Discourse of Another in Joseph Brodsky’s Poem “In Front of the Pushkin Monument in Odessa”

Abstract

The topic of the article was someone else’s word in I. Brodsky’s poem “Before the monument to A. S. Pushkin in Odessa.” The method of intertextual analysis and the biographical method were used. Pushkin’s intertext is analyzed using allusions to A. S. Pushkin’s poems about freedom (“Prisoner”, “God forbid, God forbid me to go crazy…”, “To the Sea”), references to his other texts (fairy tales, “The Bronze Horseman”). The inclusion of other forms of someone else’s word in the text of the work is also explored. Describing A. S. Pushkin, commenting on his poems on the topic of freedom, I. Brodsky reveals similarities with his own position: in the poem he focuses on those facts of the poet’s biography that resonate with his biography, and to enhance this similarity he places them in the right place for himself context. The work presents the image of A. S. Pushkin, which is seen by I. Brodsky the exile, but not by the researcher-biographer, therefore some features of this image are exaggerated, and some are omitted (this is how, according to I. Brodsky, freedom appears to A. S. Pushkin the most important value). The author of the poem perceives A. S. Pushkin through the prism of his own worldview, giving him the features of an exile, realizes his ideas in the text both explicitly, speaking about “kinship” with the poet, and implicitly, through comments on Pushkin’s lines. This allows I. Brodsky to consider himself a continuator of the poetic mission of A. S. Pushkin, which is to declare various values (including the value of freedom) in poetic texts.