Brodsky: A Personal Memoir - Hardcover

Shtern, Liudmila; Brodsky, Joseph

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1880909707 ISBN 13: 9781880909706

Publisher: Baskerville Pub, 2004

Synopsis

Bound in black boards with the spine stamped in gilt.

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Reviews

In this charming memoir, Shtern not only brings the famous poet Joseph Brodsky to life, but illuminates for an American audience the experiences of an entire generation of Russian intelligentsia. Beginning in late 1950s Leningrad and moving through immigration to America and the post-Soviet '90s of New York and Boston, Shtern uses Brodsky as the hub around which she and other Russian writers and thinkers revolve, bringing various luminaries, such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, to light through small details. She invites the reader into the struggles, from Soviet persecution to lovers' spats, that defined the lives of this extraordinary group. Shtern's book is notable for its brutal honesty: it shows people in unflattering lights. Brodsky himself comes off as often unkind and imperious, but also as loyal and generous; old friends become grasping and jealous as others' situations improve, and alliances form and re-form. Although the book has no structure to speak of and repeats certain details, Shtern has the memoirist's gift of intimacy, keeping the tone conversational throughout. Interspersed with poems and stories, the book conveys how poetry and the work of the mind stood as the central experience for Shtern and her circle, both within Soviet entrapment and amid the pressures of acclimation to a wide and frightening new life in the West. B&w photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Joseph Brodsky's reputation as a poet is singular in Russia, and yet he emerged from a group of mentors, friends, and colleagues in postwar Leningrad that was as tight and as nourishing as any literary circle in modern history. Ludmila Shtern, like Brodsky, emigrated to the United States; their friendship was intimate and lifelong. Her memoir is an emotionally rich anecdotal account of Brodsky, along with his teacher, Anna Akhmatova, and his poet friends Evgeny Rein, Anatoly Naiman, and Dmitri Bobyshev. The memoir is especially keen when it is describing Brodsky's radical individuality in a collectivist nightmare, his absolute insistence on poetical rigor, and his personal independence. Shtern adores Brodsky—his courage when he was put on trial, his refusal to become a political icon or anything other than a poet—though she does not hesitate to show his moments of harshness, even cruelty. Brodsky does not always translate well into English; here, as in his essays, he takes on the fullness of the real thing.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Shtern, author of the novel Leaving Leningrad (2001), knew Joseph Brodsky most of his life, both in Russia and the U.S. Brodsky visited her family's home, valued her father's knowledge of Russian military history, and sent her mother a personal poem for her ninety-fifth birthday. All this is just cause for Shtern to write a book about Brodsky, the famously exiled Russian poet who schooled himself in literature, went on to win the Nobel Prize, and became a U.S. poet laureate. But although Shtern offers numerous, carefully documented details about her friendship with Brodsky and his circle, and some interesting observations, there is little new here for readers even slightly knowledgeable about the exiled writer. What is more interesting is Shtern's description of the artistic and inseparably political climate in which she and Brodsky lived in Soviet Russia. Therein lies the real value of this book: insight into the country that shaped a great poet like Brodsky only to reject him for the rebel he was. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Baskerville Pub
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1880909707
• ISBN 13: 9781880909706
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 386