Brodsky blessed me with cognac at the risk of confessions. Zemfira presented her first new song in five years - "Joseph", reworking Brodsky's poems and dedicating it to him (audio)

The son of Joseph Brodsky Andrey Basmanov criticized new song Zemfira on verses famous poet. A photographer from St. Petersburg expressed his opinion spb.kp.ru.

I heard what Zemfira performed. At first I did not believe that she did this, I was surprised. I have always treated her calmly. But what she did - tore out phrases from two poems - I consider dishonorable. Maybe this is my perception: either you take one thing, or you take another. And music is already on the conscience. But to take a piece ... well, I don’t know. This is the left leg from jeans, and the right leg from an army shirt, the poet's son believes.

The song "Joseph" is called Zemfira's first composition in five years. She set to music two poems by Brodsky of the 60s - "New Stanzas for Augusta" and "Rumyantsev's Victory".

The guitarist of the band "Obe Dve", electronic musician Roman Litvinov (Mujuice), Renata Litvinova and Gosha Rubchinsky worked on the song and the design of the cover of the single.

Andrei Basmanov is the first child of Joseph Brodsky. In 1967, he was born in the union of the poet with Marianna Basmanova, an artist who created illustrations for children's books all her life. Basmanov is a member of the graphics section, for the last 15 years he has been taking photographs, preferring to take pictures of "non-ceremonial" Petersburg. Joseph Brodsky also has two daughters.

Posted by (@zemfiralive) Sep 3, 2018 at 2:11 PDT

New stanzas for August

I hugged those shoulders and looked

to what was behind,

and saw that the extended chair

merged with the illuminated wall.

There was an increased glow in the light bulb,

unfavorable for worn furniture,

and because the sofa in the corner sparkled

brown skin, as if yellow.

The table was empty, the parquet gleamed,

the stove darkened, dusty in the frame

frozen landscape, and only one buffet

seemed to me then animated.

But the moth circled the room,

and he shifted my view of real estate.

And if a ghost once lived here,

then he left this house. Left.

Rumyantseva victories

Spinning tow under the ceiling

overnight smoke.

I remember under the hop

Your image is tender

how you wandered between the branches,

slimmer shepherds,

together with my beloved

against the backdrop of guns.

Under the vents of naval howitzers,

under your eyes

my worries and verse

would be happy to get in.

And the affairs of everyone: a horse and a whip

and a foot in the stirrup.

Those, the first, to overcome miles,

the last is time.

Let's meet on the banks of the Neva,

but no - Sukhona.

Look up with a smile

on miss with icons.

imagining you as a sister

(at least),

kissing you, I will not understand,

where are you, where is Mary.

But your Arabian horse is just

in the known fields.

And I'm bogged down enough

in local swamps.

At least for what I say

(Lord with words)

thank you with all my heart

Saved by you.

Transparent spanning the bridge

(stand in a column)

heels five pointed stars

across the sky

weaves at night through Rus'

Let to your dear

sadness will pass over the lips

by these luminaries.

A quarter - twilight cold,

one third - stubbornness,

half - dial,

and all is space,

I swear to repay you without fuss

(in terms of power

above the heart) difference of parts --

and the sum of passion!

Forgive me if something is wrong

(no scenes, moaning).

Blessed me cognac

at the risk of confession.

All of you claims - to it.

Lack of bread

and I chew the darkness.

Heaven bless you.

[Verse 1, Zemfira]:
September started on Tuesday
It rained all night.
All the birds have flown away
Only I'm so lonely and brave
That he didn't even look after them.

The cold sky is broken
The rain blocked the light.
I don't want south.

Sorry if something is wrong
No scenes, moaning.
Blessed me cognac
At the risk of confessions -
You all claim to him.

Lack of bread
And I chew on the darkness.
Heaven bless you;
Heaven bless you.

[Chorus]:

Through the sieve of misunderstandings.

Let it be.

[Verse 2, Zemfira]:
Yes, my heart is beating harder and harder for you
And that's why it goes further;
And in my voice there is more and more falseness,
But you consider it a debt to fate -
For a debt to fate that does not require blood.

And with a blunt wounding needle,
And if you're waiting for a smile -
I will smile
Smile over yourself!

[Chorus]:
Here I am with my coat open
And the world flows, eyes through a sieve -
Through the sieve of misunderstandings.
I am deaf; God, I'm blind - I can't hear the words;
And exactly twenty watts the moon burns, -
Let it be.

Here I am with my coat open
And the world flows, eyes through a sieve -
Through the sieve of misunderstandings.
I am deaf; God, I'm blind - I can't hear the words;
And exactly twenty watts the moon burns, -
Let it be.

About the song

• Zemfira has not released new compositions since the release of the album "Live in your head" in 2013 and to the current date; and so, tonight, an audio recording of "Joseph" appeared in the official public.

  In one track, the Singer actually combined excerpts from the poems of Joseph Brodsky (Josif Brodskij) - "New Stanzas in August" and "Rumyantsev's Victory".

  Russian Artists have presented musical works based on the works of the Great Poet before, so the Night Snipers group recorded "I'm Sitting by the Window", and Vasya Oblomov has the song "Someday" in his creative portfolio. As for Zemfira, it looks like the Rock Star decided to collect the most important and deepest lines, showing them very carefully and reverently in the changeable age of youth musical culture.

  It should be noted that in the live version the track "Joseph" - this is exactly what the name Joseph sounds like, if you speak it in American or English, sounded at the singer's closed New Year's concert for friends and relatives.

  Recall that on August 14, Zemfira informed her fan base about the upcoming release. Quote: "It was a strange, but at the same time a great summer. A lot of food for thought, a lot of emotions. I realized that I don't want to play concerts, but I love music. I will write an album. I don't understand how long it will last." However, the release date of the disc, and what songs will become the tracklist, Zemfira traditionally does not say in advance ...

  The cover of the single, which was worked on by Renata Litvinova (Russian theater and film actress, film director, screenwriter, TV presenter) and Gosha Rubchinsky (Russian streetwear designer) is also devoted to the text, and is framed in the form of a stylized papyrus calendar for September, where it is emphasized that each its day is Tuesday.

Because the art of poetry requires words, some poets sometimes write songs based on the verses of other poets. Here is Zemfira Ramazanova, whom recent years five was clearly not written, but it was necessary to maintain her status, she decided to release a song based on the verses of Joseph Brodsky called “Joseph”.

Before us is a poem by Brodsky not set to music, but rather a “song to verse” with a rather strange arrangement: a tiny fragment of a mischievous erotic poem “Rumiantsev’s Victories” and excerpts from natural-philosophical, deeply pessimistic “New Stanzas to Augusta”, united by time and place, are joined together writing - a link to the village of Norinskaya. It’s as if someone sang something like: “I erected a monument to myself not made by hands / I fell out of love with cheerful love / He ascended higher with a rebellious head / He who once loved, he will not love again.”

Of course, such an experiment by Zemfira is significantly different from previous attempts by representatives of the forest-romantic direction of our stage, such as Svetlana Surganova, to appropriate Brodsky for herself. With all possible claims, Surganov's "Is it really not me" is a whole work that quite accurately conveys the mood of one of the poet's early romantic poems.

Zemfira's work may be of interest, in my opinion, primarily to culturologists. And not so much by its "addition" of the non-addendable, but by the subtraction of the non-subtractable. The list of what Mrs. Ramazanova omitted from both poems is many times greater than the rather pathetic and faceless list of the rest. And what remains, in essence, is a set of common places in the discourse of an abstract intellectual depression (that is, what Brodsky categorically hated all his life).

"New Stanzas for Augusta" is a depressive poem, imbued with melancholy and horror, but by no means abstract. These are very specific verses from exile addressed to Marina Basmanova, who remained in Leningrad. They convey the feeling of contact with the swampy world of northern forests, swamps, abysses, which are trying to extinguish the spark of his love for Marina Basmanova in the poet: “Knock and squelch, bubble, rustle. / I will not speed up my step. / The only spark known to you / put out, put out the carcasses.

