On Grief and Reason: Essays [Paperback]

Joseph Brodsky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 1997

Joseph Brodsky was a great contrarian and believed, against the received wisdom of our day, that good writing could survive translation. He was right, I think, though you had to wonder when you saw how badly his own work fared in English. But then perhaps the Russians hadn't expelled a great poet so much as exposed us to one of their virulent personality cults. Yet Brodsky's essays are interesting. Composed in a rather heroically determined English, clumsily phrased and idiomatically challenged, they are still inventive and alive. There are suggestive analyses of favorite poems by Hardy, Rilke, and Frost in this book, and a moving meditation on the figure of Marcus Aurelius. Though too often Brodsky goes on at self-indulgent length, he usually recaptures our attention with a characteristic aside: "The fact that we are livingdoes not mean we are not sick."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Art, especially literature, is "a form of moral insurance" that, if widely disseminated, could counteract the worst impulses of societies and governments, declares Brodsky in his eloquent 1987 Nobel lecture. In another essay, "An Immodest Proposal," the eminent poet and essayist suggests ways to make poetry much more available to the public. In an open letter to Czech president Vaclav Havel, Brodsky (who emigrated from Russia to the U.S. in 1972 after spending two years in prison as a dissident) looks squarely at the moral and economic anarchy of post-communist eastern Europe. This miscellany of reprinted essays and speeches reveals an elegant writer and incisive thinker. "Collector's Item" segues from spy novels, to a psychological profile of Cambridge spy Kim Philby, secret agent for Moscow, to an analysis of how espionage becomes a mutually destructive game. Elsewhere Brodsky champions Thomas Hardy as a modern poet of existential truths and follows Rainer Maria Rilke's poetic journey to the netherworld of Orpheus. Other pieces deal with nostalgia, lessons of history, a trip to Rio de Janeiro, Robert Frost's poetry and Roman emperor/poet Marcus Aurelius's Stoic Meditations.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

It is unfortunate that Brodsky (former poet laureate of the United States) would release a literary work with so much potential and so much disappointment. True, this collection represents some of Brodsky's most engaging insights. Pieces like the title essay represents his supreme talents as a writer; "On Grief and Reason" reveals the sagacity of Brodsky's mind by offering the reader a new way of looking at the poetry of Robert Frost through two of Frost's poems, "Come In" and "Burial." Brodsky puts Frost alongside the Virgil of the Eclogues and the Georgics. But most of the other essays fail to demonstrate the richness one expects of Brodsky's writing, e.g., his 1987 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which lacks literary merit. Ultimately, Brodsky stretches himself too thin. Not a priority purchase.?Tim Gavin, Episcopal Acad., Merion, Pa.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 504 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (April 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374525099
• ISBN-13: 978-0374525095
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #264,796 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brodsky on Frost, July 28, 2006

By 

Stuart Filler (Near Pontiac, Michigan, outside Detroit) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On Grief and Reason: Essays (Paperback)

I do not know whether I will be able to read the pieces in On Grief and Reason. I had read the title essay, which says that Frost is rough and goes through his "Home Burial," in the New Yorker, I think, and saved it, and it had deteriorated. I bought the book for the essay. It is that important, Brodsky is that important. It is the best single reading of a Frost poem that I have ever seen, but good-better-bests is not the issue. It is full of assumptions that everyone should have about what poetry is. It is how to read poetry. Stuart Filler