Brodsky, Joseph

orig. Iosip Aleksandrovich Brodsky

born May 24, 1940, Leningrad, Russia, U.S.S.R.

died Jan. 28, 1996, New York, N.Y., U.S.

Russian-born U.S. poet.

In the Soviet Union his independent spirit and irregular work record led to a five-year sentence to hard labour. Exiled in 1972, he settled in New York. He was poet laureate of the U.S. from 1991 to 1992. His lyric and elegiac poems ponder the universal concerns of life, death, and the meaning of existence. Brodsky's poetry collections include A Part of Speech (1980), History of the Twentieth Century (1986), and To Urania (1988). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987.

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▪ 1997

      (IOSIP ALEKSANDROVICH BRODSKY), Russian-born U.S. poet and essayist (b. May 24, 1940, Leningrad, U.S.S.R.—d. Jan. 28, 1996, New York, N.Y.), produced powerful, meditative poetry that treats language, exile, and the universal concerns of life, death, and the meaning of existence. He was a leading dissident writer of his generation and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 for his lyric and elegiac verse. Brodsky quit school at the age of 15, taking a series of menial jobs, reading voraciously, and developing his art. His early poetry had begun to earn him a reputation among the writers of Leningrad when he was arrested in 1964 and sentenced to five years of hard labour for "social parasitism." Under international and domestic pressure, Soviet authorities commuted his sentence after 18 months, but in 1972 he was forcibly exiled from the Soviet Union. He lived thereafter in the U.S., eventually becoming a citizen, and worked as a poet-in-residence and visiting professor at several universities. Brodsky's earlier works include Stikhotvoreniya i poemy (1965; "Verses and Poems") and Ostanovka v pustyne (1970; "A Halt in the Wasteland"); these and other poems were translated by George L. Kline in Selected Poems (1973). His important later works include the poetry collections A Part of Speech (1980), History of the Twentieth Century (1987), and To Urania (1988) and the prose collections Less than One (1986) and On Grief and Reason (1995). Notable, too, is Fondamenta degli Incurabili (1991; Watermark, 1991), a quietly intense prose reflection on his relationship with the city of Venice.

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▪ American poet

original Russian name  Iosip Aleksandrovich Brodsky  

born May 24, 1940, Leningrad [now Saint Petersburg], Russia, U.S.S.R.

died Jan. 28, 1996, New York, N.Y., U.S.

      Russian-born American poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 for his important lyric and elegiac poems.

      Brodsky left school at age 15 and thereafter began to write poetry while working at a wide variety of jobs. He began to earn a reputation in the Leningrad literary scene, but his independent spirit and his irregular work record led to his being charged with “social parasitism” by the Soviet authorities, who sentenced him in 1964 to five years of hard labour. The sentence was commuted in 1965 after prominent Soviet literary figures protested it. Exiled from the Soviet Union in 1972, Brodsky lived thereafter in the United States, becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1977. He was a poet-in-residence intermittently at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, from 1972 to 1980 and was a visiting professor at other schools. He served as poet laureate of the United States in 1991–92.

 Brodsky's poetry addresses personal themes and treats in a powerful, meditative fashion the universal concerns of life, death, and the meaning of existence. His earlier works, written in Russian, include Stikhotvoreniya i poemy (1965; “Verses and Poems”) and Ostanovka v pustyne (1970; “A Halt in the Wasteland”); these and other works were translated by George L. Kline in Selected Poems (1973), which includes the notable “Elegy for John Donne.” His major works, in Russian and English, include the poetry collections A Part of Speech (1980), History of the Twentieth Century (1986), and To Urania (1988) and the essays in Less Than One (1986).

Additional Reading

Critical studies on Brodsky include Valentina Polukhina, Joseph Brodsky: A Poet for Our Time (1989); Lev Loseff (Lev Losev) and Valentina Polukhina (eds.), Brodsky's Poetics and Aesthetics (1990), which includes a translation of his Nobel Prize speech; and David M. Bethea, Joseph Brodsky and the Creation of Exile (1994).

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