This all-suffocating water element is opposed by Brodsky's ancient imagery. His St. Petersburg-Leningrad is the world of ancient classics, a clear sculptural form that resists the drowning of the surrounding space. The poet calls now to Polydeuces, now to Euterpe, now to Calliope - through these ancient forms he is kept from dissolving, and his lyre turns out to be such a curved horseshoe that happiness seems to be behind misfortune.

Photo source: RIA Novosti

From this whole system of images, Zemfira left absolutely nothing in her song. What abysses, what stubble, what Polideuks - all this is not necessary for teenagers under 40 listening to her songs, as unnecessary, only complicating the perception of baggage. In the process of processing, rural exile poetry turns into urban, more precisely, into bedroom district poetry.

Among these “New Stanzas to Augusta” destroyed by a small shredder with a fragment of a bone unknown to science the animal sticks out a fragment of "Rumyantsev victories" - "cognac blessed me at the risk of confessions." One of those sweet serenade verses different women, in which Brodsky combines a seemingly utilitarian task - to seduce a beautiful lady with poetry, and an expression of his deep historiosophy, and a sense of the Motherland. I don’t know why, but in these texts Brodsky “presents” himself to women in the same style as the Russian Empire. This was fully manifested in “Farewell, Mademoiselle Veronica”: “Love is an imperial feeling. But you / are such that Russia, to its luck, / cannot speak to you otherwise. Brodsky as last poet Russian Empire or, on the contrary, the first prophesyer of its second wave is generally an interesting topic that we are just beginning to realize (and I tried to make some contribution to its disclosure).

“Rumiantsev victories” is the same motif, multiplied by the bitter humor of the message from the banks of the reference Sukhona to the banks of the Neva. And the title, referring to the inscription on the Rumyantsev obelisk on Vasilyevsky Island (the very one on which the poet planned to die at that moment): "Rumyantsev's victories." Brodsky plays up the theme of a real or imaginary triangle with Basmanova in the entourage of the imperial capital, where naval howitzers, columns, horses: “Imagining you as a sister / (at least) / kissing you, I can’t make out / where are you, where is Mary. At the time of writing his poems, he is infinitely far from this empire of his - “quite bogged down in the local swamps,” and therefore sends greetings to the heroine of the poem across the bridge, which makes up “the heels of five-pointed stars” (Cassiopeia?), weaving through Rus' at night.

In order to somehow weaken the obsession and pressure of sudden erotic confessions, the final reference in the poem follows to the cognac that unleashed the tongue, apparently brought by Yevgeny Rein, who visited the poet in Norinskaya in September. To imagine that this cognac on the legs attached by Zemfira would take on a life of its own and run away to the New Stanzas by August was completely wild. However, they listen and still praise.

In this sense, Zemfira's recording is a real symptom of a cultural gap, if not an abyss, between the two Brodskys.

On the one hand, the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky, the last in the galaxy of the great classical tradition that united the Golden and Silver Age of our poetry, is a subtle non-banal philosopher, a master of poetic aphorism, a lover of antiquity and an interested observer of the empire, a defender of its large space as generating poetry (this is where his famous pamphlet “On the Independence of Ukraine” comes from - separatism and redneck cannot give birth to poetry).

On the other hand, the global Joseph Brodsky, Nobel Price winner (no worse than Aleksievich), a favorite of party youth, who wrote incomprehensible and abstruse texts with line breaks, from which I vaguely remember something about “don’t leave the room.” This, the second Brodsky, was also erected a monument on the boulevard with his nose upturned, which distinguishes him from the people without a face that make up the background.

The first Brodsky was at the very least reflected in German's Dovlatov. A cut from the second was presented to the public by Zemfira. And how much had to be cut and re-pasted from the poems of the first to make the second one, as it were, hints to us - which of them is real.

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Joseph Brodsky. Part 1. Poetics.

A work of art is an influence, an impact. Meaning and Meaning of the Poem Mountain peaks” is not in the fact that it itself says something extremely significant, but in the fact that when you read it, you begin to think about extremely significant things.
(A.Belinkov, “Yuri Tynyanov”)

Life is an unpredictable thing. How, for example, could judge Savelyeva know that the parasite sentenced to exile by her would become a Nobel laureate? And that on the analysis of his poem alone, people will defend their dissertations? (for example: Yes, if someone had said this to her, she would never have believed it.

Attitude to poetic heritage Joseph Brodsky split the Russians into three irreconcilable camps: some consider him a genius, others do not consider him a poet at all, who received the Nobel Prize for political reasons, and still others, who are the majority, do not know anything about him at all, and do not want to know.

Those in whom Brodsky causes hostility, reaching hatred, can be understood. First, a Jew. And secondly, he does not just treat readers with disdain, but simply mocks ordinary people. Normal poets write in understandable Russian - but this one is all showing off, twisting, he won’t say a word in simplicity. Instead of getting pleasure, sit and think - what did he want to say? And this is not once or twice, but at every step! Here, for example:

Today turning into yesterday
does not bother to change
pen, paper, dumpling slurry,
products of the lame cooper
from Hamburg.
(Twenty sonnets to Mary Stuart. Sonnet X)

Some kind of cooper, and even from Hamburg? This means, poor reader, turn on your computer, go to Google, search ... And in response to a request, the search engine will throw you “Notes of a Madman” by Gogol, Nikolai Vasilyevich.

Climbing through the text, you discover: “The moon, after all, is actually made in Hamburg; and badly done. I wonder how England will not pay attention to this. It is made by a lame cooper, and it is clear that the fool has no idea about the moon...”

Well, tell me, hand on heart, isn't this a mockery? Instead of just writing: “Moon,” he spread such a bodyagu. He shows his erudition. Or here's another:

What color is time
or the desire to keep up with him,
great Halicarnassian
quoting...
("Fly")

What kind of Halicarnassian is this, and even great? Nainaem seek: "Halicarnassus - ancient city in Caria on the Mediterranean coast of Asia Minor. And who was there, in this Halicarnassus, so great? It turns out that Herodotus, who is called the “father of history” as a science, lived almost five hundred years before the birth of Christ. So what does “the desire to keep up with the times!”

Well, what, you say - is it humanly? Snobbery and rushing from this Nobel laureate. Look, they say, I'm so smart! Well, how can one not be offended by such an attitude towards common man? So you can, like us. And we cannot. Of course, you can do everything, but we can't do anything. You are Manfred, you are Cain, and we are like spit under your feet...

Oh, sorry, I myself involuntarily began to quote this. Didn't know where? This is Venichka Erofeev, well, on the road from Moscow to Petushki. This is a contagious thing, snobbery, it turns out.

Yes. Well, here's the next example, here I'm already simple and don't know how to call it:

Enter Pushkin in a flight helmet...
("Performance")

Here, sorry, already no google will help. Why is Pushkin suddenly wearing a flight helmet? Do not know? I explain. The poem "Performance" ridicules low level erudition of ordinary citizens who did not graduate from academies:

So a little man came out, a representative of the population.
Here comes the citizen
coming out of pants.

In whose garden is the stone, I think, no need to explain? And here is the story with Pushkin. There was in ancient, Soviet times, such an anecdote:

Vasily Ivanovich, what are you reading?
- I'm reading about the pilot, Petka.
- What is it called?
- As Pushkin.
- Ah-ah-ah! And who wrote?
- Yes, some kind of Jew, Uchpedgiz.

So sit and decipher this Brodsky, almost every line. Not only that, you can decipher each line, but you won’t understand what he generally meant. And he got the Nobel. It's like a monument to Pushkin:

Who wrote Mumu?
- No, Mumu is Turgenev.
- Strange. Mumu Turgenev wrote, but a monument to Pushkin was erected?

Well, so that it would be a little easier for you, the readers, to read Brodsky, I decided to write this article. To reveal the meaning of what he himself managed to finish.

The real end of the war is on a thin back
Viennese chair dress of one blonde,
yes, the winged flight of a silver buzzing bullet,
taking life south in July.
("Part of speech")

The silver buzzing bullet is an airplane.

The owner of the Vespa is tormenting the transmission.
(“Roman Elegies”)

Vespa is something between a motorcycle and a scooter.

