Table of Contents

Introduction. List of Photographs. Acknowledgements. I . JOHN L E CARRÉ. A Great Talent that was a bit of an Orphan. MIKHAIL HEIFETS . The Empire he was Loyal to was the Russian Language. LEV LOSEFF. He Lived at Extraordinary Pace. IGOR EFIMOV. Navigators in the Ocean of Spirit. GENRIKH STEINBERG . Joseph Wanted to Know Everything. EDWARD BLOOMSTEIN. Penetrating to the Depth of Things. MIKHAIL ARDOV. Leaving this Place is Impossible but Living here is also – Inconceivable. OLEG TSELKOV. With his Own Point of View on Everything. TOMAS VENCLOVA. He Tended to Ascribe his own Traits to Other Poets. VIKTOR GOLYSHEV. He was too Democratic to be an ‘Aesthete’. ALEKSANDR SUMERKIN. Continuation of Poetry by Other Means. PETR VAIL . Brodsky’s Poetic Globe is Equal to the Geographical one. BENGT JANGFELDT. The Terrible Fate of a Russian Poet. I I. LUDMILA SHTERN. He Needed to have this kind of Dulcinea. NATALYA GORBANEVSKAYA. He was Lonely Everywhere. ZOFIA KAPUSCINSKA. In Search of New Meaning. ANNIE EPELBOIN. Generations of Suffering People Speaking through him Over the Ages. ELENA CHERNYSHEVA. Russia was his Heartache. NATASHA SPENDER. Ranging over Poetry of all Ages. SUSAN SONTAG. He Landed among us like a Missile . ANNELISA ALLEVA. There was a Lot of him, a Whole Mosaic. TATIANA RETIVOV. His Voice Remains Unique. TATIANA SHCHERBINA. A Demiurge, a Prophet, a Philosopher. DASHA BASMANOVA. A Unique Sense of Internal Freedom and Self-esteem. PASHA BASMANOVA. His World is Language. ANASTASIYA KUZNETSOVA. One can be Worthy of him Only in a Loving Way. I I I SEAMUS HEANEY. The Young Poet in him Never Aged. MARK STRAND. Joseph was a Great Choice for Poet Laureate. DEREK WALCOTT. Almost Medieval Devotion to his Craft. JONATHAN AARON. He Pushed English to its Limits. WILLIAM WADSWORTH. A Turbulent Affair with the English Language. LES MURRAY. English for him was Associated with Civilization. MATTHEW SPENDER. A Necessary Smile. SAM BRUSSELL. He Restored to Poetry its Metaphysical Dimension. IV. ALAN MYERS . The Handmaid of Genius. DANIEL WEISSBORT. Nothing is Impossible. PETER FRANCE. A Dictionary-haunted Poetry. MICHAEL SCAMMELL . He Responded to Christianity Aesthetically. PAUL KEEGAN. He Wanted to Infect English with the Virus of History. ROGER STRAUS . A Great Poet was Living among us. Name Index.

About the Author

Valentina Polukhina is Professor Emeritus of Russian Literature at Keele University, England and the author of several major studies of Brodsky: Joseph Brodsky: A Poet for Our Time (CUP, 1989), Brodsky Through the Eyes of his Contemporaries, vol. I (St Martin's Press, 1992); a Russian version Brodskii glazami sovremennikov (vol. I, 1997, 2006) and A Dictionary of Brodsky's Tropes (Tartu University Press, 1995). She is editor of a collection of Brodsky's interviews - Large Book of Interviews (Bol'shaya kniga intervyu) (2000, 2005, 2007); with Lev Loseff, of Brodsky's Poetics and Aesthetics (1990) and Joseph Brodsky: The Art of a Poem (1999, 2002), with A. Stepanov and I. Fomenko, of Brodsky's Poetics ("Poetika Brodskogo", Tver, 2003), with A. Korchinsky Joseph Brodsky: A Strategy of Reading ("Iosif Brodkii: Strategiya chteniya", Moscow, 2005). Among her articles we can find essays on Akhmatova, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Khlebnikov, Mandelshtam, Shcherbina, Gorbanevskaya, etc. She had edited bilingual collections of Olga Sedakova (1994), Oleg Prokofiev (1995), Dmitry Prigov (1995), Evgeny Rein (2001). Recently a second volume Brodsky Through the Eyes of his Contemporaries was republished in St Petersburg (SPb, Zvezda, 2006).