Why did Brodsky first write "I don't want to choose either a country or a graveyard. I'll come to Vasilyevsky Island to die," and then bequeathed to be buried in Venice? Not a country, not a graveyard, I don't want to choose

The happiest years of his life, Joseph Brodsky called the years of exile in the Arkhangelsk region

The Nobel Prize winner in literature was born 75 years ago, on May 24, 1940 in Leningrad.

... The evening of January 27, 1996, Brodsky spent at his home in New York. Wishing his wife good night, the poet said that he still had to work, and went up to his office. In the morning there, on the floor, his wife found him. Doctors stated a heart attack. They buried him the next day - in a crypt in the cemetery at the Church of the Holy Trinity on the banks of the Hudson. Although in his poems he himself expressed such a wish:

No country, no graveyard

I don't want to choose

To Vasilyevsky Island

I'm coming to die...

The will of the poet could well be fulfilled after his death. But the proposal of State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova - to bury the poet in St. Petersburg on Vasilyevsky Island, where there is an old Smolensk cemetery - was rejected by his relatives.

The poet and translator Ilya Kutik said that two weeks before his death, Brodsky bought himself a place in the chapel at the New York cemetery and made a will. However, this is not confirmed by other sources.

According to Brodsky's widow, Italian Maria Sozzani, the idea of ​​a funeral in Venice was suggested by one of his friends. “This is the city that, apart from St. Petersburg, Joseph loved the most,” she said. “Besides, speaking selfishly, Italy is my country, so it was better that my husband was buried there.”

In 1997, at the San Michele cemetery in Venice, Joseph Brodsky was buried for the second time. Arranging a grave between the graves of Stravinsky and Diaghilev, as planned, turned out to be impossible: Brodsky was not Orthodox. The Catholic clergy also refused to be buried. As a result, they decided to bury the body in the Protestant part of the cemetery.

... His father, returning from the war, worked as a photographer and a newspaper journalist. Mother was an accountant. In 1942, after a terrible blockade winter, the mother, together with Joseph, left for evacuation to Cherepovets, they returned to Leningrad in 1944. In 1947, Joseph went to school, but never finished it. I studied not only badly, but very badly. He received "deuces", and in the seventh grade he remained for the second year. Then he dropped out of school altogether and went to work as a milling machine apprentice at the Arsenal plant.

Unsuccessfully tried to enter the school of submariners, and then suddenly got excited about the idea of ​​​​becoming a doctor. But, having worked for a month as an assistant dissector in the morgue at the regional hospital, he abandoned his medical career. Brodsky also worked as a stoker in a boiler room, as a sailor at a lighthouse, and as a worker on geological expeditions in Siberia.

Stepping awkwardly

I walk away forever.

Smells brand new

The wind of freedom, the fire of labor.

At this time, Brodsky read a lot, first of all, poetry, began to study English and Polish, and also began to write poetry. And on February 14, 1960, its first major public speaking at the "tournament of poets" in the Leningrad Palace of Culture named after A.M. Gorky.

In December 1960, he, with his close friend, pilot Oleg Shakhmatov, went to Samarkand. There they began to discuss a plan to escape abroad on a hijacked domestic aircraft, which was to be landed at an American military base in Afghanistan.

Brodsky was supposed to stun the pilot with a blow to the head, after which Shakhmatov would take his place at the helm. But it didn't come to fruition. Then he said: the day before he cracked a walnut, saw its two halves, similar to the hemispheres of the human brain, and realized that he would never be able to hit a person on the head.

Shakhmatov was soon arrested for illegal possession of weapons. During the investigation, counting on indulgence, he spoke about the “underground anti-Soviet group” that allegedly existed in Leningrad, and named names, including Brodsky. The poet was arrested, but after being held for two days, they were released, since he had not committed anything illegal.

Gradually, Brodsky becomes famous among the Leningrad poets. In August 1961, in Komarov, he was introduced to Anna Akhmatova. Brodsky's first published poem was "The Ballad of a Little Tug", published in an abridged form in the children's magazine "Koster" in 1962.

Judge: In general, what is your specialty?

Brodsky: Poet, poet-translator.

Judge: And who admitted that you are a poet? Who ranked you among the poets?

Brodsky: Nobody. And who ranked me among the human race?

