Joseph Brodsky

“It really does look like musical sheets, frayed at the edges, constantly played, coming to you in tidal scores, in bars of canals with innumerable obbligati of bridges, mullioned windows, or curved crownings of Coducci cathedrals, not to mention the violin necks of gondolas. In fact, the whole city, especially at night, resembles a gigantic orchestra, with dimly lit music stands of palazzi, with a restless chorus of waves, with the falsetto of a star in the winter sky.”

“...and love, as an act, lacks a verb”

“And geography blended with time equals destiny.”

“secrecy is a hotbed of vanity”

“A glance leaves an imprint on anything it's dwelt on.”

“Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.”

“Poetry is rather an approach to things, to life, than it is typographical production.”

“Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.”

“Jeśli założyć, że piękno jest taką dystrybucją światła, która najbardziej odpowiada naszej siatkówce, łza jest formą przyznania się do niemożności zatrzymania przez siatkówkę – a także przez sama łzę – tego piękna na stałe. Miłość, żeby to tak podsumować, ma prędkość światła; rozstanie – prędkość dźwięku”

“If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore...”

“... Now to die of griefwould mean, I'm afraid, to die belatedly, while latecomersare unwelcome, particularly in the future. ...”

“Because every book of art, be it a poem or a cupola, is understandably a self-portrait of its author, we won't strain ourselves too hard trying to distinguish between the author's persona and the poem's lyrical hero. As a rule, such distinctions are quite meaningless, if only because a lyrical hero is invariably an author's self-projection.”

“A jeśli ktoś cię zapyta "kim jesteś?", to odpowiedz"Ja jestem Nikt" - jak rzekł niegdyś Polifemowi Odys.”

“Dotknij mnie - pod palcami poczujesz rzep uschły,wilgoć wieczoru lub poranku, tętnokamieniołomu miasta, oddech stepowej pustki,tych, którzy już nie żyją, lecz których pamiętam.Dotknij mnie - a poczujesz pod czubkami palcówwszystko to, co istnieje poza mną, beze mnie,co nie wierzy mnie, mojej twarzy, memu paltu,wpisując nas w swój bilans zawsze po stronie ujemnej.”

“What gets left of a man amounts to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech”

“إنني أبحث.إنني أخلق من نفسي إنسانًا”

“Nobody knew literature and history better than these people, nobody could write better Russian than they, nobody despised our times more profoundly. For these characters civilization meant more than daily bread and a nightly hug. This wasn’t, as it would seem, another lost generation. This was the only generation of Russians that had found itself, for whom Giotto and Mandelstam were more imperative than their own personal destinies. Poorly dressed yet somehow still elegant…broken, growing old, they still retained their love for the non-existent (or existing only in their balding heads) thing called ‘civilization.”

“Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse”

“It's an abominable fallacy that suffering makes for greater art. Suffering blinds, deafens, ruins, and often kills. Osip Mandelstam was a great poet before the revolution. So was Anna Akhmatova, so was Marina Tsvetaeva. They would have become what they became even if none of the historical events that befell Russia in this century had taken place: because they were gifted. Basically, talent doesn't need history.”

“The Constitution doesn't mention rain.”

“Judge: And what is your occupation in general?Brodsky: Poet, poet-translator.Judge: And who recognized you to be a poet? Who put you in the ranks of poet?Brodsky: No one. And who put me in the ranks of humanity?Judge: Did you study it?...How to be a poet? Did you attempt to finish an insitute of higher learning...where they prepare...teachBrodsky: I did not think that it is given to one by education.Judge: By what then?Brodsky: I think that it is from God.”

“When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor.Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. It is your window on time's infinity. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.”

“In the end, like the Almighty Himself, we make everything in our image, for want of a more reliable model; our artifacts tell more about ourselves than our confessions.”

“For a writer, only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.”

“Zawsze szuka ratunku ten, komu świat runąłi potrzebna jest pomoc, bo pogubił nogi,a w dodatku nie widzi śniegu. Północ. Północ.Wszystko to prowokuje do tego stwierdzenia,które nocą z podwójną ostrością się jawi:jedni się nie spalają w tych samych płomieniach,które z innych tymczasem mogą pozostawićpołowę ich postaci zaledwie (...)”

“Szepczę "żegnaj", lecz komu to przekazać, nie wiem,Bo przecież nie rozmawiam z martwą marą czy cieniem.On gdyby chciał przytaknąć, choćby głowę skłonić,W odpowiedzi nie poda nawet pustej dłoni.Ale w tym się już nowy zawiera element,bo przewagę nie głos ma, ale usta nieme,jak u ryby miarowo otwierane dlawydobycia w wydechu bezdźwięcznego "la".Akwarium, jak wiadomo, jest takim zaciszem,gdzie się nigdy piosenek i płaczu nie słyszy,gdzie ręka zawieszona i znieruchomiałazmienia własności - wkrótce płetwą by się stała.A więc do ciebie - która umiałaś pokonaćte mokre, wyciągnięte ku tobie ramionanereid z wód rodzimych - ja unosząc brewpiszę o tym, co może w żyłach zmrozić krew,że kondensat cierpienia i bólu przekroczyłpowierzchnię mózgu. Nie da się pamięci z oczuwykłuć. Za zamkniętymi ustami się piętrzyto cierpienie i krzyczy w rozpaczy do wnętrza.”

“Pociągła twarz o rysach lewantyńskich,dziobatą cerę ukrywają baczki;kiedy wyjmuje papierosa z paczki,bezbarwny pierścień nad palcu rozbłyskiemdwustuwatowym nagle wzrok poraża.Moja soczewka jest bardzo wrażliwa,mrużę więc oczy - i on się odzywa,krztusząc się dymem przy słowie "przepraszam".Styczeń na Krymie. Czarnomorski brzegzima odwiedza jakby dla zabawy:nawet nie może utrzymać się śniegna ostrych klingach wysokiej agawy.Świecą pustkami restauracje. Dymipaskudnie brudny ichtiozaur na redziei zalatuje laurami zgniłymi."Nalać wam tego paskudztwa?" "Nalejcie."A więc zmierzch, uśmiech i karafka. W mrokugdzieś w dali barman, zaciskając dłonie,jak młody delfin wznieca kręgi wokółfeluki chamsą po brzeg wypełnionej.Czworokąt okna. Żółtofiolet pyląodblaski garnków. Na tle ciemnej palmylecą śnieżynki. Zatrzymaj się chwilonie tyle piękna, co niepowtarzalna.”

“Out of Dostoevsky: Kafka. Out of Tolstoy: Margaret Mitchell.(in conversation, explaining his dislike for Tolstoy)”

“After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life.”

“What concerns me is that man, unable to articulate, to express himself adequately, reverts to action. Since the vocabulary of action is limited, as it were, to his body, he is bound to act violently, extending his vocabulary with a weapon where there should have been an adjective.”

“The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.”

“The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention.”

“An object, after all, is what makes infinity private.”

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”

“...in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.”

“...boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life--...the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. 'You are finite,' time tells you in a voice of boredom, 'and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile.' As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of limited significance even of your best, most ardent actions is better than the illusion of their consequence and the attendant self-satisfaction.”

“For darkness restores what light cannot repair.”