Joseph Brodsky

Starred review from February 14, 2011
Nobel Prize-winning poet Brodsky grew up in the Soviet Union in the midst of WWII. "If anyone profited from the war," he writes, "it was us: its children...we were richly provided with stuff to romanticize..." A middling student, Brodsky dropped out at 15 and began his informal education. Rejected from submarine training, he held many jobs, including machinist, morgue assistant, and bath house stoker, which attracted the attention of the KGB. They arrested Brodsky in 1962, marking the start of his troubles with his government. He would soon be found guilty of "parisitism" and face exile, first to rural Norenskaya, where he read, wrote, and worked the land, and then to Vienna, where he flourished as a poet, essayist, and intellectual. But success was bittersweet, as Brodsky never returned to his homeland or saw his parents again. Loseff counts himself a longtime friend of his subject's and this account brims with respect and enthusiasm: "I cannot comment on Joseph's life and work dispassionately, not only because I loved him, but also because I thought him a genius." Yet he does employ restraint in capturing the poet's individualism, originality, whimsicality, and eccentricity, lovingly illuminating the man behind the work.

March 1, 2011

Loseff (1937-2009) was a professor of Russian language and literature at Dartmouth and a longtime friend of 1987 Nobel Prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky (1940-96), both of them Leningrad (today's St. Petersburg) natives who left the then Soviet Union for the United States, although under different circumstances. Loseff describes Brodsky's life in the USSR, Brodsky's parents, his early departure from formal education, the variety of work he sought, and his relationship with Marina Basmanova, with whom he had a son. Loseff explains the history and nature of Russian poetry, Brodsky's differences from the Leningrad poets of the 1950s, and the particular influence of Anna Akhmatova (as well as John Donne, W.H. Auden, and Robert Frost). Brodsky's denunciation as anti-Soviet, his 1964 trial, and his internal exile are carefully detailed. Loseff writes of Brodsky's major poems and essays and his poetic ideas of eros, nature, politics, and ethics, noting that themes of guilt and forgiveness, Christian love, Neoplatonism, and existentialism are major forces in Brodsky's work. Loseff also covers Brodsky's life in the United States and the evolution of his politics and writing up to his early death. VERDICT Recommended for all readers and scholars of postwar Russian studies, Russian literature, or simply Brodsky's life.--Gene Shaw, Paramus P.L., NJ

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2011
Distinguished literary scholar Loseff declares, There were a number of reasons for me not to write this book. The most obvious being the fact that he and Joseph Brodsky (194096) were close friends. But, of course, that very intimacy makes for a uniquely knowledgeable and elucidative biography. Like Brodsky, Loseff (19372009) was a Russian poet who came to America in the 1970s, albeit without suffering persecution and exile as did the revered Nobel laureate. With dramatic on-the-scene documentation, Loseff tells the complete story of Brodskys now legendary arrest in 1964 for parasitism, his travesty of a trial, and his exile to a remote village. Brodsky became an international cause c'l'bre, only to be abruptly ejected from the USSR eight difficult years later. Loseff chronicles pivotal chapters in Brodskys thoroughly literary life, but he concentrates most zealously on Brodskys writing and philosophy, irony and gratitude. He traces Brodskys influences from Akhmatova to Orwell to Auden, performs exhilarating close readings of Brodskys complex and powerful poetry and exquisite essays, and delineates the formidable challenge of translating his Russian prosody into English. Loseffs commanding portrait reasserts Brodskys standing as an artistic genius of rectitude who called for justice, sought inner freedom, and became a true citizen of the world and poet for all.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)