Latest Joseph Brodsky Quotes from Interviews

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• Literature sort of makes your daily operation, your daily conduct, the management of your affairs in the society a bit more complex. And it puts what you do in perspective, and people don't like to see themselves or their activities in perspective. They don't feel quite comfortable with that. Nobody wants to acknowledge the insignificance of his life, and that is very often the net result of reading a poem.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Reading, Perspective, People

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• In the West you have every opportunity for civilization to triumph.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Opportunity, Civilization, Triumph

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• It's partly the fault of the institutions of education. But it's partly the decision to be relieved of responsibility. Literature is simply the most focused form of the demands on the evolution of the species. It imposes a certain responsibility, moral, ethical and esthetic responsibility, and the species simply doesn't want to oblige.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Responsibility, Decision, Faults

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• In general, in America, every discourse in literature in 15 minutes degenerates into a conversation about ethics, morality and this and that. The Holocaust and the consequences of it. Well, I find it terribly boring, predictable and unimportant, because what matters about literature is esthetic achievement.

  Joseph Brodsky

  America, What Matters, Achievement

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I don't have principles. I have nerves.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Principles, Nerves

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• The government, the state, they're just objects of jokes rather than serious consideration. I can't possibly take them seriously.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Government, Serious, Consideration

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• A man should know about himself two or three things: whether he is a coward; whether he is an honest man or given to lies; whether he is an ambitious man. One should define oneself first of all in those terms, and only then in terms of culture, race, creed.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Lying, Men, Race

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Political, Grew Up, Lows

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• I didn't want to be either the cre`me de la cre`me or a martyr. I'd rather be a novelty, especially in a democracy that doesn't understand the language I write in.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Writing, Democracy, Want

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• In Russia, the moment a person opens his mouth you know where he's from. There's the uniformity of experience of an individual in Russia. When you're about 7 years old you get into school and you get put in this factory or this bureaucracy or whatever. The options are computable. Here it's tremendously diverse.

  Joseph Brodsky

  School, Russia, Years

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Miserable, Ifs, I Can

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Jew

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• I'm neither Catholic not Protestant. Protestant sounds good but I don't think I am.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Thinking, Catholic, Sound

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Should Have, Wrecks, Apartment

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I'm 100 percent Jewish by blood, but by education I'm nothing. By affiliation I'm nothing.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Blood, Affiliation, Percent

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• It's rather an exhilarating feeling. It's 6 or 7 when you get up and go out into the fields wearing your Wellingtons or high boots. You know that at this very hour half the nation does the same thing, which gives you, with the benefit of hindsight, a satisfaction in doing those things, too, a knowledge, a sense of the nation. I was a city boy until then.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Boys, Cities, Exhilarating Feeling

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• I was quite happy in Arkhangelsk.Subsequently, I was sent to a village. I liked it in its own way because it sounded to me very much like the tradition of a hired man in any world-class poem. That's what I was, a hired man. I was working for a collective farm.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Men, Class, World

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I'm not trying to be ridiculous or funny, but it was rather pleasant to find yourself in isolation, in solitary.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Finding Yourself, Trying, Ridiculous

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• In America, a metrical poem is likely to conjure up the idea of the sort of poet who wears ties and lunches at the faculty club. In Russia it suggests the moral force of an art practiced against the greatest personal odds, as a discipline, solitary and intense.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Art, Russia, Odds

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• Every life has a file, if you will.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Files, Ifs

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Way, Proletariat, Caught

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• I had this fantasy of becoming a neurosurgeon. You know, the normal Jewish boy fantasy, but I wanted to be a neurosurgeon for some reason. So I started in this unpleasant way. I was an assistant to the coroner, opening up corpses, taking the innards out, opening skulls, taking the brains out.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Boys, Opening Up, Skulls

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.

• I am quite prepared to die here [in NY]. It doesn't matter at all. I don't know better places, or perhaps if I do I am not prepared to make a move.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Moving, Matter, Prepared

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• What's happening in Russia is devoid of autobiographical interest for me. Maybe it's egocentric. Whatever it is, feel free to use it.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Russia, Use, Interest

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• When Thomas Mann arrived in California from Germany, they asked him about German literature. And he said, 'German literature is where I am.' It's really a bit grand, but if a German can afford it, I can afford it.

  Joseph Brodsky

  California, Germany, Literature

  "Joseph Brodsky's Art of Darkness". www.washingtonpost.com. October 23, 1987.