Judge: Did you learn this?

Brodsky: For what?

Judge: To be a poet? They didn’t try to graduate from a university where they train ... Where they teach ...

Brodsky: I didn't think... I didn't think that this comes from education.

Judge: What about?

Brodsky: I think it is… from God…

As a result, Brodsky was sentenced to five years of forced labor and exiled to the Konoshsky district of the Arkhangelsk region, where he settled in the village of Norenskaya. Later, the poet will call this time, oddly enough, the happiest in his life. In exile, Brodsky studied English poetry.

Supporters of the poet, as well as some prominent cultural figures, including Shostakovich, Tvardovsky, Paustovsky and others, wrote letters in defense of Brodsky to party and judicial authorities. In September 1965, under public pressure, in particular, after an appeal to Soviet government Jean-Paul Sartre and a number of other foreign writers, the term of exile was reduced and Brodsky returned to Leningrad. At first, he became famous all over the world not at all thanks to his poems, but to his sentence. It is no coincidence that the wise Anna Akhmatova, having learned about the trial, said: “What a biography they are doing to our redhead! It's like he hired someone on purpose."

Brodsky resisted the image of a dissident, a fighter against Soviet power, imposed on him - especially by the Western media.

He practically did not have political poems, he did not show “fig in his pocket” in his poems, as Yevgeny Yevtushenko sometimes did. Moreover, he had poems that, although they did not meet the standards of that time, could not be called dissident at all.

He did not like to talk about the hardships suffered in exile, he did not try to be known as a "victim of the regime." Brodsky made statements like: “I was lucky in every way. Other people got much more, it was much harder than me. He did not engage in politics at all, but wrote poetry. Only when he heard that Yevtushenko was speaking out against the collective farms, Brodsky declared indignantly: "If Yevtushenko is against it, then I am for it."

At the end of 1965, he passed to the Leningrad branch of the publishing house " Soviet writer» the manuscript of his book “Winter Post (poems 1962-1965)”. Its author was returned, he had to deal with translations, and his poems also appeared in "samizdat". He became popular with foreign journalists and Slavists who came to the USSR. As a result, they began to publish it in the West, send invitations ...

Brodsky was summoned to the OVIR on May 10, 1972, and already on June 4, deprived of Soviet citizenship, the poet flew from Leningrad to Vienna. So, having completed only 7 classes high school, the poet began working at universities - he changed several of them, in the USA and England - teaching the history of Russian literature, poetry, the theory of verse, giving lectures and reading poetry at international literary festivals and forums.

If in the USSR he hid his convictions, then, when he later found himself in the West, he no longer did this. The American literary scholar and Slavist Ellendea Proffer Tisley wrote about him in her book: "Brodsky was an implacable enemy of communism and a 100% supporter of everything Western." She also admits the fact that the poet had a very difficult character: “Joseph Brodsky was the best of people, and the worst. He was not a model of justice and tolerance. He could be so sweet that in a day you start to miss him; he could be so arrogant and disgusting that he wanted the sewer to open under him and carry him away.

Brodsky's parents several times applied for permission to see their son, but each time they were refused. When they died, the poet was not allowed to come to their funeral. Brodsky became an American citizen in 1977. In 1990 he married Maria Sozzani, an Italian aristocrat, Russian on her mother's side.

In 1987 Brodsky was awarded Nobel Prize in literature "for an all-encompassing authorship, full of clarity of thought and poetic depth." He became one of the youngest winners of the award in all the years of its award.

Many believe that Brodsky, like Boris Pasternak, received the prize for political reasons. The same was said when it was awarded to Mikhail Gorbachev, who collapsed the USSR. Alexander Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel, but Leo Tolstoy refused to receive the prize, mindful of the funds for which it was created. Alfred Nobel's father made his fortune in Russia in the Baku oil fields, and he himself - on the invention of dynamite, for which he was called the "merchant of death."

Not all writers, even liberal fellow writers, approved of the award. Vasily Aksyonov, for example, wrote that Brodsky is "quite an average writer who was once lucky, as the Americans say, to be" at the right time in the right place ".

After the start of "perestroika", Brodsky's works finally began to be widely published in Russia as well. In 1995, the poet was awarded the title of honorary citizen of St. Petersburg, Mayor Anatoly Sobchak persistently invited him to return. But he delayed his arrival.

