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Less Than One: Selected Essays

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When Joseph Brodsky emigrated to the United States in 1972 as an involuntary exile from the Soviet Union, he probably believed that he'd see his parents again, that political circumstances would inevitably change. Moreover, it is only natural to believe that a forced "political" separation from one's parents could not last for long. His parents spent their final years hoping against hope that they'd see their beloved son one more time-a death wish before dying. But that faithful dream never materialized. "I know," writes Brodsky, "that one shouldn't equate the state with language but it was in Russian that two old people, shuffling through numerous state chancelleries and ministries in the hope of obtaining a permit to go abroad for a visit to see their only son before they died, were told repeatedly, for twelve years in a row, that the state considers such a visit `unpurposeful'..." Letters were mostly forbidden, but Brodsky was allowed to call his parents every week. Phone calls were monitored. Brodsky tells us that they learned how to speak "euphemistically."

"In a Room and a Half" is Brodsky's last attempt to join his parents. Brodsky's father was a professional photographer and journalist. Something of the art of photography must have been passed on to his son. This beautiful narrative was as close as Brodsky could come to presenting a family album of photographic "takes" or "frames" which emerge in the poet's memory from his childhood days. There are forty-five photos that make up "In a Room and a Half."

You cannot possibly stand outside of this memoir as a "detached witness" once you begin to read it. It is as if you were sitting late into the night with Brodsky-the last log is burning out and he begins to tell you about something that is, under ordinary circumstances, a private and solitary affair of the heart. In this sense, we feel privileged, and we want him to go on-to keep turning the pages of his lost youth, to share whatever sacred memories he has left to share about his life with his parents. It is indeed an act of defiance that is anything but sentimental. And yet, who can read this eulogy without feeling their heart drop to the floor?

We listen, and, through Brodsky's genius, enter into these forty-five narrative photographs. We can see and touch the China that his mother saved for his wedding. We hear the sounds of a faucet, the odors from the kitchen. We see the quiet, grey light of this tiny space where father, mother and son lived out their daily activities. We walk around the room with Brodsky as he tells us about the story of his parents' cherished bed. We see a feeble table with a white, luminous tablecloth under the care of his mother's hands. We see the deep blue of his father's uniform and we reach out to touch those bright yellow buttons that remind the boy of an illuminated avenue. It is all so vividly real.

Joseph Brodsky is dead now-and there is nothing that can ever separate this family again.

A fascinating view of the literary world as seen by a leading Russian emigre poet. Some of the essays (like the long dissection of an elegy by Marina Tsvetaeva) are so dense as to be almost unreadable. The equally long dissection of "September 1, 1939" by Auden,though, is like auditing a brilliant university lecture on contemporary British poetry. The paeans to Leningrad and to Brodsky's parents give a gritty feel of life in Soviet Russia. The book gives unexpected rewards, and is worth perseverin

This collection of essays is by one of the great Russian poets of this century. In it he writes of his life and poetry, and of those poets who have meant much to him. His memoir of his separation from his parents, their twelve - year effort to reunite while being refused by the Soviet Authorities is a tale of sadness, and pain.

I have just read the essay on Nadezhda Mandelstamm and through it received an insight into her life and literature. At the age of sixty- five never really having written at length before she wrote the two great memoirs of her husband's life that Brodsky considers the true cultural history of Russia in this century.

He writes of the poems of her husband and life together which she remembered.," And gradually those things grew on her. If there is any substitute for love , it'smemory. To memorize , then, is to restore intimacy.Gradually the lines of those poets became her mentality, became her identity. They supplied her not only with the plane of regard or angle of vision; more importantly, they became her linguistic norm.So when she out to write her books, she was bound to gauge-by that time already unwittingly, instinctively- her sentences against theirs. The clarity and remorselessness of her pages, while reflecting the character of her mind, are also inevitable stylistic consequences of the poetry that had shaped that mind.In both their content and style , her books are but a postcript to the supreme version of language which poetry essentially is and which became her flesh through learning her husband's lines by heart."

