Do you remember the governor’s postum, sister? Famous poem by Joseph Brodsky

(from Martial) Today it is windy and the waves are overlapping. Autumn is coming, everything will change in the area. The change of these colors is more touching, Posthumus, than a change in a friend’s outfit. Virgo amuses to a certain extent - you won’t go further than the elbow or knee. How much more joyful is beauty outside the body: neither embrace nor betrayal is possible! ___ I am sending you, Posthumus, these books. What's in the capital? Are they laying softly? Isn't it hard to sleep? How's Caesar doing? What is he doing? All the intrigue? All the intrigue is probably just gluttony. I am sitting in my garden, the lamp is burning. No girlfriend, no servant, no acquaintances. Instead of the weak of this world and the strong, there is only the harmonious hum of insects. ___ Here lies a merchant from Asia. He was a smart merchant - businesslike, but unnoticeable. He died quickly due to fever. He came here on trade business, not for this. Next to him is a legionnaire, under rough quartz. He glorified the empire in battles. How many times could they have killed? and died an old man. Even here, Posthumus, there are no rules. ___ It’s true, Posthumus, that a chicken is not a bird, but with a chicken brain you’ll have enough trouble. If you happen to be born in the Empire, it is better to live in a remote province by the sea. And far from Caesar, and from the blizzard. There is no need to fawn, be cowardly, or rush. Are you saying that all governors are thieves? But a thief is dearer to me than a bloodsucker. ___ I agree to wait out this downpour with you, hetaera, but let’s not trade: taking sestertius from a covering body is the same as demanding a drachma from a roof. Leaking, you say? But where is the puddle? It never happened that I left a puddle. If you find yourself some kind of husband, he will leak onto the bedspread. ___ So we have lived more than half of our time. As the old slave told me in front of the tavern: “When we look around, we see only ruins.” The view, of course, is very barbaric, but true. I was in the mountains. Now I'm busy with a large bouquet. I’ll find a large jug and pour water for them... How is it in Libya, my Postumus, or where? Are we still fighting? ___ Do you remember, Postumus, the governor has a sister? Thin, but with full legs. You slept with her again... You recently became a priestess. The priestess, Posthumus, communicates with the gods. Come, let's drink wine and eat bread. Or plums. Tell me the news. I’ll make your bed in the garden under the clear sky and tell you the names of the constellations. ___ Soon, Postumus, your friend who loves addition, will pay his long-standing debt to subtraction. Take your savings from under your pillow, there isn’t much there, but it’s enough for the funeral. Ride your black mare to the house of the hetaeras under our city wall. Give them the price at which you loved, so that they will mourn for the same price. ___ The greenness of the laurel, reaching the point of trembling. The door is open, the window is dusty, the chair is abandoned, the bed is abandoned. Fabric that has absorbed the midday sun. Pontus rustles behind a black hedge of pine trees. Someone's ship is struggling with the wind off the cape. On the dry bench is the Elder Pliny. A blackbird chirps in the cypress hair. March 1972 1972 Viktor Golyshev The bird no longer flies into the window. The girl, like an animal, protects her blouse. When I slip on a cherry pit, I don’t fall: the force of friction increases as the speed decreases. The heart jumps like a squirrel in the tangle of ribs. And proudly sings about age. This is already aging. Aging! Hello my aging! Blood flows slowly. The once slender leg structure is tormenting the eyesight. I advance to the fifth area of my sensations, taking off my shoes and saving them with cotton wool. Anyone who walks by with a shovel is now an object of attention. Right! The body repented of its passions. In vain it sang, sobbed, grinned. In the oral cavity, the caries of ancient Greece is not inferior, at least. Breathing stinkingly and cracking my joints, I dirty the mirror. We are not talking about the shroud yet. But the very ones who will endure you are already entering the doors. Hello, young and unfamiliar tribe! Time, buzzing like an insect, finally found the desired delicacy in the hard back of my head. There is confusion and destruction in my thoughts. Like a queen - Ivana in the mansion, I feel the breath of the mortal crown with all my fibers and press myself closer to the mat. Scary! That's exactly what is scary. Even when all the wheels of the train roll with a roar below the waist, the flight of fantasy does not stop. Like the absent-minded gaze of an excellent student, not distinguishing glasses from a bra, the pain of a myopic person, and death are blurry, like the outlines of Asia. Everything that could have been lost was completely lost. But I also achieved in rough form everything that was set out to be achieved. Even cuckoos in the night are little affected by the sound - even if life is slandered or justified by it for a long time, but aging is the growth of an organ of hearing designed for silence. Aging! There is more and more mortal in the body. That is, not necessary for life. The radiance of the local light disappears from the copper forehead. And at noon a black spotlight floods my eye sockets. The strength in my muscles has been stolen. But I am not looking for a crossbar for myself: I am ashamed to take on the Lord’s work. However, it must be a matter of cowardice. In fear. There are technical difficulties in the act. This is the influence of the coming corpse: every decay begins with will, the minimum of which is the basis of statistics. This is how I taught while sitting in the school kindergarten. Oh, move away, fellow orcas! Let me go out into the open field! I was like everyone else. That is, he lived a similar life. He entered the hallway with flowers. Drank. Playing the fool under the skin. I took what they gave me. The soul did not set its sights on things that were not its own. He had a support, he built a lever. And I made a sound just right for the space, blowing into a hollow pipe. What can I say at the end of the day?! Listen, squad, enemies and brothers! Everything that I did, I did not do for the sake of fame in the era of cinema and radio, but for the sake of my native speech, literature. For what oracle-priesthood (the doctor was told: let him heal himself), having lost the cup at the feast of the Fatherland, now I stand in an unfamiliar area. Windy. Damp, dark. And it's windy. Midnight throws leaves and branches onto the roof. We can say with confidence: here I am ending my days, losing my hair, teeth, verbs, suffixes, scooping up a wave from the ocean with a cap like a Suzdal helmet, so that it narrows, fragile fish, albeit raw. Aging! The age of success. Knowledge of the truth. The wrong side of it. Expulsions. Pain. I have nothing against her or for her. If they go too far, I’ll cry out: it’s absurd to hold back your feelings. For now, I'll be patient. If there is something warming in me, it is not the mind, but only the blood. This song is not a cry of despair. This is a consequence of savagery. This - more precisely - is the first cry of silence, the kingdom of which I imagine as the sum of sounds emitted by a previously wet, hard larynx that has now hardened into a seemingly dead nature. This is for the best. So I think. This is what I am talking about: the transformation of the body into a naked thing! I don’t look at the mountain, I don’t look down, but into the emptiness - how did they not brighten it up? This is for the best. The feeling of horror is not inherent in the thing. So the puddle next to the thing will not show up, even if the thing is dying. Like Theseus from the cave of Minos, coming out into the air and taking out the skin, I don’t see the horizon - a minus sign for the life I’ve lived. This blade is sharper than his sword, and with it the best part is cut off. So wine is taken away from the sober, and salt from the unleavened. I want to cry. But there's no point in crying. Beat the drum about your trust in the scissors, in which the fate of matter is hidden. Only the size of the loss makes a mortal equal to God. (This judgment is worth a tick even in view of the naked couple.) Beat the drum while you hold the sticks, marching in step with your shadow! December 18, 1972 Butterfly I Should I say that you are dead? But you only lived for a day. How much sadness there is in the Creator’s joke! I can barely pronounce “vein” - the unity of the date of birth and when you crumbled in my handful, I am embarrassed to subtract one of the two quantities within the day. II Because days are nothing for us. Just nothing. You can’t pin them down, and you can’t make them food for the eyes: against a white background, without having a body, they are invisible. Days, they are like you; or rather, what can weigh reduced ten times one of the days? III Should I say that you don’t exist at all? But what is in my hand that is so similar to you? and color is not the fruit of non-existence. According to whose prompting the paints are applied anyway? It is unlikely that I, a muttering lump of words alien to color, would have been able to imagine this palette. IV On your wings there are pupils, eyelashes - are they beautiful birds, are the birds - fragments of whose faces, tell me, are these faces, a portrait of a flying? Tell me, what kind of particles or grains does a still life show: things, fruits? and even fishing the trophy is stretched out. V