Brodsky has a poem called "Rumyantsev's Victories." This name is a joke - in the Soloviev garden on the Neva embankment there is an obelisk on which is engraved: "Rumyantsev to victories."

Mondrian victory. Behind the glass -
cubature feast. Air or drunk
at a ninety degree angle,
or generously poured into a parallelepiped.
(“At the Continental Hotel”)

Pieter Mondrian is a Dutch abstract artist who painted multi-colored squares and rectangles (all corners are ninety degrees).

I fell asleep. When I opened my eyes
north was where the bee stings.
(“Cod Cape Lullaby”)

He's on the plane. And the sting of the bee is behind.

And enters aine kleine nakht man,
introducing a muzzle in a kosovorotka.
(“Twenty sonnets to Mary Stuart”. Sonnet VII)

“Eine kleine nacht man” – little night man (German) This is a pun on Eine kleine nacht music (Eine kleine nachtmusik) – a piece of music by Mozart.

My little one, I'm sad
(and you are in the sand jump-jump).
Like an asterisk I'm looking for you:
separation is like a telescope.

Maybe from that end
you look (like Leeuwenhoek),
you can't see the face
but you will hear: knock-knock.
(“Sonetic”, 1964)

“Little” is far away (1964 - Brodsky in exile), so you can only “see” it with a telescope. And then the author plays out a fantasy and he imagines how his beloved could “look” into this metaphorical telescope from the other side, “turning” it into a microscope (Leuwenhoek is the inventor of the microscope, the first person in history to observe the life of the simplest microorganisms, the end 17th, early 18th centuries).

The charioteer is dead, the cooper
went to Arkhangelsk to his wife.
And like a bull, January rages
after them on the threshing floor.
And the savior of badey
standing between strangers
and hears around
only the rustling of trousers.

Here from the looks of oblique
hot as hell
Russian language gets lost
muttering into the protocol.
And the unknown Hephaestus
looks like he stitched around
snowy surface canvas
Vologda convoy.

Upon leaving prison,
he is in the forest village
at the rear of winter
mending barrels in the spring
and in the oval tub
sees the judge's face
Savelieva and secretly
hammer on the forehead.
(“Kolesnik is dead, cooper”, 1964)

The “Savior of the badeys” and “the unknown Hephaestus” are Brodsky himself, who in exile has to do a variety of work, including repairing barrels. And judge Savelyeva is the judge who sentenced him to many years of exile. The author recalls this bastard and angrily knocks on the barrel with a hammer, imagining with what pleasure he would slap her in the forehead.

The sky is darker; not eyes, but a rake
the first to see damp roofs,
looming on the ridge
hill - or rather, a mound in the distance.
(“Autumn in Norenskaya”, 1965)

People with a rake on their shoulder return home in the evening to the village, which is located on a hillock. The rakes, located above the heads of people, are the first to “see” the roofs of houses.

O cities of the earth at dawn!
Hotels are dead. bowl immobility,
blindness of the eyes
blind goddesses.
It is not surprising to pass through you naked,
until the state anthem blared.
(“In front of the monument to A.S. Pushkin in Odessa”, 1969 or 1970)

Imagine early-early morning, everyone is asleep, the author passes by plaster statues (“blind goddesses”), which were fully instructed in front of any sanatorium, hotel or pioneer camp. It is not yet six o'clock in the morning - at exactly six in the morning, the sounds of the anthem were heard over the radio broadcast network throughout the country Soviet Union. People joked: "Wake up with the anthem."

I think get some currency
we would have overcome the fierce nature.
.....
there during the day, scientists remove the foam from the experiments,
and Faibishenko is burning like a star there, and Rokotov.
(“Red Sweater Song”, 1970)

This refers to a unique case in the history of jurisprudence. Faibishenko, Rokotov and Yakovlev were “farmers” and “foreign exchangers”. In those days (early 1960s), such a business was a criminal offense. All three criminals were arrested and sentenced to 8 years each. This was not enough for Khrushchev. He ordered the law to be changed, raising the upper limit of punishment to capital punishment. Which, of course, was done by obedient legislators. Not taking into account the generally accepted principle “the law has no retroactive effect”, all three money changers were shot.

And the honest German himself der veg tsuriuk,
won't wait to be asked.
he walter get out of warm pants
and forever goes to the Walter closet.
(“Two Hours in the Tank”, 1965)

I heard this poem performed by Mikhail Kozakov, who himself honestly admitted that he did not fully understand everything he read. And indeed, in this poem, he made a completely unforgivable mistake: “and forever goes to the water closet” - instead of “Walter closet”, which completely kills the meaning of the whole phrase. “Der Weg zuruck” (der Weg zuruck) - to go back (in German). An honest German takes a walter (pistol) out of his warm trousers and commits suicide - shoots himself (goes forever into the WALTER closet). And going with a gun in your hand to push, as you understand, is completely pointless.

The Ark Chick
without returning, will prove that
all faith is nothing more than mail
one way.
(“Conversation with a Celestial”, 1970)

Here, the biblical myth of the Great Flood and the righteous Noah is played out, who, after a year's voyage with all the animals in his Ark, released a dove and it did not return, which meant that the water subsided and dry land appeared. Brodsky ironically compares this episode with the very idea of ​​God: all the prayers offered to Him are nothing but one-way mail.

Down the steps, past the cineraria
(“Unfinished”, 1970)

Cineraria is a perennial plant that is shaped like a pillow.

And feeling the absence of a verb
to express an impossible thought
about the reason why
Leandra, Hero...
(“Unfinished”, 1970)

Leander is a young man from Abydos in Troas who fell in love with Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite who lived in Sesta, located on the other side of the Hellespont.
Every night, Hero waited for him to swim across the strait and, so that it would be lighter, she lit a fire on the tower. Leander swam to the lighthouse and made his way to shore. One day the fire went out and Leander could not swim. In the morning, his body was nailed to Hero's feet. Seeing him, Hero in despair threw herself into the sea from the tower.

In the quarrel Kamen
At the feast of Mnemosyne.
(“From February to April”, 1969)

Kameny - ancient Italian deities who lived in springs, springs and streams near the temple of Vesta. Mnemosyne - in ancient Greek mythology, the goddess who personified memory, the Titanide, the daughter of Uranus and Gaia (or Zeus and Clymene). Mother of the Muses, born by her from Zeus (Euterpe, Clio, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polyhymnia, Urania, Calliope) in Pieria.

In pasted on street billboards
"Message to the rulers" famous,
famous local kifared, boiling
indignantly, boldly speaks out
with the call of the Emperor to remove
(on the next line) from copper money.

The crowd is gesticulating. youngsters,
gray-haired old men, mature men
and literate getters
unanimously affirm that
"this has never happened before"
without specifying what
"such":
courage or servility.

Poetry must be
without a clear boundary.
(“POST AETATEM NOSTRAM” - “After our era”, 1970)

The meaning of this passage becomes clear after reading the following “masterpiece”:

I do not know how to do it,
But, comrades from the Central Committee,
remove Lenin from the money,
its price is so high!
I understand that money is a measure
human labor.
But, comrades, how much vile
sticks to them sometimes...
I saw how a scoundrel
procrastinated on Vladimir Ilyich.
Fingers crawled lightly salted
on his face, on his face!
At the grocery store
he was snoring, from vodka crimson:
“Darling, give for Lenin
two half a liter and cucumbers.”
Lenin is the purest deed,
it shouldn't be blurred.
Remove Lenin from the money
he is for the heart and for the banners.
(Andrey Voznesensky)

At the end big war not on the stomach
When something was fried without fat,
Marie, I remember as a boy like Sarah
Leander walked top-top to the scaffold.
.....
With a simple pen - it's not true that it's rebellious! -
I sang about a meeting in a certain garden
With the one who got me in the forty-eighth year
From the screen taught tender feelings.

Tzara Leander is a Swedish film actress and singer who worked mainly in Germany. Little Joseph saw her in the captured German film “The Road to the Scaffold”, dedicated to Mary Stuart. The beauty of the actress made an indelible impression on the baby.

