A Talk with Joseph Brodsky
HUSARSKA, ANNA
I WAS SIMPLY A-SOVET' A Talk with Joseph Brodsky By Anna Husarska On Decern ber 10 Joseph Brodsky formally received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Widely considered the most outstanding...
...For me the real change will be when they publish Solzhenitsyn's Gulag...
...They are mesmerized by the system one way or another...
...I am, you know, a sponge...
...My interest in and sentiment for Poland is and always will be strong, but statistically speaking I read more in English than in any other language, including Russian...
...I was a great admirer of Polish poetry...
...I even wanted to translate Mikolaj Rej [a Renaissance poet...
...Unfortunately, they all related to politics...
...So that was the practical consideration: We needed a window onto Europe, and the Polish language provided it...
...From my own experience with translating your prose into Polish, I can tell you it is no easy task to render all those idioms in a foreign language...
...Brodsky: It's good to be afraid of such things, because it makes you doubly attentive to what you are doing...
...Auden in the West...
...But 15 out of 18 texts in Less Than One, the collection of your prose, were originally written in English...
...Brodsky: It is being produced now in Germany, and I've been invited to a staging of it in Stockholm around the Nobel week...
...Here in the United States I am in contact with the Polish poets Czeslaw Milosz, Adam Zagajewski and Stanislaw Baranczak, who translates my poems...
...Heinrich Boll wrote, I think in his Irish Diary, that a writer is at his best when his desk is far away from his home...
...Brodsky: I think 200-300 copies arrived there...
...Stalin's attitude toward Trotsky was that of a plagiarist toward the author he is plagiarizing...
...Brodsky: I have very few friends there —the fingers of one hand would be enough to count them—and a few relatives...
...In those days the bulk of Western literature, and of news about cultural events in the West, was not available in the Soviet Union, whereas Poland was even at that point the happiest and the most cheerful barrack in the entire camp...
...Subsequently, I learned about this through the Western radio...
...What is happening now remains within a certain system, it comes from the top and not from the bottom...
...We are friends...
...Do you know of copies of this book making their way to the USSR...
...I have never seen a more accomplished human being...
...Husarska: Do you think that living writers who were blacklisted in the past now have a better chance of being published officially in the USSR...
...When did you actually start writing...
...Do you have friends there...
...Husarska: Your poems now frequently appear with a note, "Translated by the author from Russian...
...Publishing Pasternak doesn't mean a lot...
...But I keep on hearing all sorts of contradictory rumors about that, and the selection they made is not the selection I would have made...
...He drowned in blood the only Russian revolution we ever had, ihe Kronstadt uprising...
...Had Trotsky come to power the consequences might have been much more disastrous for the country...
...the publishing house Czytelnik was printing God knows what...
...I just received a letter from Adam Michnik with greetings from him and the staff of the underground publishing house Niezalezna Oficyna Wydawnicza...
...Except for occasional poems that your Polish translators managed tosneak into officially published anthologies, you are known in the country largely through books printed underground...
...He notes that when he visited you in Leningrad in the '60s you were "emotionally ecstatic" about Poland...
...Brodsky: Yes, I got a telegram from Club-81 congratulating me on the Nobel Prize...
...The two happened to meet while she was translating Brodsky's essay, "In a Room and a Half, "fortheParis-based quarterly Zeszyty Literackie...
...Since I was interested in poetry, I started translating it...
...Husarska: You have been living in this country for 15 years, you are now part of the American literary milieu...
...Brodsky: True, I knew a girl who was from Poland, Zoska was her name...
...He is writing the preface for it...
...When should we expect it...
...You were 23 then...
...Brodsky: 1 really don't know...
...Brodsky: Well, I cooperate with Barbara Torunczyk, the editor of Zeszyty Literackie...
...Then I read Melville, and after Frost and Melville, I read Faulkner, and then you are out of your native literature for good, whatever literature it is...
