New Year- not the holiday to boldly give up on signs and superstitions and do everything according to your desire and discretion.

New Year is a holiday surrounded by many signs and superstitions. Of course, one can be skeptical about these warnings, but Luck is a capricious and fickle lady, so why not try to celebrate the New Year 2017, according to popular beliefs that have existed for hundreds of years?

It is difficult to say how true these signs are. After all, if they went through this long haul and have survived to this day, which means there is definitely some truth in them.

Yes, and there are things that are better accepted not with the mind, but with the heart, no matter how strange it may seem.

Here's what popular beliefs advise against doing on both December 31 and January 1:
You can't celebrate the New Year with debts or empty pockets.

You cannot work (wash, wash, tidy) on the eve of the New Year and immediately after its onset.

You can't take out the trash on New Year's Eve.

You cannot celebrate the New Year in an uncleaned apartment.

You cannot sew on buttons on New Year's Day.

You can’t throw away old clothes and shoes before the New Year.

You can't swear or scream on New Year's Eve.

You can't celebrate the New Year alone.

The New Year's table cannot be empty.

You should not cut your fingers while preparing food.

It is impossible for there to be only women at the table.

You can't break dishes.

You can't break something.

You can't put pins on yourself.

You cannot cut your hair and nails on New Year's Eve.

You can't wash your hair on New Year's Eve.

You can't celebrate the New Year in old clothes.

You can't wear black.

Books cannot be given as gifts.

It is impossible not to spend the old year.

You cannot let a woman into your home first in the New Year.

You can't sing songs loudly at the table.

You can't swear.

You can't help but make a wish when the chimes strike.

You cannot make wishes that begin with “not...”.

You cannot tell someone about your wish.

You can’t throw away your Christmas tree right after the New Year.

You cannot extinguish New Year's candles and throw away unburned ones.

You can't regret the past year.

You can't help but kiss your loved ones.

It is impossible not to give gifts.

You can't cry and be sad while the chimes are ringing.

And the most important thing - you can't help but celebrate the New Year!

Decide for yourself whether to follow these tips or not. Perhaps from the entire list you will choose something suitable for yourself, and this will help you be a little happier in the New Year. Choice the right decision comes with experience, and experience is usually born only after a wrong choice.

Maybe, New Year's celebration It would not be so fabulous and mysterious for us if we had not pinned our illusory hopes on it. And when they stop believing in miracles, miracles simply die.

Should be left at home. In this situation, they are not comrades or advisers. A thing that your friend will like may not suit you at all. But, succumbing to her persuasion, you will buy something that “your soul is not in.” Only you yourself can know and understand what suits you and what doesn’t. Listen to yourself and your feelings - they will not deceive you.

I have a mother-in-law. He is a kind-hearted person, he loves me almost like his own child, he is always ready to help me cope with various difficulties. As you know, every person has their own quirks, and she is no exception. During my pregnancy, she pestered me: she kept giving me advice on how to behave, what to eat, how many hours a day you should sleep, and how much you should be in the fresh air. Since being nervous during pregnancy is simply contraindicated, I took everything calmly, tried not to pay attention, and when things got really difficult with her, I talked to my husband, and he always answered: “Mom only wants the best. She won’t advise anything bad.” This is how I calmed myself down, I thought it would go away as soon as I gave birth to a healthy baby.

Gave birth. A healthy and strong boy. Over time, my mother-in-law’s smart advice became more and more numerous. “Why did you put on a hat? It’s hot outside! Watch the child, otherwise he’ll fall...” - and so on ad infinitum. You can’t take a step without a caring “I advise you...” or “I would if I were you...” To be honest, I quickly got used to the advice of my beloved mother-in-law, learned to react to them correctly, and more often, not to react at all.

But to the teachers of life, experts in appearance, I still can’t get used to the best cooks and it’s unlikely that I ever will. In the words of the English writer Joseph Addison: " There is nothing people accept with such disgust as advice.", I think are absolutely true.

“You don’t need to buy this thing - you need to be more economical. For some reason, your husband is coming back late - you keep an eye on him! In my opinion, you’ve gained weight, it’s time to lose weight. You’re very pale, you need to eat more...” - and stuff like that, further by the list. Without advice from experts on all life issues, you cannot take a step. I wonder why shouldn't every well-wisher remain in his place? Why do people so often like to meddle in other people’s lives rather than look after their own?

As you know, we see a speck in someone else’s eye, but we don’t notice a log in our own. But it still seems to me that before advising something to another person, you need to think a hundred times. After all, for many people, advice is a very important part of life, and you simply can’t live without it!

