Joseph Brodsky
Russian-American · 1940–1996
Nobel laureate poet exiled from the Soviet Union, whose essays and verse explored language as the supreme instrument of civilization, the metaphysics of time and exile, and the moral authority that poetry derives from its precision.
Wikipedia ↗“Жизнь — какова она на самом деле — это борьба не между плохим и хорошим, а между плохим и худшим.”
Russian
“Life — the way it really is — is a battle not between bad and good but between bad and worse.”
“Настоящая биография поэта — в том, как ведут себя его гласные и шипящие, в его размерах, рифмах и метафорах.”
Russian
“The poet's real biography is in the way his vowels and sibilants behave, in his meters, rhymes, and metaphors. In the number of cancelled lines.”
“В конце концов, именно поэты и романисты обеспечивают обществу самосознание.”
Russian
“After all, it is the poets and novelists who afford a society its self-awareness, who are to a nation what dreams and nightmares are to a person.”
“Для человека нет другого будущего, кроме очерченного его способностью пользоваться языком.”
Russian
“For a human being there is no other future save that outlined by his ability to use language. The ability to use language and the gift of speech are two different things. The gift of speech is given to everyone. The ability to use language, however, is an art.”
“Язык — вещь более древняя и более неизбежная, чем государство.”
Russian
“A language is a more ancient and inevitable thing than any state. The revolutions, coups, and wars — all that stuff of political history — are but surface disturbances. Language is what lies beneath.”
“Каждая писательская карьера начинается как личный поиск святости, самосовершенствования.”
Russian
“Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.”