ISSN: 2158-7051 ==================== INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES ==================== ISSUE NO. 7 ( 2018/1 ) |
BRODSKY AMONG US, A MEMOIR , By Ayse Dietrich*, Published by: Academic Studies Press, USA. Written by Ellendea Proffer Teasley, Year of Publishing: 2017. Subject Area: Jews of Russia and Eastern Europe and their Legacy. Book Type: Memoir, Literary Criticism . Total Number of Pages: 166. ISBN: 9781618115799, $24.00, Paperback.
The
poet in exile becomes the poet of exile… the poet of exile is continually
struggling in a time that is too late and a place that
is elsewhere.
Peterson (1993)[1]
This memoir Brodsky Among Us (Brodskiy sredi nas) written by Ellendea
Proffer Teasley is about the friendship and
experiences between the author and her husband and the Russian-born poet Joseph
Brodsky. In 1964 he was charged with social parasitism
and sentenced to five years of hard labor. Brodsky was exiled form his country to Israel
in 1972, but he was persuaded to live in the United States and offered a job at
the University of Michigan by the Proffers; Brodsky and the Proffers remained friends until Brodsky’s death in 1996. The author of the book, Ellendea Proffer Teasley, who co-founded with her husband the avant-garde Russian publishing
house Ardis in the U.S., published her book first in Russian in Russia in 2015;
the English translation was published in the U.S. by the Academic Studies Press
in 2017.
In the section of the book “A Word about the Context” the author explains how she and her
husband met Brodsky in Leningrad in 1969 on the advice of Nadezhda
Mandelstam, the widow of the poet Osip Mandelstam and
the one who introduced the Proffers into the Russian literary world. The author
was a graduate student at Indiana University when she went to the Soviet Union
with her husband, Carl Proffer.
She continues her book with an explanation of her first
Russian contact with Russian literature, particularly with Dostoevsky and Mayakovsky in her teenage years, and her graduate school
education at Indiana University. Later she describes her first impressions
about the Russian intellectual world and her first impressions about Brodsky
and ‘his code of behaviour under totalitarian rule’.
The author states that ‘a man who does not think for
himself, a man who goes along with the group, is part of the evil structure
itself’. She states that the most remarkable thing about the poet was ‘his determination to live as if he were free in the eleven time
zone prison that is the Soviet Union’ and ‘his preference to act as if the
Soviet regime does not exist’. During their visit the author witnessed the
rivalry between Leningrad/Petersburg and Moscow. She describes
Leningrad as an artificial and the most European city, which considers itself
superior to the rest of the country. As a resident of Leningrad Brodsky
considered himself part of an elite and had the same
attitude. Later in the memoir, the author talks about anti-Soviet Brodsky’s
desperate desire to get out of the Soviet Union. His first offer from the OVIR was
to emigrate to Israel, and the second offer by the Proffers
was to become poet-in-residence at the University of Michigan. The author
states that Brodsky had no intention to go to Israel; he wanted to go to the
anti-Soviet great power. Then the memoir continues with Brodsky meeting with
Carl in Vienna, then his meeting with poets from London, their travel to his
first settlement place, Ann Arbor in the U.S. where he was forced to learn many
new things, his first impressions about the new country, his comparison of old
and new cultures, and shows how Brodsky found a way to adapt himself to the new
world and how this new world perceived him. He loved England, he loved Italy
and Poland, but stayed in this new world, in New York because only the U.S. was
as anti-Soviet Union he required, where he was free to express his overwhelming
disgust at how the Soviet system required not just obedience, but complicity
and how his country had been enslaved.
In the Soviet Union he had been known only to a small
circle of literary people; in New York, however, he was not only accepted, but as
a dissident he had influence, power and became part of the establishment. The
author claims that he had trouble getting the balance right. While he was proud
and possessive of his relations with the famous outside of Russia, he was
infuriated by the fame of literary people in his homeland, Russia, and his
hostility was based on his conviction that these people were political puppets.
He was envied them because he also wanted to be famous in his country, but he was
unable to do so.
The author also talks about Brodsky’s problems of after
becoming famous, his thirst for recognition and fame in the U.S. She explains
why Brodsky
never returned to his beloved Petersburg. The author believes that this was “because
he didn’t believe anything had really changed and return would be a form of
forgiveness; and as if exile was not so difficult and it had not cost you
anything. sometimes
you love your country but it doesn’t love you back. This loss becomes a part of
your new identity.”
Proffer Teasley’s memoir is an excellent
primary source for information about Brodsky’s character and personality, his exile
and journey to the United States, his adaptation to this new culture and his
attitudes toward it, his relationship with writers and intellectuals in
America, and his undiminished opposition to and hostility towards the Soviet
Union.
[1]Peterson, D., ‘From
Exile to Affirmation: The Poetry of Joseph Brodsky’, Studies in 20th
Century Literature, Vol.17, Issue 2, Article 12, 1993.
*Ayse Dietrich - Professor, Part-time, at Middle East Technical University, Department of History. Editor and the founder of the International Journal of Russian Studies e-mail: editor@ijors.net, dayse@metu.edu.tr, dietrichayse@yahoo.com
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