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Life Is A Game With Many Rules But No Referee. One Learns How To Play It More By Watching It Than By Consulting Any Book, Including The Holy Book. Small Wonder, Then, That So Many Play Dirty, That So Few Win, That So Many Lose.

-Joseph Brodsky

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Life Is A Game

Joseph Brodsky

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Life Is A Game With Many Rules But No Referee. One Learns How To Play It More By Watching It Than By Consulting Any Book, Including The Holy Book. Small Wonder, Then, That So Many Play Dirty, That So Few Win, That So Many Lose.

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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.

...boredom Speaks The Language Of Time, And It Is To Teach You The Most Valuable Lesson In Your Life--...the Lesson Of Your Utter Insignificance. It Is Valuable To You, As Well As To Those You Are To Rub Shoulders With. 'you Are Finite,' Time Tells You In A Voice Of Boredom, 'and Whatever You Do Is, From My Point Of View, Futile.' As Music To Your Ears, This, Of Course, May Not Count; Yet The Sense Of Futility, Of Limited Significance Even Of Your Best, Most Ardent Actions Is Better Than The Illusion Of Their Consequence And The Attendant Self-satisfaction.

As To The State, From My Point Of View, The Measure Of A Writer's Patriotism Is Not Oaths From A High Platform, But How He Writes In The Language Of The People Among Whom He Lives .

In Poetic Thought, The Role Of The Subconscious Is Played By Euphony.

If A Poet Has Any Obligation Toward Society, It Is To Write Well. Being In The Minority, He Has No Other Choice. Failing This Duty, He Sinks Into Oblivion. Society, On The Other Hand, Has No Obligation Toward The Poet. A Majority By Definition, Society Thinks Of Itself As Having Other Options Than Reading Verses, No Matter How Well Written. Its Failure To Do So Results In Its Sinking To That Level Of Locution At Which Society Falls Easy Prey To A Demagogue Or A Tyrant. This Is Society's Own Equivalent Of Oblivion.

Were We To Choose Our Leaders On The Basis Of Their Reading Experience And Not Their Political Programs, There Would Be Much Less Grief On Earth. I Believe ... That For Someone Who Has Read A Lot Of Dickens To Shoot His Like In The Name Of An Idea Is Harder Than For Someone Who Has Read No Dickens.

At Certain Periods Of History It Is Only Poetry That Is Capable Of Dealing With Reality By Condensing It Into Something Graspable, Something That Otherwise Wouldn't Be Retained By The Mind.

All The Literati Keep At Least One Imaginary Friend.

Imaginary Friend

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.

I Do Not Believe In Political Movements. I Believe In Personal Movement, That Movement Of The Soul When A Man Who Looks At Himself Is So Ashamed That He Tries To Make Some Sort Of Change - Within Himself, Not On The Outside.

Because Every Book Of Art, Be It A Poem Or A Cupola, Is Understandably A Self-portrait Of Its Author, We Won't Strain Ourselves Too Hard Trying To Distinguish Between The Author's Persona And The Poem's Lyrical Hero. As A Rule, Such Distinctions Are Quite Meaningless, If Only Because A Lyrical Hero Is Invariably An Author's Self-projection.

A Poet Is A Combination Of An Instrument And A Human Being In One Person, With The Former Gradually Taking Over The Latter. The Sensation Of This Takeover Is Responsible For Timbre; The Realization Of It, For Destiny.

My Poems Getting Published In Russia Doesn't Make Me Feel In Any Fashion, To Tell You The Truth. I'm Not Trying To Be Coy, But It Doesn't Tickle My Ego.

I Always Adhered To The Idea That God Is Time, Or At Least That His Spirit Is.

What's Happening In Russia Is Devoid Of Autobiographical Interest For Me. Maybe It's Egocentric. Whatever It Is, Feel Free To Use It.

Try Not To Pay Attention To Those Who Will Try To Make Life Miserable For You. There Will Be A Lot Of Those-in The Official Capacity As Well As The Self-appointed. Suffer Them If You Can't Escape Them, But Once You Have Steered Clear Of Them, Give Them The Shortest Shrift Possible. Above All, Try To Avoid Telling Stories About The Unjust Treatment You Received At Their Hands; Avoid It No Matter How Receptive Your Audience May Be. Tales Of This Sort Extend The Existence Of Your Antagonists.

After Having Exhausted All The Arguments On Behalf Of Evil, One Utters The Creed's Dictums With Nostalgia Rather Than With Fervor.

Every Life Has A File, If You Will.

The Fact That We Are Living Does Not Mean We Are Not Sick.

There Are Worse Crimes Than Burning Books. One Of Them Is Not Reading Them.

