Selected Essays
Joseph Brodsky
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This collection of essays thrusts Brodsky--heretofore known more for his poetry and translations--into the forefront of the "Third Wave" of Russian emigre writers. His insights into the works of Dostoyevsky, Mandelstam, Platonov, as well as non-Russian poets Auden, Cavafy and Montale are brilliant. While the Western popularity of many other Third Wavers has been stunted by their inability to write in English, Brodsky consumed the language to attain a "closer proximity" to poets such as Auden. The book, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, opens and closes with revealing autobiographical essay.
contents
less than one / 3
the keening muse / 34
pendulum's song / 53
a guide to a renamed city / 69
in the shadow of dante / 95
on tyranny / 113
the child of civilization / 123
nadezhda mandelstam(1899-1980):an obituary / 145
the power of the elements / 157
the sound of the tide /164
a poet and prose / 176
footnote to a poem / 195
catastrophes in the air / 268
on "september1,1939"by w.h.auden / 304
to please a shadow / 357
a commencement address / 384
flight from byzantium /393
in a room and a half /447