Perhaps you are a landscape, and, taking a magnifying glass, I will find a group of nymphs, a dance, a beach. Is it as bright there as during the day? Or is it as dull there as at night? and what light rose into the sky in it? whose figures are in it? Tell me, from what nature was it made? VI I think that you are both this and that: stars, faces, features of objects in you. Who was that jeweler whose brow did not frown, who painted on them in miniature that world that drives us crazy, takes us in pincers, where you, like the thought of a thing, we are the thing itself? VII Tell me, why was such a pattern given to you just for a day in the land of lakes, whose amalgam stores space for future use? And you - deprives you of the chance in such a short time to get into the net, to flutter in the palm of your hand, to captivate the pupil at the moment of the chase. VIII You will not answer me not because of shyness and not out of malice, and not because you are dead. Whether alive or dead, every creature of God, as a sign of kinship, is given a voice for communication, singing: prolonging a moment, a minute, a day. IX And you - you are deprived of this pledge. But, strictly speaking, it’s better this way: why the hell should I be in debt to heaven, on the register. Do not be distressed if your age and your weight are worthy of muteness: sound is also a burden. More incorporeal than time, more soundless you are. X Without feeling, without living up to fear, you hover lighter than dust over the flowerbed, beyond the prison-like atmosphere of the past and the future, and therefore, when you fly into the meadow, wanting food, the air itself suddenly takes shape. XI This is what the pen does, sliding along the smooth surface of the lined notebook, not knowing about the fate of its line, where wisdom and heresy are mixed, but trusting in the pushes of the hand, in whose fingers speech beats completely silently, not removing dust from the flower, but the weight from the shoulders. XII Such beauty and such a short period, when combined, twist the lips with a guess: it cannot be stated more clearly that in fact the world was created without a goal, and if with it, then the goal is not us. Entomologist friend, there are no needles for light and no needles for darkness. XIII Tell you "Goodbye" as the form of the day? There are people whose minds are stricken with oblivion; but look: the only reason for this is that behind them they have not days with a bed for two, not dense dreams, not the past - but clouds of your sisters! XIV You are better than Nothing. Or rather: you are closer and more visible. Inside, you are one hundred percent related to him. In your flight it reached the flesh; and therefore, in the hustle and bustle of the day, you are worthy of a glance as an easy barrier between him and me. 1972 * Dated 1973 in PS. In the lake district In those days, in the country of dentists, whose daughters prescribed things from London, whose clenched pincers raise up the Wisdom Tooth on the banner of no one, I, hiding in my mouth ruins worse than the Parthenon, a spy, an infiltrator, the fifth column of a rotten province - in everyday life a professor of eloquence - - I lived in college near the Main Fresh Lakes, where I was called from the local undergrowth to pull out veins. Everything I wrote in those days inevitably came down to ellipses. I fell, without unfastening, onto my bed. And if I looked for a star on the ceiling at night, it, according to the rules of combustion, ran down onto the pillow across my cheek faster than I made a wish. 1972 Sketch The lackey is shaking. The slave laughs. The executioner sharpens his axe. The tyrant cuts up the capon. The winter moon is shining. This is the type of Patronymic name, engraving. On the sun lounger are the Soldier and the Fool. The old woman scratches her dead side. This is the view of the Fatherland, popular print. The dog barks, the wind blows. Boris asks Gleb in the face. Couples spinning at the ball. In the hallway there is a pile on the floor. The moon sparkles, my vision is tormented. Beneath it, like a separate brain, is a cloud... Let the Artist, the parasite, depict a different landscape. 1972 Odysseus to Telemachus My Telemachus, the Trojan War is over. I don’t remember who won. They must be Greeks: only Greeks can leave so many dead people outside the house... And yet the road leading home turned out to be too long, as if Poseidon, while we were wasting time there, stretched out the space. I don’t know where I am, what’s in front of me. Some dirty island, bushes, buildings, grunting pigs, an overgrown garden, some kind of queen, grass and stones... Dear Telemachus, all the islands are similar to each other, when you have been wandering for so long, and your brain is already confused, counting the waves, the eye, clogged with the horizon, cries, and the watery meat obscures the hearing. I don’t remember how the war ended, and I don’t remember how old you are now. Grow big, my Telemacus, grow. Only the gods know if we will meet again. Even now you are no longer the same baby before whom I held back the bulls. If it weren't for Palamed, we would have lived together. But maybe he is right: without me you are freed from the Oedipal passions, and your dreams, my Telemachus, are sinless. 1972 x x x Autumn evening in a modest town, proud of his presence on the map (the topographer was probably in excitement or had a short conversation with the judge’s daughter). Tired of its own whims, the Space seems to throw off the burden of greatness, limiting itself here to the features of the Main Street; and Time looks with a certain chill in the bones at the dial of the colonial shop, in whose depths everything that our world could produce: from a telescope to a pin. There are cinemas, saloons, around the corner there is a cafe with a drawn curtain, a brick bank with a spread out eagle and a church, the presence of which and the nets it places, if not next to the post office, would be forgotten. And if children had not been made here, the pastor would have baptized cars. Here grasshoppers run amok in silence. At six in the evening, as a result of an atomic war, you will no longer meet a soul. The moon floats in, fitting into the dark square of the window that is your Ecclesiastes. Only occasionally will a luxurious Buick speeding somewhere flash its headlights onto the figure of the Unknown Soldier. Here you are not dreaming of a woman in tights, but of your own address on an envelope. Here in the morning, seeing the milk sour, the milkman learns about your death. Here you can live, forgetting about the calendar, swallow your bromine, not go outside, and look in the mirror like a lantern looking into a drying puddle. 1972 Song of innocence, also known as experience "On a cloud I saw a child, and he laughing said to me..." W. Blake 1 We want to play tag in the meadow, not wear a coat, but just a shirt. If it suddenly rains and slushes outside, we, while preparing our lessons, want not to cry. We will read the textbook, despite the title. What we dream will come true. We will love everyone, and in return they will love us. This is the best: plus versus minus. We will take maidens with the eyes of a wild doe as our spouses; and if we are virgins ourselves, then we will take slender young men as spouses, and we will not dote on each other. Because the doll has a smiling face, we will make our own mistakes while laughing. And then the sages living in retirement will tell us what life is. 2 Our thoughts will become longer every year. We will defeat any disease with iodine. Our windows will be covered with tulle, and not covered with black prison bars. We'll be back early from a pleasant job. We won't take our eyes off the movie screen. We will pin heavy brooches to dresses. If anyone is without money, we will pay. We will build a ship with propeller and steam, all of iron and with a full bar. We'll board and get our visas and see the Acropolis and Mona Lisa. Because the number of continents in the world with seasons, number four, multiplying and filling the tanks with fuel, we get twenty places to go. 3 The nightingale will sing to us in the green thicket. We will not think about death more often than a crow thinks about garden scarecrows. Having sinned, we ourselves will become cornered. We will meet our old age in a deep armchair, surrounded by grandchildren. If they don’t exist, the neighbors will let them watch the death of the spy network on TV. As books, friends, and the era teach us: tomorrow cannot be as bad as yesterday, and we should write this word in tempi passati. Because the soul exists in the body, life will be better than we wanted. We will fry our pie in pure lard, because it tastes better this way: so we were told. ___ "Hear the voice of the Bard!" W. Blake 1 We don't drink wine on the edge of the village. We will not give ourselves as grooms to the princess. We don’t dip our bast shoes in thick cabbage soup. It's embarrassing for us to laugh and boring to cry. We do not bend the arc in half with the bear. We are not riding forward on the gray wolf, and he will not get up, having been pricked with a syringe or thrown to the ground, like a slender prince. Knowing copper pipes, we don’t blow them. We do not love those like ourselves, we do not love those who were made from a different cloth. We don't like the time, but more often we don't like the place. Because the north is far from the south, our thoughts cling to each other. When the sun fades, we turn on the lights, ending the evening with Georgian tea. 2 We do not see shoots from our arable lands. The judge is disgusting to us, the defense lawyer is scary. We value a piledriver more than a century match. Give us lunch and compote for third. A star in our eye is like a tear in our pillow. We are afraid of the crown on a frog's forehead, warts on our fingers and other filth. Give us a tube of good ointment. We prefer stupidity than the cunning of a fox. We don't know why trees have leaves. And when Boreas breaks them before the deadline, we feel nothing but shock. Because warmth turns into cold, our jacket is sewn up, and our sheepskin coat is pierced. It is not our reason, but our eyes that have weakened in order to look for the difference between an eagle and a heron. 