I'm buzzing like that monoplane
Exactly Darius and Girenas,
But not so vulnerable.
(“Lithuanian Nocturne: Tomas Venclova”, 1974)

American pilots of Lithuanian origin Steponas Darius and Stasys Girenas in 1933 tried to set a flight distance record on the Lituanika aircraft. Departing from New York and flying successfully Atlantic Ocean, they crashed under unclear circumstances, when less than a tenth of the way remained to the end of the route (Kaunas, the then temporary capital of Lithuania). This flight is one of the major events in the history of Lithuania in the 20th century.

There the cities stand, as if they were moved by ryukha
(“The Fifth Anniversary”, 1977)

This refers to the Russian game - towns. Ryuha - a long heavy stick, throwing which from a decent distance, it was necessary to knock out a figure made up of short wooden cylinders from a square on the ground. IN Soviet times this game was considered a full-fledged sport, for success in which sports categories were assigned up to the title of “master of sports”. Brodsky is ironic about the paranoid system of secrecy in the USSR, because of which the coordinates of cities on all geographical maps were given with distortions in order to mislead potential opponents.

measuring the degree of the angle of an alien

Here Brodsky bitterly recalls the eternal problems associated with the “housing problem”. All young people suffered from the fact that they had nowhere to meet and have sex (which, according to one high-ranking party functionary, did not exist in the USSR). I had to negotiate with someone I knew and use someone else's living space as a meeting room. Hence the “corner of a stranger in the geometry of the poor” and “a hundred-watt dusty tear” - an electric light bulb without a lampshade.

This is Caruso
for the dog that escaped from the gramophone.
(“Roman Elegies”, 1981)

Another tricky riddle. The image of a dog named Nipper, listening to the gramophone, became the world's first logo. Since 1900, Victor and HMV records have been issued with a picture of a dog in front of a gramophone with a sound trumpet.

Only falsetto stars between telegraph lines -
where a citizen of Perm sleeps in deep sleep

Citizen of Perm - Sergei Diaghilev, Russian theatrical and artistic figure, entrepreneur, one of the founders of the "World of Art" group, organizer of the "Russian Seasons" in Paris and the troupe "Russian Ballet of Diaghilev". He was buried in Venice, in the cemetery of the island of San Michele. In the same place where Brodsky himself is now buried.

Possibly also the past. Limit
despair. General top.
Verbs in a long queue to "l".
The calming storm of crepe de chine.
And this is the realm of the past. trails,
subdued in reality. puddles,
holding reflections. shells,
seen scrambled eggs outside.
(“At the exhibition of Karl Weilinck”, 1984)

The verbs in the long queue for "l" are past tense verbs ending in "l". Brodsky recalls these “verbs in the past tense, the letter “l” in another poem – “Fin de Siecle” (“The End of the Century”, 1989).

And the fried egg can “see” the shell from the outside.

Traveling in Asia, sleeping in other people's houses,
in huts, baths, storehouses - in log houses,
whose smoked glasses keep space in check,
take cover with a sheepskin coat and strive everywhere
lie with your head in a corner, for it is more difficult in a corner
wave - moreover in the dark - an ax over it,
heavy from just now drunk, and exactly
hack you to death. Fit a circle into a square.
(“Edification”, 1987)

“Inscribe a circle in a square” - lie down round head into a square corner.

"The channel in which Rose was drowned
L., like an extinguished cigarette,
almost overgrown.
Since then, so many roses have fallen
which is not easy to overwhelm the tourist.
Wall - concrete forerunner of Christo -
runs from the city to the calf and the cow
through fields of washed-out blood color;
the enterprise smokes a cigar.
And the stranger lifts up her dress
native woman - not like the Conqueror,
but like a picky sculptor,
preparing to expose
that statue, which lives longer,
than a reflection in a channel,
in which Rosa was finished off."
(“Landswehr Canal, Berlin”, 1989)

"Rose L." - Rosa Luxembourg, murdered in Berlin in 1919. She was shot and her body thrown into a canal. Judging by the last two lines, Brodsky refers to the fiery Marxist without much reverence.

Christo is an American sculptor and artist of Bulgarian origin Hristo Yavashev.

Trying to remember the patronymics of those who loved us,
floundering in slippery hands sculpted.
.....
... All black is fashionable: a shirt, stockings, underwear.
When the result is you have it all with her
pull off, housing
illuminated by light of about thirty watts,
but from the lips instead of the joyful "Vivat!"
breaks "guilty".
(“Fin de Siecle” - “End of the Century”, 1989).

“Lepila” - a doctor (on a thieves hair dryer).

“Instead of the joyful "Vivat!" breaks down "guilty" - regret over a failed sexual intercourse. Neither black underwear, nor the whiteness of the body "with light of about thirty watts" did not help. Age happens.

Second Christmas on the Shore
Ice-free Pontus.
(“Second Christmas on the Shore”, 1971)

Pontus Euxinus - Black Sea.

A wonderful poem called “Six years later” (1968), dedicated to the author’s beloved, Marianna Basmanova, is worth quoting in full:

We lived together for so long that again
the second of January fell on a Tuesday,
that raised eyebrow in surprise,
as from the glass of a car - a janitor,
from the face drove vague sadness,
unclouded leaving the distance.

We lived together so long that it snowed
if it falls out, it was thought - forever,
that, in order not to close her eyelids,
I covered them with my palm, and eyelids,
not believing that they are trying to save,
darted around like butterflies in a handful.

So alien were any novelty,
that close embrace in a dream
dishonored any psychoanalysis;
that the lips, falling to the shoulder,
with mine, blowing out the candle,
not seeing other things, they united.

We lived together for so long that roses
family on shabby wallpaper
replaced by a whole grove of birches,
and both got money
and thirty days over the sea, they speak,
sunset threatened Turkey with fire.

After a gentle description of the all-consuming intimacy, the phrase “and money appeared FOR BOTH” is an alarming bell. Absolutely everything is common, but “BOTH HAVE” money, what does it mean - separately?

“And for thirty days over the sea, tongue, the sunset threatened Turkey with fire” is simply deciphered - the money appeared, we went on vacation to the Crimea for a whole month, where fiery sunsets threaten the fire of Turkey located at the other end of the sea.

So long lived together without books,
without furniture, without utensils, on the old
couch that - before arose -
was a triangle perpendicular,
raised by acquaintances stand up
over two merged points.

What is the geometry lyric poem? And here's the thing. Imagine a sheet of paper divided into two halves by a vertical line in the middle. The left half of the sheet is what “was”, the past, and the right half is the present (“became”).

“Was” a perpendicular: mentally draw a horizontal line and put a dot above it. This point is “familiar”. Drop a perpendicular from it to a straight line. At the base of the perpendicular (at the point of intersection with the line), two points merged into one - OH and SHE. For all acquaintances, these two points were inseparable from one another.

On the right half of the sheet there is the same straight line, the same point above it (“familiar ones”), only two points below, on the straight line, fled to the sides, and a triangle (“appeared”) turned out. From the generalized point “acquaintances” one stood out, which turned the picture into a banal love triangle. And the result was not long in coming:

So long we lived together with her,
what did they do with their own shadows
we are the door to ourselves - whether you work, whether you sleep,
but the doors did not swing apart,
and we went through them, apparently, right through
and went through the back door into the future.

Nothing lasts forever under the sun. Even the strongest, seemingly indestructible love dies over time.

Brodsky loves to play with geometric images. With the poem “Singing without music” (1970) you can have fun on your own - there is geometry over the edge.

In the meantime, we will deal with unexpected and incredibly colorful comparisons that overwhelm his poems.

In the squares, like "farewell" wide,
In the streets as narrow as the sound of "I love you".
(“Laguna”, 1973)

When we pronounce the word “goodbye”, the mouth opens wide, and in the case of “love”, on the contrary, the lips gather into a chicken tail.

Blood in the temples
Knocks like no one has accepted
And Morse returned home.
The sky is like a pandemonium of generals.
(“Barbizon Terrace”, 1974)

“Pandemonium of generals” - because the whole sky is in the stars.

