his losses. The classical construct serves as a
vehicle for exploring the feelings that might very
well hound a man who has committed so many
years to national interests and in the process for-
saken the needs of his family and his own private
youthful aspirations. That Brodsky chose this
persona to speak this particular poem suggests
that the imagined moment for Odysseus reson-
ated with the poet in a personal way. It makes
sense to imagine that the poet, facing permanent
exile from his native home and alienation from his
son who lives there, found it meaningful to envi-
sion Odysseus in this new way.
Classical Allusion
Allusion is a deliberate reference to a literary or
historical character, event, or object. Classical
allusions refer to characters, events, objects, or
ideas in ancient Greek and Roman art, litera-
ture, and philosophy. Such allusions tap the
knowledge readers have of earlier art, of works
of literature, of mythology, and of cultural and
scientific ideas and historical events. Writers use
allusions deliberately in order to place the
present work within a given cultural landscape,
to define their own composition in terms of or in
contrast to earlier material, and to exploit reader
recognition in order to generate a deeper sense of
the work’s meaning. The effectiveness of allu-
sion, thus, depends on the reader’s ability to
recognize its application and significance in the
present text. Using names from Greek mythol-
ogy allows Brodsky to frame his poem with what
readers already know about these mythic char-
acters. The choice allows the poet to characterize
his speaker and the speaker’s son in light of the
ancient models, exploiting similarities and simul-
taneously distinguishing these modern charac-
ters from their archetypes.
Much of ‘‘Odysseus to Telemachus’’ draws
on the epicsIliadandOdyssey, attributed to the
early Greek poet Homer (c. 800B.C.–c. 750B.C.),
specifically in the use of Odysseus as the speaker
and his son Telemachus as the one addressed in
the epistolary poem, along with oblique referen-
ces to the siege of Troy, Circe, and the sailors
having been turned to swine. However, informa-
tion about Palamedes is not found in Homer’s
epics, and so Brodsky draws from the Roman
works of Virgil (70B.C.–19B.C.) and Ovid (43
B.C.–A.D. 18) for the allusions to the trick Pala-
medes played on Odysseus. In addition to these
references, Brodsky alludes to Oedipus, whose
famous acts of slaying his father and marrying
his mother are retold by Sophocles in the tragic
trilogy,Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and
Antigone. Brodsky’s use of the allusion to Oedi-
pus incorporates the theory espoused by psy-
chologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who
called a son’s competition with his father for
his mother’s love an Oedipus complex.Historical Context
Emigration from USSR
Under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev (1906–
1982), who headed the Soviet government from
1964 to 1982, the strict regulations that governed
residents and controlled their activities and their
relocation loosened slightly. During the 1960s
and 1970s, increasing numbers left the country.
Many of these departing people belonged to three
somewhat overlapping groups: Russian Jews
seeking residency in Israel; dissidents and other
so-called politically undesirable individuals, who
either sought freedom in the West or who were
forced into exile; and highly educated people who
were part of a mid-twentieth-century movement
of Eastern bloc intellectuals to the West, com-
monly called the brain drain. As a Jew by birth
though nonreligious, as a creative writer whose
work was considered objectionable by the Soviet
government, and as an intellectual who sought
freedom of expression, Joseph Brodsky shared
characteristics with these groups of emigrants.
In the mid-twentieth century, anti-Semitism
in the USSR was explicit and pervasive, and
many Russian Jews were nonpracticing or secu-
lar as a result. However, after Israel won the
1967 Six-Day War, pro-Zionist feelings surged
among these Russian Jews and many sought to
emigrate.
Found guilty of the charge of parasitism and
later objecting to the strict Soviet censorship of
his work, Brodsky emigrated in 1972. Like other
artists and intellectuals, he well understood the
oppression of the Soviet state and the drawbacks
of certain aspects of Soviet life. Exile from his
native Leningrad gave him access to freedom of
expression and the press in the West at the same
time that it cost him his native home and contin-
ued daily relationship with family and friends.
Emigrants who left the Soviet Union under sim-
ilar circumstances included Aleksandr Solzhenit-
syn, who was forced to leave in 1974. During the
1960s, an estimated 4,000 people were allowed orOdysseus to Telemachus