Joseph Brodsky Quotes
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If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological - indeed, genetic - goal.
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This is the generation whose first cry of life was the Hungarian uprising.
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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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Contrary to popular belief, the outskirts are not where the world ends - they are precisely where it begins to unfurl.
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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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Unfortunately, a human being is able to comprehend only that amount of evil which he is able to commit himself.
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I'm no parasite. I'm a poet who will bring honor and glory to his country.
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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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Unlike life, a work of art never gets taken for granted: it is always viewed against its precursors and predecessors.
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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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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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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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Unlike a state, a writer cannot plead the historical necessity of his actions.
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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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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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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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Life has a great deal up its sleeve.
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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.
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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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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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To translate poetry, one has to possess some art, at the very least the art of stylistic re-embodiment.
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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.