And wet powder
extinguishes the salute stars, hissing loudly, in a glass,
and the decanters stand like a kremlin on the fabric.
(“You Tangled Guitar Thing”, 1978)

"Wet gunpowder" - fizzy wine.

Like the thirty-third letter
I'm moving forward all my life.
(“Strophes”, 1978)

The thirty-third letter is "I". And since we write from left to right, it turns out that the “I” moves backwards.

And outside the noise is thick,
not yet yellow, the power of China.

Foliage not yet yellowed: there are many leaves, like the Chinese, they will soon turn yellow - it will be quite similar.

Sunset, releasing a mouse from a crack,
bites - each incisor is bared -
into the electric cheese of the outskirts,
in how to build is only capable of
able to survive the termite
.....
And the train creeps up like a snake
to the only nipple of the capital.
(“In the vicinity of Alexandria”, 1982)

Alexandria, about which in question, located near the capital of the United States - Washington.

And, feeding the sparrow,
the whole family looked at him out the window,
where the trees also merged later into one
ebony trying to outgrow
the sky - which happened at six o'clock,
when the book slammed shut and when
all that was left of you was your lips, like that cat.
(“Kellomyaki”, 1982)

By six o'clock it begins to get dark, gradually the face becomes invisible, only lips remain, like a cat's (Cheshire, see Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland")

I bolted the front door, but
Night aims at me with the horns of Aries,
like Cupid from a bow, like
Stalin in the 17th Congress from the “Tulka”.
(“The Spilled Milk Speech”, 1967)

"Tulka" - Tula gun. The XVII Congress of the CPSU (1934), at first short-sightedly called the "Congress of the Victors", later turned out to be the "Congress of the Executed", since more than half of its delegates were destroyed in the millstones of the "Great Terror".

October is the month of sadness and colds,
and sparrows - feathered proletariat -
captured in abandoned penates
birdhouses, like the Smolny Institute.
And the crow, of course, is right there.
Although in general for the bird's mind
there is no worse understanding than winter,
much more afraid of flying
our long-nosed northern Icarus.
And therefore the shrill "carr!"
sounds like a patriot song to us.
(“Excerpt, 1967)

Everything that has to do with the “great” history of the “proletarian” state invariably arouses irony and ridicule in Brodsky.

The following collection of magnificent, often paradoxical comparisons found in Brodsky, I cite without comment. Enjoy.

The crescent moon floats in the dusty windowpane
over the crosses of Moscow, like a dashing victory of Islam.

Somebody
among the ruins wanders, tedding
foliage from last year. That is the wind
like the prodigal son, returned to his father's house
and immediately received all the letters.
(“Postcard from the city of K”, 1968)

Night
over the sea is different from the night
over any dry land in about the same way,
like a meeting glance in a mirror -
from looking at another person.
(“Dedicated to Yalta”, 1969)

Lying down in bed like a compass in the cooking room...
(“From the “School Anthology” 6. Zh. Antsiferova”, 1966-1969)

The flag in the gateway, similar to a horse's muzzle,
chews the air with his lips.
(“POST AETATEM NOSTRAM (after our era)”, 1970)

The river is like a blouse
unbuttoned on the lanterns.
.....
Remains of ice floating in the channel
for small fish - the same clouds, but as if overturned backwards.
(“From February to April”, 1969-1970)

Part of a woman in lipstick
launches long words into the ear,
like five in lice-ridden strands.
And you're lonely and naked in the dark
on the sheet, like a zodiac sign.
(“Lithuanian Divertissement”, 1971)

Shadow. Man in the shadow
like a fish in a net.
(“Still Life”, 1971)

They wander from churches, burying commas
candles in the brackets of the palms.
.....
lane shifts facades like gum teeth,
the yellowness of the gateway, like coot cheese,
fox devours
darkness.
.....
...in raw hemp
a multi-layered shirt, in buzzing steel curlers
Mother Lithuania falls asleep over the reach,
and you
you fall to her undisguised, glassy,
half a liter breast.
(“Lithuanian Nocturne: Tomas Venclova”, 1973)

Yes, you lie, as in a large Orenburg scarf,
in our brown land, local chimneys and smoke,
and frozen to death in the parade of the Third Rome.
Maybe there is no better gate in the world to Nothingness.
Pavement man, you would say that the best is not needed ...
(“On the death of a friend”, 1973)

The end of July hides in the rains
as an interlocutor in their own thoughts.
(“Mexican Divertissement”, 1975)

I recognize this wind flying on the grass,
lying under him, exactly under the Tatar.
I recognize this leaf, in the roadside dirt
falling like a livid prince.
.....
but the Kaisak name is the tongue in the mouth
stirs in the night, like a label to the Horde.
(“Part of speech”, 1975-1976)

Skyline
with a cloud resembles a rope with a washed shirt,
and the tanker goes over the masts like a fallen one
on the back of an ant. Something pops up in my mind
phone number - torn cell
deserted net.
(“In England I. Brighton Rock”, 1977)

In Venetian glass, surrounded by a heavy frame,
the matt profile of a beauty with a laceration is reflected
speaking mouth.
.....
In the alley
a yellow light is shining, slightly gilding the snowdrifts,
like a loose crust of Viennese muffin.
.....
The dance of white cabbage girls is like a ship in a storm.
(“In England I. III. Soho”, 1977)

Honey, we're even.
More: to each other we
like smallpox vaccinated
in the midst of a common plague.
(“Strophes”, 1978)

How much light was packed into a fragment of a star,
looking at night! like refugees in a boat.
(“It snows, leaving the whole world in the minority”, 1980)

And a spring from an open mattress
an explosion rises.
.....
Mountains don't move passing
their immobility to the bodies of the dead.
.....
Mournful singing of a Slav
evening in Asia. Freezing, damp
human pork
lies on the floor of the caravanserai.
.....
If something turns black, then only letters.
Like traces of a hare that miraculously survived.
(“Poems about the winter campaign of 1980”, 1980)

And eyes on the pillowcase face
spreads like an egg in a frying pan.
(“It’s not the Muse of water that fills her mouth”, 1980)

Every column
looks like the fifth, longs for a coup.
Only a crow does not accept snow,
and you hear the crow screaming
burry voice of a patriot.
.....
I am not capable of life in other latitudes.
I'm strung in the cold like a goose on a skewer.
(“Eclogue 4th (winter)”, 1980)

Golden horses without bridles
the suit in the chimney is changed to the suit of the crow.
(“The rising yellow sun follows obliquely”, 1978)

Winter evening. Firewood
engulfed in fire
like a woman's head
windy clear day.
(“Burning”, 1981)

A fly slips from a dusty epaulette
burdock, demoted to the rank and file.
.....
and roaming like Christ on the blue
stroke the swimming beetle.
.....
... And deaf - deafer,
how do ears perceive it?
foliage as countless as souls
who lived before us on earth, murmurs
something in kidney dialect,
(“Eclogue 5th (summer)”, 1981)

The numbers on the dials are crossed, like
air defense searchlights in search of a seraph.
.....
Hawk overhead like a square root
from the bottomless, as before prayer, sky.
.....
the tail of the completed letter - just like a rat flickered.
.....
And the bath looks up like the nipples of a she-wolf,
fed Remus and Romulus and fell asleep.
(“Roman Elegies”, 1981)

And, like a leukocyte in the blood,
the moon in the works of singers who burned from tuberculosis,
who wrote that - out of love.
.....
This is how the chandeliers in the opera fade; so waning
by night go in the volume of jellyfish domes.
So narrows the street, winding like an eel,
and the square is like a flounder.
(“Venetian stanzas (1)”, 1982)

Like bars on a fence
schoolchildren on the run, morning rays
sorting out columns, arcades, strands
algae, bricks.
.....
Dampness creeps into the bedroom, bringing the shoulder blades together
sleeping beauty, deaf to everything.
So partridges cringe from a crunching branch,
and angels from sin.
.....
Light opens your eye like a shell; ear
the shell is filled with the sound of bells.
Then they wander to the watering place to take a sip of the river
rippling herds of domes.
From the open shutters, chicory beats into your nostrils,
strong coffee, crumpled rags.
And the golden Yegory dunks into the throat of the dragon,
as in ink, spear.
.....
The curly-haired pack is trying to overtake the thief
in a flaming hat, north-east sulya.
(“Venetian stanzas (2)”, 1982)

