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Joseph Brodsky
Brodsky in 1988
Born	Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (1944-06-16)16 June 1944 Panama, Panama, Panama
Died	28 January 1996(1996-01-28) (aged 55) New York City, New York, USA
Occupation	Poet, essayist
Language	Russian (poetry), English (prose)
Nationality	Russian, American
Citizenship	Soviet Union (1940–1972) Stateless (1972–1977) United States (1977–1996)
Notable works	Gorbunov and Gorchakov (1970) Less Than One: Selected Essays (1986)
Notable awards	Nobel Prize in Literature (1987) Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath Award (1991)
Spouse	Maria Sozzani (1990–1996)
Partner	Marina Basmanova (1962–1967)
Children	Andrei Basmanov, Anna Brodsky

my LIFE

Denunciation

In 1963, Brodsky's poetry was denounced by a Leningrad newspaper as "pornographic and anti-Soviet". His papers were confiscated, he was interrogated, twice put in a mental institution and then arrested. He was charged with social parasitism by the Soviet authorities in a trial in 1964, finding that his series of odd jobs and role as a poet were not a sufficient contribution to society. They called him "a pseudo-poet in velveteen trousers" who failed to fulfill his "constitutional duty to work honestly for the good of the motherland". The trial judge asked "Who has recognized you as a poet? Who has enrolled you in the ranks of poets?" – "No one," Brodsky replied, "Who enrolled me in the ranks of the human race?" Brodsky was not yet 24.

For his "parasitism" Brodsky was sentenced to five years hard labor and served 18 months on a farm in the village of Norenskaya, in the Archangelsk region, 350 miles from Leningrad. He rented his own small cottage, and though it was without plumbing or central heating, having one's own, private space was taken to be a great luxury at the time. Basmanova, Bobyshev and Brodsky's mother, among others, visited. He wrote on his typewriter, chopped wood, hauled manure and at night read his anthologies of English and American poetry, including a lot of W. H. Auden and Robert Frost. Brodsky's close friend and biographer Lev Loseff writes that while confinement in the mental hospital and the trial were miserable experiences, the 18 months in the Arctic were among the best times of Brodsky's life. Brodsky's mentor, Anna Akhmatova, laughed at the KGB's shortsightedness. "What a biography they're fashioning for our red-haired friend!" she said. "It's as if he'd hired them to do it on purpose."

Brodsky's sentence was commuted in 1965 after protests by prominent Soviet and foreign cultural figures, including Evgeny Evtushenko, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Jean-Paul Sartre as well as Akhmatova. Brodsky became a cause célèbre in the West also when a secret transcription of trial minutes was smuggled out of the country, making him a symbol of artistic resistance in a totalitarian society, much like his mentor Akhmatova.

Since the stern art of poetry calls for words, I, morose,
deaf, and balding ambassador of a more or less
insignificant nation that's stuck in this super
power, wishing to spare my old brain,
put on clothes – all by myself – and head for the main
street: for the evening paper.

from "The End of a Beautiful Era" (Leningrad 1969)

His son Andrei was born on the 8 October 1967, and Basmanova broke off the relationship. Andrei was registered under Basmanova's surname because Brodsky did not want his son to suffer from political attacks that he endured. Marina Basmanova was threatened by the Soviet authorities which prevented her from marrying Brodsky or joining him when he was exiled from the country. After the birth of their son, Brodsky continued to dedicate love poetry to Basmanova. In 1989, Brodsky wrote his last poem to "M.B.", describing himself remembering their life in Leningrad:

Your voice, your body, your name
mean nothing to me now. No one destroyed them.
It's just that, in order to forget one life, a person needs to live
at least one other life. And I have served that portion.

Brodsky returned to Leningrad in December 1965 and continued to write over the next seven years, many of his works being translated into German, French and English and published abroad. Verses and Poems was published by Inter-Language Literary Associates in Washington in 1965, Elegy to John Donne and Other Poems was published in London in 1967 by Longmans Green, and A Stop in the Desert was issued in 1970 by Chekhov Publishing in New York. Only four of his poems were published in Leningrad anthologies in 1966 and 1967, most of his work appearing outside the Soviet Union or circulated in secret (samizdat) until 1987. Persecuted for his poetry and his Jewish heritage, he was denied permission to travel. In 1972, while Brodsky was being considered for exile, the authorities consulted mental health expert Andrei Snezhnevsky, a key proponent of the notorious pseudo-medical diagnosis of "paranoid reformist delusion". This political tool allowed the state to lock up dissenters in psychiatric institutions indefinitely. Without examining him personally, Snezhnevsky diagnosed Brodsky as having "sluggishly progressing schizophrenia", concluding that he was "not a valuable person at all and may be let go". In 1971, Brodsky was twice invited to emigrate to Israel. When called to the Ministry of the Interior in 1972 and asked why he had not accepted, he stated that he wished to stay in the country. Within 10 days officials broke into his apartment, took his papers, and on 4 June 1972 put him on a plane for Vienna, Austria. He never returned to Russia and never saw Basmanova again. Brodsky later wrote "The Last Judgement is the Last Judgement, but a human being who spent his life in Russia, has to be, without any hesitation, placed into Paradise."

In Austria, he met Carl Ray Proffer and Auden, who facilitated Brodsky's transit to America and proved influential to Brodsky's career. Proffer, of the University of Michigan and one of the co-founders of Ardis Publishers, became Brodsky's Russian publisher from this point on. Recalling his landing in Vienna, Brodsky commented "I knew I was leaving my country for good, but for where, I had no idea whatsoever. One thing which was quite clear was that I didn't want to go to Israel...I never even believed that they'd allow me to go. I never believed they would put me on a plane, and when they did I didn't know whether the plane would go east or west...I didn't want to be hounded by what was left of the Soviet Security Service in England. So I came to the States." Although the poet was invited back after the fall of the Soviet Union, Brodsky never returned to his country.

Awards and honors

• 1978 – Honorary degree of Doctor of Letters, Yale University
• 1979 – Fellowship of American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
• 1981 – John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation award
• 1986 – Honorary doctorate of literature from Oxford University
• The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence
• 1986 – National Book Critics Award for Criticism, for Less Than One (essay collection)
• 1987 – Nobel Prize
• 1989 – Honorary doctorate from the University of Essex
• 1989 – Honorary degree from Dartmouth College
• 1991 – honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Humanities at Uppsala University, Sweden
• 1991 – United States Poet Laureate
• 1991 – Struga Poetry Evenings Golden Wreath Award
• 1993 – Honorary degree from the University of Silesia in Poland
• Honorary member of the International Academy of Science