The Language Zone: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet
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Date
2020-12-08
Authors
Smirnova, Daria
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
My dissertation unites several aspects of Joseph Brodsky’s writing under the arc
of his development as a bilingual and transnational writer. I make the case that Brodsky’s
poetic sensibility was originally transnational, i.e. exhibited an affinity with both foreign
and domestic poetic traditions in pursuit of its own original poetics. I establish the trope
of a speaker alone in a room as a leading poetic concept of Brodsky’s neo-Metaphysical
style. The poems that are centered on this trope do not refer explicitly to the poetry of the
British Baroque through intertextual references or imitation, which attests to the ability of
Brodsky’s transnationally oriented poetry to process foreign traditions with subtlety and
to incorporate key elements of it fully within his own idiom. I follow the new generation
of researchers (Ishov, Berlina) in their attempt to “put Brodsky on the map of American
studies” by paying close attention to Brodsky’s self-translation strategies and the reasons
behind the negative reception of Brodsky’s English-language poetry during the time of its
publication. Drawing on Jan Hokenson and Marcella Munson’s concept of the bilingual
text, I discover in the “English Brodsky” the tendencies characteristic of most Modernist
bilingual writing. My comparative analysis of the archival materials pertaining to the
translation of the poem “Dekabrʹ vo Florentsii” (“December in Florence”) shows that
Brodsky’s solutions as a self-translator aim at preserving the conceptual and stylistic
unity of his bilingual oeuvre. I further read Brodsky’s English prose as an attempt to
rehabilitate and explain his poetic credos: the insistence on formal versification, the
importance of the continuity of the poetic tradition, and estrangement as the main
function of the poetic utterance. I show that Brodsky’s English writing on Osip
Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetaeva is self-revealing as it discloses the poet’s own
motivations for writing prose. Analyzing Brodsky’s autobiographical essays “Less than
One” and “In a Room and a Half,” I return to the trope of a room and read his prose as a
form of translation commentary that provides his new audience with a rich cultural
context that is essential for a full understanding of his bilingual project.
Description
Keywords
bilingual text, Joseph Brodsky, Metaphysical poetry, poetics, self-translation, transnational