I have a friend Alina, who cannot take a single step on her own without the advice of people from outside. She always takes a friend with her to clothing stores so that she can tell her what is best for her to buy, what color to choose, etc. And if a friend cannot devote enough time to her, she has to call the entire store staff for help, so that everyone can give advice and say their opinion. Until everyone comes to the same conclusion, Alina does not calm down.

This behavior is typical for people who do not have their own opinion. Alina could never buy anything, wear something, or even choose a hairstyle or a new haircut without someone’s advice. What is most surprising is that she always blindly trusted them and never tried to argue, which, by the way, once played a cruel joke on her. Arriving at the hairdresser's, she, as usual, gathered all the hairdressers, stylists and visitors around her, asking for advice on how to cut her hair and what color to choose. Everyone gathered, discussed for a long time, everyone tried to advise something different. As a result, my friend left this hairdresser without a new haircut and in a bad mood, because the advisers did not agree.

Listening to advice is sometimes useful. But only sometimes! After all, beloved mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers, grandparents, friends and acquaintances will not give bad advice. It just happens very often that you perceive their words as the only correct opinion, which is fundamentally wrong. Listen to the advice, but think for yourself whether this is the right decision and whether there is a better option.

Personally, I almost never give advice unless asked. I think that this is the right position, since you shouldn’t get involved in things that don’t concern you. You can only make things worse, and your good intention may be perceived as something said with malicious intent.

However, now almost everyone listens to advice, from mere mortals to celebrities and stars. For example, even Tony and Sherry Blair listen to the opinion of a certain Carole Caplin, who chooses lipstick for Mrs. Blair and recommends a Japanese massage to Mr. Blair.

But in cases with celebrities, advice and recommendations are more likely to benefit than harm. Stylists, makeup artists, and nutritionists turn out to be assistants; they not only save the time of celebrities and simply busy people, but also help them make the right choice.

Imagine that you are a TV presenter of some very popular program (actress, businesswoman, famous writer...). You always need to look perfect not only in terms of your figure and hairstyle, but also in terms of clothes and makeup. Of course, at first you will choose clothes yourself, but in less than six months you will have an urgent need for your own stylist and makeup artist. And the point here is not even that you have bad taste. You will simply get tired of constant shopping, and sometimes there is no time left for this.

Of course, you shouldn’t bring yourself to the point of being unable to choose a new dress for yourself - know when to stop! Sometimes it's just funny to see grown people on television who need someone to tell them what color lipstick or socks to wear. It turns out that we are completely subordinate to the power of unrecognized authorities.

After all, if I want to cook something new from food, I don’t have to consult with a famous chef, when choosing something new - with a fashion connoisseur, and at the first manifestation of a cold in my baby - run to my neighbor, who works as a nurse at the nearest clinic. I can solve such issues on my own.

If you have your own taste, a head on your shoulders, a sense of style and time, as well as the ability and desire to try something new, it is not at all necessary to turn to someone for advice. You can try and experiment yourself. The main thing is not to be afraid of anything and listen to yourself first. If you are confident that you can cope with a particular task, you will really cope with it.

Well, if problems and questions that are really difficult to solve arise, go to a psychologist or psychotherapist. In any case, it is better to receive advice from highly qualified and educated specialists than from all-knowing neighbors. A psychologist will become a mirror for you and help you see yourself in a difficult situation. Moreover, you will find a way out of any situation by changing your own views, attitude towards what is happening, thoughts and actions.

"Ask for advice from someone who knows how to overcome himself", Leonardo da Vinci once said.

And believe me, if you are used to running around for advice all the time, you can break the habit of this habit - you just have to want it.

Biography

Childhood and youth

Joseph's early childhood was spent during the years of war, blockade, post-war poverty and passed without a father. In 1942, after the blockade winter, Maria Moiseevna and Joseph went for evacuation to Cherepovets, returning to Leningrad in 1944. In 1947, Joseph went to school No. 203 on Kirochnaya Street, 8. In 1950, Joseph moved to school No. 196 on Mokhovaya Street, in 1953, Joseph went to the 7th grade at school No. 181 on Solyanoy Lane, and subsequently remained year for the second year. He applied to the naval school, but was not accepted. He moved to school No. 289 on Narvsky Prospekt, where he continued his studies in the 7th grade.

Brodsky's aesthetic views were formed in Leningrad in the 1950s. Neoclassical architecture, heavily damaged during the bombing, endless perspectives of the St. Petersburg outskirts, water, multiple reflections - motifs associated with these impressions of his childhood and youth are invariably present in his work.

At the same time, he read a lot, but chaotically - primarily poetry, philosophical and religious literature, and began to study English and Polish.