One of the most striking parts of this essay is Brodsky's description of the great Akhmatova's devotion to Nadezhda Mandelshtamm. Through poverty, destitution, persecution two great friends, one one of the greatest Russian poets of the century , the other the widow of another of the greatest of Russian poets stood by each other.

The humane voice of a great poet is in these essays. And they inspire and remind of the Literature that is not merely words, but rather the 'truth of life.'

Primarily known as a poet this volume shows that Joseph Brodsky was also a splendid essayist and his interests varied and his attention to detail deep and probing. Dealing with the trauma of exile his remembrance of things past is like the educational adventure of a long furlough from love and his country submerged in totalitarianism with his mentors either imprisoned, declawed or dead is still the theme upon which he is emotionally impaled.
He seems disgusted by America and in love with his disgust, the social utility of hypocrisy, the halo polishing in the upper echelons and the fawning sycophants chirruping inanely are recognizable figures on both sides of the cold war.
His paeans to poets as diverse as Mandelbaum and W.H AUDEN are astounding in their compassion , knowledge and unlike other critics never infected by logorrhea.
He can't cure what is lost in translation but he makes us aware that a poem is a form of aggression in its purest and most humane form. Brooding, dark and often pessimistic Brodsky is still an illuminating writer because he chooses to create rather than mourn and seems to say that sorrow observed is compensatory idealism but when your love cannot create you are in love with death. And he saw too much to sentimentalize sacrifice and the grim reaper.

I once met Joseph Brodsky. I was a student of English at Amherst College and I had heard that Brodsky taught a poetry course at nearby Mt. Holyoke College (for women). My girlfriend (who I later married) was a Russian pre-med student on exchange at Mt. Holyoke and introduced me. His biographer recently wrote that Joseph Brodsky said "What's the use of getting up in the morning if you can't have a cigarette with your coffee." That was funny to me because during the lecture I attended he almost drank from a cup of coffee he had put his cigarette out in. Well, I had told my Amherst friends that Brodsky had talked about "The Oddysey" as the best literature ever written and that he had almost drank a cigarette and his coffee. I guess that Brodsky remembered me and that day. My Russian wife was a stunningly beautiful woman and they were acquainted at the time, which is an aid to memory, I guess.

But his essays in the collection "Less Than One" I have almost reread a few weeks ago. I had read everything I could find by Brodsky back in the nineties and remembered this book when I saw it advertised on Amazon. Well, I'm of the opinion that Brodsky was well deserving of his Nobel Prize and contributed greatly to the years when Reagan was tearing down the Cold War. It was an outrage that the Soviets had tried Brodsky and found him to be a parasite on their system when he was nothing of the sort. At College we were well aware of his predicament and championed him as opposed to the Soviets. I married my Russian wife when (to the day) the Soviet Union fell. Some twenty years later she is a doctor in Florida and I am a teacher of English in S. Korea and a writer and poet myself. Of my many items on my "to do" list is to write a serious essay on Brodsky's poetry. He was well acquainted with the great Russian poets of his era and things literary and I am happy to be reading his essays once again.

Al leer éste libro he podido sentir con el autor , toda la tragedia que significó para él no ver a sus padres los últimos años de su vida y no poder acompañarlos en su enfermedad y muerte como así también las privaciones , cárceles y las secuelas de la guerra . Sentí el desgarro en su alma, por no poder volver a su país, por su ausencia definitiva de la belleza" abstracta " de Petersburgo. Es una obra conmovedora que me transmitió la tragedia vivida por su pueblo y por él mismo durante muchos años...En fin Brodsky hace sentir al lector como sólo puede hacerlo un gran escritor , que está a la altura de los mas importantes creadores Rusos de todos los tiempos.

Brodsky's words flow with the gentle ease of a boat ride on a sunny sunday afternoon, until you find yourself floundering at the bottom of a crashing waterfall. Repeated re-readings of the 'waterfall' line do little to lessen the impact. Brodsky holds nothing back, as he brings his mighty pen to bear against the soviet government that exiled him, and would not allow either of his parents to visit him in the remaining 12 years of their lives.

I translated this book into Hebrew and it was published by sifriat poalim.

For a reader of the old testament in the original freedom and language are one and the same.

Giora Leshem