...I met with him only six or seven times, however, I still depend on him...
...I remember that a year ago, when we were talking about Gorbachev's perestroïka, you told me that it was merely a cosmetic "face-lifting,' that no real changes were occurring in the Soviet Union...
...Husarska: What, in your opinion, prompted your trial...
...Brodsky: I'm afraid they adore me...
...The system is pretty much intact...
...Trotsky was indeed the author, in my view, and a fanatic, while Stalin was simply a practical man...
...It may be that we were rather lucky with Stalin, monstrous as he was...
...One shouldn't mistake Russia for Poland or me for Milosz...
...Husarska:...and now Poles are great admirers of yours...
...They are used to dealing with either-or situations...
...she was studying in Leningrad then...
...Do you keep up with Polish literary life...
...Brodsky: If I write prose in English it is mainly due to necessity, although I adore the language and for me it's a terrific pleasure to make sense in that language...
...You probably are aware that the Leningrad writers' group Club-81, whose members published in samizdat, recently had an anthology put out officially...
...that it comes from God...
...They cite the reality of the situation, which is a bad sign for me because they don't have it in themselves to change the situation, they don't resist, they try to go along...
...I was simply a-Soviet...
...What has become of this project...
...I don't even see Kultura, which comes out in Paris...
...It is a sort of system where they assume from the threshold without questioning it that there is a certain order to be in which they have to find for themselves some tenable position...
...So to compete with them, and to show that I was also able to compose verse, I wrote my first pieces of poetry...
...You answered, "I think...
...Husarska: Was the diary mentioned as evidence by the judge a literary work...
...But don't report that, because they will lock me up...
...Husarska: What are your links with the USSR now...
...Of course, in the terms of literature the change is one of night and day, but I'm not prepared to take the whole thing seriously until the Communist Party relinquishes its power...
...Brodsky: A Russian poet, an English essayist, and of course, an American citizen...
...As for the new idioms, there are not that many, except for slang...
...In Russian, what matters is the combination...
...I forgot a couple of words and I was climbing walls, wondering whether I merely couldn't recall them or they simply did not exist...
...Brodsky: Well first of all, in terms of proximity, there is Derek Walcott...
...How did you develop your facility with English...
...Brodsky: My main knowledge comes from here...
...Well, what I do believe is that if God exists he is absolutely arbitrary—that is, you cannot make deals with Him—and this is basically an echo of Judaism, its conception of the Almighty...
...In the émigré Polish literary milieu, however, he was the best known poet...
...Brodsky: I know that The New Leader ran it first in the United States, but at the time I of course knew nothing...
...People there were much better informed and they were publishing all sorts of magazines and everything was translated into Polish...
...Husarska: Your knowledge of English is indeed astonishing...
...the main question you ask yourself when you write is whether it sounds good...
...Of course it's helpful when you hear your own tongue spoken, but you can live without it...
...Putting on a play about Trotsky is not really much...
...Yet in order for this to happen I would have to have some qualities I do not possess, I am afraid...
...Then there is the Australian poet Les Murray...
...Recently a collection of your poetry was published in Poland by the clandestine house Oficyna Literacka...
...I am a bad Jew, but I'm abetter Jew perhaps than most of those who scream about being Jewish at every corner...
...Only later was he welcomed officially, with all due honors, in his homeland...
...I even received a copy of their anthology Krug [Circle...
...Is it because English is more analytical and Russian more sensual that you have these linguistic preferences...
...We then ran a transcript of the Leningrad trial that resulted in his spending 18 months in the Arkhangelsk region of Siberia and eventually emigrating to this country...
...As the New York Times noted after his Nobel Prize was announced, it was in The New Leader that h is poetry first appeared in English in 1964, while he was being accused of "parasitism " in the USSR...
...In fact, it is a rather interesting story: I quit school at the age of 15 and began to work with a geological team...
...Do you believe in God...
...It is not going to be an exact replica of the Russian book, it will be a selection, but the bulk of the poems will be the same...