3 We are afraid of death, posthumous punishment. In life, we are familiar with the subject of fear: emptiness is more likely and worse than hell. We don't know who we should say "don't." Our lives, like lines, have reached a point. We can’t sleep at the head of a daughter in a nightgown or a son in a T-shirt. Our shadow is longer than the night before us. It’s not the bell that rings over the gloomy evening! We are going into the darkness, where we have nothing to shine with. We lower the flags and burn the papers. Let us finally fall to the flask. Why did everything turn out this way? And it would be a lie to blame the character or the Will of God. Should it have been different? We paid for everyone and no change was needed. 1972 Bobo's funeral 1 Bobo is dead, but her hat is missing. How can one explain that there is nothing to console oneself with? We will not pin a butterfly with an Admiralty needle - we will only mutilate it. Square windows, no matter how much you look around. And as an answer to “What happened”, open the empty tin from the inside: “Apparently, this is it.” Bobo is dead. Wednesday ends. On the streets where you can’t find accommodation for the night, it’s white and white. Only the black water of the night river does not accept snow. 2 Bobo is dead and there is sadness in this line. Squares of windows, semicircular arches. It’s so cold that if they kill you, it’ll be with a firearm. Goodbye Bobo, beautiful Bobo. A tear to the face of cut cheese. We are weak to follow you, but we are also unable to stand still. Your image, I know in advance, will not diminish in the heat and clematis-frost, but on the contrary, in the unique perspective of Russia. 3 Bobo is dead. Here is a feeling that is accessible to share, but slippery, like soap. Today I dreamed that I was lying in my bed. And so it was. Tear off the sheet, but change the date: zero opens the list of losses. Dreams without Bobo resemble reality, and the air enters the room in a square. Bobo is dead. And I want to open my lips slightly and say: “Don’t.” Probably, after death there is emptiness. And more likely and worse than Hell. 4 You were everything. But, because you are now dead, my Bobo, you have become nothing - more precisely, a clot of emptiness. Which is also, as you might think, a lot. Bobo is dead. For round eyes, the view of the horizon acts like a knife, but they will not replace you, Bobo, Kiki or Zaza. This is impossible. It's Thursday. I believe in emptiness. It's like Hell, but worse. And the new Dante bends over to the sheet and puts a word in the empty space. 1972 * Dated "January-March 1972" in the translation by Karl Proffer. Torso If you suddenly wander into stone grass, which looks better in marble than in reality, or you notice a faun indulging in fuss with a nymph, and both in bronze are happier than in a dream, you can let go of the staff from your weary hands: you are in the Empire, friend. Air, fire, water, fauns, naiads, lions, taken from nature or from the head - everything that God invented and the tired brain continued to carry on was turned into stone or metal. This is the end of things, this is the mirror at the end of the path to enter. Stand in a free niche and, rolling your eyes, watch how centuries pass, disappearing around the corner, and how moss grows in the groin and dust falls on your shoulders - this tan of eras. Someone will break off a hand, and the head will roll down from the shoulder, knocking. And what remains is the torso, an anonymous sum of muscles. A thousand years later, a mouse living in a niche with a broken claw, unable to overcome the granite, came out one evening, squeaking, and scurried across the road so as not to come to the hole at midnight. Not in the morning. 1972 Unfinished passage During dinner, he got up from the table and left the house. The moon was shining like winter, and the shadows from the bush, overcoming the curls of the fence, were so clearly blackened in the snow, as if they had taken root here. Heartbeat, not a soul around. So great is the desire of all living things to overcome boundaries, to spread upward and broadly, that one has only to look out at a luminary, whatever it may be, and at that very moment the surroundings become the prey not of ourselves, but of our aspirations. 1972(?) x x x Establishing a connection with a beauty, along the walls of the prison where he served three years, flying in a taxi, splashing dirt, with a bottle in a net - this is freedom! The Neva breeze tickles your nostrils. The fate of relatives does not gnaw at the mind. Oh! only a compatriot can comprehend the charm of these lines!.. 1972(?) Rotterdam Diary I Rain in Rotterdam. Twilight. Wednesday. Having opened my umbrella, I raise the collar. They bombed the city for four days, and the city was gone. Cities are not people and do not hide in the entrance during a rainstorm. The streets and houses do not go crazy in these cases and, falling, do not call for revenge. II July afternoon. It drips from the waffle onto the trouser leg. Choir of children's voices. There are huge new buildings all around. What Corbusier has in common with the Luftwaffe is that both worked hard to change the face of Europe. What the Cyclopes forget in their rage, the pencils will soberly complete. III No matter how healing time is, the stump, not seeing the means to distinguish it from the goal, hurts. And even more so - from a panacea. Night. Three decades later, we are drinking wine in front of major summer stars in an apartment on the twentieth floor - at the level reached by those who once flew into the air here. July 1973, Rotterdam Lagoon I Three old women with knitting in deep armchairs are talking in the hall about the torment of the godfather; the boarding house "Akkademia" together with the entire Universe floats towards Christmas to the roar of the TV; The clerk tucks the ledger under his elbow and turns the wheel. II And a guest goes up the stairs to his room on board, carrying grappa in his pocket, a complete nobody, a man in a cloak, who has lost his memory, his homeland, his son; The aspen in the forests is crying over his hump, if anyone is crying for him at all. III Venice churches, like tea sets, can be heard ringing in a box from under random lives. The bronze octopus of the chandelier in a trellis overgrown with duckweed licks a damp machine, stained with tears, affection, and dirty dreams. IV Adriatic at night the east wind fills the canal like a bathtub, with the top shaking the boats like cradles; the fish, not the ox, stands at your head at night, and the starfish in the window moves the curtain with its rays while you sleep. V So we will live, pouring the dead water of a glass decanter into the wet flame of grappa, shredding bream, and not a goose bird, so that Your chordate ancestor, Savior, will satisfy us on a winter night in a damp country. VI Christmas without snow, balls and spruce, by the sea, constrained by a map in the body; letting the shell of the mollusk sink to the bottom, hiding her face, but captivating her back, Time comes out and waves, changing the arrow on the tower - her alone. VII The sinking city, where a strong mind suddenly becomes a wet eye, where the sphinxes of the northern southern brother, a winged lion who knows how to read and write, slamming a book, will not shout “Ratou!”, but is glad to choke in the splash of mirrors. VIII The gondola hits rotten piles. Sound negates itself, words and hearing; and also the power where your hands stretch out over the coniferous forest in front of a small but predatory demon and the saliva freezes in your mouth. IX Let us cross the left paw, which has taken in the claws, with the right paw, bending it at the elbow; We will receive a gesture similar to a hammer in a sickle - and, like the devil Solokha, we will bravely show it to an era that has taken on the image of a bad dream. X The body in the cloak inhabits the spheres where Sophia, Hope, Faith and Love have no future, but there is always a present, no matter how bitter the taste of the kisses of the ebres and goeks, and the city where the foot leaves no trace XI - like a boat on the surface watery, any space behind, taken in numbers, reducing to zero - does not leave deep traces in squares, like a wide “goodbye”, in narrow streets, like the sound “love”. XII Spiers, columns, carvings, stucco moldings of arches, bridges and palaces; look up: you will see the smile of a lion on a tower covered in winds, like a dress, indestructible, like grain outside the arable land, with a time belt instead of a moat. XIII Night on San Marco. A passerby with a crumpled face, comparable in the darkness to a ring removed from his ring finger, gnawing his nail, looks, enveloped in peace, into “nowhere”, in which thoughts can linger, but the pupil cannot. XIV There, beyond nowhere, beyond its borders - black, colorless, perhaps white - there is some thing, an object. Maybe the body. In the era of friction, the speed of light is the speed of vision; even when there is no light. 1973