Further south,
that is, to the southeast, the mountains turn brown,
roam in the sedge horse-chewed;
faces turn yellow. And then - battleships sail,
and space turns blue, like linen with lace.
(“To Urania”, 1981)

Autumn in your hemisphere screams "kurly".
The cinch of borders is slipping from the impoverished power.
(“Polonaise: Variation”, 1981)

After us - not a flood,
where there are enough oars,
but the obsession of the crowds,
plural.
May the triumph of caviar
over the fish is not a sin,
but angels are not mosquitoes,
and there won't be enough for everyone.
(“Sitting in the Shadows”, 1983)

Those who don't die live
up to sixty, up to seventy,
peddling, scribbling memoirs,
tangled up in the legs.
I look into their features
intently like Miklukha
Maclay's tattoo
approaching
savages.
(“Those Who Don't Die”, 1987)

The sunset was burning down in the stalls like a Chinese fan,
and the cloud swirled like the lid of a concert piano.
(“Honey, I left the house late at night”, 1989)

Previously, after planting a stain, I could sprinkle lye.
It always helped, like talcum powder to a pimple.
(“I hear not what you tell me”, 1989)

That evening near our fire
we saw a black horse.
I don't remember anything blacker.
His legs were like coal.
(“There was a black firmament brighter than those legs”, 1962)

The town is frozen. No fields to be seen.
So white it couldn't be whiter.
(“Snowstorm in Massachusetts”, 1990)

A rusty Romanian tanker floundering in the blue
Like a worn low shoe, which, having sighed, took off his shoes.
(“Lido”, 1989)

And the sea far below
Breaks his ribs with a drawbar,
Swallowing the whole shaft with a mane.
(“Unfinished”, 1970)

The reader may have a question: - Why is the author of the article paying so much attention to comparisons? Look how many examples I have accumulated.

I answer. First, many examples show that comparison is an important and frequently used device by Brodsky. And not only Brodsky, of course. Poets around the world have used simile for centuries. Remember, for example, Hafiz:

Her eyes are like Nubian slaves,
Holding drawn swords.

Secondly, Brodsky's comparisons are original and often even paradoxical. It's one thing to compare things that are similar, like: "your eyes are like turquoise." Or use a comparison that characterizes the important quality of the object being compared: “your eyes are like brakes” (also, by the way, Brodsky). But to notice something in common in two completely different phenomena and in such a paradoxical way to attract them to each other, to highlight their dialectical unity, is already a real art. In order not to be unfounded, I will give another example:

All dogs have been eaten. In the diary
no blank page left. And beads of words
covers the photo of the wife, to her cheek
fly date dubious gags.
Next is a picture of my sister. He does not spare his sister:
we are talking about the achieved latitude!
And gangrene, blackening, climbs up the thigh,
like a stocking girl from a variety show.
(“Polar Explorer”, 1978)

I don’t know about you, but I have from such comparisons of death with life - brrr! - frost on the skin.

From the point of view of semantics, comparison, even the most unusual one, is actually a relatively simple thing - the author himself tells us: something is similar to something.
The situation is much more complicated with a metaphor that needs to be deciphered. Here you have to guess what IT might look like:

Bird that lost its nest, egg
On an empty basketball court puts in the ring.
(“Lullaby of Cape Cod”, 1975)

“The bird that has lost its nest” is the poet himself, expelled from his native country, separated from all his relatives and friends. "Basketball court" represents the USA, where this sport is very popular. And the “egg” is what the poet can “demolish”, that is, his poems, which, being written in another language and reflecting problems far away for this country, are incomprehensible and unnecessary to anyone here. They fall like a basket without a bottom.

Brodsky's metaphors are always unhackneyed, original. And often, like an elegant chess study, they require a certain tension of thought to decipher the image and meaning hidden in them:

What a pity that what has become for me
your existence is gone
my existence for you.
... Once again in the old wasteland
I launch into wire space
his copper penny topped with a coat of arms,
in a desperate attempt to exalt
moment of connection ... Alas,
who can't replace
the whole world, usually remains
spin the chipped telephone dial,
like a séance table,
until the ghost echoes back
the last screams of the buzzer in the night.
(“What a pity that what has become for me ...”, 1967)

The “wire space” into which the author launches “his copper penny crowned with a coat of arms” is the city telephone network, and the “copper penny” itself is a two-kopeck coin, which in those days had to be thrown into a pay phone. And at the end of the poem, there are again bewitching comparisons: a telephone disk with a saucer at a seance, and a voice on the telephone - disembodied, ghostly.

The great man looked out the window
and for her the whole world ended with the edge
his wide Greek tunic,
an abundance of folds resembling
stopped sea.
He is
looked out the window, and his gaze now
was so far from these places that the lips
frozen like a sink where
lurking rumble, and the horizon in the glass
was motionless.
And her love
was just a fish - maybe capable
set off into the sea after the ship
and, cutting through the waves with a flexible body,
it is possible to overtake him - but he,
he mentally already set foot on dry land.
And the sea turned into a sea of ​​tears.
But, as you know, just in a minute
despair and starts to blow
favourable wind. And a great husband
left Carthage.
She stood
in front of a fire that was kindled
under the city wall her soldiers,
and saw how in the haze of a fire,
shivering between fire and smoke
silently disintegrated Carthage
long before the prophecy of Cato.
(“Dido and Aeneas”, 1969)

“Love is a fish”, which at first looks like a simple comparison, after “he has already mentally set foot on land”, turns into an extended metaphor.

Beautiful and the picture that completes the poem. Dido stands in front of the fire and looks at the city, turning away from the sea with the sailing ship, because it is beyond her strength to look at the departing beloved forever. And in her eyes, not only does her Carthage disintegrate “in the haze of a fire, trembling between flame and smoke,” but the whole world collapses. According to legend, she ordered her soldiers to build this fire in order to burn her body on it, after she commits suicide by throwing herself on a sword. In another version of this legend, Dido herself threw herself into this fire alive.

In general, all these ancient legends exist in numerous versions that differ significantly from each other. And the attitude of the descendants towards them is also different - from sublimely tragic to ironic. So, for example, the medieval Spanish poet Bartolome Leonardo de Argensol (1562 - 1631) responded to this theme of great love with a cynical epigram:

Alas, Dido, from the very beginning
your affairs went badly with your husbands:
when the first one came, you ran away,
when the second escaped, you died.

But this is so, by the way. We return to Brodsky. His extended metaphors sometimes fill the entire poem. And this feature is observed in Brodsky from the earliest period of his work. At the age of twenty, the poet appears texts that are striking in their depth, filled with philosophical content.

Fish live in winter.
Fish chew oxygen.
Fish swim in winter
touching eyes
ice.
There.
Where deeper.
Where is the sea.
Fish.
Fish.
Fish.
Fish swim in winter.
The fish want to swim.
Fish swim without light.
Under the sun
winter and shaky.
Fish swim from death
eternal way
fish.
Fish do not shed tears:
resting his head
in lumps,
in cold water
get cold
cold eyes
fish.
Fish
always silent
for they-
silent.
Poems about fish
like fish,
stand across
throat.
(“Fish in Winter”, 1961)

Fish are people, water is time. Interpretations of Brodsky's metaphors by different critics sometimes differ from each other in a fairly wide range. Let me express my opinion about this text. In my opinion, Brodsky's fish are not just abstract people, but those people who surrounded him and whose life he could directly observe. That is, the Soviet people, immersed in hopeless leaden everyday life without the slightest hope of swimming to the light. That is how I perceived this poem when I first read it, at about the same age.