...And Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, Mark Strand, Seamus Heaney, Melissa Green, and Gjertrud Schnackenberg...
...They grabbed all the papers that seemed interesting tothemandkept them forever in their archives...
...There was a practical side to my interest in Polish as well...
...The difference between English and Russian, or for that matter any other language, is like the difference between tennis and chess...
...Husarska: You also belong to the literary world of Leningrad, where news regularly arrives about the successes of "our Brodsky...
...I left Russia when I was 32,1 was a grown-up and linguistically the mold was already set...
...Brodsky: It is coming out in February...
...But I don't read much in Polish anymore...
...My main push came from reading the Russian translation of Robert Frost, whose poetry displayed a qualitatively new notion of terror for me, something absolutely unprecedented on the Continent...
...What happened is that English matters gradually replaced Polish matters...
...Although we don't see each other very often, we remain very close...
...I was stupid enough to commit to paper several thoughts or several good expressions, one-liners that occurred to me...
...Husarska: Do you get a wide response from your Russian readership here in the United States...
...Your latest volume of poetry, Urania, was published in Russian in the United States this year...
...Lack of a connection with official institutions...
...Part of it I owe to my students, part of it to television...
...He told me of the forthcoming underground publication of a volume of my essays...
...Husarska: Did you understand them...
...I don't happen to like Trotsky, but for a different set of reasons than the Communist Party doesn't like him, or that Stalin didn't like him...
...We were searching for uranium...
...His interlocutor in the following exchange, AnnaHusarska, is a Polish-born journalist and previous NL contributor specializing in Eastern Europe and Central A merica...
...Husarska: Your autobiographical essay, "In a Room and a Half," contains many instances of how State antiSemitism influenced your famiiy life...
...It is said that there was a Polish girl somewhere in your life...
...Husarska: Strangely enough—or maybe it is not strange—when Czeslaw Milosz received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980, he was exclusively published underground in Poland, too...
...We all have been brainwashed, in this century especially, to believe that a writer should write in the language of the crowd...
...Husarska: Yet in spite of all those years you are very much present there, as I had an opportunity to witness during my visit to Leningrad this summer...
...Brodsky: Akhmatova was the best human being I ever met...
...Brodsky: The other day 1 received a telephone call from Novy Mir and they said that approval has been given for their publication...
...I don't want to criticize them, though, because it's easy for me sitting here in absolute safety...
...Who are your favorite living Englishspeaking poets and writers...
...And I get some response...
...Husarska: What about your native language...
...In English you ask yourself whether it makes sense, and the ball flies back into your face...
...Brodsky: I am inclined to believe the man is serious and may even have the ambition to change the whole place, but the country has its record, or rather its history, and the history shapes the minds and the psyches of the people...
...Husarska: Your trial was given wide publicity in the West...
...In 1959 or 1960, during my first or second arrest, my house was searched before I was taken away...
...1 would naturally like to see several people, the grave of my parents, some of my relatives, Leningrad itself...
...Husarska: At the opening session of your trial the judge asked, "Who included you among the ranks of the poets...
...Brodsky: I sort of understood them, because after all the languages are quite similar...
...I read Zeszyty, of course, and Puis, but I don't follow the other Polish literary periodicals...
...I set out to doublecheck the poems in the Russian-language anthology with the original, which I found even more remarkable...
...Do I believe in God...
...Brodsky: I am 100 per cent Jewish, but I didn't receive any religious education and I do not care about the obvious manifestations of being a Jew...
...I simply started to make those things out and I was stunned by their contents...
...Brodsky: I'm glad you mentioned that...
...Someone showed me a volume of poetry glorifying the profession of geologist...
...Do you feel yourself a Jew...
...And if you are not part of the system you're regarded as an enemy...
...Aren't you afraid the absence of daily contact with Russian will make your writing in that language more difficult...
