Over the Rooftops of Time: Jewish Stories, Essays, Poems

Interview with Joseph Brodsky February 28, 1979

Interview with Joseph Brodsky February 28, 1979 In 1964 Joseph Brodsky was charged with social parasitism and convicted of idleness, a legitimate crime in the Soviet Union. He was sentenced to five years’ hard labor in the Arkhangelsk region of Northern Russia. He speaks of this time in his life as a “previous incarnation.” After pressure from many fronts, Brodsky was released having served twenty months of his sentence. In 1972 he came to America, to the University of Michigan, where a position had been arranged for him with the help of W. H. Auden and others. He had been befriended by the poet Anna Akhmatova during the last five years of her life. She considered Brodsky the most gifted lyric poet of his generation. Brodsky came to Washington during the week of February 25, 1979 to take part in the International Symposium on Literary Translation and Ethnic Community run by the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland . Brodsky’s works in English at that time included: Joseph Brodsky, Selected Poems, translated by George Kline, Gorbunov and Gorchakov, and A Part of Speech, translated by Daniel 7 9 8 0 Joseph Brodsky in late 1978 in front of his Greenwich Village apartment. Photographer: Marianna Volkov. Weissbort, forthcoming. He has translated many works from English into Russian, including the poetry of the English metaphysical poets. His technique for teaching himself English was to make literal translations of the first and last stanzas of the poetry of Auden, Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Eliot, and Wallace Stevens and then to “imagine” what should come in between. We are in a Chinese restaurant—Arnost Lustig, the Czech novelist and short story writer; Brodsky’s friend John Francis; and Cynthia Porter, a student who has spent some time in the Soviet Union. Brodsky orders for us all in a style reminiscent of a pasha ordering for his court. Squab, he announces. And shrimp. And dumplings, he says emphatically. No dumplings. For a moment I fear we will have to move again. This is the second restaurant we have tried, Brodsky having rejected the first. But I see that he is going to make do. The squab arrives, a plate of tiny elbows and knees. MS: The last place I left off with you was in the sixties during the trial with the lady judge. JB: That was in the previous incarnation almost. MS: She asked you: “Who included you among the ranks of the poets?” And you said: “Who included me among the ranks of the human race?” JB: That’s right. Yah. Well, actually that was a (laughs) good comment on my part, although quite innocently. MS: And then what did she say? JB: I think . . . the way I remember, the most immediate line—I don’t really remember that dialogue. In Russian you don’t proceed in this kind of a way. Question, answer, logical development. No. No. So consequently you are not proceeding in this fashion, even if it is a dissident line delivered in public, it is not necessarily followed with a rebuttal. MS: The poem that I love, “Gorbunov and Gorchakov . . .” JB: Gorchakov [he offers, rolling the r. Brodsky’s characters in this long poem are named Gorbunov, suggesting the word for hunchback, a kind of spiritual cripple, and Gorchakov, suggesting the Russian THE WORLD IS A PARCHMENT 8 1 word for bitterness, a character who is himself embittered and who embitters the lives of others.] MS: Is the whole work to be translated? JB: It is. It does exist from cover to cover. It’s by Ardis. The translation is rather informative. It informs you of what’s going on. It has its own merit. MS: Who did the translation? JB: Mr. Carl Proffer. Well, he’s running Ardis Publishing House and it’s the first issue of Russian Literature Triquarterly . . . How do you like squabs, John? JF: I haven’t tasted them yet. MS: Is Metropol going to happen? JB: Yes. It’s going to happen, by the same publishing house, Ardis. I don’t know much about it. I’ve read only poems by one person there, a friend of mine . . . (Discussion of this project is not included here in deference to the wishes of Mr. Brodsky.) Publishing is a political thing, yah? MS: I don’t want to talk about political things. I want . . . JB: Why not? MS: I want to talk...