Sadness and reason became the swan song.
Brodsky won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987 as an American citizen, but he has been called "Russian poet" on most occasions. He insisted on writing poems in Russian from the Soviet Union to the West in 1972, and was considered as the most important Russian poet in the second half of the 20th century, even the "first Russian poet". But in the United States and even the whole western literary world, Brodsky's English prose is the most widely circulated and respected, and he is even called "one of the great English essayists" (see the back cover of the English version of Sorrow and Reason by Penguin Club). As the proud inheritor of "Petersburg Poetry Tradition", brodsky always looked down on prose and seemed to be a poetry supremacist, but prose obviously brought him greater reputation, at least in the western world. As an "English model essay", brodsky's prose is widely read nowadays, and as a master of his prose creation, his last collection of essays, Sadness and Reason, won worldwide praise.
Grieving for the Past and Sense contains 2 1 essays, which can be roughly divided into several types, namely, memoirs and travel notes, speeches and notes, open letters and eulogies. Specifically, among them, the trophy and the collection are autobiographical memoirs; "A place as good as other places", "After a trip, I still go to the spine" and "Salute to Marcus Aurelius" are almost all travel essays; We call it exile, or floating acorns, a unique face, an award-winning speech, a second self, how to read a book, praise depression, the silhouette of clio, a speech at the stadium, an unfriendly suggestion and a cat's meowing, all written by brodsky in seminars, award ceremonies and books. Letters to the President and Horace are epistolary prose; Sorrow and Reason and Caring for the Dead are detailed interpretations of Frost and Hardy's poems in college classes. Ninety Years Later is an in-depth analysis of Rilke's poem orpheus Eurydice Hermes. The last article "Mourning for Stephen Spender" is an eulogy to the poet. The articles in the anthology are roughly arranged in the order of publication time. The last page of this book indicates the completion time of Mourning for Stephen Spender, that is, "1August 995 10". Less than half a year after this date, brodsky died, so Sadness and Reason became the last collection of essays published by brodsky before his death. This is brodsky's prose.
The theme of Poems and Poets is sadness and reason.
Twenty years after the English version of Sorrow and Reason was published, we read its Chinese translation and found that its content and form still have great charm for us.
As far as the content is concerned, Regret for the Past and Sense are the concentrated expressions of brodsky's world outlook and aesthetics. The prose in the book has various forms and different lengths, but they all resort to the same theme, that is, "poetry and poets." By reading Regret for the Past and Sense and summarizing them, we can easily get an overall impression of brodsky's poetry and aesthetics, as well as his ethics and world outlook. Regarding the relationship between art and reality, brodsky asserted: "On the balance of truth, the weight of imagination is equal to, and sometimes even greater than, reality" (Buddy). He thinks that reality imitates art instead of art, because art itself constitutes a more real, ideal and perfect reality. "On the other hand, art does not imitate life, but it can influence life." (Sorrow and Reason) "Because literature is a dictionary, a manual to explain the significance of human destiny and experience." (We call it "exile") In a speech as an American poet laureate, he claimed: "Poetry is not a form of entertainment, or even an art form in a certain sense, but our anthropological and genetic purpose, and it is a beacon of our linguistics and evolution." Reading poetry, that is, accepting the influence of literature, can make people move from convention to creation, from identity to individuality, from evil to good. Therefore, poetry is the best means for human beings to preserve their individuality, and "it is the only form of moral insurance owned by society; It is the antidote to the dog-eat-dog principle; It provides the best argument that can be used to question all kinds of threatening statements. It is only because people's richness and diversity are the whole content of literature and the significance of its existence ("we call it exile"). "Compared with a person who has never read Dickens, it is more difficult for a person who has read Dickens to shoot his own kind because of any kind of ideological theory" (Face with Unique Expression). It is in this sense that Brodsky quoted Dostoevsky's famous proposition that "beauty will save the world" more than once in this book, and reiterated his famous proposition that "aesthetics is the mother of ethics" more than once. Broschi's Nobel Prize-winning speech "Face with Unique Expression" included in this book is a concentrated expression of his aesthetic standpoint. This passage in his speech reflects his views on art, the essence and function of art: "As far as anthropology is concerned, I repeat that man is an aesthetic creature first, followed by an ethical creature. Therefore, art, including literature, is not a by-product of human development. On the contrary, human beings are a by-product of art. If there is anything that distinguishes us from other representatives of the animal kingdom, it is language, that is, literature, including poetry. Poetry, as the highest form of language, is, to put it bluntly, the goal of our whole mankind. "
Regret for the Past pursues the prose nature of poetry and the poetic nature of prose.
As far as form is concerned, we can also read Regret for the Past as a literary text with unique genre significance. The essays in Regret for the Past and Sense are not only about poetry, but also written in the form of poetry. The essays in Mourning for the Past and Sensibility have obvious emotional color and strong lyricism. Comparing Brodsky's poetry and prose, we are not surprised to find that Brodsky seems to show more warmth and lyricism in his prose than in his poetry. In his calm and reserved prose narration, there is often a sudden sentimental insertion. Brodsky analyzed Frost's poems with Sadness and Reason as the title. While explaining that "sadness and reason" is the eternal theme of Frost's poems and even all his poems, he seems to imply that "sadness" and "reason", as two opposing emotional elements, may coexist in poetry and prose. His prose style even makes us feel that generally speaking, poetry is "sad" and prose is "rational". However, brodsky seems to be exchanging their positions, deliberately writing "rational" poems and "sad" essays. In other words, he seems to be consciously or unconsciously pursuing the prose nature of poetry and the poetic nature of prose. This unique narrative style makes his prose unique. It is not so much an objective narrative as a subjective feeling. It is not so much a concrete description as a lyrical monologue. The structure and narrative rhythm of the book Regret for the Past and Reason and every prose in the book are typical poetic techniques, which some researchers call "mirror principle", "carpet principle" or "music principle". Corresponding to this structural principle, brodsky's prose is unique in composition, syntax and even morphology. In addition, the montage scenes and combined metaphors throughout the book make it difficult to equate the words in sad feelings with the prose in the usual sense. In fact, there are not many strict and clear boundaries between various literary genres. The transitional genre between poetry and prose is called "prose poetry". Perhaps we can define the sad and rational style as "poetic prose". When commenting on Zvetayeva's prose, brodsky pointed out that Zvetayeva's prose is "the continuation of her poetry". Similarly, brodsky's own prose is the continuation of his poetry, and even his poetry has developed to the point of independent genre significance.
The intellectual words in Regret for the Past and Sense are durable to read, and the poetry in them can also give people pleasure. What's more, many problems that brodsky faced or raised in Sorrow and Sense, such as the relationship between empire and culture, identity and individuality, freedom and power, are undoubtedly of great practical significance to us.