that they are nobody because that is the only way
to avoid annihilation. However, Odysseus still
feels an emotional connection to his son as evi-
denced by his opening words ‘‘my Telemachus,’’
which in Russian and English is both possessive
and a term of endearment. That is why the end-
ing of the letter, which is supposed to be the final
legacy of the father to the son, seems abrupt. If
the self-alleged Nobody uses the possessive pro-
noun charged with emotional connotation, then
the self-identity is still present. The final lines,
however, spell out for us why this subtle self-
identification is not pursued any further.
In the final lines of the poem, we encounter
two names that are equally important in the
message Odysseus is trying to convey to his
son. One is Palamedes, the hero who exposed
Odysseus’ deception when the latter pretended
to be mad to avoid going to Troy. In revenge,
Odysseus forged a letter from Priam to Pala-
medes, planted gold in his tent, and exposed
him as a traitor of the Greek army. As a result,
Palamedes was put to death by his own army. In
Brodsky’s poem, Odysseus admits that Pala-
medes was right all along in forcing Odysseus
to join the Trojan campaign and depriving his
son of a relationship with his father. The explan-
ation of this sudden reversal is clear in the allu-
sion to Oedipus. Odysseus has found probably
the most important redeeming feature of his
absence from the life of his son, namely, that
there will be no worry about the rivalry between
father and son. This perspective of Odysseus was
never an explicit part of the Homeric poem. In
fact, theOdysseybegins with the Telemachy [the
first four books of the epic] when the son comes
of age by going on a journey to become more like
his father so that he can be ready to meet him,
having fulfilled his father’s expectations. In
Homer, the continuity of the male offspring is
the single most important legacy that a man can
leave behind. In Brodsky’s poem, this continuity
can only be a source of discord; ironically, sons
are better off without their fathers. There is little
doubt that the poem also deals with Brodsky’s
conflicted feelings towards his son Andrei.
‘‘Odysseus to Telemachus,’’ written in 1972, is a
moving farewell to his son whom he left in Len-
ingrad after emigrating to the United States. At
the time when Brodsky left Russia forever, his
son was still a small boy not unlike Telemachus.
This letter then can be interpreted as a muted
quest for the justification of why the abandon-
ment by the father is best for the future of the
son. Brodsky’s emigration is interpreted not in
the terms of neglect but a liberation of his son
from a painful legacy. In the society wherehomo
homini lupus,to be the son of a dissident poet is a
sure way to be trampled by the state machine. To
be a son of Nobody is by far a better choice. The
reference to Oedipus, however, is more ironic
and more disturbing. Brodsky chooses to evoke
the fate of Oedipus not in Sophoclean but rather
Freudian terms: the patricide and the incest
become a conscious choice rather than crimes
committed in ignorance. The undercurrent of
this reference, however, leads to the same con-
clusion as the reference to Palamedes: sons are
better off without their fathers.
In 1993, some twenty years after ‘‘Odysseus
to Telemachus,’’ Brodsky writes ‘‘Ithaka,’’ a
poem which serves as an epilogue to his earlier
poem:
To return here after twenty years,
to find barefoot in the sand your own foot
prints
and the mongrel dog’s barking fills the entire
wharf
not because he is happy but because he has
gone wild.
If you wish to, throw off those rags soaked
in sweat
but the servant who can recognize your scar
is dead,
and the one, they say, who waited for you
is nowhere to be found for she put out for
everybody.
Your son has grown tall: he is a sailor
himself
and he looks at you as if you were scum.
And the language they all shout in
is a futile labor, it seems, to decipher.
Whether it’s not that island or it is indeed
because you drowned your eye in blueness,
your eye became fastidious:
from the patch of earth, it seems, the waves
will
not forget the horizon, dashing on.
The parallels between this poem and the ear-
lier letter are apparent, but the style and the
language have changed. The first poem is filled
with the sadness and irrevocability of the time
lost. ‘‘Ithaka’’ is a reflection of an Odysseus
whose spirit has degenerated into blind cynicism.
Penelope becomes a whore, Eurycleia is dead,
Argus has gone wild, and Telemachus, althoughOdysseus to Telemachus