Apparently, the hexameter trochee of Brodsky’s poem won’t let go... The Internet is full of imitations, parodies or, as aptly put it, remakes. I chose the three best (in my opinion).

1.I don’t know the date
ALEXANDER TIMOFEEVSKY
Reply from a Roman friend

I wander the streets all day, gawking.
It's autumn in Rome. Everything is dead. Everything has gone wild.
A black cloud hangs over the Colosseum,
It is not known what this would mean?
It's raining. Heaven pays the arrears.
It’s a pity, it’s not pouring on the arable land, but on the stone
In those humpbacked alleys, where in an embrace
Your dead stand with mansions.
Do you remember the house where you and I visited more than once?
On the bald lawn the grass withers,
Not even ashes remained from the ruins,
But something always pulls me there.
You were once happy in this house,
And I read an elegy about John Donne,
And the fruits of yellow-green olives
The dark-skinned hostess ate from the palm of his hand.
Where is the cheerful hostess? Where are the olives?
All we were left with was a vacant lot around the corner.
Of course, there are only ruins behind,
But ruins are still better than voids.
Only a woman suits inconstancy,
We love what we loved in our youth.
Who came up with the idea that the fatherland is space?
It was you and me who were our homeland.
You write to me, why languish in the empire,
It is better to live in a remote province among the Gauls,
But is it worth rushing to leave?
After all, the empire did not exist for a hundred years.
Rome collapsed, no one remembers the exact date.
So we argue and draw parallels...
Everywhere the same bloodsuckers and soldiers,
Bloodsuckers and thieves, my Valery.
It’s better that you come back yourself, the journey is short.
My wife and I have been waiting for you in the capital.
Is it really that important to enter the city?
Four in a triumphal chariot?
Past the stone wall, the sacred grove,
Where the legionnaires stand on guard...
It seems to me that it’s easier in our kitchen
Talk about Naso and Catullus.
Wax frozen on the page of an old book,
Guests sleeping side by side anywhere.
There are ashes everywhere, a fig core on the floor,
On the table is a cherry rim from a glass.
And when the time is measured by the booming Chronos,
Old Posthumus will be able to see you off.
Let's go for one last walk together
And let's go to your favorite island.

2.2007.
VSEVOLOD Emelin
Letters from a Crimean friend.
Also, apparently, from Martial.

It's windy today and I'm drinking toast after toast
Summer is coming, women will come here
I don't need to be strong and tall anymore
I can now be small and weak.

Alcohol takes over my body
Symptoms of intoxication develop
How much more pleasant it is to watch this thing
Than a woman at the moment of copulation.

I'm sitting here waiting for the bill
There is no need to fawn and fuss here
I drink vodka as much as I want
Vacationers here are not taken into police custody.

Here I walk barefoot through the primroses
I tear off the legs of small insects
How is Putin? What is he doing? All by Rosneft?
All by Rosneft, probably, and Gazprom.

There's a devout Muslim in the grave
He fought with the infidels in the Caucasus
He never smoked or was drunk.
He died immediately, without any euthanasia.

There goes a cheerful old man, one-armed
He hasn't been dry since he was fourteen.
Buried his wife, children and grandchildren long ago
Even here, Posthumus, there are no rules.

Life plays a chess game with us
Everything is divided into two unequal fields
Living in an era of sovereign democracy
It’s better in the neighboring principality, near the sea.

Far from their power vertical
From a struggle that will lead to impotence
Are you saying that the Tatars are sick of everyone here?
But the Tatars are dearer to me than the Chechens.

Spend this evening with you, prostitute
I agree, but let's not have intercourse
I'll pump you two glasses of port
And I can buy something else.

Don't breathe fumes in my direction
Turn away your painted snout
What are you muttering there? What was I doing, old asshole?
Old - yes, but I don’t agree that I was an asshole.

Now it’s our turn to glue the fins together
As an old gay man told me near the tent:
“Life passed like an unfulfilled fairy tale”
The view, of course, is somewhat true, but disgusting.

My stomach is acting up in the south in the summer
It's good that it's two steps to the restroom.
Like in Ichkeria, my Postumus - or where there?
Have you restored constitutional order?

Come in your tattered Zhigulenka
Through mountains and forests, fields and countries
Let's drink hot cherry plum moonshine
Having bitten it with rubber brine.

And then, to the sounds of a local orchestra
I will order wines called “Massandra”.
I'll show you a famous place.
Where was the sad film about Ichthyander filmed?

I'll take you to the hill where the ruins are
I'll tell you about the exploits of the ancients.
I'll read the list of ships to the middle
And I’ll ask who the expected successor is.

To your friend, Postumus, who was active
Soon a guest will come, named Kondraty
My savings, half a thousand hryvnia
You will find it under the mattress, on the bed.

Come to the beer bar on the pier
And make an agreement with the men there
To begin with, you give them a liter of vodka
They will carry me forward feet first.

Gloomy boatman drunk to the point of trembling
Pelengas in a bucket knocks its tail on the bottom
The shadow of the trees is becoming more distinct and stricter.
The sun setting behind the rock.

Empty bottle on the table
Zodiac constellations float in the sky
Dmitry Bykov on a dry bench
Awesome novel about Pasternak.

3.1.04.14
VICTOR BAYRAK
Letters to a friend in the capital

It's windy today and the waves are beating rhythmically.
Soon it will be May, everything will stir and ferment.
Changing flags is even erotic
Still, there is some movement in nature.
Of course, I don’t care about politics -
You won’t go further than Crimea or Maidan.
True, conscience sells better than body:
The conscience is different, but the body is constant.
___
I am sending you links, there are not many of them.
What's there in Kyiv? Are they rioting? Aren't you tired?
How is the Duma doing? Everything's not going well again, thank God?
Thinking is not standing on a pedestal.
I'm sitting in my garden, repairing the attic.
Off-season: no salaries, no tourists.
Free entertainment - bards' gathering
And among the paid ones, tractor drivers have preference.
___
Even though Simferopol really is not the capital,
but why in the capital's row with a resort snout.
If you happen to be born in the Empire,
So she should put me in the grave.
To get away from Russia, from China.
So that you don’t have to fight for a place in the cemetery.
Are you saying you don’t have enough Ukrainians?
Well, we are all almost foreigners here.
___
This is how we lived our lives. Mind you, no hernia.
As Rav Yishaya from Odessa told me:
"Flying like plywood over Paris,
I still look at the flight attendant’s legs.”
I was in the mountains. I collected two kilograms of morels.
The mushroom is inconspicuous, but nutritious and tasty...
“President,” as my mother used to say,
“Must be the same.” It somehow became sad.
___
Remember, little Maruska behind the fence
Did you sell cherry plum moonshine?
You slept with her again... That's it, she became a prosecutor.
Prosecutor, and communicates with the law.
Come, let's drink wine, there's plenty of it here.
And snacks. By the way, new dishes.
Then I’ll go to the Tatars for a barbecue.
They will soon be driven out of here anyway.