After living abroad for many years, Brodsky began to talk about himself like this: "I am a Jew, a Russian poet and an American citizen."

Especially for "Century"

“No country, no churchyard…” Joseph Brodsky

No country, no graveyard
I don't want to choose.
To Vasilyevsky Island
I will come to die.
Your facade is dark blue
I can't find it in the dark.
between faded lines
I'll fall on the asphalt.

And the soul, relentlessly
rushing into the darkness
fly over the bridges
in the Petrograd smoke,
and April drizzle
snow over the back of the head,
and I will hear a voice:
- Goodbye, my friend.

And see two lives
far beyond the river
to an indifferent homeland
pressing his cheek.
like sister girls
from unlived years
running out to the island
waving at the boy.

Analysis of Brodsky's poem "No country, no graveyard ..."

In 1972, Joseph Brodsky was forced to leave Soviet Union under pressure from the KGB. The poet had little choice - either to go abroad forever, or to go back to prison and camps, where Brodsky spent almost 5 years. The poet chose the first option, realizing that he would hardly ever be able to return to his beloved Leningrad.

It is noteworthy that exactly 10 years before emigration, in 1962, the 22-year-old Brodsky wrote the poem “No Country, No Graveyard…”, which to this day can be regarded as the poet’s testament. In the first lines of this work, the author admits that he does not want to choose the place of his death, since it is obvious. “I will come to Vasilyevsky Island to die,” the poet notes. Right here. Among the dilapidated post-war barracks, Brodsky spent his youth, who knows every pothole in the asphalt, and every brick in the masonry of neighboring houses. Therefore, it is not surprising that in the last moments of his life, Brodsky wants to see his native and painfully familiar landscape. The poet does not exclude the fact that by the time the time comes to go to another world, his beloved city will change beyond recognition. However, this does not frighten Brodsky at all, because the passage of time cannot be stopped. “And the soul tirelessly, hurrying into the darkness, will flash over the bridges in the Petrograd smoke,” this is how the poet imagines the last moments of his own life.

Brodsky believes in what is beyond the line separating life from death. There is some other world in which everything will be put in its place. But it is already clear to the poet that, “clinging his cheek to the indifferent homeland,” he will forever remain a barefoot St. Petersburg boy, to whom childhood memories are very dear. The author even mentally cannot imagine that everything will happen somehow differently, he does not see himself outside his beloved city, outside the country, which, although he condemns, he perceives as a homeland that is not customary to choose. Nevertheless, in 10 years it will become obvious that arguing with fate is completely pointless.

During his life abroad, Brodsky managed to visit many cities of the world. But Venice made a particularly strong impression on the poet, in which he saw the features of his beloved Leningrad. Therefore, Brodsky bequeathed to leave part of his ashes on the shore of one of the Venetian canals. As a result, it was in Venice that the poet was buried at the insistence of relatives and friends, who swore to fulfill the last will of the deceased.

You should not take the poet's word for everything. The words in his poems usually belong to him lyrical hero- who the poet imagined himself to be at the time of writing the poem. This is akin to acting: an actor can transform into a character so much that he feels like it. So is the poet. When Brodsky wrote the poem "No country, no graveyard ..." - he most likely experienced exactly the same feelings that are expressed in his poem, first of all - the desire to die on Vasilyevsky Island. It would be wrong to perceive this poem as a poetic testament like Shevchenko's "When I die, bury it in dear Ukraine ...": there is not a word about the desire to be buried in St. Petersburg-Leningrad in the poem. In it, on the contrary, the soul leaves his native city. Subsequently, the poet will go through a humiliating trial on charges of parasitism, exile, a ban on publishing, he will essentially be squeezed out of the country, and then his parents will not be released to him - and he will be forbidden to come to their funeral. It was not Brodsky the poet, but the catchy man, who chose the place of his burial, so similar to his native city (it is no coincidence that St. Petersburg is called the Northern Venice), beloved by him no less, but not causing him so much pain in his life.

Joseph Brodsky: No Country, No Graveyard

I have erected a monument to myself!
To the shameful century - back.
To his lost love - face.
And the chest - a bicycle wheel.
And the buttocks - to the sea of ​​half-truths.