Personal card of I. A. Brodsky in the personnel department of Arsenal

In 1962, Brodsky met the young artist Marina (Marianna) Basmanova. The first poems with dedication “M. B." - “I hugged these shoulders and looked...”, “No longing, no love, no sadness...”, “A riddle to an angel” date back to the same year. On October 8, 1967, Marina Basmanova and Joseph Brodsky had a son, Andrei Basmanov. At the beginning of 1968, Marina Basmanova and Joseph Brodsky broke up. From poems addressed to “M.B.”, Brodsky compiled the collection “New Stanzas for Augusta”, 1983.

Early poems, influences

According to his own words, Brodsky began writing poetry at the age of eighteen, but there are several poems dating back to 1957. One of the decisive impetuses was the acquaintance with the poetry of Boris Slutsky. “Pilgrims”, “Monument to Pushkin”, “Christmas Romance” are the most famous of Brodsky’s early poems. Many of them are characterized by a pronounced musicality, for example, in the poems “From the outskirts to the center” and “I am the son of the suburbs, the son of the suburbs, the son of the suburbs...” you can see the rhythmic elements of jazz improvisations. Tsvetaeva and Baratynsky, and a few years later Mandelstam, had, according to Brodsky himself, a decisive influence on him.

Among his contemporaries he was influenced by Evgeny Rein, Vladimir Uflyand, Stanislav Krasovitsky.

Later Brodsky called greatest poets Auden and Tsvetaeva, followed by Cavafy and Frost, completed the poet's personal canon with Rilke, Pasternak, Mandelstam and Akhmatova.

Persecution, trial and exile

I remember sitting in a small hut, looking through a square window the size of a porthole at a wet, muddy road with chickens roaming along it, half believing what I had just read... I simply refused to believe that back in 1939 English the poet said: “Time... worships language,” but the world remained the same.

- “Bow to the Shadow”

In August and September, several of Joseph’s poems were published in the Konosha district newspaper “Prazyv”.

The trial of the poet became one of the factors that led to the emergence of the human rights movement in the USSR and to increased attention abroad to the situation with human rights in the USSR. The transcript of Frida Vigdorova was published in several influential foreign media: “New Leader”, “Encounter”, “Figaro Litteraire”. At the end of 1964, letters in defense of Brodsky were sent by D. D. Shostakovich, S. Ya. Marshak, K. I. Chukovsky, K. G. Paustovsky, A. T. Tvardovsky, Yu. P. German. After a year and a half, in September 1965, under pressure from the Soviet and world community (in particular, after an appeal to the Soviet government by Jean-Paul Sartre and a number of other foreign writers), the term of exile was reduced to the one actually served.

Brodsky, who refused to dramatize the events of his life, recalled what followed with considerable ease:

“The plane landed in Vienna and Karl Proffer met me there... he asked, “Well, Joseph, where would you like to go?” I said, “Oh my God, I have no idea”... and then he asked, “ How would you like to work at the University of Michigan?"

2 days after his arrival in Vienna, Brodsky goes to meet W. Auden, who lives in Austria. “He treated me with extraordinary sympathy, immediately took me under his wing... undertook to introduce me to literary circles.” Together with Auden, Brodsky takes part in the International Poetry Festival in London at the end of June. Brodsky was familiar with Auden’s work from the time of his exile and called him, along with Akhmatova, a poet who had a decisive “ethical influence” on him. At the same time in London, Brodsky met Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender and Robert Lowell.

Life line

In July 1972, Brodsky moved to the USA and accepted the post of “guest poet” (poet-in-residence) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he taught, intermittently, until 1980. From that moment, he completed incomplete 8 classes in the USSR high school Brodsky led the life of a university teacher, holding professorships at a total of six American and British universities over the next 24 years, including Columbia and New York. He taught the history of Russian literature, Russian and world poetry, the theory of verse, and gave lectures and poetry readings at international literary festivals and forums, in libraries and universities in the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, France, Sweden, and Italy.

“Taught” in his case needs clarification. For what he did was little similar to what his university colleagues, including poets, did. First of all, he simply did not know how to “teach”. Own experience he had no problem in this matter... Every year out of twenty-four, for at least twelve weeks in a row, he regularly appeared before a group of young Americans and talked to them about what he loved most in the world - about poetry... What the course was called was not so important: all its lessons were lessons in slow reading of a poetic text...

