mask that initially seemed innocuous to Soviet
censorship concerned mainly with more aggres-
sive, explicit outbursts of dissidence.
The fates of three famous heroes are united
by the idea of abandonment and exile which
seems to be persistent in Brodsky’s poetry prior
to his emigration. The heroic characteristics usu-
ally associated with the plights and achievements
of Odysseus, Aeneas, and Theseus undergo a
transformation into an ‘‘alter ego’’ of the poet
and focus on the dimension of the mythological
plot that is anti-heroic, an aspect charged with
loss, shame, and abandonment rather than
homecoming, moral virtue, and victory.
Brodsky rewrites familiar myths, providing
the reader with an original interpretation and
modernization of the myth. In the context of
the Soviet era, it was not the heroic but rather
the anti-heroic vision of Greece and Rome that
appealed to Brodsky’s poetic imagination,
reflecting the thoughts of the poet on the verge
of exile and estrangement in a world which he
does not accept and which does not accept him.
Through his eyes we see the aftermath of the
heroic plight—alienation and ‘‘spiritual exile’’—
experienced by many intellectuals in Russia dur-
ing the 1960s. Brodsky’s treatment of his classi-
cal heroes rests on this notion of a poet as a
private individual amid the imposed collectivity
of Soviet everyday life. Classical heroes become
illuminated descriptions of the imagined ‘‘civili-
zation’’ and the choices it offers to its sons. This
civilization strikingly resembles the poet’s own
and at the same time establishes his place within
the continuity of literary tradition.
Source:Zara M. Torlone, ‘‘Classical Myth in Three
Poems of Joseph Brodsky,’’ inClassical and Modern Lit-
erature, Vol. 23, No. 1, Spring 2003, pp. 95–114.
Martin E. Marty
In the following brief essay, Marty reflects on the
life and talent of Joseph Brodsky.
Perspective on events and on oneself is hard
to gain, hard to retain. When we brush up
against famous people we usually see that fame
and celebrity have distorted their perspective
and sense of proportion. When we run into
exceptions, it’s a delight to appraise them. In
recent years I’ve read a good deal of the work
of Joseph Brodsky, the late Nobel Prize-winning
poet, but I’d not read much about him. Now I
am likely to pursue details about his life, having
read Michael Hofmann’s review in theTimes
Literary Supplement(January 10) ofSo Forth
andOn Grief and Reason, both by Hamish Ham-
ilton. Hofmann calls Brodsky ‘‘a flaneur,’’ andˆ
says that the poet’s ‘‘presence in a place always
struck me as a magnificent gift.’’ This ‘‘autodi-
dact and globe-trotter’’ was what Robert Lowell
called a ‘‘spendthrift talker.’’ Hofmann says the
poet was ‘‘bewilderingly well read and au fait,
generous, unsnobbish, stern, funny, modest
and doctrinaire.’’ His summary judgment: ‘‘The
word of such a man on literature and on literacy
is worth more than anyone else’s—and not least
because of his life.’’
He was born in what the poet might have
called ‘‘Theningrad,’’ during the siege in 1940,
and lived a full life, much of it in the U.S.
There were travails: ‘‘It is hard to think of a
man, as it were, surviving such a life, but to
Brodsky it was no big deal.’’ One of his poems
reflects: ‘‘It’s strange to think of surviving, but
that’s what happened.’’ He hated ‘‘larmoyance’’
(look it up; I had to) and ‘‘display.’’
I was struck mainly by Brodsky’s perspec-
tive on the vocation of those who lecture or
preach. We’re impressed with ourselves, but in
the view of eternity, it’s forgettable. ‘‘As far as
this room is concerned, I think it was empty just
a couple of hours ago, and it will be empty again
a couple of hours hence. Our presence in it, mine
especially, is quite incidental from its walls’ point
of view,’’ Brodsky said in his Nobel acceptance
speech.
That would not be a bad set of words to tape
on lecterns and pulpits: the walls forget the
speaker’s ego and achievement. What matters is
the lives of the people who exit the rooms. And
the walls remain standing—for other speakers,
in different decades and succeeding centuries.
Hofmann says, ‘‘I am not sure which came first
with Brodsky: the modesty or the metaphysics of
absence. Success is a chimera, so is fame.’’ Then
Hofmann quotes more of Brodsky, who makes
sense for all us who are not superstars or the
pope or Billy Graham: ‘‘On any street of any
city in the world at any time of night or day
there are more people who haven’t heard of
you than those who have.’’ Another good quote
for lecterns, pulpits and auto dashboards.
I recently bought Brodsky’s To Urania
(Noonday). Its first poem makes autobiograph-
ical references, including some to his suffering
and survivorhood, and observes: ‘‘Those who
forgot me would make a city.’’ He ends with
two lines that stick in the mind: ‘‘Yet untilOdysseus to Telemachus