sacrifice. Such sacrifice also entails the idea that
the hero (or the poet) acts alone. The rewards for
what the Russians callpodvizhnichestvo(martyr-
dom achieved through heroic feat, expressed in
Russian with a word of the same root—podvig)
preclude personal happiness. Brodsky identifies
with Aeneas through the act ofpodvizhnichestvo,
but there is an undisguised feeling of uneasiness
and self-contempt connected with abandonment
of the hero’s human ties. This idea ofpodvizhni-
chestvooverlapping with the presence of anti-
heroic shame finds yet another more articulated
reflection in the following poem which invokes
the myth of Theseus.
To Lycomedes on Scyros
I abandon this city, as once Theseus abandoned
the labyrinth, leaving the Minotaur
to rot, and Ariadne to murmur words of love
in Bacchus’ embrace.
This is my victory!
An apotheosis of moral virtue [podvizhnichestvo].
But God has arranged our meeting
at just that moment when in the middle of it
all,
with our endeavors accomplished,
we now stroll through the vacant lot,
with booty in our hands leaving forever
these places, with no intention of ever com-
ing back.
At the end of the day, a murder is
a murder. The duty of mortals
is to take up arms against all monsters.
But who has said that monsters are immortal?
For secretly God—lest we arrogantly assume
ourselves to be different from the vanquished—
takes away any reward when the exultant
mob is not looking
and bids us to be silent. And we walk away.
This time, for sure, we do leave for good.
Men can
return to where they committed crime,
but men do not return to the place of their
humiliation.
On this point God’s design and our feeling
of humiliation
coincide so completely that we leave behind
our back
the night, the rotting beast, the exultant
mob, our homes,
our hearthfires, and Bacchus in a vacant lot
kissing Ariadne in the dark.
But one day the return is inevitable. Back
home.Back to the native hearth. And my own
journey
will pass through this very city. So God
grant that I
shall not carry with me then the double-
edged sword—
since cities start, for those who inhabit them,
with central squares and towers—
but for the traveler—with their outskirts.
The title of this poem is striking. Lycomedes
is an obscure mythological figure, a legendary
king of Scyros famous mostly for the fact that
Thetis, in order to hide her son Achilles, puts
him among the daughters of Lycomedes dis-
guised in girl’s dress. However, a more obscure
mythological tradition related by Plutarch
asserts that after the rebellion in his native
Athens, Theseus was banished and went to
Scyros and was murdered there by King Lyco-
medes. Brodsky’s choice of Lycomedes as an
addressee of Theseus’ letter is unusual and
must be viewed as an integral part of the main
theme of the poem. But before any analysis of
Brodsky’s treatment of the myth, some back-
ground is necessary.
Classical antiquity offers several versions of
the abandonment of Ariadne by Theseus. In
bothHeroides10 andMetamorphoses8.175ff.,
Theseus deserts Ariadne before the arrival of
Bacchus. InCatullus64, Theseus is not justified
in his forsaking of Ariadne. The beautiful cover
on the marriage bed of Peleus and Thetis repre-
sents in detail Ariadne’s agony after Theseus has
left her alone on the island of Naxos where Bac-
chus would come to her. Catullus’ description,
however, is mostly concerned with Ariadne’s
state of mind, and the deeds of Theseus are
understood only from her point of view. She,
like Vergil’s Dido, is seduced only to be aban-
doned. She looks toward the horizon where the
diminishing sail of Theseus’ ship can still be seen.
From the other side of the island the Bacchantes
are leading the way for Bacchus, her new lover.
Theseus is reviled by Ariadne as perfidus in a
manner similar to Dido’s treatment of Aeneas.
His disregard for Ariadne and her plight is pun-
ished with the suicide of his father, for in his
temporary oblivion Theseus also forgets to
exchange the black sails of mourning for the
white ones announcing the happy news of his
return (247–248):... Theseus ferocious with death, the same sorrow
that you brought to the daughter of Minos
Odysseus to Telemachus