Over the years, his health steadily deteriorated, and Brodsky, whose first heart attack occurred during his prison days in 1964, suffered four heart attacks in 1976, 1985 and 1994. Here is the testimony of a doctor who visited Brodsky in the first month of Noren exile:

“There was nothing acutely threatening in his heart at that moment, except for mild signs of so-called dystrophy of the heart muscle. However, their absence would be surprising given the lifestyle that he had in this timber industry... Imagine a large field after cutting down taiga forest, where huge stone boulders are scattered among numerous stumps... Some of these boulders are larger than a person's height. The job consists of rolling such boulders onto steel sheets with a partner and moving them to the road... Three to five years. such a reference - and hardly anyone today has heard of the poet... because his genes, unfortunately, were prescribed to have early atherosclerosis of the heart vessels, and medicine learned to fight this, at least partially, only thirty years later."

Brodsky's parents submitted an application twelve times asking for permission to see their son, congressmen and prominent US cultural figures made the same request to the USSR government, but even after Brodsky underwent open-heart surgery in 1978 and needed care, his parents was denied an exit visa. They never saw their son again. Brodsky's mother died in 1983, and his father died a little over a year later. Both times Brodsky was not allowed to come to the funeral. The book “Part of Speech” (1977), the poems “The Thought of You Moves Away, Like a Disgraced Servant...” (1985), “In Memory of the Father: Australia” (1989), and the essay “A Room and a Half” (1985) are dedicated to the parents.

In 1977, Brodsky accepted American citizenship, in 1980 he finally moved from Ann Arbor to New York, and subsequently divided his time between New York and South Hadley, a university town in Massachusetts, where from 1982 until the end of his life He taught spring semesters at the Five College Consortium. In 1990, Brodsky married Maria Sozzani, an Italian aristocrat who was Russian on her mother's side. In 1993, their daughter Anna was born.

Poet and essayist

Brodsky's poems and their translations have been published outside the USSR since 1964, when the poet's name became widely known thanks to the transcript of Frida Vigdorova's trial. Since his arrival in the West, his poetry regularly appears on the pages of publications of Russian emigration - in the Bulletin of the Russian Christian Movement, Continent, Echo, New American, in the Russian-language Russian Literature Triquarterly, published by Karl Proffer. Almost more often than in the Russian-language press, translations of Brodsky’s poems are published, primarily in magazines in the USA and England, and in 1973 a book of translations was published. But new books of poetry in Russian were published only in 1977 - these are “The End of a Beautiful Era,” which included poems from 1964-1971, and “Part of Speech,” which included works written in 1972-1976. The reason for this division was not external events (emigration) - the motives of exile were alien to the work of Brodsky, a poet and essayist - but the fact that, in his opinion, qualitative changes were taking place in his work in 1971/72. “Still Life”, “To a Tyrant”, “Odysseus to Telemachus”, “Song of Innocence, also known as Experience”, “Letters to a Roman Friend”, “Bobo’s Funeral” are written on this turning point. In the poem “1972,” begun in Russia and completed abroad, Brodsky gives the following formula: “Everything that I did, I did not do for the sake of / fame in the era of cinema and radio, / but for the sake of my native speech, literature... ". The title of the collection - “Part of Speech” - is explained by the same message, lapidarily formulated in his Nobel lecture in 1987: “everyone, but a poet always knows... that it is not language that is his instrument, but he is the means of language.”

In the 70s and 80s, Brodsky, as a rule, did not include poems included in earlier collections in his new books. An exception is the book “New Stanzas for Augusta”, published in 1983, composed of poems addressed to M.B. - Marina Basmanova. Years later, Brodsky spoke about this book: “This is the main work of my life... it seems to me that in the end “New Stanzas for Augusta” can be read as separate work. Unfortunately, I didn't write " Divine Comedy". And, apparently, I will never write it again. But here it turned out to be a kind of poetic book with its own plot..." .

Since 1972, Brodsky has been actively turning to essay writing, which he does not abandon until the end of his life. Three books of his essays are published in the United States: Less Than One (Less than One) in 1986, Watermark (Embankment of the Incurable) in 1992, and On Grief and Reason (On Grief and Reason) in 1995. Most of the essays included in these collections were written by in English (Russian translations of all English-language essays and most of Brodsky’s other prose works have now been published). His prose, at least no less than his poetry, made Brodsky's name widely known to the world outside the USSR. The collection Less Than One was recognized as the best literary critical book in the United States for 1986 by the American National Board of Literary Critics. By this time, Brodsky was the holder of half a dozen titles of member of literary academies and honorary doctorates from various universities, and was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 1981.

Next big Book poems - "Urania" - published in 1987. In the same year Brodsky became a laureate Nobel Prize in literature, which was awarded to him “for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity.” Forty-seven-year-old Brodsky began his Nobel speech, written in Russian, in which he formulated his personal and poetic credo with the words:

“For a private person who has preferred this particularity all his life to some kind of public role, for a person who has gone quite far in this preference - and in particular from his homeland, for it is better to be the last loser in a democracy than a martyr or the ruler of thoughts in a despotism - “To suddenly appear on this podium is a great embarrassment and trial.”