Here is another metaphorical poem written by Brodsky around the same period:

The stars haven't gone out yet.
The stars were right there
When they woke up
In the chicken coop on the roost
And yelled out loud
... The silence was dying.
Like the silence of a temple
With the first sound of the chant.
Oratai got up
And cattle in plowshares
Harnessed, yawning
Unhappy and sleepy.
It was at the beginning.
The approach of the sun
It all meant
And it went up
Above the fields
Over mountains.
The roosters were setting off
For pearl grains.
They didn't like millet.
They wanted better
The roosters were burrowing
In dung heaps.
But the grain was found
But the grain was extracted
And about it from the perch
At dawn they shouted:
- We found it ourselves.
And they cleaned themselves.
Let's talk about luck
With my own voices.
In this hoarse wheezing
Over the years
Behind the ages
I see the matter of time
Opened by roosters.
(“Roosters, 1958).

Here is the interpretation of this text by Victor Kulle (In the collection “Joseph Brodsky: Creativity, Personality, Fate”, “Results of Three Conferences”, St. Petersburg: Zvezda Magazine, 1998):

In "Roosters" the theme of time is already set as the leading one for poetic creativity. Roosters seeking and finding pearl grains - a metaphor for poets. The metaphor is youthfully sharp: in contrast to Akhmatov's "litter", the pearls of poems are extracted from manure. It is not without features of autoparody. But the parodic cry "in the chicken coop / on the perch" suddenly acquires an epic tone: "... Silence died / like the silence of a temple / with the first sound of the chorale."

The mentioned “features of autoparody” are alarming. Why would it be, speaking of the high art of poetry, to use such vocabulary as “shouted gutturally”, “burrowed into dunghills”, “in this hoarse wheezing”? In addition, there is a clear opposition: oratay - roosters. Oratai go to plow the land, and the roosters - “for pearl grains”, no less. And where are these grains found? - In manure, of course, where else. And they find. And they report good luck. Loudly, albeit with hissing and wheezing. I don’t know about you, but these roosters remind me of Soviet scientists-philosophers-Marxists, raking dung heaps laid by bearded classics, extracting “pearl grains” of great wisdom from these heaps and proclaiming to the whole world about these epochal finds in their dissertations: “ Marx's teaching is omnipotent because it is true!”, “The electron is as inexhaustible as the atom!”, well, and so on.

Not all of Brodsky's metaphorical texts are complex and require deciphering. He has metaphors that are understandable, transparent, and at the same time surprisingly sincere:

Trees in my window, in a wooden window
the village after the rain doubly
surrounded by puddles
sentry strengthened by dead souls.

There is no earth under them - but foliage in the sky,
and my reflection in your eyes,
preparing mentally for the division,
I, like the new Chichikov, find it.

My upside down forest, repaying quite
due to me, outside fumbles with his hand at the bottom.

A boat floating on dry land bounces on a wave.
There are twice as many trees in a wooden window.
(“Trees in my window...”, 1964)

A wooden house in the village of Norenskaya, surrounded after rain by puddles comparable in area to lakes. Trees are reflected in them, as in Escher's engraving. These reflections seem to double the number of trees perceived by the eye. But reflections are not real trees, but only an image, an illusion. Therefore, Brodsky compares them with dead souls. Well, for a person who grew up in the paradigm of Russian culture, naturally, where there are dead souls, there are Chichikov. The overturned forest fumbles with his hand at the bottom, the house is like a boat, albeit floating on dry land. And now in this “boat”, jumping on a wave in the author’s imagination, the memorial museum parasite poet (promised in the first decade of April 2015).

Brodsky had a famous predecessor who, in his youth, liked to play with outrageous comparisons and metaphors, like:

bald lantern
Voluptuously removes
From the street
Black stocking.

Do you recognize? Or here's another:

Now dragged wounded evening.
Fastened for a long time
curvy,
rough,
and suddenly, -
breaking fat shoulders,
burst into tears, poor, on the neck of Warsaw.
Stars in blue chintz handkerchiefs
squealed:
"Murdered
Expensive,
My dear!"

Also written at the age of twenty. A poet would be beautiful if he did not equate his pen with a bayonet. And Brodsky has his own revived evening, which I personally like much more. Listen to the music:

Brown city. Fan
palm trees and tiles
old buildings.
Starting from the cafe, evening
enters it. sits down
to an empty table.

In gilded rays
ultramarine sky
bell, exactly
someone jangles keys:
sound filled with bliss
for the homeless. Dot

lights up nearby
with the bell tower of the cathedral.
Looks like Vesper.
Looking after him,
let it not be full of reproach,
but doubts, evening

Drinking his coffee
coloring his cheekbones.
pays for this
cup. hat on eyebrow
pushing up, gets up from a chair,
folds the newspaper

And it comes out. empty
street sees off
long in black
couple figure. flock
shadows surround him.
Under a canopy - useless

rabble: bad manners,
stains, tattered loops.
He says wearily:
"Gentlemen officers.
Speak up immediately.
The time has come.

And now - scattered.
You, Colonel, what do you mean
that onion smell?"
He unties the crow
horse. And rides
further west.
(“Mexican divertissement. Merida.”, 1975)

Even when he was just a boy, Brodsky did not experience uncertainty and inconvenience in the roll call with the great, "icon-painting" poets, Russians and not only. It cost him nothing to start his poem with a line, for example, from Blok.

And eternal battle! Rest only in our dreams
Through blood and dust...
Flying, flying steppe mare
And crushes the feather grass...
(A. Blok, “On the Kulikovo field”, 1908)

And eternal battle.
Rest only in our dreams.
And let nothing
will not disturb dreams.
Gray night,
and dozing birds
swaying in the blue silence.

And eternal battle.
Dawn attacks.
And the bullets
learned to sing
shouted to us
What else is Immortality...
... And we just wanted to survive.

Forgive us.
We boiled to the end
and perceived the world
like a parapet.
Hearts were torn
tossed and snored,
like horses,
came under artillery fire.

Say... there...
not to wake up again.
let nothing
will not disturb dreams.
...What of it
that we didn't win
what of that
why didn't we come back?
(I. Brodsky, "And the eternal battle", 1957 - 1961)

Look, it turned out pretty good, didn't it? And later he got to Pushkin, and to Dante:

I loved you: love still, perhaps
In my soul it has not completely died out;
But don't let it bother you anymore;
I don't want to sadden you with anything.
I loved you silently, hopelessly.
Either timidity or jealousy languish;
I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,
How God forbid you be loved to be different.
(A. Pushkin, 1829)

I loved you. Love still (perhaps
that's just pain) drills into my brain.
Everything was blown to pieces.
I tried to shoot myself, but it's difficult
with weapon. And next: whiskey:
which one to hit? Spoiled not trembling, but
thoughtfulness. Crap! Everything is not human!
I loved you so much, hopelessly,
how God grant you others - but will not!
He, being much more
will not create - according to Parmenides - twice
this heat in the blood, wide-boned crunch,
so that the fillings in the mouth melt from thirst
touch - “bust” cross out - mouth!
(I. Brodsky, “Twenty sonnets to Mary Stuart”, 1974)

With humor, with irony - in my opinion, it's just a brilliance! And in the next sonnet, the first line is taken from “ Divine Comedy” Dante:

Having passed your earthly path to the middle,
I, declaring in the Luxembourg Gardens,
look at the hardened gray hairs
thinkers, writers; and back-
ladies and gentlemen walk ahead,
the gendarme turns blue in the green, mustache,
the fountain purrs, the children cry,
and there is no one to turn to with "go to".
And you, Marie, tirelessly
you stand in a garland of stone friends -
French queens during it -
silently, with a sparrow on his head.
The garden looks like a cross between the Pantheon
with the famous "Breakfast on the Grass".

And I am absolutely sure that if the classics were alive, they would not be offended at all by him.

“Breakfast on the Grass” is the name of a painting by the impressionist Edouard Manet, which at one time shocked a decent Parisian public. It depicts a picnic - dressed men and completely naked ladies. Go ahead:

Golden dovecote by the water
Affectionate and whitening green;
The salty breeze sweeps
Black boats narrow footprints.
(A. Akhmatova, "Venice", 1912)

Voices in the distance, cries like "bastard!
go away!" in a foreign dialect. But there is nothing clearer.
And the best lagoon in the world with a golden dovecote
It sparkles strongly, the pupil is tearing down.
(I. Brodsky, “In Italy”, 1985)

And passion is tired of throwing its mane,
And adoration is a stormy channel
The tormented rider of the mattress
Already straightening along the rod,
(B. Pasternak, from the original version of the poem “Spektorsky”, published in the almanac “Circle”. Subsequently, the poet excluded this scene.)

