Physics and Lyrics. Part 3. Joseph Brodsky: I fall to the people
The country needed poems about milkmaids, collective farms, newspapers and ships. He wrote about the "normal size of human death" …
Part 1. Sounds of space for those who hear
Part 2. Mikhail Shemyakin: the forbidden fruit of metaphysics
There is mysticism. There is faith. There is a Lord.
There is a difference between them. And there is unity.
(I. A. Brodsky)
He started writing quite late - at seventeen. The first poems interested some people. The Procession was long and thoughtfully read by AA. Akhmatova. The parade of archetypes-symbols - the King, Harlequin, Poet, Thief, Columbine, Liar - was mesmerizing. The march of blind copies of Brodsky's poems from Leningrad to the very outskirts will begin later, when he is published in Syntax and will hold his first answer in the KGB's internal prison on Shpalernaya, and while he becomes her, Anna Andreevna, “godson”, her “red”, Later - her“orphan”.
From his youth, absolutely aloof in sound, Brodsky seemed to his judges arrogant and anti-Soviet when he was just outside the system, outside the law, according to which high poetry was equated with petty parasitism, and some people called his poems “so-called”. He really measured the meaning of life by the high measure of the Word, he could not, could not, and did not want to do it differently to the extent of the sound that nature let out to him.
The country needed poems about milkmaids, collective farms, newspapers and ships. He wrote about the "normal size of human death." Or here:
I don't understand dactylic rhyme yet.
Who could be excited by this in the everyday life of some great construction projects, who could even empathize with such a state? A narrow circle of selected rhyming parasites, no one else. It is interesting that these poems were written not somewhere on the St. Petersburg roof, not even in the dust of libraries, but in the most that neither is the geological party: "Field season of 1958". There are hardworking geologists all around, and this one is tormented that he, just think, did not understand the dactylic rhyme! Yes, he did not finish his studies at school, where:
… "Hannibal" sounds from a thin bag on a chair, the
uneven bars smell strongly of armpits during exercise;
as for the black board, from which the frost on the skin,
remained black. And behind too.
The rattling bell
transformed the silvery frost into a crystal. As for the parallel lines, everything turned out to be true and dressed in bone;
reluctance to get up. I never wanted to.
Factory everyday life with drunkenness, smoke breaks and talking about football also did not capture the sonic youth.
On the bus in the morning I go to
where the terrible face of labor awaits me.
At the end of November, in the dark, slush and mud, sleepy in it ride, fearing watchmen, gloomy crowds with rotten teeth.
The wind blows, laughing maliciously.
It remains to run to geologists. The device in the geological party led Brodsky to the literary association at the Mining Institute. The search for minerals became for the young man at the same time a search for ideas, words, meaning. The hobbies of his poetic environment for Indian philosophy, mysticism, esotericism did not touch Brodsky. This "friendship with the abyss" was too little for him to fill his lack of sound:
… Friendship with the abyss
is of a purely local
interest these days …
Otherwise, telepathists, Buddhists, spiritualists, drugs, Freudians, neurologists, psychopaths will take over.
Kaif, a state of euphoria, we will dictate our own laws.
Addicts will attach their shoulder straps.
The syringe will be hung instead of the icons of the
Savior and St. Mary.
Brodsky connected his initiation as a poet with the main woman of his life - the artist Marina Basmanova.
It was you, hot, oshuy, the right-hand
conch of
my ear, whispering.
It was you, fiddling with the
curtain, put a voice in my wet mouth, calling out to you.
I was simply blind.
You, arising, hiding, gave me sight.
The slender beauty Marina "gave her sight" not only to Brodsky. When, fleeing from the persecution of the Leningrad "organs", Joseph was in a Moscow mental hospital, his muse, whom he considered his wife, got along with the man whom he considered a friend. Not surviving double betrayal, Joseph tried to open the veins.