In the 90s, books of new poems by Brodsky were published: “Notes of a Fern” in Sweden, “Cappadocia” and “In the Vicinity of Atlantis” in St. Petersburg, and finally, published after the poet’s death and becoming the final collection, including both new works and poems that appeared in three previous books: "Landscape with Flood" from Ardis. The undoubted success of Brodsky's poetry both among critics and literary critics (one can, first of all, mention the body of works by L. Losev, V. Polukhina, V. Kulle, E. Kelebay, Y. Lotman...), and among readers, has probably , more exceptions than would be required to confirm the rule. Reduced emotionality, musical atonality and metaphysical complexity - especially of the “late” Brodsky - repels him and some artists. In particular, we can mention negative work Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose reproaches to the poet’s work are largely ideological in nature. He is echoed almost verbatim by a critic from another camp: Dmitry Bykov in his essay about Brodsky after the opening: “I’m not going to repeat here the common platitudes that Brodsky is “cold,” “monotonous,” “inhuman” ...,” - goes on to do just that: “In the huge corpus of Brodsky’s works there are strikingly few living texts... It is unlikely that today’s reader will finish “Procession”, “Farewell, Mademoiselle Veronica” or “Letter in a Bottle” without effort - although, undoubtedly, he will not be able to do not appreciate “Part of Speech”, “Twenty Sonnets to Mary Stuart” or “Conversation with a Celestial”: best texts Brodsky, still alive, not yet petrified, the cry of a living soul, feeling its ossification, glaciation, dying."

The last book compiled by the poet ends with the following lines:

And if you don’t expect thanks for the speed of light,
then the general, maybe, armor of non-existence
appreciates attempts to turn it into a sieve
and will thank me for the hole.

Playwright, translator, writer...

Relative financial well-being (at least by emigration standards) gave Brodsky the opportunity to provide more material assistance. Lev Losev writes:

Several times I participated in collecting money to help needy old acquaintances, sometimes even those for whom Joseph should not have sympathy, and when I asked him, he began to hastily write out a check, not even allowing me to finish.

The Library of Congress elects Brodsky as Poet Laureate of the United States for 1991-92. In this honorable, but traditionally nominal capacity, he developed active efforts to promote poetry. His ideas led to the creation of the American Poetry and Literacy Project, which since 1993 has distributed more than a million free poetry books to schools, hotels, supermarkets, train stations, and more. According to William Wadsworth, director of the American Academy of Poets from 1989 to 2001, Brodsky's inaugural address as Poet Laureate "caused a transformation in America's view of the role of poetry in its culture." Shortly before his death, Brodsky became interested in the idea of ​​founding a Russian Academy in Rome. In the fall of 1995, he approached the mayor of Rome with a proposal to create an academy where artists, writers and scientists from Russia could study and work. This idea was realized after the poet's death. In 2000, the Joseph Brodsky Memorial Scholarship Fund sent the first Russian poet-scholar to Rome, and in 2003, the first artist.

English-language poet

In 1973, the first (not counting the disavowed Elegy to John Donne, 1967) book of Brodsky’s poetry in English was published in New York - “Selected poems” translated by George Cline and with a preface by Auden. Second collection on English language, "Part of Speech" (Part of Speech), published in 1980; the third, “To Urania” (To Urania), - in 1988. These collections in content basically followed the corresponding Russian-language books of the poet. In 1996, So Forth was published - the 4th collection of poems in English prepared by Brodsky. The last two books included both translations and auto-translations from Russian, as well as poems written in English. Over the years, Brodsky trusted other translators less and less to translate his Russian-language poems into English; at the same time, he increasingly writes poetry in English, although in his own words he did not consider himself a bilingual poet and argued that “for me, when I write poetry in English, it’s more of a game...”.

“Linguistically and culturally, Brodsky was Russian, and as for self-identification, in his mature years he reduced it to a lapidary formula, which he repeatedly used: “I am a Jew, a Russian poet and an American citizen.”