___
Soon your friend, the delayed teenager,
He prefers his boots to white slippers.
I have Voloshin’s sketch here.
This value is enough for the funeral.
Go if they let you through at customs,
Put things aside, find a replacement.
The soil here is good, digging is not difficult,
And don’t believe it when they jack up the price.
___
Green laurel in the late afternoon fever,
A shelf with books, an open bottle,
the chair is abandoned, the computer is charging.
The cat lay down belly up on the bedding.
Pont is noisy and unique every day.
The hang glider sways slightly in the wind.
A resident of Crimea sits on a dry bench.
A lonely tricolor over the village council.

Several guys wrote comments not according to the proposed structure, but using their own options:
1) Katya Rakitskaya (katergonnakate)
Letters to a Roman Friend (from Martial (=imitation of Martial's epigrams))
It's windy today and the waves are overlapping.

The change of colors of these touching, Postumus, (The addressee of Brodsky’s “Letters” is Postumus, the provincial friend of the lyrical hero. The addressee’s name refers us to Horace’s ode “To Postumus” (“Oh, Postumus, Postumus, fast-flowing years pass ...”)
than changing a friend’s outfit. (antithesis: the outfit in which nature dresses is similar to a woman’s dress. The very process of changing seasons is similar to women’s dressing up)
Virgo amuses to a certain limit (I can’t understand what kind of “limit” this is, if not excitement) -
You can’t go further than your elbow or knee. (allusion to Martial, epigram LIII “Chloe”, translated by A. Fet: “I could do without your face And without your neck and arms and legs too, And without your chest, waist and hips; And not to work to count everything separately, Chloe, I could do without you all...")
How much more joyful is the beautiful outside the body (Plato’s love?):
No hugs are possible, no betrayal!
Brodsky wrote this poem in March 1972, even before he left the Soviet Union. (Source: Natalya Borisovna Ivanova, literary scholar, literary critic, first deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine “Znamya”; radio broadcast “Echo of Moscow” dated December 27, 2009, program OUR ALL: JOSEPH BRODSKY). Based on this, I dare to conclude that the change of season, the change in weather mean something more for Brodsky - emigration. Also, the maiden amusing the lyrical hero means the American dream, which is destined to come true.
___
I am sending you, Posthumus, these books. (Are we talking about the epigrams of Mark Valery Martial in general? If not, then this line can be considered an allusion to the IV epigram of Mark Valery “The Book” also translated by A. Fet: “Book, be my companion Flava Beyond the sea into the distance, but on a favorable wave, And easily on the move with a fair wind Aspire to the Tarraconian heights of Spain..")
What's in the capital? Are they laying softly? Isn't it hard to sleep? (Rome - Moscow; allusion to the work of V.I. Lenin “They lay softly, but sleep hard”)
How's Caesar doing? What is he doing? All the intrigue? (the title of the rulers, but not Gaius Julius Caesar; an allusion to William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Julius Caesar”; Brezhnev?)
All the intrigues are probably just gluttony. (crude irony that evokes associations with the apparatus of power)
I’m sitting in my garden, a lamp is burning. (I really want to say that this is a reference either to Chekhov himself, or to his work “The Cherry Orchard”)
No girlfriend, no servant, no acquaintances.
Instead of the weak of this world and the strong -
only the harmonious hum of insects. (personification; hard-working communists)
Developing further the idea of the close connection of the poem with Brodsky’s personal experiences, I believe that this epigram was written in America, hence the interest in news from the capital (the projection of Rome onto Moscow), expressed in interrogative sentences.
The poet's loneliness is felt, but it does not kill him. The poem takes on a philosophical tone here, removing the lyrical hero from the noise and bustle.
In the first line, an associative series of political problems arises (“intrigue” and “gluttony” of officials = bureaucracy).
The first antithesis: the metropolitan “intrigues” from which the lyrical hero freed himself are contrasted with the “harmonious hum of insects” - a symbol of calm and silence away from the metropolis; the second antithesis “the weak of this world and the strong” speaks of the division of society into those who command (acquaintances, girlfriend) and those who obey (servants). Here lies a merchant from Asia.
He was a smart merchant - businesslike, but unnoticeable.
Died quickly - fever.
He came here on trade business, not for this. (Reference to the “Epitaph for a Cretan Merchant” by Simonides of Keos (556-468 BC): “By birth, a Cretan, Brotach from Gortyna, I lie in the ground here, I came here not for that, but for trade matters...” (source: Translated by L. Blumenau in the book: Antique Lyrics. M.: Khudozhestvennaya Literature, 1968. P. 181). (1969): “Not traveling on trade business, scattering my pathetic rubbish in strange corners, one morning with a heavy taste in my mouth I went ashore in a foreign port...”)
Next to him is a legionnaire, under rough quartz. (can be read as “here lies a legionnaire under rough quartz” - the inscription on the gravestone)
He glorified the empire in battles.
How many times could they have killed? and died an old man.
Even here, Postumus, there are no rules. (Death is the natural course of life, fate is not explained by any rules)
The philosophical tone set in the previous epigram here flows into Brodsky’s reasoning about the eternal question - about life and death.
___
Let it be true, Postumus, that a chicken is not a bird (a reference to the Russian proverb “A chicken is not a bird, a woman is not a person”, given in Dahl’s explanatory dictionary)
but with a chicken brain you will have enough grief. (metaphor; a stupid person cannot live in a metropolis)
It’s better to live in a remote province by the sea. (Completion of a series of oppositions: capital - province, public - private, people - loneliness, sublime - everyday, eagle - chicken)
And far from Caesar, and from the blizzard. (I have a thought about an allusion to Blok’s poem “The Twelve”, but there could also be an oxymoron here (what kind of blizzards are there in northern Italy?!), as well as the symbolic meaning of the blizzard, which determines the relationship of the text not so much to the ancient world as to the modern one Russia)
There is no need to fawn (=serve, grovel), there is no need to be cowardly, or to rush.
Are you saying that all governors (in the first half of the 16th century, an official who exercised state power and administration on behalf of the head of state in a separate and defined territory (vicerarism) rushist.ru/) are thieves?
But a thief is dearer to me than a bloodsucker. (A bloodsucker is capable of destroying another, hence this comparison, also a reference to the “insects” about which the lyrical hero wrote to a friend earlier)

In this epigram, the life of a Roman literary hero gives way to Brodsky’s own assessment of modern life. Here his civic position is clearly visible, as well as his opinion about the political structure of the country.
___
Wait out this downpour with you, hetaera (I found out who hetaeras are from here http://marinni.livejournal.com/612832.html; allusion to my own work Post aetatem nostram, 1970)
I agree, but let’s not trade (moral: it’s absurd to take money from a man’s shoulder that gives protection and comfort)
taking a sestertius (ancient Roman silver coin, http://linemoney.ru/termin/chto-takoe-sestercij.html) from the covering body (highlighting the main common task of a man and a roof in a house - “to cover” = to cover, to protect) - all the same what should shingles (material for making wooden tiles) be required from a roof? (comparison of body and roof)
I’m leaking (transferring the properties of the roof to the image of the lyrical hero), you say? But where is the puddle?
It never happened that I left a puddle. Now you will find yourself some kind of husband (covers what is leaking - leaky, like a roof, = the unreliable body of a husband),
it will leak onto the bedspread. (exalting oneself in the form of a lover over any other, endowing oneself with an important quality - reliability)

In this epigram, the topic of philosophical reasoning changes - now the poet talks about love. It is worth noting that he distinguishes himself from all male representatives.
So we have lived more than half of it.
As the old slave told me in front of the tavern:
“We, looking around, see only ruins.” (allusion to the letters of Pliny the Younger (on behalf of whom the lyrical hero himself writes, a speech about the state of the Roman Empire before its collapse, a projection on the state of the USSR before the collapse)
The view, of course, is very barbaric (the barbarian’s view of what he himself destroyed is ironic), but true.

