A Poet in Prison
FIELD, ANDREW
THE CASE OF IOSIF BRODSKY A Poet in Prison By Andrew Field Iosif Brodsky is a young Soviet poet, born in 1940, whose verse has never appeared in print in the Soviet Union. I first heard his...
...In January 1964, Brodsky was confined to a mental institution in Moscow for observation...
...I first heard his name when the elderly Anna Akhmatova, Russia's greatest living poet, praised his poetry in a conversation on the work of the younger generation, adding that "that might be because he writes like me though...
...In connection with the investigation of this circle, Brodsky's personal papers were confiscated and examined, among them his diary which contained "several anti-Soviet expressions...
...A particularly clear indication that Brodsky's harassment up to this point was the direct result of the personal initiative of Lerner is the fact that the transcript records the Public Prosecutor, Ryabruk, as entering an objection in which he stated that Brodsky was being illegally detained...
...Lerner pushed his case still farther, and on December 13, 1963, in a closed court session, Brodsky was again accused of being a parasite (tuneyadets) who had "no relation to literature" and wrote "anti-Soviet and pornographic little rhymes...
...Among contemporary poets, Brodsky can perhaps be best grouped with the poets of the "quiet school" of Tarusa, particularly Naum Korzhavin and Evgeny Vinokurov...
...He produced a considerable body of poems which won the attention and approbation of, besides Akhmatova, such eminent figures as Kornei Chukovsky and Samuil Marshak...
...and on May 5 an authoritative account received from Soviet sources who have taken an active interest in the case was published by an emigre Russian newspaper in Paris...
...The poem was translated by Collyer Bowen...
...they probe deeper where they silently endure the freezing water on their eyes, and then, characteristically, the poem concludes: "poems on fish/like fish themselves/catch in one's throat...
...Publication of the following poem by Iosi) Brodsky, with facing Russian text, marks the first time that the work of the young Soviet poet is appearing in this country...
...A substantial number of his poems will be published in the New York Russian almanac Aerial Ways in several months...
...It is difficult not to concur with that interpretation...
...At that time two men were arrested in Leningrad as leaders and organizers of an "anarcho-individualist circle...
...Brodsky held various jobs, including work as a stoker and a crew member of a geological expedition, though he devoted himself mostly to poetry...
...Andrew Field, a frequent contributor and editor of the just published Pages from Tarusa, recently spent several months in the USSR...
...Still, Brodsky remained in prison...
...Owing to his age and the nature of the diary's comments, however, it was decided not to press any charges against the young poet...
...Brodsky's first difficulties with the KGB occurred in 1962...
...It is extremely difficult on the basis of the small amount of Brodsky's verse which I have seen so far to make a proper assessment of his importance...
...In the November 29, 1963, number of the newspaper Evening Leningrad, there appeared a denunciatory article about Brodsky signed by three Party agitators representing a group which had lately taken an interest in him...
...The instigator of the campaign...
...As a poet Brodsky does show the strong influence of Akhmatova, and also of the famous Russian poet Osip Mandelstam...
...Lerner, was an active member of the druzhinniki...
...Numerous friends of Brodsky, including several poets, came to his defense, but Lerner threatened them with charges of "aiding a political criminal...
...The question of his diary was resurrected...
...In the Soviet Union such witch hunts often still serve as an excellent means of "career advancement...
...There do occur weak poems and lines which bespeak Brodsky's imperfectly developed style, but he is of course still quite young, and as the work printed above indicates there is certainly sufficient evidence to justify the interest which Anna Akhmatova, Kornei Chukovsky, and Samuil Marshak have taken in him...
...As long ago as March, confused and often contradictory reports about Brodsky's arrest began to reach the West...
...Brodsky had been connected with the circle, but he had disassociated himself from the group in 1961...
...Brodsky is now serving his sentence in a work camp in the Arkhangelsk region...
...Lines of his poetry, most of which had not in fact been written by him, were cited in support of this thesis...
...The first substantive account of the Brodsky affair in English appeared in the Manchester Guardian...
...Sorokin, constructed his concluding speech of excerpts from Brodsky's diary (written when he was 16-17 years old...
...many months before its suppression...
...In spite of these intercessions on his behalf, at a trial held in two sessions on February 18 and March 13, Brodsky was sentenced to five years exile and forced labor because, in the opinion of the court, "he had worked too little...
...At this point the matter assumed larger proportions: A letter of protest was sent by the writer Frida Vigdorova (whose "Empty Eyes and Magic Eyes" appeared in The New Leader of January 6) to the Prosecutor-General of the USSR, and telegrams were also sent by Marshak, Chukovsky, and composer Dmitri Shostakovich...
...His poems are unassertive and deceptively conversational in style...
...In this article Brodsky, who neither drinks nor smokes and is generally spoken of as an extremely reticent person by those who know him, was depicted as a cynical young degenerate and parasite of society...
...There is, by the way, absolutely nothing "political" or "pornographic" about any of the Brodsky poems I have seen or heard of...
...The decision was announced in the newspaper that first attacked Brodsky, Evening Leningrad, in an article which also denounced the witnesses in his behalf and his defending lawyer...
...Incidentally, such intellectual fads—other favorite subjects are yogi philosophy, Schopenhauer, and stoicism—are not at all uncommon among the young Russian intelligentsia...
...The Prosecutor...
...their aim is frequently to convey the strangeness and awkwardness of life in the simplest possible manner...
...In a wry poem entitled "The Fish in Winter," Brodsky writes of the fish swimming from death "in their eternal fishlike way...
...But in his determination to devote himself to poetry, and to do only such labor as was necessary for subsistence, Brodsky violated a basic tenet of Soviet doctrine: the sacredness of labor (which assumes that poetry is not "work...
...In other poems a note of resignation and bitterness gives great strength to the sparse lines...
...He was released after less than a month only to be arrested once more, on February 13 upon his return to Leningrad, as a "parasite evading a court summons," although no summons had been served...
...This conclusion of the Brodsky affair is viewed with some bitterness by many Soviet writers as a sign of tolerance at higher levels toward rabid anti-intellectual elements and Stalinist methods...
...The significance of this idea in official Soviet morality ("Work ennobles the human being" —Maxim Gorky) must be fully grasped if one is to understand properly the "crime" (parasitism) of Iosif Brodsky...
Vol. 47 • June 1964 • No. 13