...I remember I was reading Malcolm Lowry, some of Proust, some of Faulkner, and also Joyce I first read in Polish...
...But I am not terribly afraid...
...It's a language of reason, whereas Russian is basically a language of texture...
...Were they more of an example or more of a guide for you...
...Husarska: One of your Polish translators who is a specialist in Russian literature, Andrzej Drawicz, recently published an essay underground called "Facesof My Friends...
...Normally an attachment to this or that poet wears off after a year or so...
...Internship with the wrong masters...
...She knew I was writing poetry so she gave me, or rather I heard in her apartment, a record of [Konstanty I.] Galczynski reading some of his poems and I liked them very much...
...Were you aware of the transcript being published in the United States...
...I suppose it was that I was neither pro-Soviet nor anti-Soviet...
...I was living up North, in my place of confinement or banishment, and somebody sent me an anthology of 20th-century English poetry as well as the collection of John Donne's poems and sermons...
...But the first consideration is practical: I normally write essays or introductions when I'm asked to do them, and while I could write in Russian and then translate, writing in English helps meet the deadline...
...Do you still feel that way...
...Well, many years have passed since I read his first lines and exactly the opposite has been the case: My attachment just grows and grows and grows, until sometimes I think I simply am him...
...Look, I have been away from the Soviet Union for 15 years and I'm just not in a position to comment soundly on the processes taking place there...
...So 10 years ago I elected to write directly in English...
...He was a first-rate bastard...
...I believe it is the writer who creates the language, not the crowd...
...Husarska: Tell me about your literary masters, Anna Akhmatova in Leningrad and W.H...
...Husarska: It was reported that in a meeting with Oleg Tchukontsev, poetry editor of Novy Mir, you discussed the possibility of publishing your verses in the Soviet Union...
...Someone is trying to put it on in this country in Massachusetts...
...I am terribly proud to claim his friendship, but I say this because of the reality of his work, which is absolutely stunning...
...Husarska: Aren't things changing...
...That is basically the position of intelligentsia in general...
...You are also widely published in Polish-language magazines in the West, and you are on the editorial board of the Paris-based Zeszyty Literackie...
...I thought to myself, I could do better than these poems...
...sometimes people write to me directly from the Soviet Union, when they feel reckless...
...I do not know what kind of sacrifices they had to make to have that book appear...
...Brodsky: I started writing poetry when I was 18 or 19 years old...
...How come...
...I began with Galczynski and went to do translations of [Julian] Tuwim, [Jerzy] Harasymowicz, [Stanislaw] Grochowiak, [Zbigniew] Herbert, and [Cyprian K.] Norwid...
...It is a good play, it's much better than anything they have on Broadway, in my view anyway...
...Would you consider it an important part of your personality...
...Husarska: You do not limit yourself to poetry and essays...
...Who received the Nobel Prize for literature this year—an American poet of Russian origin, or a Russian poet living in America...
...A year ago you invited me to a reading in Greenwich Village of your play, Marbles...
...I really don't know...
...Is the play being produced...
...In a system like that a human being is either a slave or an enemy...
...Brodsky: That diary wasn't exactly a diary...
...Husarska: The English translation of this volume has been announced for a long time now...
...True, initially I was worried...
...She was married to a physicist, an athletic fellow, so it was a dangerous acquaintance...
...Widely considered the most outstanding poet writing in Russian today, Brodsky is of course no stranger to these pages...
...So I don't take this kind of thing seriously...
...Brodsky: I started to read English a long time ago...
...The same goes in many ways for Auden, although there the interplay was less substantial and my feelings about him derive from the printed word rather than personal recollections...
...Husarska: What was it that brought you to English...
...Some things influence you—better people, terrific landscapes, I don't know...
...Husarska: Do you plan to visit the Soviet Union...
...Brodsky: You know, it was 23 years ago and it still beats me what made them so angry...
...Russia is not Poland...
Vol. 70 • December 1987 • No. 19