I was in the mountains. Now I'm busy with a large bouquet.
I'll find a big jug and pour water for them...
How is it in Libya (alliteration with the process of pouring water into a jug of flowers), my Posthumus, - or where there? (the lyrical hero has been away from his homeland for a long time and continues to be interested in what is happening in the country, only now the questions are not narrow (about the little things of everyday life), but broader, and the country already appears blurry in the hero’s memory)
Are we still fighting? (contrasting two different worlds - prosperity and war)

This epigram shows us a person who is happy to be away from vanity and cruelty; they seem hardly real to him.
Do you remember, Postumus, the governor has a sister?
Thin, but with full legs. (allusion to Catullus)

The priestess, Posthumus, communicates with the gods. (Iphigenia, heroine of ancient Greek mythology)
Come, let's drink wine and eat bread.
Or plums. Tell me the news.
I’ll make your bed in the garden under the clear sky (reference to the second epigram)
and I’ll tell you what the constellations are called. (for the lyrical hero these two processes are equivalent; he distinguishes between the interests of a city person and a person who has left the city)
___

will pay off his long-standing debt. (approaching death, imminent departure from life)
Take your savings from under your pillow,
there is not much there, but enough for a funeral. (reference to Soviet life)
Ride your black mare
to the house of hetaeras under our city wall.
Give them the price for which you loved,
so that they mourn for the same price. (reference to the discussion about love presented in epigram 5)

In the penultimate epigram, the conversation about death again arises, only we are talking about its imminent approach.
Here the lyrical hero’s idea of love, which can be bought with money, changes.
___
The greenness (=color of melancholy) of the laurel, almost to the point of trembling.
The door is open, the window is dusty,
an abandoned chair, an abandoned bed.
Fabric that has absorbed the midday sun.

Pontus rustles behind a black hedge of pine trees.
Someone's ship is struggling with the wind off the cape.
On a dry bench - the Elder Pliny. (allusion to the letters of Pliny the Younger; Pliny the Elder visited his son after his death)
A blackbird chirps in the cypress hair. (contrasting the end of human life and the endless life of nature)
In the last epigram the lyrical hero is no longer heard; Brodsky himself paints the picture, describing the simplicity and loneliness of human death.
It’s amazing how Brodsky fit the main stages of human life into nine epigram letters.
2) Tanya Klenova(petitgarcon)
Before starting a detailed analysis of I. Brodsky’s poem “Letters to a Roman Friend,” it is necessary to highlight and explain words that we, modern readers, for some reason (updating the language, “author’s words”) do not understand (and can also only be partially understood or incorrect). However, I hope you will not judge me if I try not to divide the analysis into subtopics proposed in the assignment, but to consider any points that seem unusual and simply interesting to me through several prisms at once (as if turning a curious find from different angles).
The first thing that catches our eye, as soon as we glance at the title, is a kind of subtitle - “from Martial”. And this is a kind of first allusion that we have encountered: Brodsky writes as if (precisely “as if”, this is in no way a translation!) on behalf of the ancient Roman poet Martial, famous for his epigrams, constrained by the narrow framework of life in the provinces. Martial, represented by Brodsky, turns to his friend and patron Pliny the Elder. It is curious that in the English translation Brodsky removes the subtitle previously indicated in the drafts (since it is philologically invalid and incorrect).
Brodsky’s relations with Russia, with his homeland, developed and were not easy. Perhaps the work of the Roman poet Martial is close to Brodsky for this very reason, because Martial himself at the end of his life left Rome for his homeland, Spain.
“Letters to a Roman Friend” traces images and themes found in the poets of antiquity: Ovid, Horace, and Martial, among others. However, the closest thing to Joseph Brodsky is not Ovid, who was exiled to Toms, and Horace, who did not voluntarily and even, I dare say, retire with official honors, but rather the “emigrant Martial.”
“If you happen to be born in the Empire,
It’s better to live in a remote province by the sea.” - in the 60s, Brodsky lived in St. Petersburg, which became a “province of Russia,” just as Athens became a “province” of Rome, and Rome became a “province” of Constantinople.
Strictly speaking, I was wrong to skip over the word “letters.” It would seem a simple, ordinary word, the meaning of which we know very well, but in order to understand Brodsky and his poem, it is necessary to remember the genesis of the epistolary genre. Before us is the Bible (the Christian “source” of letters, since the New Testament included letters, including those of the Apostle Paul, which are considered the most significant). Another source is antiquity, which gave us the works of such a poet as Horace Flaccus and his “Epistle” in two books, incl. and “To the Pisons,” “To Augustus” (I would also like to mention “To the Servant,” which I discussed earlier.) I also found it extremely funny and charming that in 1986 (I discovered this completely by accident) a collection of Brodsky’s poems was published entitled "The Poetics of Brodsky". In addition, the name “Postum” (translated as “that which comes after”, “posthumous”) is no coincidence: having become acquainted with the work of Horace, I recognized, among other things, the reference here to Horace’s ode “To Posthumus”. Returning to the topic “provinces”, I consider it necessary to note that the theme of the province and the Empire appears in Brodsky, probably largely thanks to the work of Ovid. In Ovid, we have previously studied and analyzed in detail some of the “Letters from Pontus,” which are also messages and addresses. I think we have every right to believe that it was they who “pushed” Brodsky.
Brodsky has a different kind of “letters”, although in some places they are extremely close to Martial and his epigrams, but at the same time they are different. And here lies the main, fundamental allusion: readers who are unaccustomed to the genre of messages meet them again in his poem, with a genre recreated from the past, resurrected, into which Brodsky breathed something new: he writes about the beauty of complete loneliness. Dwelling in more detail on the lines of the poems where the so-called “finds” are found, I would like to paraphrase the words of M. Segal: in the lines
“Soon, Postumus, your friend who loves the addition
he will pay off his old debt by subtracting it.”
"subtraction" means death. In general, life and death are the key themes of Brodsky’s poem, eternal themes.
“On a dry bench - the Elder Pliny.”
Here, some critics unfairly, in my opinion, notice a refutation of the name of the “sender of the letters”: after all, what is meant is not the fact that Pliny the Elder is sitting on the bench in person, but only his book!
3)Ira Ermolaeva(amely_am)
While reading this work by Brodsky, I came across several words whose meaning was unclear to me.
legionnaire - in ancient Rome, a warrior of the legion,
fawn - please (synonym to flatter),
Caesar - in this work we do not mean Gaius Julius Caesar, but the title of the rulers of the Roman Republic, who after the consulate of Gaius Julius began to be called Caesars.
And I would also like to add to these words an explanation of the word “epigram” - in the era of classicism, a short satirical work. In ancient poetry - a poem of arbitrary content. In addition, it is worth noting that the epigram differed from the elegy in its brevity and narrow subject matter.
Brodsky's poem was written in imitation of Martial's epigrams. It is divided into separate epigrams (in the ancient sense of the word) of two stanzas, each of which is aimed at one aspect of life.
The poem is written in trochaic hexameter.
The work uses conversational intonation (addresses, questions, etc.).
It is worth saying a few words about the lyrical hero of the work. It is he who writes short letters - epigrams to his friend Postumus in Rome from the province where he left. Fully conveying the thematic features of the ancient epigram, Brodsky makes his lyrical hero touch on a variety of topics. For example, the theme of death is touched upon, through which the idea of the materiality of the world and relationships is expressed: every feeling has a price (“Give them the price for which they loved, so that they mourn the price for the same price”).
Each of the epigrams is built on an antithesis. For example, in the first stanza, the natural beauty of autumn is contrasted with the colorful outfits of her friend. In the second, Rome is contrasted with the province, intrigue with the “harmonious hum of insects.”
In addition, the poem uses allusion - a projection from the past to the present. It seems to me that it is with the help of allusion that the poet reflects modernity through the prism of antiquity.
Also, in the poem there is a reminiscence of Pushkin, of his fate through the theme of exile and loneliness.
If we talk about the poem as a whole, then it seems to me that it is talking about the bliss of absolute loneliness, away from intrigue, in peace and quiet. The main idea of the poem is expressed in the lines: “If you happen to be born in an empire, it is better to live in a remote province by the sea.”
4)Ira Dolinina (ira_shady)
Brodsky's poem "Letters to a Roman Friend" is addressed to Posthumus, the Roman commander who organized the Gallic Empire. Horace's ode (II, 14) had the same addressee. The subtitle “From Martial” is also an allusion to antiquity, and more specifically to Ovid. Martial - Roman poet-epigrammatist. The mention of Martial may be an allusion to the fact that this poem is also a satirical epigram. In the first two stanzas, the poet, addressing Posthumus, tells him that the inner is much more beautiful than the outer. As you know, in antiquity there was a cult of a beautiful body; few people thought about inner beauty. It is precisely this cultural reality of antiquity that Brodsky alludes to. “How is Caesar? What is he doing? All the intrigue? The intrigues of the imperial court in ancient times can easily be compared with the game of the “powers that be” in Soviet times. But Brodsky, like Ovid, is in exile and only nature listens to him, which does not care about political intrigues. In principle, the entire poem is built on an allegorical comparison of the Roman Empire and the Soviet Empire (as many historians call the Soviet Union). Caesar is the image of a ruler - a tyrant, a bloodsucker, before whom they “coward”, “fawn”, which connects Roman realities and contemporary Brodsky.
Next, the sweat turns to a certain hetaera (in antiquity - an educated unmarried woman leading a free lifestyle, or another meaning - a prostitute, which, it seems to me, is closer to Brodsky’s poem), who demands a sestertia (silver coin) from the poet with whom she is taking refuge from the rain. Perhaps this “conversation” with the heterosexual woman is the poet’s attempt to figuratively say that his roof has not yet “leaked” - his life has not yet come to an end.
“When we look around, we see only ruins.” This phrase seems to me to be key to understanding this poem. It also contains the nostalgia of a person who has gone through a difficult life path. It also contains an allusion to the Roman and Soviet empires, built on violence, which destroyed many things and ruined many lives. It is not for nothing that in the poem the poet quotes an old slave in front of a tavern (eatery) - an unfree man who lived a long life under the yoke of power from above. It is through his “barbaric” lips that the truth speaks in such cruel totalitarian realities.
The poet contrasts the peaceful life in the mountains with the tough life in the country he left. He asks, “How is it in Libya, my Postumus, or where?” Are we still fighting?” This dismissive “or where there” refers us to the poet’s alienated attitude towards all wars and the politics of a large state, an empire that is constantly at war, and sometimes it is not even clear with whom.
The poet tells Posthumus about the governor's sister, who became a priestess. And her porter is not very pleasant (“thin, but with full legs”) and her behavior, which the poet points out (“You slept with her yet...”), but she became a priestess. Perhaps this is how the poet is trying to explain through the realities of antiquity what happened in the Soviet empire, when “Every cook must learn to govern the state” or at least communicate with the so-called “gods.”
The poet warns his friend Posthumus, to whom he is writing a letter, that death will soon await him. He asks him to find his savings for the funeral. Hetaeras appear again, who this time must mourn his departure - this increases the poet’s feeling of loneliness.
“The greenery of the laurel,” “the door is wide open,” “the abandoned chair” is a description of the “abandoned bed.”
The mention of Pontus again takes us to Ovid, with whose life the poet draws a parallel in this poem. Another Roman writer, the Elder Pliny, sits on a “withered bench.”
5) Anya Simonaeva(la_guignard)
Who is this Posthumus?
“Postum is the fictitious addressee of Joseph Brodsky’s poem “Letters to a Roman Friend,” Wikipedia will answer us. The word "postum" in Ancient Rome was attached to the names of people born after the death of their fathers.
This poem is dated March 1979. Brodsky has been in America for a long time. He wrote this letter not to Rome at all, but to the reality around him.
How's Caesar doing? What is he doing? All intrigue?
All intrigue, probably, and gluttony.
What kind of Caesar is this? Caesar is all the highest ranks of the USSR. Their intrigues, conspiracies, inhumane actions. Actions only for one’s own benefit, “gluttony,” while the whole country is looking for crumbs of bread in the corners.
Instead of the weak of this world and the strong -
only the harmonious hum of insects.
While in the USA, Brodsky taught at the university and did what he loved - he talked about poetry. After life in the USSR, with eternal interrogations, psychiatric examinations, calls to offices, life in the USA is calm and measured. Contrasting difference. If you remember a warm evening in the garden, imagine these insects, from which there is a quiet hum around, you immediately remember that feeling of relaxation and that calmness that is inherent in such evenings, and you understand what the poet felt.
Why is there a reference to a merchant from Asia? Simonides of Keos, an ancient Greek poet, “introduced the fashion” of writing epitaphs to living people. Here Brodsky quotes his epitaph to a Cretan merchant: “Cretan by birth, Brotach from Gortyn, I lie in the ground here, // I came here not then, but on trade business.” Such “comic” epitaphs were always written for the edification of living people.
And if at first the poet talks about an inconspicuous merchant who died early from a fever, then in the next stanza he contrasts him with a real hero, who fought tooth and nail, glorified the empire, and, despite everything, did not die in bloody battles, and in old age.
If you happen to be born in the Empire,
It is better to live in a remote province by the sea.
I immediately remember Horace's satire, in which he praises rural life, contrasting it with the noisy and dirty city life. In addition, Brodsky may have called America a province, because he felt much calmer there than in the USSR:
And far from Caesar, and from the blizzard.
There is no need to fawn, be cowardly, or hurry up.
Are you saying that all governors are thieves?
But a thief is dearer to me than a bloodsucker.
In the USSR, Brodsky would have had to “fawn over” in order to live well, so as not to be a coward. Don't write poetry.
Having left the country, the poet was left with a grudge against those “bloodsuckers” who contributed to this. After all, he was offered two options: either he leaves, or a “fun” time awaits him here - psychiatric hospitals, interrogations. And he left, despite the fact that he loved Russia very much.
6)Alina Tavlueva(alinatavlueva)
LETTERS TO A ROMAN FRIEND
(From Martial
Analysis.
*linguistic level of analysis
**literary level of analysis
***historical and cultural level of analysis

