Joseph Brodsky Quotes
-
The one who writes a poem writes it above all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of conscience, of thinking, of comprehending the universe.
-
This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.
-
There is nothing odder than to apply an analytical device to a synthetic phenomenon: for instance, to write in English about a Russian poet.
-
Unfortunately, a human being is able to comprehend only that amount of evil which he is able to commit himself.
-
The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.
-
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.
-
I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
-
I'm no parasite. I'm a poet who will bring honor and glory to his country.
-
It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything.
-
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.
-
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.
-
If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological - indeed, genetic - goal.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Life has a great deal up its sleeve.
-
Unlike life, a work of art never gets taken for granted: it is always viewed against its precursors and predecessors.
-
Unlike a state, a writer cannot plead the historical necessity of his actions.
-
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.
-
Translation is not original creation - that is what one must remember. In translation, some loss is inevitable.
-
To translate poetry, one has to possess some art, at the very least the art of stylistic re-embodiment.
-
Bad politics make for bad morals.
-
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.
-
Whether by theft or by artistry or by conquest, when it comes to time, Venetians are the world's greatest experts. They bested time like no one else.
-
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.