Lev Losev

“In the five-hundred-page volume of Brodsky’s English-language poetry there are no translations made without his participation... But if his essays evoked mostly positive critical responses, the attitude towards him as a poet in the English-speaking world was far from unambiguous.” Valentina Polukhina, professor at Keele University (England), writes: “The paradox of Brodsky’s perception in England is that as Brodsky’s reputation as an essayist grew, attacks on Brodsky the poet and translator of his own poems intensified.” The range of assessments was very wide, from extremely negative to laudatory, and a sour-sweet bias probably prevailed. Daniel Weisbort, an English poet and translator of Brodsky's poems, responded to a question about how he evaluates his English poems:

In my opinion, they are very helpless, even outrageous, in the sense that he introduces rhymes that are not taken seriously in a serious context. He tried to expand the boundaries of the use of feminine rhyme in English poetry, but as a result his works began to sound like W. S. Gilbert or Ogden Nash. But gradually he got better and better, and he really began to expand the possibilities of English prosody, which in itself is an extraordinary achievement for one person. I don't know who else could have achieved this. Nabokov couldn't

Return

Death and burial

General view of a grave in Venice, San Michele Island, 2004. People leave pebbles, letters, poems, pencils, photographs, Camel cigarettes (Brodsky smoked a lot) and whiskey. On the back of the monument there is an inscription in Latin - this is a line from the elegy of Propertius lat. Letum non omnia finit - Not everything ends with death.

The deputy's proposal sent by telegram State Duma RF G.V. Starovoytova’s family refused to bury the great poet in St. Petersburg on Vasilievsky Island - Brodsky did not want to return to his homeland, besides, Brodsky did not like his youthful poem with the lines “I will come to Vasilievsky Island to die...”.

Two weeks before his death, Brodsky bought himself a place in a small chapel in a New York cemetery next to Broadway (this was his last will). After this, he drew up a fairly detailed will. A list was also compiled of people to whom letters were sent, in which Brodsky asked the recipient of the letter to sign that until 2020 the recipient would not talk about Brodsky as a person and would not discuss him privacy; it was not forbidden to talk about Brodsky the poet.

Although the insensible body
equally decay everywhere,
devoid of native clay,
it is in the alluvium of the valley
Lombard rot is not averse. Ponezhe
its continent and the same worms.
Stravinsky sleeps on San Michele...

Family

  • Father - Alexander Ivanovich Brodsky (-).
  • Mother - Maria Moiseevna Volpert (-).
  • Daughter - Anastasia Iosifovna Kuznetsova, daughter of ballerina Maria Kuznetsova
  • Son - Andrey Osipovich Basmanov, born, from Marianna Basmanova.
  • Wife - Maria Sozzani, b. (marriage from 1991 to 1996 - until Brodsky’s death).
  • Daughter - Anna Alexandra Maria Brodskaya, born in 1993. (from marriage to Maria Sozzani).
  • Granddaughters - Daria Andreevna Basmanova (graduate of the Academy of Arts, 2011); Praskovya (born 1989) and Pelageya (born 1997) Basmanovs.

Addresses in St. Petersburg

  • 1955-1972 - apartment building of A.D. Muruzi - Liteiny Prospekt, building 24, apt. 28. The municipality of St. Petersburg plans to buy the rooms where the poet lived and open a museum there. Exhibits of the future museum can be temporarily seen in the Anna Akhmatova Museum in the Fountain House.
  • 1962-1972 - Benois house - Glinka street, building 15. Apartment of Marianna Basmanova.
  • 1962-1972 - Marata Street, house 60. Workshop of the artist Marianna Basmanova.

To Komarovo

  • August 7, 1961 - in “Budka”, in Komarovo, E. B. Rein introduces Brodsky to A. A. Akhmatova.
  • At the beginning of October 1961, he went to Akhmatova in Komarovo together with S. Schultz.
  • June 24, 1962 - on Akhmatova’s birthday, he wrote two poems “A. A. Akhmatova” (“The roosters will crow and crow…”) from where she took the epigraph “You will write about us diagonally” for the poem “The Last Rose”, as well as “Behind the churches, gardens, theaters...” and the letter. Published in: About Anna Akhmatova: Poems, essays, memoirs, letters, ed. M. M. Kralin (L.: Lenizdat, 1990. - P. 39-97). In the same year he dedicated other poems to Akhmatova. Morning mail for Akhmatova from the city of Sestroretsk (“In the bushes of immortal Finland...”).
  • Autumn and winter 1962-1963 - Brodsky lives in Komarov, at the dacha of the famous biologist R.L. Berg, where he works on the cycle “Songs of a Happy Winter”. Close communication with Akhmatova. Meeting Academician V. M. Zhirmunsky.
  • October 5, 1963 - in Komarov, “Here I am again hosting the parade...”.
  • May 14, 1965 - visits Akhmatova in Komarov.

For two days he sat opposite me on the chair on which you are now sitting... After all, our efforts are not without reason - where has it been seen, where has this been heard, that a criminal would be released from exile for a few days to stay in hometown?.. Inseparable from his former lady. Very good-looking. You can fall in love! Slender, ruddy, skin like a five-year-old girl... But, of course, he won’t survive this winter in exile. Heart disease is no joke.