Autumn is coming, everything will change in the area.
The change of colors is so touching, Postumus
...
*The name of the addressee appears in the poem - Postum. Postum-
(lat. postumus - “posthumous”), a nickname attached in the ancient Roman naming system to the names of people born after the death of their father, in the exact same way it means “that which is after.” In Brodsky’s poem, Postumus is a fictitious addressee.
***
Also, in the USA in 1894, Charles Post, the “king of grain mixtures,” created a recipe for a “coffee” drink made from cereals, which he called “Postum.” Today, the marvelous “Postum” would be called a healthy energy drink, which is essentially an oxymoron. It was produced until 2007. As you know, it was in 1972 that Brodsky moved to the USA... you never know.)
*
What's in the capital? Are they laying softly? Isn't it hard to sleep?
How's Caesar doing? What is he doing? All the intrigue?
**Caesar is the image of those in power. In the case of Brodsky, the USSR government.
*
Here lies a merchant from Asia. Tolkovym
He was a merchant - businesslike, but inconspicuous.
Died quickly: fever. By trade
he came here for business, not for this.
**
Perhaps this quatrain is the only place in “Letters to a Roman Friend” that can be considered a direct quotation. Its original is a Greek text (not Roman, although initially the poem was marked “From Martial”, and Martial was a Roman poet), namely “ Epitaph to a Cretan merchant" by Simonides of Keos (556-468 BC):
I am a Cretan by birth, Brotach from Gortyn, I lie in the ground here, I came here not for this reason, but for trade matters.”
Next to him is a legionnaire, under rough quartz.
He glorified the Empire in battles.
*+**
"...Granite is a durable and ceremonial stone used for making monuments. This stone has practically no weaknesses, and over time, tombstones made from it do not lose their characteristics. Granite is a rock consisting of several minerals, such as quartz, mica, spar...."
This refers to a granite tombstone.
If you happen to be born in the Empire,
It’s better to live in a remote province by the sea.
**In June 1972, Brodsky was forced to leave the country, in fact, the poet was expelled, and later settled in the USA in the status of “guest poet”, where he began teaching at universities, giving lectures and, having achieved financial independence, was able to intensively engage in poetry and, in general, literary creativity.
The lines “If you happen to be born in the Empire,
It’s better to live in a remote province by the sea” acquired the status of a popular expression.
"To the village, to my aunt, to the wilderness, to Saratov..." A.S. Griboyedov "Woe from Wit"
Distance from the center, from power, is the best destiny for a poet, be it a non-party poet, a sage poet, or a Decembrist poet.
In Brodsky’s words, the picture of the surrounding world evokes only, albeit not without some bitterness, irony. Exile, seclusion, escape to a quiet refuge. Those who immediately came to mind were those who liked to “hide from the crowd of people” - Horace, and after him, having finally taken refuge from the storms" and Alexander Sergeevich.
A.S. Pushkin "Eugene Onegin":
(Zaretsky)
...
Finally sheltered from the storms,
Lives like a true sage
Plants cabbage like Horace
Breeds ducks and geese
....
Wait out this downpour with you, hetaera,
I agree, but let's not trade:
take sestertius from the covering body
it’s like asking for shingles from the roof.
*Hetera.In Other In Greece, there were women “functionally” similar to the geishas of Japan. Their task was not only to relieve a man’s sexual tension, but also to entertain him intellectually. Hetaera is a woman with an excellent education. These women were worthy friends of the greatest minds and artists. Hetaeras should not be equated with prostitutes. Social. the status of hetaeras was quite high.
Sestertius (lat. sestertius) is an ancient Roman silver coin.
SHINGLES
shingles, f.1.. Thin, narrow planks, used. for covering roofs and for lathing walls under plaster.
You slept with her again... You recently became a priestess.
The priestess, Posthumus, communicates with the gods.
*priestess is a female servant of the cult of a deity.
The game of meaning in.priestess vs priestess of love.priestess of love-prostitute.
Soon, Postumus, your friend who loves the addition,
will pay off his long-standing debt...
** Yesenin’s poem “Goodbye, my friend, goodbye!” immediately came to mind:
**There is no farewell in Brodsky’s poem; rather, these words can be considered a kind of testament, the last wish of a dying person, or, to be very crude, an “instruction.”
On the dry bench is the Elder Pliny.
*Pont-Black Sea
**There are two versions of the interpretation of the words “On a dry bench - the Elder Pliny.
1) The poet imagines that the outstanding encyclopedist writer Pliny the Elder is actually sitting on the bench next to him, in person.
.2) Lev Losev, in his recently published biography of the poet, suggests that on the bench is not Pliny himself, but his work “Naturalis Historia”, also known as “Natural History”.

