Joseph Brodsky Quotes
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Translation is not original creation - that is what one must remember. In translation, some loss is inevitable.
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There is nothing odder than to apply an analytical device to a synthetic phenomenon: for instance, to write in English about a Russian poet.
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I simply loved all my life; loved is too strong a word, but I had a tremendous sentiment, partly conditioned, of course, by the reality of where I grew up, for the spirit of individualism, for the idea of your being on your own in a big way.
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English is the only interesting thing that's left in my life.
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Unfortunately, a human being is able to comprehend only that amount of evil which he is able to commit himself.
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Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.
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Unlike a state, a writer cannot plead the historical necessity of his actions.
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Life has a great deal up its sleeve.
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As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like claiming to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.
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It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable. It seems banal to him; he fears banality worse than anything, and therefore, he uses free verse - though free verse is no guarantee against banality.
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This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.
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Weaknesses have a certain function in a poem... some strategy in order to pave the reader's way to the impact of this or that line.
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The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.
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I began to despise Lenin, even when I was in the first grade, not so much because of his political philosophy or practice... but because of his omnipresent images.
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Bad politics make for bad morals.
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The blue-collar is not supposed to read Horace, nor the farmer in his overalls Montale or Marvell. Nor, for that matter, is the politician expected to know by heart Gerard Manley Hopkins or Elizabeth Bishop. This is dumb as well as dangerous.
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I remember myself, age five, sitting on a porch overlooking a very muddy road. The day was rainy. I was wearing rubber boots, yellow - no, not yellow, green - and for all I know, I'm still there.
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One of the worst things that can happen to an artist is to perceive himself as the owner of his art, and art as his tool. A product of the marketplace sensibility, this attitude barely differs on a psychological plane from the patron's view of the artist as a paid employee.
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The unbearableness of the future is easier to face than that of the present if only because human foresight is much more destructive than anything that the future can bring about.
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On the whole, books are indeed less finite than ourselves. Even the worst among them outlast their authors - mainly because they occupy a smaller amount of physical space than those who penned them. Often they sit on the shelves absorbing dust long after the writer himself has turned into a handful of dust.
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Americans have been tremendously fortunate in poetry, regarding both the quantity and quality of poetry produced. Unfortunately, it remains in schools and universities; it is not widely distributed.
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A man is, after all, what he loves. But one always feels cornered when asked to explain why one loves this or that person, and what for. In order to explain it - which inevitably amounts to explaining oneself - one has to try to love the object of one's attention a little bit less.
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Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
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To put it mildly, nothing can be turned and worn inside out with greater ease than one's notion of social justice, public conscience, a better future, etc.