Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky is yet another controversial figure in Russian literature. He was sentenced to a five-year term in exile by the Soviet government, but he only served a year and a half of his term. In 1972, he was exiled permanantly and lived in London and Vienna before coming to live in the United States where he died in 1996. In 1987, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Brodsky, like other Russian poets, also translated the works of others, and his own works have been translated into at least ten languages. Follow this link to see his biography on the official Nobel Prize website.

Part Of Speech

...and when "the future" is uttered, swarms of mice

rush out of the Russian language and gnaw a piece

of ripened memory which is twice

as hole-ridden as real cheese.

After all these years it hardly matters who

or what stands in the corner, hidden by heavy drapes,

and your mind resounds not with a seraphic "doh",

only their rustle. Life, that no one dares

to appraise, like that gift horse's mouth,

bares its teeth in a grin at each

encounter. What gets left of a man amounts

to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech.

The first few lines of this poem remind me of the Chekhov quotation from the video we watched in class that said, "The Russian people adore their past, hate their present, and fear their future." When Brodsky writes that when the future is mentioned, "mice rush out of the Russian language and gnaw a piece of ripened memory which is twice as hole-ridden as real cheese," I cannot help but think how closely Russia's past ties in with its present and its future. Memory fades over time. This seems to be the real meaning behind "Part of Speech" When memory fades, people tend to remember only the best of times. The bad things get blocked out. Russians adore the past because they remember only the good times. The present is hated because it is filled with daily issues and problems to solve. The future is feared because it is uncertain, unlike the past which has already occurred and is concretely etched. When man dies, as the speaker points out, "What gets left of a man amounts to a part. To his spoken part. To a part of speech." Chekhov's words prove exactly this. He is remembered for what he said. We are all remembered for what we do and say, not for who we are.