It's windy today and the waves are overlapping.
Autumn is coming, everything will change in the area.
The change of colors is more touching, Postumus,
than changing a friend’s outfit.

I am sending you, Posthumus, these books.
What's in the capital? Are they laying softly? Isn't it hard to sleep?
How's Caesar doing? What is he doing? All the intrigue?
All the intrigue is probably just gluttony.

I am sitting in my garden, the lamp is burning.
No girlfriend, no servant, no acquaintances.
Instead of the weak of this world and the strong -
only the harmonious hum of insects.

Here lies a merchant from Asia. Tolkovym
He was a merchant - businesslike, but inconspicuous.
Died quickly - fever. By trade
he came here for business, not for this.

Next to him is a legionnaire, under rough quartz.
He glorified the empire in battles.
How many times could they have killed? and died an old man.
Even here, Posthumus, there are no rules.

Let it be true, Posthumus, that a chicken is not a bird,
but with chicken brains you'll have enough grief.
If you happen to be born in the Empire,
It’s better to live in a remote province by the sea.

And far from Caesar, and from the blizzard.
There is no need to fawn, be cowardly, or rush.
Are you saying that all governors are thieves?
But a thief is dearer to me than a bloodsucker.

Wait out this downpour with you, hetaera,
I agree, but let's not trade:
take sestertius from the covering body -
it’s like demanding shingles from a roof.

Leaking, you say? But where is the puddle?
It never happened that I left a puddle.
You'll find yourself some husband,
it will leak onto the bedspread.

So we have lived more than half of it.
As the old slave told me in front of the tavern:
“When we look around, we see only ruins.”
The view, of course, is very barbaric, but true.

I was in the mountains. Now I'm busy with a large bouquet.
I’ll find a big jug and pour water for them...
How is it in Libya, my Postumus, or where there?
Are we still fighting?

Do you remember, Postumus, the governor has a sister?
Thin, but with full legs.
You slept with her again... You recently became a priestess.
The priestess, Posthumus, communicates with the gods.

Come, let's drink wine and eat bread.
Or plums. Tell me the news.
I'll make your bed in the garden under the clear sky
and I’ll tell you what the constellations are called.

Soon, Postumus, your friend who loves the addition,
will pay off his long-standing debt.
Take your savings from under your pillow,
there is not much there, but enough for the funeral.

Ride your black mare
to the house of hetaeras under our city wall.
Give them the price for which you loved,
so that they pay for the same price.

The greenery of the laurel, almost to the point of trembling.
The door is open, the window is dusty,
an abandoned chair, an abandoned bed.
Fabric that has absorbed the midday sun.

Pontus rustles behind a black hedge of pine trees.
Someone's ship is struggling with the wind off the cape.
On the dry bench is the Elder Pliny.
A blackbird chirps in the cypress hair.

Analysis of the poem “Letters to a Roman Friend” by Brodsky

The work of I. Brodsky is still perceived extremely ambiguously. Some praise him as the greatest poet of our time, others subject him to derogatory criticism. The main reason for negative statements is the poet’s vague and rude style and the use of obscene language. Critics believe that such a language cannot in any way be considered an integral part of the classical cultural heritage. In this regard, Brodsky’s poem “Letter to a Roman Friend” (1972) is very interesting. In it, the poet practically does not use complex images and symbols. The work is a calm reflection of the author, written in simple and accessible language.

In the title, Brodsky indicates a possible translation of the poem (“from Martial”). However, it is not. It is an independent work. The poet simply uses the common ancient Roman genre of a friendly message-reflection to a loved one.

Brodsky was close to the ancient Roman poets who sang the individual freedom of the creative personality. At the same time, they most often had a negative attitude towards the all-powerful emperors. The comparison between the Soviet Union and the Roman Empire is clearly noticeable. The author likens himself to a Roman citizen who, for some reason, is in a distant province. A possible reason could be persecution by the authorities.

The author addresses a friend who remains in the capital. In the ironic questions about Caesar's condition, hints of the Soviet leader are visible. Brodsky considers the communist leadership an exact copy of the ancient Roman elite of society. The power of the two greatest empires is united by intrigue and insane luxury.

The main character emphasizes that being away from the capital, he feels great peace, which allows him to indulge in philosophical reflection. Brodsky never hid the fact that he was unfamiliar with the feeling of patriotism. He was not at all attracted by the title of citizen of the empire. In a powerful country, he strives to get to the very outskirts so as not to experience ideological pressure. The author puts forward a serious accusation, directed primarily against Stalin - “bloodsucker.” Compared to him, all petty leaders are simply “thieves” with whom one can still somehow coexist.

Brodsky is not at all concerned with national issues. This is clearly demonstrated in the remark: “in Libya... or wherever? ...are we still fighting?” For him, getting water for a bouquet of flowers is much more important than an international conflict.

In the mention of the “sister’s governor”, Brodsky’s allusion to those people who strive to achieve the favor of the authorities is visible. He equates “communication with the gods” with public respect, which is deeply alien to him.

The ending of the poem describes the simple situation surrounding the voluntary exile (“dusty window”, “abandoned bed”). Brodsky depicts his idea of the ideal lifestyle that he was able to subsequently achieve after leaving the Soviet Union.