Whatever landscape surrounds me,
no matter what I have to apologize -
I will not change my appearance.
I love the height and pose.
I got tired there.

You, Muse, do not blame me for that.
My mind is now like a sieve
and not a vessel filled with gods.
Let me be overthrown and demolished,
let them be accused of arbitrariness
let me be destroyed, dismembered, -

In a big country, to the delight of the children
from a plaster bust in the yard
through blind white eyes
I will hit the sky with a jet of water.

Joseph Brodsky:
No country, no graveyard
I don't want to choose.
To Vasilyevsky Island
I will come to die.
Your facade is dark blue
I can't find it in the dark.
between faded lines
I'll fall on the asphalt.

And the soul, relentlessly
rushing into the darkness
fly over the bridges
in the Petrograd smoke,
and April drizzle
snow over the back of the head,
and I will hear a voice:
- Goodbye, my friend.

And see two lives
far beyond the river
to an indifferent homeland
pressing his cheek.
- like sister girls
from unlived years
running out to the island
waving at the boy.

Joseph Brodsky "Almost an elegy"

In the old days and I waited
cold rain under the Stock Exchange colonnade.
And I thought it was a gift from God.
And maybe he wasn't wrong. Was the same
and sometimes I'm happy. Lived in captivity
at the angels. Went to ghouls.
Running down the stairs alone
beauty in the front door, like Jacob,
lay in wait.
Somewhere forever
it's all gone. Hidden. However,
I look out the window and, writing "where",
I don't put a question mark.
Now September. In front of me is a garden.
Distant thunder fills your ears.
In dense foliage poured pears
how masculine signs hang.
And only a shower in my dormant mind,
as in the kitchen of distant relatives - skared,
my hearing about this time misses:
no music yet, no more noise.

Joseph Brodsky LETTERS TO A ROMAN FRIEND (fragments)

It's windy and the waves are overflowing.
Autumn is coming, everything will change in the district.
The change of these colors is more touching, Postumus,
than a friend's dress change.

Virgo amuses to a certain limit -
you can't go further than the elbow or the knee.
How much more joyful is beauty outside the body:
no hug is possible, no betrayal!

I am sending you, Postumus, these books
What's in the capital? Lay softly? Is it hard to sleep?
How is Caesar? What is he doing? All intrigue?
All intrigue, probably yes gluttony.

I am sitting in my garden, the lamp is on.
No girlfriend, no servants, no acquaintances.
Instead of the weak of this world and the strong -
only the consonant buzz of insects ....

We've been here for more than half.
As the old slave told me in front of the tavern:
"When we look back, we see only ruins."
The view, of course, is very barbaric, but true.

Was in the mountains. Now I'm busy with a large bouquet.
I will find a large jug, I will pour water for them ...
How is it in Libya, my Postumus, or where is it?
Are we still fighting?

Joseph Brodsky "TO ONE TYRAN"

He has been here: not yet in riding breeches -
in a coat of drape; restrained, stooped.
The arrest of cafe regulars
having done away with world culture later,
he kind of took revenge on this (not on them,
but Time) for poverty, humiliation,
for bad coffee, boredom and fighting
at twenty-one, lost to him.

And Time swallowed this revenge.
Now it's crowded, many are laughing,
records rattle. But before you sit down
at the table, somehow pulls to look back.
Everywhere plastic, nickel - everything is not right;
in cakes there is a taste of sodium bromide.
Sometimes, before closing, from the theater
he is here, but incognito.

When he enters, they all stand up.
Some - in the service, others - from happiness.
The movement of the palm from the wrist
he returns the evening comfort.
He drinks his coffee - better than then,
and eats a bagel, perched in an armchair,
so delicious that and dead "oh yes!"
would exclaim if they were resurrected.
January 1972

Joseph Brodsky "SKETCH"
Kholui is shaking. The slave laughs.
The executioner sharpens his axe.
The tyrant shreds the capon.
The winter moon sparkles.

This view of the Fatherland, engraving.
On the lounger - the Soldier and the Fool.
The old woman scratches her dead side.
This view of the Fatherland, lubok.

The dog barks, the wind carries.
Boris asks Gleb in the face.
Couples are spinning at the ball.
In the hallway - a pile on the floor.