Marina will come to him in exile. He will devote beautiful poems to her about love. The birth of their son will put an end to the difficult relationship of the three, but in Brodsky's poems, the dedication to M. B. for a long time will be the hallmark of the time when the world of the sound poet irrevocably flowed "through the sieve of incomprehension." For the image of Marina to acquire the cold abstraction of abstraction, materiality, it will take time and a "change of empire":
You, a guitar-like thing with a tangled web of
strings that continues to brown in the living room, whiten a la Casimir in the washed space, darken - especially in the evening - in the corridor …
Brodsky could not be judged for the spread of anti-Soviet views, he did not spread his views, and they were not anti-Soviet, but rather extra-Soviet. The poet was "sewn" by parasitism, which, in fact, did not exist either, Brodsky earned money with poetry and translations. However, the order is the order. The "slacker climbing Parnassus" should have been jailed under the heading.
The interrogation is conducted in an openly mocking tone. The defendant is deep in sound, calm and aloof, which infuriates the judge. Much more than this entire Kafkaesque court, Brodsky is now worried about the catastrophe of his personal life.
“Judge: What is your specialty in general?
Brodsky: Poet. Poet-translator.
Judge: Who admitted that you are a poet? Who ranked you among the poets?
Brodsky: Nobody. (Without challenge.) And who ranked me as a human race?
Judge: Have you studied this?
Brodsky: To what?
Judge: To be a poet? We did not try to graduate from a university where they prepare … where they teach …
Brodsky: I did not think that this is given by education.
Judge: And what then?
Brodsky: I think it's … (confused) from God …"
When the verdict - exile, sounded, Brodsky did not seem to even understand what it was about. Where can they send him from Russian poetry, from the Russian language? It is impossible, in fact, to expel a person out of love, from obsession, it is impossible to deprive him of his air without taking his life. They were not going to take their lives. The link is not an execution, not even expulsion, the expulsion will come later. In exile, the authorities intend to “isolate but preserve”. Perhaps it will still come in handy. He came in handy, becoming a recognized classic of Russian literature, but this is not the most interesting thing. The most interesting thing is what changes happened to Brodsky in exile and on the way to it.
“One of the best times in my life. There were no worse, but better - perhaps it was not”(I. Brodsky on the Arkhangelsk exile)
An old man was traveling with the poet in the Stolypin carriage. He stole a sack of grain and got six years for it. It was clear that he would die in exile. The world community supported the convicted Brodsky, he was supported by the dissidents who remained at large, a whole human rights wave arose. No one stood up for the old man. He was alone with his misfortune, he carried it quietly, humbly. Even his grandmother, who even stayed in his village, would never have said: "You acted nobly by stealing a bag of grain, because we had nothing to eat."
“All these young people - I called them 'wrestlers' - they knew what they were doing, what they were doing, what for. Maybe really for the sake of some change. Or maybe for the sake of thinking well to yourself. Because they always had some kind of audience, some friends, a sidekick in Moscow. And this old man has no audience. And when you see this, all these human rights lyrics take on a slightly different character"
The link marked a tremendous transformation of Brodsky's psyche, becoming the filling of the sound he had been looking for all his life. In the distant Norenskaya, surrounded by simple muscular people, Brodsky learned to distance himself from himself. He overcame the egocentricity of sound and received the highest pleasure that is only possible in sound - the pleasure of uniting with others.
It is difficult to find a more vivid example of the sound inclusion of the desires of others, the transition from “I” to “we,” than Brodsky's case in exile. The poet's mental state could not but be reflected in his poems. In the village, Brodsky actively mastered the expanded baroque metaphor. Researchers believe that it was after the exile that Brodsky's stanza was structured into stanzas, and the poet acquired his unique style.
The exiled must find a job for himself. Brodsky got a job as a laborer at a state farm. He fervently chopped wood, dug potatoes, grazed cattle, felled wood, was a roofer, driver, cooper. "Brown clods of native land stuck to the tarpaulin tops." The earth "sheltered" its poet, and he mocked at his inconsistency with the harmony of nature:
A. Burov is a tractor driver and I, an
agricultural worker Brodsky, sowed winter crops - six hectares.
