of these lines deserves explication. Initially, the
word ‘‘monster’’ appears in Russian as ‘‘chudo-
vishe,’’ which is a neutral word that can be applied
equally either to a scary creature or to a dominat-
ing police state. However, in the latter usage, also
translated into English as ‘‘monsters,’’ Brodsky
chooses the syncopated version of the same
word ‘‘chudishe,’’ which usually is applied ironi-
cally as a cartoonish version of the real monster.
The monster that brings death becomes reduced
to an awkward, almost funny creature which
should not be feared but ridiculed.
The late sixties in Russia was a time that still
wistfully remembered theottepel(the ‘‘thaw’’)
after the freezing, terrifying years of Stalin’s
rule. The monster, however, even if weakened
and already ridiculous, was only half dead, and
the ‘‘reward’’ for even the suspicion of dissidence
was either a ‘‘journey’’ to prison in the outskirts
of the Soviet empire or for the fortunate ones
exile to the West. Brodsky would experience
both, for the poem is prophetic of his final exile
from Russia in 1972. ‘‘This time again we go for
good,’’ echoes the last phrase of the first stanza
‘‘with no intention of ever coming back.’’ The
reason for such a drastic cutting of all ties is
rather simple: one cannot return to the place of
humiliation—the notion applicable to both a
hero and a poet. The home left behind is lost
amid the ‘‘rotting beast’’ and the ‘‘exultant mob.’’
The first phrase once again reiterates the idea of
a half-dead beast (the decaying Soviet machine).
The second phrase, on the other hand, empha-
sizes the gap between the aspirations of the intel-
ligentsia and those who eagerly and sincerely
hailed the leaders of the Communist party on
the steps of Lenin’s mausoleum while parading
past them on national holidays.
Strangely enough, however, the very last
stanza brings back the Odyssean motif: ‘‘But one
day we must all go back. Back home. Back to our
native hearth.’’ These lines are marked with the
disappearance of anger, irony, and even resigna-
tion. The reason for such a sudden change of heart
is not stated but is self-evident, as in Odysseus’
case: the poet’s self-identity is connected with the
land from which he comes. The humiliation once
endured cannot be given apriority. The only rem-
nant of anger and frustration is present in the lines
‘‘so God grant that I / shall not carry with me then
the double-edged sword,’’ but even here the mel-
ancholy of the hero’s (poet’s) ‘‘new’’ status as an
outsider is clearly expressed. Brodsky’s Theseus
has very little in common with any Theseus in the
classical accounts: he is neither a treacherous man,
nor is he a coward running away from the divine
wrath. Nor is he experiencing any sudden loss of
memory. Theseus emerges as almost a tragic hero
of sorts, one that stands for the figure of the poet
himself: bitter, exiled, and contemplative.
In another poem, ‘‘The year 1972,’’ Brodsky
will return to the theme of Theseus one more
time:
Like Theseus from Minos’ cave emerging
into the open air and carrying the skin,
I don’t see the horizon, but a minus sign
applied to life behind.
Sharper than his sword is this blade.
By it the best part is cut off.
Thus is wine taken away from the sober
And salt from the bland. I feel like crying.
But what’s the use?
As David Bethea observes, there is no men-
tion of Ariadne this time. The emergence of
Theseus from the cave represents for Brodsky
exile into the West and ‘‘the minus sign’’ is the
only mention of the losses and betrayals of his
prior life. This clinging to the myth of Theseus
allows Brodsky to convey the painful experience
of separation from his loved ones and to express
through the images of sword and blade the idea
of impotence, mostly linguistic, since the exile
from Russia is associated for him with the loss
of his most powerful weapon, his verse.
The poems discussed in this essay do not
comprise a cycle in the traditional poetic
sense.... In each of the poems discussed, we
can see sets of allusions and verbal images that
connect us both with Brodsky’s poetics and his
epoch. The poems are somber and the unifying
themeisthatoffailureandbitterness.Therea-
sons for that lie not only in the autobiograph-
ical circumstances that conditioned these early
poems of Brodsky, but also in the whole Rus-
sian approach to poetry, which is very rarely
uplifting and encouraging. The poet commits
an act of conscious rebellion when he composes
poetry removed from the panegyrics of the
party-line poets. Svetlana Boym calls dissident
artthe‘‘artofestrangement.’’Classicalmyth
offered the poets of the Soviet era a practical
road to alienation from their own epoch, alien-
ation that should not be interpreted as escap-
ism. Classicism becomes a useful means of
disguising discontent with the existing situation
under the costumes of classical antiquity, aOdysseus to Telemachus