translated into English, . it is often compared with the poetry of the English Metaphysical poets, . such, . as D. Donne and Marvell E., . with a characteristic combination of soulful lyricism, and philosophical reflections, . baroque syntax, . metaphors, . metaphysical imagery, . ironic intonation and inventive rhyme,
. Despite the fact that Brodsky has been influenced by many poets from Catullus to WH Auden, his work remained distinctive. His favorite shape - elegy, message, sonnet - are traditional, but he is free to treat them. In his language biblical simplicity and grandeur coexist with street talk and prison jargon.

The dominant image in the poetry of Brodsky's exile nevertheless is not a political figure. His exile is doomed to search the house in time - in the history. Brodsky look at the world and a rather gloomy, but he softened cheerful irony of his verse and the author's bitter humor. The language itself - the last thing that is opposed to individual loneliness and death, and he has no other task but to be true to yourself:

? Life, which,

as gifts things do not look in the mouth,

bares his teeth at every meeting.

On the whole man, you have to part

speech. Part of speech in general. Part of speech.

Among the books Brodsky - Poems (1965), Stop in the Desert (1970), Debut (1973), Part of speech (1977), New Stanzas to Augusta (1982), Roman Elegies (1982), Urania (1987) and Landscape the flood (1996). Language: English went Selected Poems (Selected Poems, 1973), Part of speech (A Part of Speech, 1980) and two books of essays is less than unity (Less than One, 1986), Sorrow, and the mind (On Grief and Reason, 1995).

Brodsky died in New York on January 28, 1996, buried in Venice.