Joseph Brodsky was a Nobel Prize-winning Russian-Jewish poet, writer,
director and translator, who was arrested and prosecuted by the Soviet
regime before his emigration.
He was born Joseph Aleksandrovich Brodsky on May 24, 1940 in Leningrad
(St. Petersburg, Russia). He survived the Nazi siege of Leningrad
during WWII. His father, Aleksandr Brodsky, was a professional
photographer, who worked for newspapers and magazines. His mother,
Maria Volpert, was a professional interpreter. Young Brodsky was
brought up in a highly intellectual and stimulating atmosphere of his
family. He studied languages for the purpose of reading the banned
Western authors.
Joseph Brodsky was an unusual individual with his own independent
views. He was destined to be at odds with the Soviet system due to his
highly original thinking and his uncommon ways. He got tired of being
abused by the Soviet propaganda and countless portraits of Lenin at his
school. In an act of disobedience to the totalitarian system he dropped
out of school at the age of 15. Then he tried many different jobs,
including a sanitary job in the morgue at the "Kresty" prison, where he
would be imprisoned a few years later. From the age of 16 he was
writing his own poetry and produced literary translations. In 1961,
Brodsky met the leading Russian woman poet
Anna Akhmatova, at her dacha in Komarovo.
That meeting was a pivoting point in his life as a poet and man.
Anna Akhmatova and her circle was an
unofficial incubator for talented youth. She praised Brodsky's poetry
as "enchanting", and encouraged him to keep on writing. At that time
Brodsky met his first love, the artist Marianna Basmanova, who inspired
him on writing a collection of poetry, dedicated to "M. B." But his
happiness was not on the agenda of the secret police.
The Soviet regime attacked Brodsky after he wrote a poem "Isaac and
Avraam", based on the Old Testament and tried to publish it in 1963. He
was arrested for an unofficial publication in an underground edition in
1963. Then he was charged with "social parasitism" in 1964. The trial
of poet Brodsky was designed to intimidate other intellectuals during
the return of censorship under the hard-line regime of the Soviet
leader Leonid Brezhnev. The Soviet judge
announced that Brodsky was not an officially registered poet, and that
his activity does not help the construction of Communism. He was
sentenced to five years of hard labor. He was exiled to the remote
Northern village of Norenskaya in Arkhangelsk region. There he was
visited by several Russian intellectuals and cultural figures. Marianna
Basmanova went along to live with Brodsky in his exile for several
months, and in 1965 she became the mother of his son, Andrei. The civil
union between Joseph Brodsky and Marina Basmanova could not be
registered officially due to obstruction from the Soviet authorities.
Brodsky and Marina agreed to have the baby registered on the mother's
name for the safety of their child.
The unfair trial and exile of Joseph Brodsky caused political protests
from such prominent figures as
Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy,
Dmitri Shostakovich,
Anna Akhmatova,
Samuil Marshak,
Yevgeniy Yevtushenko, and the French
philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. After
their written protests, his sentence was commuted. In 1965, Brodsky
returned to Leningrad (St. Petersburg), but his poetry was still under
the Soviet censorship. That same year his first collection of poetry
was published in USA. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union Brodsky was
forcefully sent to a Soviet mental institution, where the treatment
consisted of wrapping him in cold, wet sheets. On June 4, 1972, Brodsky
became an involuntary exile from the Soviet Union. He made brief stops
in Vienna and London, and then went to USA. There he worked as a
visiting professor at several universities. In 1978 he was awarded an
honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at Yale University. In 1979,
Brodsky was indicted as a member of the American Academy and Institute
of Arts and Letters. In 1981, Brodsky received the "genius" award from
the MacArthur Foundation.
While living in America, Brodsky tried to bring his father and mother
to live with him. He sent many official requests and invitations, but
all his requests were denied by the Soviet authorities, and his parents
ended up dying in the Soviet Union without seeing Brodsky ever again.
In the 80s he published a collection of love poems, dedicated to
Marianna Basmanova, with several verses titled "M. B." He also wanted
to reunite with her and their son, Andrei Basmanov, but neither
Marianna Basmanova, nor their son, were able to leave the Soviet Union
to join Brodsky in emigration. In 1990 he married his Sorbonne student,
Maria Sozzani, who was of Russian-Italian heritage, and they had a
daughter. Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Brodsky
succeeded in bringing his son, Andrei Basmanov, for a father-son
reunion in New York, and they were together for several months. By that
time, his son already had a wife and three children living in Russia.
Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987), and
was designated Poet Laureate of the United States (1991-1992). Outside
of his writing profession, he founded a popular Russian restaurant in
New York, and also made a documentary film about the city of Venice,
which was his favorite place to visit. He died of a heart attack on
January 28, 1996, and was laid to rest in the island of San Michele in
Venice, near the tomb of
Sergei Diaghilev.
