brown clay has been crammed down my larynx,/
only gratitude will be gushing from it.’’
When my own gratitude gushes daily, it is
inspired by the rare Brodskys of the world,
poets or not—people of fame who provide
perspective.Source:Martin E. Marty, ‘‘The Wall’s Point of View,’’ in
Christian Century, Vol. 114, April 2, 1997, p. 351.
Sources
Brodsky, Joseph, ‘‘Letter to Horace,’’ inOn Grief and
Reason: Essays, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1995, p. 439.
———, ‘‘Odysseus to Telemachus,’’ inA Part of Speech,
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980, p. 58.
Brown, Clarence, ‘‘The Best Russian Poetry Written
Today,’’ inNew York Times, September 7, 1980, pp. 11, 16.
Campbell, Joseph,The Hero with a Thousand Faces,
Princeton University Press, 1973, p. 246.
Cohen, Arthur A., Review ofSelected Poems,inNew York
Times, December 30, 1973, pp. 161, 162.
‘‘President Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize,’’ Asso-
ciated Press, October 9, 2009, available at http://news.
yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_nobel_peace (accessed October 9, 2009).
Sosin, Gloria Donen, ‘‘The Nobel Prize-Winner Nobody
Knows,’’ inNew York Times, January 3, 1988, p. WC20.
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, ‘‘Ulysses,’’ in The Norton
Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2, 7th ed., Norton,
2000, pp. 1213–14.
Tolstaya, Tatyana, ‘‘Tatyana Tolstaya on Joseph Brod-
sky,’’ inThe Company They Kept: Writers on Unforget-
table Friendships, edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara
Epstein, New York Review Books, 2006, p. 219.
Torlone, Zara M. ‘‘Classical Myth in Three Poems of
Joseph Brodsky,’’ inClassical and Modern Literature,
Vol. 23, No. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 95–114.
Further Reading
Brodsky, Joseph,On Grief and Reason: Essays, Farrar,
Straus, Giroux, 1995.
This collection of essays gives interested read-
ers some insight into the mind, range of associ-
ations, and personality of Joseph Brodsky. The
first essay, ‘‘Spoils of War’’ describes the items
that arrived in Leningrad after World War II
that conveyed the West to Brodsky when he
was a child.
Campbell, Joseph,The Hero with a Thousand Faces,
Princeton University Press, 1972.
Joseph Campbell’s work in mythologies of the
world is required reading for anyone seeking to
understand the role of myth in religious
thought and psychological theory. This impor-
tant work by Campbell discusses the global
patterns in stories told round the world. Camp-
bell touches on myths about Odysseus and
Oedipus.
Ceram, C. W.,Gods, Graves, and Scholars: The History of
Archeology, Vintage Books, 1986.
First published in 1949 in German and revised
and published several times in the United
States by Knopf, Ceram’s book remains one
of the best studies of nineteenth- and early-
twentieth-century archeological explorations.
It includes Heinrich Schliemann’s efforts to
discover Troy, Jean-Franc ̧ois Champollion’s
translation of the Rosetta Stone, and Howard
Carter’s discovery of Tutankamun’s tomb.
Torlone, Zara M., ‘‘Classical Myth in Three Poems of
Joseph Brodsky,’’ inClassical and Modern Literature,
Vol. 23, No. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 95–114.
Torlone’s essay is essential reading for anyone
who wants to understand how classical myth
is appropriated by Brodsky. Torlone also
explains the original Russian text and how
certain Russian words were translated into
English to create the English text.Odysseus to Telemachus