It'd be great if you were able to bring us more Russian poetry in future posts. If you're taking requests, Alexander Blok is a figure whose work I'd love better to understand.
I agree, Martin -usually I don't like analysis of poetry, as it ruins some magic, to me, as in how Pushkin had said, "алгеброй гармонию поверив" ; yet this essay is tender, thorough, wise, magnetic even, in short, excellent indeed.
Thank you, Lisa. Enjoyed this post tremendously.
(Needless to add -I happen to love Brodsky)
(I hope you're subscribed to Larisa Rimerman -she has an essays' cycle on Russian Poets Before abd After Revolution, including Blok. She's very passionate, knowledeable, and does an amazing work bringing Russian poets to the readers, their work and their often very tragic fate)
But I think you might have missed a detail. The poem is written in 1972: this is the year of Brodsky's exile. He was writing it as he was embarking to his own "Trojan war", with very slim chances of return (and in fact, we know, he famously never did return, staying with his "Calypso" forever).
Moreso, he was leaving in the Soviet Union his extramarital five-year-old son, Andrei Basmanov, who, I think, is the true recipient of the poem.
Brodsky has several poems about how he, trough exile, was loosing his connection to the homecountry, to his language and his culture. He also has many poems dedicated to the woman he left there, Marina Basmanova. But this is, I think, the only one that is implicitly about his son, whom he might have never seen after his banishment. And this one is somehow even more personal.
Very interested in more Russian poetry! Thank you for this!
I think it’s worth noting too that Palamedes’ trick was to see through Odysseus’ fake madness when he was being recruited to fight in the Trojan war (which he wanted to avoid). Very telling is the way this unfolded: Palamedes put Telemachus in Odysseus “mad” path who was then forced to stop his crazy plowing in order to protect his son -and thus reveal that he was not insane. He then had no excuse but to go to the Trojan war.
Thematically, this means that Telemachus was in danger when he literally was “in Odysseus’ path”. Which alludes to the same present predicament after the war: Odysseus -now corrupted by the War- has to protect his son from his own influence, by getting out of his way.
👏👏👏🙌🙌🙌🎉🎉🎉 A masterful analysis of Joseph Brodsky’s “Odysseus to Telemachas”, Liza! This analysis is a great example of why all of us subscribe to Pens and Poison! Joseph Brodsky was a brilliant man and a gifted poet. He won the 1987 Nobel Prize for Literature and was selected to be the United States Poet Laureate in 1991. His early death in 1996 at the age of just 55 of a heart attack was terribly tragic! Russian poetry is criminally underrated! It deserves MUCH more attention from the general public! As to the poem, Odysseus doesn’t recognize the Greece he lives in and loses his love for his country. He no longer cares about the world around him. He starts to look inward and focus on family, hearth and home. He will do anything and everything even if it means causing his son to hate him, to save him from being corrupted. So many universal themes in this poem! Brodsky is severely, severely underrated in my opinion! It’s such a shame that such a beautiful country like Russia and wonderful people like the Russian people live under a tyrant like Vladimir Putin! I pray one day he’ll be overthrown and Russia will become a liberal democracy! 🙏🙏🙏
You have such a rich heritage, Liza! You have such a distinguished linage! Your Russian ancestors gave the world the Periodic Table of Elements, space exploration, helicopters, the artificial heart, the T-34 tank, and the radio as well as Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander Nevesky, Mikhail Gorbachev, Leo Tolstoy, Yuri Gargarin, Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Igor Sikorsky, Anton Chekhov, and Alexander Pushkin. Your Jewish ancestors gave the world Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Joshua, Joseph with his coat of many colors, Jacob, Leah, Rachel, King Solomon, King David, Joseph, Mary, Jesus of Nazareth, Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, Alfred Dreyfus, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Jonas Salk, Irving Berlin, Stan Lee, Milton Friedman, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Danny Kaye, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Betty Friedan, Elie Wiesel, Simon Wiesenthal, Moses Mendelssohn, the ballpoint pen, the polio vaccine, Levi’s Jeans, Marvel and DC Comics, the Internet, Google, Wi-Fi, the Mobile Phone, the Camera Phone, the Teddy Bear, Video Games, and Chemotherapy.
One of my favorite books is a compilation called "Homer In English" edited by George Steiner that compiles both translations of Homer over the centuries and instances where poets like Derek Walcott et al wrote their own work connected to the Homeric tradition. This post makes me wish there was a companion volume of translations of other Homer-influenced work from other languages.
It should be noted that the translation of "Odysseus to Telemachus" is by George L. Kline, who befriended the poet in St. Petersburg in the 1960s. The Slavic scholar translated more of Joseph Brodsky's poems than anyone except the poet himself. Kline smuggled Brodsky's Russian poems to the West and also had an important role in bringing the young Brodsky to the U.S.
Many thanks Liza. That's really excellent.