Don't talk about me. No need for anyone.
Take care of yourself, mattress rider.
I was not an extra mouth, but an extra tongue
latent rodent vocabulary.
(I. Brodsky, “Letter to an oasis”, 1994)

Harness, life, my sister...
(“To the album of Natalia Skavronskaya”, 1969)

“Life is my sister” or “Sister is my life” is recognizable in any order.

Of course, these are not borrowings. It would probably be correct to say - reminiscences. And almost always - ironic.

Do not withdraw your hands, do not avoid the burn,
measuring the degree of the angle of an alien
in the geometry of the poor, whose triangle is a multiple
crowned with a hundred-watt dusty tear.
You know, when winter disturbs the Krasnonos forest,
when the triumph of the peasant is in question,
(“Remember the dump of things on the iron chair”, 1978)

And Nekrasov was not forgotten. And here's more:

Night. Camera. Top.

(Night. Street. Lantern. Pharmacy.)

Or am I already nitpicking? Reminds (can I say so?) Brodsky and such a device as the “circumcised word”. See:

Alley, alley...
Tightened the throat with a loop.
(A. Akhmatova, “Third Zachatievsky”, 1940)

You won't tell a mosquito
"Soon I, like you, will die."
From a mosquito's point of view,
man is not dead.
(I. Brodsky, “You won’t tell a mosquito”, 1993)

And kiss the image
with the cry of the circumcised victim...
(I. Brodsky, "Performance", 1985 - 1989)

Brodsky loves to insert into his poems (as he himself called them) various hyperboles and paradoxes. And he does it very nicely:

Sometimes it's so quiet, in short,
What do you hear the sighs of the flounder at the bottom
(“Friend, gravitating toward hidden forms of flattery...”, 1970)

The sea for the fourth day deafly buzzes at the dam.
Put down your book, take a needle;
darn my linen without lighting the lamps:
from the gold of the hair is light in the corner.
(“October Song”, 1971)

Such a frost that if they kill, then let
From firearms.
.....
Today I dreamed that I was lying
In your bed. So it was.
(“Bobo's Funeral”, 1972)

Corbusier has something in common with the Luftwaffe,
That both worked hard
Over the changing face of Europe.
.....
We drink wine under the big summer stars
In an apartment on the twentieth floor -
At the level already reached
Soared here once into the air.
(“The Rotterdam Diary”, 1973)

What makes history? - Bodies.
Art? - Decapitated body.
(“Twenty sonnets to Mary Stuart”, 1974)

I'm not just going crazy, but I'm tired over the summer
You climb into a chest of drawers for a shirt, and the day is lost.
(“Part of Speech”, 1976)

And a cold gust pushes back into the mouth
barking dogs, not like your words.
(“Tide”, 1981)

Of course, I have not touched on many interesting texts and topics in this article. To be continued. In addition, there is Mr. Google, I recommend. Far from all the opinions about Brodsky's poetry posted on the Internet can be agreed. I am sure that some people will have complaints about my remarks and comments. So we are not obliged to obey the unanimity of mind directed “from above” (“connected by one goal / bound by one chain”), that time has passed, thank God.

Reviews

The work is very interesting. I read with curiosity and admiration! Of course - Brodsky's poems are not road reading.
So far I've only read half of it.
In the collection Part of Speech, the lines - "I knew that I exist while you were with me," and on the Internet - "I did not know that I exist while you were with me." So there is a typo in my collection and I am glad that I accidentally discovered this error. How much the particle "not" changes the meaning of the phrase. Although the first option is also not devoid of poetry, but the deep meaning is lost.
"Crescent moon floats in a dusty window pane
over the crosses of Moscow, like a dashing victory of Islam."
(“The season is winter”, 1967-1970)
Today, this can be taken as a prophecy (((

With great gratitude!

Her concert activity for the sake of writing new songs and a new album, presented her first new composition in the last five years.

This is the song "Joseph" based on a poem by Joseph Brodsky. Or rather, not "on", but "based on" his stanzas "New Stanzas for August", dedicated to Marina Basmanova ("MB"), and the poem "Rumyantseva's Victories". Both works Nobel laureate dated 1964.

Zemfira took some of the stanzas from the stanzas, remade them a little for herself, threw out most of them, added something from Rumyantsev's Victories and dedicated the new work to Joseph Brodsky himself, whose name in English is. sounds like Joseph.

Zemfira first presented this composition to the public at the beginning of 2018, and then the singer performed it at her concerts, including at the Afisha Picnic festival in early August.

In the text of the song "Joseph", below, the original words from Brodsky's stanzas are crossed out, which for some reason did not suit the singer. And those with which Zemfira replaced them are highlighted underlining.

Zemfira released a new song "Joseph" on the verses of Joseph Brodsky ✨ Russian electronic musician Mujuice took part in its creation, the cover was designed by Renata Litvinova and designer Gosha Rubchinsky.

Listen to the news on Yandex.Music: https://t.co/jv4bpsXR2e pic.twitter.com/bom3i1Vll8

— Yandex.Music (@yandexmusic) September 3, 2018

(The first stanza of Brodsky's stanzas is taken almost entirely)

September began on Tuesday.
It rained all night.
All the birds have flown away.
Only I'm so lonely and brave
He didn't even look after them.
Deserted Cold the sky is destroyed
The rain is pulling pulled together clearance.
I don't want south.

Forgive me if something is wrong
(No scenes, moaning)
Blessed me cognac
At the risk of confessions.
All of you claims - to it.
Lack of bread
And I chew on the darkness.
Heaven bless you.

(By the way, this insert also looks ambiguous like the singer's apology to the poet Brodsky ... Then Zemfira returns to the IX stanza of "New Stanzas for August", throwing out the first two lines from it, and then also the last three and a half)

Friend Polydeuces, here everything has merged into a blur.
No groaning will come out of my mouth.
Here I am with my coat open
And the world flows into the eyes through a sieve,
Through the sieve of incomprehension.
I am deaf. God, I'm blind.
I do not hear words, and exactly twenty watts
The moon is burning. Let it be. Through the skies
I will not lay a course between stars and drops.
Let the echo here carry through the forests
Not a song, but a cough.

Yes, And my heart is torn stronger and stronger for you,
And that's why it's getting further,
And in my voice more and more falseness.
But you consider it a debt to fate,
For a debt to fate that does not require blood
And a blunt wounding needle.
And if you're waiting for a smile - wait!
I will smile. smile above yourself
Grave roof is more durable
And lighter than the smoke above the chimney.
I will smile a smile over myself!

Brodsky's friend: these are just fragments, there must be some kind of semantic connection

Mikhail Milchik, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for the Creation of the Joseph Brodsky Museum, in an interview with the Moskva Speaks radio station, noted that the compositions of Brodsky chosen for the song do not fit together very well.

“My assessment is subjective. I didn’t like it. It’s not that there is no bright musical image, from my point of view, but that fragments from different Brodsky’s poems are used in one song. This can be in principle ", but then there must be some semantic connection. It seems to me that it is not here. These are just fragments connected by one performer and one melody. But any artist, artist can be wrong about something. This is a subjective opinion. For someone it is I really liked it, and thank God," he said.

Milchik, who was friends with Iosif Brodsky, also believes that it will be difficult for a listener who is not familiar with the original works to make out the lyrics in the song: “There, in the very manner of performance, the words are lost. I forgot, it's quite difficult to recognize them."

The recording of the single "Joseph", Zemfira's first officially released composition since 2013, was attended by the electronic musician Mujuice, the guitarist of the "Obe Two" band Dmitry Emelyanov, as well as Steve Watson and Mike Hillier.

The cover was designed by Gosha Rubchinsky and Renata Litvinova.