IRONY and INDIVIDUALISM in the WORKS of JOSEF BRODSKY

By Dmitriy Aronov

Translated by Elena Clark

When studying poetry, the question of what precisely constitutes a true poet and true poetic mastery often arises. Undoubtedly, the human personality and perception of the world are important themes that poetry explores-- especially poetry of the Soviet Union, where the very presence of individuality often contradicted officially established norms. In Josef Brodsky’s poetry, the complexity and diversity of worldviews is conveyed through irony. By contradicting himself, the poet rules out any uniformity of views and feelings, and thereby any unity of public opinion. It is Brodsky’s irony that speaks of individualism--the philosophical underpinning of his poetry.

A certain irony in the observation of daily life serves as the fundamental theme of the poem “We Went Straight From the Post Office to the Canal.”  Watching a retreating figure, the lyrical hero describes an ordinary perspective: “He was quickly diminishing in my eyes.”  In this commonplace phenomenon, however, he finds deep philosophical meaning. At the same time, as the moving figure diminishes in the eyes of one person, it also becomes larger in the eyes of others “at the end of the journey.” The lyrical hero emphasizes that these are not two separate events, but merely different aspects of one single phenomenon: “He filled everything with himself, turning into a dot at the same time.” Even such a simple concept as the size of a person stops being absolute. On the contrary, it can be completely compatible with two diametrically opposed views. Everything depends on the point of view of the observer, which in the given situation is defined only by physical location.

Brodsky also rejects absolute opinion in other poems, displaying irony in even less disputable situations. In the poem “I Always Maintained That Life Was a Game,” he repeatedly confuses parts with the whole: “I thought that the forest was only part of a log.” In this poem there is also frequent confusion of events in time. For example, the lyrical hero asks the question, “Why do we need fish, since we have caviar?” as if he does not understand the impossibility of the existence of caviar without fish. Saying that “the leaf destroys the bud,” he purposefully ignores the role of a bud in nature. At first glance, such confusion of cause and effect does nothing more than introduce absurdity into the poem. But it is important to note that the lyrical hero presents this absurdity as an inalienable part of his past works: “I always maintained...” “I wrote...” That is to say, the individuality of the lyrical hero as a poet is demonstrated precisely in the denial of generally accepted norms. In a sense, the disparity between such a world outlook and standard opinions makes his works unacceptable to other people: “My song was devoid of a tune, but then, you couldn’t sing it as a chorus...”

In the later poems of Brodsky, such complexity can be observed not only in the views of the lyrical hero, but also in his feelings. One of the poems from the cycle “Part of Speech” is an address by the lyrical hero to another person. This letter begins fairly ironically: the author notes indifferently that he is incapable of remembering “the features of the face” of the person whom he is addressing, and cannot even find an appropriate term  (“dear, esteemed, kind lady, but it doesn’t matter”). Nevertheless, the poem very quickly acquires an entirely opposite tone. The feelings become strained (“twisting at night on the sheet”), and the lyrical hero distinctly imagines the person to whom he is referring: “My body imitates yours, like a deranged mirror.” This simultaneous existence of different feelings is also important in other poems. For example, the sorrow and gloom of “Christmas Romance” are combined with a certain optimism in the last line. In the poem “Rain in August,” nostalgia and discussions about life, brought about by the rain, are contrasted with the trite remark, “What a rainstorm.”       

By using irony and often contradicting himself, Brodsky creates a poem that seems complex and somewhat absurd. By avoiding in this manner clear and straightforward pronouncements, however, he achieves a more important goal. The distortion of the generally accepted norms of logic, and the confusion of feelings and opinions, emphasize the possibility of the existence of contradictions. In Brodsky’s world, situations in life do not require absolutely true conclusions, and this lack of definition is repeatedly reflected in his poetry: “Everything that I have written...has unavoidably come to an ellipsis.”

All of Brodsky’s poetry and life experiences may be presented in such a light. A denial of norms and lack of definitions cannot be compatible with a society whose opinions are defined beforehand--officially, no less. An individualist, in denying such a system, becomes an outcast, and his works are perceived--in the words of Brodsky himself--as “second-class goods.” The paradox is that such poetry can be produced in a society as prejudiced and constrained as the Soviet one. Indeed, it is the unofficial poetry of the Soviet era’s creative stagnation that reflects most clearly the aspiration towards complexity and diversity of feeling, breadth of opinion, and individuality of worldview.