It'd be great if you were able to bring us more Russian poetry in future posts. If you're taking requests, Alexander Blok is a figure whose work I'd love better to understand.
I agree, Martin -usually I don't like analysis of poetry, as it ruins some magic, to me, as in how Pushkin had said, "алгеброй гармонию поверив" ; yet this essay is tender, thorough, wise, magnetic even, in short, excellent indeed.
Thank you, Lisa. Enjoyed this post tremendously.
(Needless to add -I happen to love Brodsky)
(I hope you're subscribed to Larisa Rimerman -she has an essays' cycle on Russian Poets Before abd After Revolution, including Blok. She's very passionate, knowledeable, and does an amazing work bringing Russian poets to the readers, their work and their often very tragic fate)
The essay is excellent, thank you.
But I think you might have missed a detail. The poem is written in 1972: this is the year of Brodsky's exile. He was writing it as he was embarking to his own "Trojan war", with very slim chances of return (and in fact, we know, he famously never did return, staying with his "Calypso" forever).
Moreso, he was leaving in the Soviet Union his extramarital five-year-old son, Andrei Basmanov, who, I think, is the true recipient of the poem.
Brodsky has several poems about how he, trough exile, was loosing his connection to the homecountry, to his language and his culture. He also has many poems dedicated to the woman he left there, Marina Basmanova. But this is, I think, the only one that is implicitly about his son, whom he might have never seen after his banishment. And this one is somehow even more personal.
Appreciate the close reading of this poem. A contrast to the heroic "Ulysses" of Tennyson and altogether more human.
Very interested in more Russian poetry! Thank you for this!
I think it’s worth noting too that Palamedes’ trick was to see through Odysseus’ fake madness when he was being recruited to fight in the Trojan war (which he wanted to avoid). Very telling is the way this unfolded: Palamedes put Telemachus in Odysseus “mad” path who was then forced to stop his crazy plowing in order to protect his son -and thus reveal that he was not insane. He then had no excuse but to go to the Trojan war.
Thematically, this means that Telemachus was in danger when he literally was “in Odysseus’ path”. Which alludes to the same present predicament after the war: Odysseus -now corrupted by the War- has to protect his son from his own influence, by getting out of his way.
👏👏👏🙌🙌🙌🎉🎉🎉 A masterful analysis of Joseph Brodsky’s “Odysseus to Telemachas”, Liza! This analysis is a great example of why all of us subscribe to Pens and Poison! Joseph Brodsky was a brilliant man and a gifted poet. He won the 1987 Nobel Prize for Literature and was selected to be the United States Poet Laureate in 1991. His early death in 1996 at the age of just 55 of a heart attack was terribly tragic! Russian poetry is criminally underrated! It deserves MUCH more attention from the general public! As to the poem, Odysseus doesn’t recognize the Greece he lives in and loses his love for his country. He no longer cares about the world around him. He starts to look inward and focus on family, hearth and home. He will do anything and everything even if it means causing his son to hate him, to save him from being corrupted. So many universal themes in this poem! Brodsky is severely, severely underrated in my opinion! It’s such a shame that such a beautiful country like Russia and wonderful people like the Russian people live under a tyrant like Vladimir Putin! I pray one day he’ll be overthrown and Russia will become a liberal democracy! 🙏🙏🙏
You have such a rich heritage, Liza! You have such a distinguished linage! Your Russian ancestors gave the world the Periodic Table of Elements, space exploration, helicopters, the artificial heart, the T-34 tank, and the radio as well as Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander Nevesky, Mikhail Gorbachev, Leo Tolstoy, Yuri Gargarin, Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Igor Sikorsky, Anton Chekhov, and Alexander Pushkin. Your Jewish ancestors gave the world Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Joshua, Joseph with his coat of many colors, Jacob, Leah, Rachel, King Solomon, King David, Joseph, Mary, Jesus of Nazareth, Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, Alfred Dreyfus, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Jonas Salk, Irving Berlin, Stan Lee, Milton Friedman, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Danny Kaye, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Betty Friedan, Elie Wiesel, Simon Wiesenthal, Moses Mendelssohn, the ballpoint pen, the polio vaccine, Levi’s Jeans, Marvel and DC Comics, the Internet, Google, Wi-Fi, the Mobile Phone, the Camera Phone, the Teddy Bear, Video Games, and Chemotherapy.
One of my favorite books is a compilation called "Homer In English" edited by George Steiner that compiles both translations of Homer over the centuries and instances where poets like Derek Walcott et al wrote their own work connected to the Homeric tradition. This post makes me wish there was a companion volume of translations of other Homer-influenced work from other languages.
It should be noted that the translation of "Odysseus to Telemachus" is by George L. Kline, who befriended the poet in St. Petersburg in the 1960s. The Slavic scholar translated more of Joseph Brodsky's poems than anyone except the poet himself. Kline smuggled Brodsky's Russian poems to the West and also had an important role in bringing the young Brodsky to the U.S.