Joseph Brodsky
...This region is immovable. Introducing the volume of gross
cast iron and lead, shake your head stunned,
remember the old power on bayonets and Cossack whips.
But the eagles land like a magnet on the iron mixture.
Even wicker chairs are held here
on bolts and nuts.

Only fish in the seas know the price of freedom; but their
dumbness forces us, as it were, to create our own
labels and cash registers. And the space sticks out like a price list.
Time is created by death. Needing bodies and things
properties of both it seeks in raw vegetables.
Kochet listens to the chimes.

To live in the era of achievements, having an exalted disposition,
unfortunately difficult. Beauty dress up,
you see what you were looking for, and not new marvelous divas.
And it’s not that Lobachevsky is firmly observed here,
but the expanded world must narrow somewhere, and here -
here is the end of perspective.

Whether the map of Europe was stolen by agents of the authorities,
or five sixths of the remaining parts in the world
far too far. Is it some good fairy?
He's telling fortunes over me, but I can't run away from here.
I pour Cahors for myself - do not shout to the servant -
I'm scratching the cat...

Either a bullet in the temple, as if in the place of an error with a finger,
or pull from here across the sea with the new Christ.
Yes, and how not to mix with drunken eyes, stunned by the frost,
a locomotive with a ship - you still won’t burn with shame:
like a boat on the water, will not leave a trace on the rails
locomotive wheel...

Joseph Brodsky:
In an undertone - of course, not in full -
I say goodbye forever to your threshold.
The hail will not move, the whole will not start
from a muffled voice.
With God!
Up the stairs, into the street, into the darkness...
In front of you - the outskirts in the smoke,
expanse of swamps, evening coolness.
I am not a barrier to your eyes
your sad words are not a barrier.
And that he is not visible from here.
Bunches of grass... and larch decoration...
You are not happy, I am not in grace
unoccupied, accessible space.

Joseph Brodsky:
I've always said that fate is a game.
Why do we need fish, since there is caviar.
That the gothic style will win like a school
as the ability to hang around without being stabbed.
I am sitting by the window. Aspen outside the window.
I loved few. However, strongly.

I thought that the forest is only part of the log.
Why the whole maiden, if there is a knee.
That, tired of the dust raised by a century,
the Russian eye will rest on the Estonian spire.
I am sitting by the window. I washed the dishes.
I was happy here and never will be.

I wrote that in the light bulb - the horror of the floor.
That love, as an act, is devoid of a verb.
What Euclid did not know that going down the cone,
the thing acquires not zero, but Chronos.
I am sitting by the window. I remember my youth.
Sometimes I smile, sometimes I spit.

I said that the leaf destroys the kidney.
And that the seed, falling into bad soil,
does not escape; that a meadow with a glade
there is an example of masturbation, given in Nature.
I'm sitting by the window, hugging my knees,
in the company of his own overweight shadow.

My song was devoid of motive
but not to sing it in unison. It's not a miracle
what is my reward for such speeches
no one puts their feet on their shoulders.
I sit in the dark; as fast
the sea rumbles behind a wavy curtain.

Second-class citizen, proudly
I recognize it as a second-class product
your best thoughts, and the days to come
I give them as an experience in the fight against suffocation.
I am sitting in the dark. And she's no worse
in the room than the darkness outside.

If I get sick, I will not go to the doctors ...
Ya. Smelyakov

No country, no graveyard
I don't want to choose.
To Vasilyevsky Island
I will come to die.
I. Brodsky

Once I wrote an ironically-joking poem:

Ah, my friends are poets
They love the red word.
Talk about this, about that
Under cheap wine.

It did not come true, well, it did not happen -
How can you not forgive a poet.
The rhyme just asked for it -
You can't resist her.

