Joseph Brodsky: Leningrad: Fragments [Hardcover]

Mikhail Lemkhin (Author), Czeslaw Milosz (Author), Susan Sontag (Author), Czeslaw Mitosz (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The Russian poet Joseph Brodsky actually spent a little more than half his career in the U.S. His work was a classical exploration of life's complex relationships, of the here and now of what life makes us. Exiled from Leningrad--indeed, from Russia--at 31, Brodsky never returned yet remained a citizen in his heart and mind, and his poetry and essays were framed by his memories. Photographer Lemkhin serves the poet well by gathering images of Leningrad whose visual language encourages the same degrees of attention and communication Brodsky's poetry demands. Here and there, images of Brodsky appear, always, it seems, with cigarette in hand, smiling eyes, the eyes of a poet. And what are the eyes of a poet? What does a poet see? Lemkhin's beautiful book may not answer these questions, but it comes close. With short, valuable, and touching written contributions by Czeslaw Milosz and Susan Sontag, the book merits hours of just sitting and looking. Raul Nino

Review

Enriched by Czeslaw Milosz's foreword and by Susan Sontag's moving, elegiac afterword, Lemkhin has successfully--and beautifully--arranged the many shards of his book into that whole, single portrait to which he aspired. -- The New York Times Book Review, Robin Lippincott

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux; First Edition edition (April 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374158312
• ISBN-13: 978-0374158316
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 8.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,283,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lemkhin's photography replies to Brodsky's verse., November 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Joseph Brodsky: Leningrad: Fragments (Hardcover)

Photography informs the poetics of Joseph Brodsky, photographer's son and himself no novice to the camera. Mikhail Lemkhin's double homage to the recently deceased poet and the city of his -- and Lemkhin's -- birth should be thought of as photography's own reply to Brodsky. Lemkhin calls his _Joseph Brodsky, Leningrad_ a photo-poem; to this one might only add that it is a particularly Brodskian photo-poem -- Brodskian not in its type of montage but in its predilection for montage, not in its sensibility but in the realities it conveys. To imitate Brodsky is to traduce Brodsky. Lemkhin understands that Brodsky's prime legacy is intellectual independence; his photography engages Brodsky's poetry rather than illustrates it, works with, rather than within, its visual counterparts of Brodsky's speech. The end-result belongs on the bookshelf as much as it does on the coffee-table.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars remarkable book, August 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Joseph Brodsky: Leningrad: Fragments (Hardcover)

Mikhail Lemkhin's book is a book in the fullest sense: not an album of exquisite photo studies, but a composition which transcribes a train of thought. The pages roll like clouds across the sky: Look, this is what we cherished in our lives, this is what happens to people, to stone, to memory, thanks to a little acid rain, that most noiseless rain, they call it - `time`. This is an experience of the `literature of silence`. Like a telepathic séance. The Covetous Knight's soliloquy over a chest of devaluated bank notes. Poor Knight! Over a hundred shots taken at the speed of 1/100 - in all, why that's just around a second! Someone else's story, made up mostly of the same things or signs as mine or yours, only linked in a different way to yield a personal fate. In particular, or rather, most importantly, it included a City which inspired a dream about the meaning of existence, and a Contemporary who succeeded in rendering the tonality of that meaning. But the second has passed, having absorbed almost all that could be held dear. The light wanes. The sound is off. And a question arises: Out of that which man has lost forever, is there anything that he possesses for eternity? The gaze, seasoned with peppery essence of silver, shows irony, pain, and tenderness.

Samuil Lurie, Neva Magazine (St.Petersburg, Russia)

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Photographic masterpieces, August 9, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (US) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Joseph Brodsky: Leningrad: Fragments (Hardcover)

I greatly enjoyed the two books by Mikhail Lemkhin: "Missing Frames" and "Fragments". I am especially moved by portraits. There is something about the portraits that make them very different from most others. The pictures are not posed, but don't seem to be too candid either. I get the impression that the subject is aware of the photographer, but is not posing for him, at least not physically. It is as if the subject is exposing his/her inner soul to the camera. The photographs work, in deeply satisfying way, very well. I know I will look at them again and again.