I contemplated the wooded edges
and the jet-striped sky, and my boot touched the lever.
The grain puffed up under the harrow, And the neighborhood announced the engine.
The pilot swirled his handwriting between the clouds.
Facing the fields, moving with
my back, I decorated the seeder with
myself, powdered with earth, like Mozart …
Here in Norenskaya Brodsky is truly happy for the first time. The lack of basic amenities is compensated by a separate room, where, after the Leningrad "one and a half rooms", the poet feels light and at ease. Local residents treat the exiled well, they treat him with respect, his name and patronymic are Joseph Alexandrovich. The older generation in the village of the 60s managed to grow up even before the horrors of collectivization, the communal spirit of these rare muscular people today is strong, their patience and generosity have no limits.
Here comes to Brodsky's beloved, already a stranger, but he accepts her. The pain of separation will habitually settle in the poet's soul. Later, exile will fly to a foreign land, into the cold space, from the Noren line, which are rightfully considered the pearl of Russian poetry:
You have forgotten the village, lost in the swamps of the
forested province, where scarecrows
are not kept in the kitchen gardens - the cereals are not there, and the road is also all gati and gullies.
Baba Nastya, hey, died, and Pesterev is hardly alive, but when he is alive, he is drunk in the basement, or he gets along from the back of our bed, they say, a gate, or a gate.
And in winter they chop wood and sit on turnips, and the star blinks from the smoke in the frosty sky.
And not in calico in the window is the bride, but a holiday of dust
and an empty place where we loved.
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Brodsky's most sincere poems were born in the village. Then there will be others - cold, detached, perfect. But such, without a shadow of bitter irony, without a hint of arrogant condescension, close to all ardent fans of I. A., he will no longer write. And although not all discerning critics like these verses, I will give them in full:
My people, who did not bow their heads, My people, who preserved the habit of grass:
In the hour of death, clutching grains in handfuls, Retaining the ability to grow on the northern stone.
My people, patient and kind people, Drinking, shouting songs, striving forward, rising - is huge and simple -
Above the stars: human growth!
My people,
raising up the best sons, Condemning their own crooks and liars, Burying their torments within themselves - and firm in battle, Fearlessly speaking their great truth.
My people, who did not ask for gifts from heaven, My people, who do not think for a minute without
Creation, labor, talking to everyone like a friend, And no matter what they achieve, without pride looking around.
My people! Yes, I am happy that your son!
You will never look at me sideways.
You will drown me if my song is not honest.
But you will hear her if she is sincere.
You won't fool the people Kindness is not gullibility. The mouth, Speaking a lie, will cover the people with a palm, And there is no such language anywhere in the world, So that the speaker could look down on the people.
The path of the singer is the chosen path for the homeland,
And wherever you look, you can only turn to the people, Dissolve, like a drop, in countless human voices, Lost as a leaf in the incessant rustling forests.
Let the people uplift - and I do not know other judges, Like a dried bush - the conceit of individual people.
Only the people can give height, a guiding thread, For there is nothing to compare their growth with on the outskirts of the forest.
I fall to the people. I fall to the great river.
I drink great speech, dissolve in its language.
I fall to the river, flowing endlessly along the eyes
Through the centuries, right into us, past us, beyond us.
About these verses A. A. Akhmatova wrote in her diary: “Either I don’t understand anything, or it’s brilliant like poetry, but in the sense of the moral path, this is what Dostoevsky says in The House of the Dead: not a shadow of anger or arrogance …”
The amazing natural wisdom, to which the sound develops, only by removing its vulnerable ego-body from the limestone of the archetypal I, is given to the muscle initially as a given. The exiled poet I. A. Brodsky in the summer of 1964 from the birth of Christ, and he was happy. Here we will leave it.