  • March 5, 1966 - death of A. A. Akhmatova. Brodsky and Mikhail Ardov spent a long time looking for a place for Akhmatova’s grave, first in the cemetery in Pavlovsk at the request of Irina Punina, then in Komarov on their own initiative.

She just taught us a lot. Humility, for example. I think... that in many ways it is to her that I owe my best human qualities. If not for her, it would have taken them longer to develop, if they had appeared at all.

Editions

In English

  • "Selected poems". New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
  • "Part of Speech". New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980.
  • "Less Than One: Selected Essays". New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986.
  • "To Urania". New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988.
  • "Watermark". New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992.
  • "On Grief and Reason: Essays". New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995.
  • "So Forth: Poems". New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996.
  • "Collected Poems in English". New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000.

Memory

Memorial plaque on the house of Muruzi in St. Petersburg, where the poet lived

  • In 1998, the Pushkin Foundation published a book of poems by L. Losev, “Afterword,” the first part of which consists of poems related to the memory of Brodsky.
  • In 2004, Brodsky's close friend, Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott, wrote a poem, "The Prodigal", in which Brodsky is mentioned numerous times.
  • In November 2005, in the courtyard of the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg University, according to the project

Anna Akhmatova's idea of ​​the poet's luck was extraordinary. When she learned about Brodsky’s trial, about the insulting charge of parasitism and the sentence of 5 years in prison, she exclaimed: “What a biography they are giving a young man!” In the distorted world of the Soviet Looking Glass, well-being aroused suspicion among the ignorant and contempt among those in the know. After leaving school at the age of 15, Brodsky came to the factory and was a milling machine operator. Adjacent to the plant were Kresty, the famous St. Petersburg prison, where the “prisoner Brodsky” was later imprisoned. Prison, deportation, “fatherly punishments for educational purposes”... What could Brodsky answer to the state? "Why don't you work honestly?" - “I work. I write poetry.”

Brodsky is not autobiographical in his writings. Facts and events grow on the basis in which, in an incomprehensible way, his individuality, his soul, lives integrally and independently. He “steps back” from the system that broke the majority. He does not fight, he leaves, “not condescending” to the humiliating jostling. Leaving the state, he immerses himself in culture. Language is his bread, air, water. Russian language - and St. Petersburg:

755


I would like to live, Fortunatus, in a city where the river protruded from under the bridge, as if from a sleeve - hand and that it flowed into the bay, fingers spread out, like Chopin, who showed no one his fist...

Brodsky is the second Russian poet to see in St. Petersburg not a river, but rivers, a delta. The first was Akhmatova.

Brodsky is surprisingly free with poetic meters, he loves to break sentences, ironically and unexpectedly placing emphasis on words * as if they do not carry the main semantic load:

Noon in the room. That peace, When in reality, as in a dream, you can’t change anything by moving your hand.

But he is rhythmic through and through, his rhythm is dry and clear, like a metronome. Brodsky is unceremonious with space, but all his poems are the organization and filling of time with meaning, they are horror and pleasure, and the excitement of war, and wise humility in front of what cannot be mastered and what cannot be surrendered:

"I don't care- where, makes sense- When".

There was a time when “where” had the edge of novelty or the edge of nostalgia:

I don’t want to choose neither a country nor a graveyard, I’ll come to Vasilyevsky Island to die.

But the sequence of space, its plane, vainly striving for the vertical, is overcome by the volume of time.

Brodsky is a poet not so much of emotions as of thoughts. From his poems there is a feeling of an unsleeping, unstoppable mind-

whether. He really doesn't live where, but when. And although in his poems Ancient Rome appears no less often than Soviet Leningrad or America, Brodsky’s “when” is always modern, momentary. He goes into the past to once again find the present. Thus, in “Letters to a Roman Friend,” subtitled “From Martial,” the Black Sea roars, connecting the exiled Ovid Naso and the exile Brodsky somewhere in eternity, to which all poets are betrothed, like the Doges of Venice to the Adriatic:

It's windy today and the waves are overlapping. Autumn soon. Everything will change in the area. The change of colors is more touching, Posthumus, than the change of a friend’s outfit.

The man who lived in two gigantic empires smiles in agreement at the Roman:

If you happen to be born in an empire, it is better to live in a remote province by the sea.

There is dead matter in space. She lives in time:

Thursday. Today the chair was out of use. He didn't move. Not a single step. No one sat on it today, moved it, or put on a jacket.

The chair strains its entire silhouette. Warm; the clock shows six. Everything looks as if he is not there, when in reality he is!