But if you leave aside the jokes, Brodsky's poem "No Country, No Graveyard ..." is one of my favorite poems. Moreover, Brodsky himself, apparently, did not attribute this poem to his best. Brodsky valued his later poems more. In this regard, the verses placed in the well-known anthology of Yevtushenko are interesting. There, there is a selection of poems prepared by Brodsky himself, and a selection made by Yevtushenko. This second selection is dominated by Brodsky's earlier poems, among which there is also "Neither country, nor graveyard ..." It's not only me who loves this poem. It is enough to type the first lines of this poem in any Internet search engine, as literally hundreds of links of fans of this poem will open. I don't think there is any secret. Brodsky's poems, as a rule, contain such a number of charades, puzzles, that very few can solve. Brodsky belongs to those few poets who defiantly write only for the elite. Solzhenitsyn wrote about the same: “The impression is that (Brodsky’s) verses are often designed to counter the reader’s tension or stun him with complexity. Many of them are braided like rebuses, puzzles. A transparent meaning in a poem is not often. (Well, this is not his first.) How many twisted, distorted, torn phrases - rearrange, disassemble ... There are phrases with an unpronounceable word order. The noun sometimes moves away from its verb or attribute to an incomprehensible, no longer graspable distance; although formally there is an agreement, it is not easy to find the meaning. Phrases with a length of 20 poetic lines - is this not mastery of the form? Overburdened phrases also lead to awkward internal junctions.” I will illustrate this statement by Solzhenitsyn with the following example. Here is one typical Brodsky poem:

Autumn -- good time if you are not a nerd,
if the parquet shoemaker is looking for a shoe draw:
the pavement is clearly her shade,
and further on - trees like hands left over from money.

In the sky without birds, it's easy to guess the victory
own words like "I'm sorry", "I won't",
exactly considered guilt and fashion
on dark gray became the weather at the end.

Everything will be better when the light rain charges,
because there will be nothing more
and many more will envy, forces in excess
drunk, memories and former mental torture.

Stop, the moment when the fish freezes
in the lakes when nature gets out of the closet
with a sigh crumpled thing and looks around
a moth-eaten place with darned windows.

How to decipher the phrase "if a parquet botvinnik is looking for a draw for shoes." It seems that the words botvinnik and draw refer to chess (but what does chess have to do with it?). Maybe parquet is associated with a chessboard? Maybe a person getting out of bed is rummaging through shoes on the parquet floor? Again, what about autumn? This phrase is followed by a colon. But then comes the sentence "there is clearly her shade by the sidewalk," apparently referring to autumn? In short, the charade is still the same! Of course, if you wish, you can find many interesting finds in this poem. These are trees, in autumn they look like hands left over from money. This is nature, which in the fall throws wrinkled things out of the wardrobe. This is a fine autumn rain, charged for a long time, after which there will be nothing but a dull winter. But all these finds alternate with charades and crossword puzzles, through which the reader or listener has to wade through, like through a dense forest.
And among his other such poems, this pearl:

No country, no graveyard
I don't want to choose.
To Vasilyevsky Island
I will come to die.
Your facade is dark blue
I can't find it in the dark.
between faded lines
I'll fall on the asphalt.

And the soul, relentlessly
rushing into the darkness
fly over the bridges
in the Petrograd smoke,
and April drizzle
snow over the back of the head,
and I will hear a voice:
- Goodbye, my friend.

And see two lives
far beyond the river
to an indifferent homeland
pressing his cheek.
- like sister girls
from unlived years
running out to the island
waving at the boy.

Here and recognizable St. Petersburg with its bridges, smoke and drizzle, and Petrograd patriotism, to which the late Brodsky somewhat cooled. And a wonderfully graceful image of two past lives - two sisters waving to a boy who is leaving for adulthood. And cordiality, which is so lacking in the vast majority of his poems. Let us recall again the words of Solzhenitsyn: “Because of the pivotal, all-pervading coldness, Brodsky's poems for the most part are not taken by the heart. And what you will not find anywhere in the collection is human simplicity and spiritual accessibility. From poetry, his poems turn into intellectual-rhetorical gymnastics. At first, when I began to analyze the poem "No country, no churchyard ...", I believed that this poem was Brodsky's farewell to St. Petersburg when he was expelled from the USSR. And the two lives that appear in the poem are, firstly, life before exile for "parasitism" and, secondly, seven years in the USSR after exile. But, in fact, the poem was written in 1962, i.e. a few years before his exile. And there is a natural assumption about the prophetic meaning of this prediction that Brodsky will have two lives: one in his native country and one in a foreign land. However, it is possible that there is a hint of reincarnation here, i.e. two past lives are the lives that his soul had earlier (before his birth). By the way, it was in 1962 that Joseph Brodsky was burned by love for Marina Basmanova, which he carried through many years of his life. So the reflection of this love, perhaps, left its mark on this verse and gave it such sincerity.