A Stop in a Desert (I. Brodskii)

Iosif Brodskii, fonte: https://koppel.pro/guest/ostanovka-v-pustyne-6262.

Title:
Ostanovka v pustyne (A Stop in a Desert)

Author: Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodskii (1940-1996)

Year/s of Editing: 1961–1969

Year of First Publication: May 1970

Publisher: Izdatel’stvo imeni Chekhova

Place of Publication: New York

Description:
Ostanovka v pustyne (A Stop in a Desert) was the first published collection by Iosif Brodskii approved by the author. A previously published anthology Stikhotvoreniia i poėmy (Verses and poems, New York 1965) had been disowned by the poet, who was unhappy with the selection of works from the beginning of his career which he judged immature. The text printed in 1965 reproduced, with some adjustment, the collection assembled three years earlier by Konstantin Kuz’minskii and Grigorii Kovalev, who later curated the anthology U Goluboi laguny (At the Blue Lagoon), a typewritten copy of which had arrived in the United States in 1964 via the complicated and at times unfathomable channels of the underground (cf. Klots 2015: web). The various stages of the story, including how the copy came to pass into the hands of Aleksandr Ginzburg, who made sure it arrived in the USA at the same time as the start of the famous trial, have recently been described in detail (cf. ibid.).
During the same years, Brodskii, who was later defined as a “Russian poet, and a Jew” (a verse by Tsvetaeva claims that “all poets are Jews”), had also tried to publish at home. Between the end of 1965 and the beginning of 1966, following the suggestion of several “enlightened” editors, Brodskii brought a selection of poems composed between 1962 and 1965 to the Leningrad branch of the Sovetskii Pisatel’ publishing company (cf. Loseff 2011: 122). Despite the positive response of four reviewers, the anthology was not accepted due to the judgment of one reviewer who claimed to notice in the young poet’s verses, a clear detachment from the “nation” and the “traditions of Russian poetry” and judged his support for the regime to be inadequately pronounced (cf. Niero 2011: 95). The collection would have been entitled Zimniaia pochta (Winter Mail), a name which finds an echo in the title of the samizdat magazine Severnaia pochta (Northern Mail), published in Leningrad between 1979 and 1981.
A Stop in a Desert is divided into six parts, prepared and given a title by Brodskii himself: Kholmy (Hills); Anno Domini; Fontan (Fountain); Poémy (Poems); Gorbunov i Gorchakov (Gorbunov and Gorchakov); Perevody (Translations). The volume includes sixty-five lyric poems, two poems (Isaak i Avraam, Isaac and Abraham, included in the first section, and Gorbunov and Gorchakov, placed at the end of the book) and four translations by John Donne.
Two thirds of the works had been absent from the anthology of 1965 (cf. Loseff 2011: 124-125) and it is this collection that Brodskii saw as a transposition into verse of his early poetic thought (cf. Wells 1998: 158). The works range from philosophical reflection to love poetry inspired by Brodskii’s troubled romance with the painter Marina Basmanova, whose initials M. B. are inscribed at the beginning of several poems. Many poems explore the tenets of Western humanist culture, the Christian tradition and classical mythology. The story of Dido and Aeneas (Didona i Ėnei) is used to explore the theme of departure (cf. ibid.) and recurs also in Brodskii’s later works. There is a sense of “nostalgia for a world culture” that fifty years earlier had characterised Acmeism and the influence of Anna Akhmatova (to whom a homonymous poem is dedicated), Osip Mandel’shtam’s (in particular for the intertextuality of the verses) and the English-language poets TS Eliot, Wystan Hugh Auden and John Donne (cf. ibid.) is evident.
A Stop in a Desert shows off a wide linguistic register and equally various is the length of the compositions, all dating to 1961-1969 (cf. ibid.: 158-159). By far the longest poem in the collection is Gorbunov i Gorchakov with nearly 1.400 iambic pentameters which recreates the conversation between two patients in an asylum, who according to Losev symbolise the two brain hemispheres, (cf. Loseff 2011: 132).
The protracted drafting of the poem, among the most successful and articulate of the poet’s early works, delayed the publication of the anthology which was originally scheduled for 1969. A typewritten copy of the poem, completed at the end of 1968, arrived in the United States only in the middle of the following year in a diplomatic dispatch that Carl Proffer, founder with his wife Ellendea of the famous publisher Ardis, managed to send from Moscow (cf. Klain 1998: web).
Most of the poems in the anthology had been brought by the poet to George Kline, philosopher, Russianist and later Brodskii’s translator (cf. Loseff 2011: 125). Although Kline expressed concern regarding the release of a volume that would cause problems to the author, who was still living in the USSR, Brodskii reaffirmed that he wanted to publish it as soon as possible (cf. Klain 1998: web), and the volume took shape in May 1970, for the Chekhov publishing company in New York. Kline’s essential support was not mentioned on the title page, since he wanted to make clear that the real curator of the collection was Brodskii himself (cf. Loseff 2011: 126). Similarly, the introduction written by Anatoii Naiman, the poet’s close friend in the so-called Magic Choir, is signed “N. N.” (cf. 1970: 15).
This first authorized anthology of Brodskii’s work was highly successful. Some of the poems would later be included in the English-language collection Selected poems (Harper & Row, New York 1973), which was approved by Brodskii and edited by Kline, with an introduction by Auden. Despite the title, the Italian edition Fermata nel deserto (Mondadori, 1979), edited by the poet’s friend Giovanni Buttafava, is instead composed of thirty lyrics, of which only a part comes from the homonymous volume published in 1970.

Federico Iocca
[30th June 2021]

Translation by Alice Bucelli

Bibliography

• Klain Dzh., Istoriia dvukh knig, in I. Brodskik, Trudy i dni, P. Vail. L. Losev (eds.), Izdatel’stvo Nezavisimaia gazeta, Moskva 1998, https://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/1057094/57/Vayl_-_Iosif_Brodskiy__trudy_i_dni.html, online (last accessed: 30/06/2021).
• Klots Ia., Kak izdavali pervuiu knigu Iosifa Brodskogo, 24^th May 2015, https://www.colta.ru/articles/literature/7415-kak-izdavali-pervuyu-kniguiosifa-brodskogo#name22, online (last accessed: 30/06/2021).
• Loseff L., Joseph Brodsky: a literary life, translated by J. A. Miller, Yale University Press, New Haven-London 2011.
• N. [Naiman A.], Zametki dlia pamiati, in I. Brodskii. Ostanovka v pustyne, Izdatel’stvo imeni Chekhova, New York 1970: 7-15.
• Niero A., Né in samizdat né in tamizdat né altrove: il «caso» Zimnjaja počta di Iosif Brodskij, “eSamizdat”, VIII (2010-2011): 91-104.
• Wells D., Ostanovka v pustyne, in N. Cornwell (ed.), Reference Guide to Russian Literature, Fitzroy Dearborn, London 1998: 194-195.