extensive endeavor of self-education, teaching
himself English and Polish and studying religion,
classical mythology, and philosophy, and by
the late 1950s, he was writing poetry in Russian
and translating into Russian from the original
Polish the poetry of his favorite poet Czeslaw
Milosz.
Between 1962 and 1964, Brodsky had a
romantic relationship with Marina Basonanova,
who refused to marry him but bore him a son
Andrey (also spelled Andrei) to whom she gave
her maiden name. In 1964, Brodsky was charged
with parasitism and tried by Soviet authorities.
(Parasitism is a general crime of acting in ways
that is a detriment to others or taking advantage
of others.) The penalty he received was five years
of internal exile in a labor camp, but he served
only about eighteen months. The penalty was
commuted as a result of protests made by famous
Soviet and foreign literary persons, including the
French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
In 1967, Brodsky’s first collection,Elegy for
John Donne and Other Poems, was published by
Longman in London. Refusing to subject his
work to press censorship in the Soviet Union,
Brodsky was expelled in 1972. He emigrated
from Russia to the United States where, in
1977, he became a naturalized citizen. There-
after, he published a lot in both Russian and
English. Four poetry collections appeared in
the 1970s. At the same time, individual pieces
appeared in such publications as the New
Yorker, the New York Times Book Review,
Kenyon Review,Iowa Review,andLos Angeles
Times.In 1980,A Part of Speechappeared, con-
taining the poem cycle ‘‘A Song to No Music,’’
which concludes with ‘‘Odysseus to Telema-
chus,’’ and also the poem cycle ‘‘A Part of
Speech.’’ Two other collections appeared in the
1980s. In 1992, Brodsky publishedWatermark,a
collection of essays about his seventeen winters
in Venice, and in 1995,On Grief and Reason:
Essays appeared. Other collections of essays
followed.
During these decades of exceptional produc-
tivity, Brodsky taught at a number of prestigious
U.S. institutions, beginning with the University
of Michigan, and he also received many high
honors. He was poet-in-residence at Queens Col-
lege in New York and held visiting faculty posi-
tions at Smith and Mount Holyoke colleges,
Columbia University, and Cambridge Univer-
sity. In 1978, he received an honorary degree
from Yale and was admitted to the American
Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His
1986 collection Less than One received the
National Book Critics Award. The next year he
was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. For
1991 and 1992, he served as the poet laureate of
the United States.
In 1990, Brodsky married Maria Sozzani,
and the couple had a daughter, Anna. In
1996, Joseph Brodsky died in New York of
a heart attack. He was fifty-six years old. His
collected poetry,Collected Poems in English,
1972–1999, edited by Ann Kjellberg, appeared
in 2000.POEM TEXTMy dear Telemachus,
The Trojan War
is over now; I don’t recall who won it.
The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave
so many dead so far from their own homeland. 5
But still, my homeward way has proved too long.
While we were wasting time there, old Poseidon,
it almost seems, stretched and extended space.
I don’t know where I am or what this place
can be. It would appear some filthy island, 10Joseph Brodsky(AP Images)
Odysseus to Telemachus