A separate topic is Brodsky and Christianity. It cannot be touched casually, superficially. The poet’s intense, very personal experience of biblical and gospel stories is striking.

zhetov: the sacrifice of Abraham, Candlemas, but especially persistently repeated - Bethlehem, Christmas:

At Christmas everyone is a bit of a magician. There is slush and crowding near the bakery. Because of a jar of Turkish halva, they are laying siege to the counter...

Rich wise men brought wonderful gifts to a baby sleeping in a manger. Poor St. Petersburg wise men bring random gifts to their babies. What common?

...you look into the sky and see: a star.

Brodsky did not return to Vasilievsky. “Where” turned out to be unimportant. He returned on time, in our “when”. Because “as a companion, a book is more reliable than a friend or a lover,” as he said in his Nobel lecture. In it, he named those whose “sum I seem to myself - but always less than any of them separately.” These are five names. Three belong to Russian poets: Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, Anna Akhmatova. I would like to end the essay with the lines of Akhmatova, who blessed Brodsky for great success:

Gold rusts and steel decays, marble crumbles. Everything is ready for death. The strongest thing on earth - sadness. And more durable is the royal word.

< ■ > < G

Reading time: 3 minutes. Published 10/21/2017

In this article you can find out all the answers in the game “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” for October 21, 2017 (10/21/2017). First, you can see the questions asked to the players by Dmitry Dibrov, and then all the correct answers in today's intellectual television game “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” for 10/21/2017.

Questions for the first pair of players

Dmitry Ulyanov and Alexander Rappoport (200,000 - 200,000 rubles)

1. What do you call a person who does nothing?
2. What do they say about a person with bad intentions: “Keeps...”?
3. What do they sometimes say about the breakdown of a device?
4. How does the title of the song by the beat quartet “Secret” end - “Wandering Blues...”?
5. Which former republic The USSR currency is not the euro?
6. What play did Lope de Vega write?
7. What did the students call the professor in the film “Operation Y” and Shurik’s Other Adventures?
8. To whom was the monument erected opposite the Theater? Russian army in Moscow?
9. What was it called gunboat, who fought together with the cruiser "Varyag" against the Japanese squadron?
10. What did Joseph Brodsky not advise you to do in one of his poems?
11. What did the centurion constantly wear as a symbol of his power?
12. In which city in 1960 did the USSR national team become the European football champion?

Questions for the second pair of players

Vitaly Eliseev and Sergey Puskepalis (200,000 - 0 rubles)

1. How to finish the proverb: “The spool is small...”?
2. What did Matthias Rust plant near the Kremlin?
3. What is the name of the film by Georgy Danelia?
4. Which of these is not a confectionery product?
5. What disrespectful nickname was previously given to police officers?
6. Who doesn't have horns?
7. Which Moscow building is taller than one hundred meters?
8. Which country's national team has never held the title of European football champion?
9. What name was invented for the sailing ship by Veniamin Kaverin, and not Jules Verne?
10. What is the fert referred to in the old expression "to walk with a fert"?
11. What was the last name of the Russian general in the Bond film “A View to a Kill”?

Questions for the third pair of players

Sati Casanova and Andrey Grigoriev-Apollonov (400,000 - 0 rubles)

1. What, according to the well-known phraseology, can cause rabies?
2. What is the name of the railway line that goes away from the main track?
3. What do those invited to a buffet most often do without?
4. What is not designed for flying?
5. Who were the girlfriends from the poem “Tamara and I” by Agnia Barto?
6. Who competes in the White Rook tournament?
7. What is the programming slang for incomprehensible characters that arise due to an encoding failure?
8. What is the name of the main unit of the vacuum cleaner?
9. Which of the following sea creatures is a fish?
10. What was located in the middle of Lubyanka Square before the installation of the monument to Dzerzhinsky there?
11. What was different about the First Symphony Ensemble, created in Moscow in 1922?

Answers to questions from the first pair of players

  1. idle
  2. stone in the bosom
  3. flew away
  4. dogs
  5. Kazakhstan
  6. "Dance teacher"
  7. Burdock
  8. Suvorov
  9. "Korean"
  10. leave the room
  11. grapevine stick
  12. in Paris

Answers to questions from the second pair of players

  1. yes expensive
  2. airplane
  3. "Autumn marathon"
  4. manta rays
  5. pharaohs
  6. ocelot
  7. Cathedral of Christ the Savior
  8. Belgium
  9. "Holy Mary"
  10. letter of the alphabet
  11. Gogol

Answers to questions from the third pair of players

  1. branch
  2. no chairs
  3. omnibus
  4. nurses
  5. young chess players
  6. krakozyabry
  7. compressor
  8. sea ​​Horse
  9. fountain
  10. there was no conductor