(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Movie: Brodsky is not a poet
Directed by: Ilya Belov
«All the butterflies of northern England dance over the report / under the dead brick wall of the factory. After Wednesday / follows Thursday etc. The sky glows, / and the fields dry out. The cities emit an ugly smell / of striped clothes. The dahlias suffer from thirst… »
This was written by Russian exile poet Josef Brodsky in the poem "York", which was dedicated to the memory of WH Auden. Josef Brodsky was born 24. May 1940 in Leningrad, and died 28. January 1996 in New York. He was born of Jewish parents and, ironically, was named after Josef Stalin. In this documentary it appears that he quit school already as an 15 year-old, and then had a number of street jobs. He worked as a cutter, laboratory worker, factory worker and hospital employee, and he was also a participant in geological expeditions. He learned Polish and English on his own.
We follow the poet through melancholy, autumnal landscapes in Leningrad, London and New York, among others – from being labeled as "a parasitic existence" in line with beggars, alcoholics and outcasts in the 1960 century, until he traveled in exile during the period 1971– 1988. The film tells of his diverse background before he went on his own – and without any official poets or the state's culture bearers – nominating him as a poet, in his own words "chosen by God," until he died in New York.
Cliche-filled. Joseph Brodsky already had in-depth knowledge of English-language poetry in his early twenties, and was particularly interested in the Baroque poets. One of the foremost Baroque pots was John Donne (1572-1631), to whom Joseph Brodsky wrote a great elegy. Unfortunately, Donne is not mentioned in the film – which at all offers many classic-romantic clichés: We get a lot of magnificent music, ravens that scream and autumnal, monotonous colors that can give associations to unhappy romantic love and metaphysical longing, and a little too little about the literary influence.
Joseph Brodsky wrote many natural poems, including "Hauken's Autumn Scream" ("Osennji Creek Jastreba"), which, like all his other poems, was printed in American and English journals before being published in book form in the United States.
Brodsky refused to relate to Marxist-Leninism, seeking an underlying, metaphysical reality. We meet the poet directly and indirectly – from the time he was placed in a mental hospital when the investigations into his parasitic existence were ongoing, until he was placed in the Leningrad Kresty prison in 1964, until his death. He spent a month in prison before being sentenced to five years in exile. The sentence was greatly reduced – but on June 4, 1972, he left Leningrad to never return.
Spiritual pygmy. Brodsky wrote poems that were highly influenced by the atmosphere of exile. The political reality of the poems is never explicit, but testifies to a willingness to let the poem's intrinsic value come to the fore, even where he writes about political conditions or events – as in "Poems about the winter campaign in 1980", where he does not mention that the poem is about about Russia's invasion of Afghanistan: «The speed of the projectile in minus degrees / is determined by the target object's capabilities, / by the trajectory of the bullet, by the urge for heat in the torso muscles, / in the complicated tissue of the neck. / On the ground, the stones lie like a second army. / The shadows are involuntarily pressed into clay-filled soil. The sky is like the chalk when it crumbles. / Like a moth, the plane appears and disappears. / Secondly, explosion and smoke spilling out of the springs from a mattress / recently popped up. In contempt for its crater, the blood, like the effervescent foam of boiling milk, is covered by a film before it sinks into the earth. "
Joseph Brodsky was branded a "spiritual pygmy" in an article in the Leningrad Post, and it was this article that led to the arrest of the poet three months later. Joseph Brodsky came to call the man who wrote the article, Jacob Lerner, "my black godfather." During the trial, Brodsky stated: "I do not need any recognition from the party assholes. I know of at least 50-60 people who recognize my poetry, and they mean more to me than the whole grandiose Communist Party combined. "
His religious, inspiration-driven poetic project made him more than a harmless fool. It made him dangerous. The real reason he was forced to live in exile, however, was that he began to spread his poetry among young people at an early age. He was characterized as "an idol for all underground literature".
Filipp Denisovich Bobkov, a party pamphlet, made the final decision to arrest Brodsky. He is interviewed in the film, and still believes the same thing: that Brodsky was a completely insignificant person. Denisovitch Bobkov's statements are in tragicomic contrast to the fact that the poet received the Nobel Prize in 1986.
"I know of at least 50-60 people who recognize my poetry, and they mean more to me than the whole grandiose Communist Party combined."
Metaphysical bandit. The poet was not allowed to settle in the United States, and therefore ended up in exile in Austria. He tried to reach the United States through a false marriage. He got a supporter in, among other things, Strobe Talbott, an American diplomat who wanted to help him get his papers in order so that he could stay in the United States. On June 9, 1972, Brodsky arrived in the United States, specifically the city of Ann Arbor in Michigan outside Detroit. "If there were no children here, they would name the cars," Brodsky said on the occasion.
We see Joseph Brodsky read his own poems in rare recordings, usually without a manuscript, with a loud, singing voice. He wrote his poems on two different typewriters, one Russian and one English. He acquired an American car and drove like a savage through the traffic. He wanted to be famous – something Russians did not like, but which Americans, naturally enough, support and understand. He was offered positions at several American universities, and gained a reputation for being an outstanding lecturer: demanding, rude, funny and sensitive.
The highlight of the film is the meeting with Maria de Zuliani in Venice. Venice proved to be the very homeland of the soul for Joseph Brodsky. He then stated that "the poet is a metaphysical bandit, he steals everything, and calls it his own". Here he wrote, among other things, "A guide to the sinking Venice".
Then we meet Brodsky in the USA with his artist friends, long after he had made a name for himself as a poet and had become part of society, and then – of course – during the Nobel Prize ceremony. Finally we meet him in exile in Sweden.
Inspiration. If this film can have a mission, then it is to lead readers who are unfamiliar with this poet to the books. I brought out the Norwegian editions again because of this film. There are two selections in Norwegian: one by Erik Bystad, and one by Ivar Magnus Ravnum. Throughout the film, Joseph Brodsky's distinctive voice and diction appear as a gift from God, which he also obviously believed in – a poet of inspiration and metaphysics in a materialistic age.
Brodsky no poet? Nothing could be more wrong. He was buried in Venice, on the island of San Michele.