The Real History Of Consciousness Starts With One's First Lie.

As Long As The State Permits Itself To Interfere In The Affairs Of Literature, Literature Has The Right To Interfere With The Affairs Of State.

Man Is What He Reads.

There's Nothing As Dear As The Sight Of Ruins.

I Got Caught Up In The Proletariat The Way Marx Describes It.

Boredom Is Your Window On The Properties Of Time That One Tends To Ignore To The Likely Peril Of One's Mental Equilibrium. It Is Your Window On Time's Infinity. Once This Window Opens, Don't Try To Shut It; On The Contrary, Throw It Wide Open.

Poetry Is Rather An Approach To Things, To Life, Than It Is Typographical Production.

Poetry Is Not Only The Most Concise Way Of Conveying The Human Experience; It Also Offers The Highest Possible Standards For Any Linguistic Operation.

Twentieth-century Russian Literature Has Produced Nothing Special Except Perhaps One Novel And Two Stories By Andrei Platonov, Who Ended His Days Sweeping Streets.

If One's Fated To Be Born In Caesar's Empire, Let Him Live Aloof, Provincial, By The Seashore.

Out Of Dostoevsky: Kafka. Out Of Tolstoy: Margaret Mitchell. (in Conversation, Explaining His Dislike For Tolstoy)

Racism? But Isn't It Only A Form Of Misanthropy?

After All, It Is Hard To Master Both Life And Work Equally Well. So If You Are Bound To Fake One Of Them, It Had Better Be Life.

The Poetic Notion Of Infinity Is Far Greater Than That Which Is Sponsored By Any Creed.

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.

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.

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.

The Moment That You Place Blame Somewhere, You Undermine Your Resolve To Change Anything.

Russian Talk Of Political Evil Is As Natural As Eating.

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.

I Sit In The Dark. And It Would Be Hard To Figure Out Which Is Worse; The Dark Inside, Or The Darkness Out.

Bad Literature Is A Form Of Treason.

I Don't Have Principles. I Have Nerves.

I Am Losing My Soviet Citizenship, I Do Not Cease To Be A Russian Poet. I Believe That I Will Return. Poets Always Return In Flesh Or On Paper.

By Failing To Read Or Listen To Poets, Society Dooms Itself To Inferior Modes Of Articulation, Those Of The Politician, The Salesman, Or The Charlatan. In Other Words, It Forfeits Its Own Evolutionary Potential. For What Distinguishes Us From The Rest Of The Animal Kingdom Is Precisely The Gift Of Speech. Poetry Is Not A Form Of Entertainment And In A Certain Sense Not Even A Form Of Art, But It Is Our Anthropological, Genetic Goal. Our Evolutionary, Linguistic Beacon.

On The Whole, Love Comes With The Speed Of Light; Separation, With That Of Sound.

Judge: And What Is Your Occupation In General? Brodsky: Poet, Poet-translator. Judge: And Who Recognized You To Be A Poet? Who Put You In The Ranks Of Poet? Brodsky: No One. And Who Put Me In The Ranks Of Humanity? Judge: Did You Study It?...how To Be A Poet? Did You Attempt To Finish An Insitute Of Higher Learning...where They Prepare...teach Brodsky: I Did Not Think That It Is Given To One By Education. Judge: By What Then? Brodsky: I Think That It Is From God.

For A Writer Only One Form Of Patriotism Exists: His Attitude Toward Language.

Poetry Is What Is Gained In Translation.

As Failures Go, Attempting To Recall The Past Is Like Trying To Grasp The Meaning Of Existence. Both Make One Feel Like A Baby Clutching At A Basketball: One's Palms Keep Sliding Off.

Geography Blended With Time Equals Destiny.

I Don't Believe In That Country Any Longer. I'm Not Interested. I'm Writing In The Language, And I Like The Language.

When The Eye Fails To Find Beauty-alias Solace-it Commands The Body To Create It, Or, Failing That, Adjusts Itself To Perceive Virtue In Ugliness.

I'm A Bad Jew, A Bad Russian, A Bad Everything.

For Boredom Speaks The Language Of Time, And It Is To Teach You The Most Valuable Lesson Of Your Life - The Lesson Of Your Utter Insignificance.

I'm Not Trying To Be Ridiculous Or Funny, But It Was Rather Pleasant To Find Yourself In Isolation, In Solitary.

Finding Yourself

Every Writing Career Starts As A Personal Quest For Sainthood, For Self-betterment. Sooner Or Later, And As A Rule Quite Soon, A Man Discovers That His Pen Accomplishes A Lot More Than His Soul.

Who Included Me Among The Ranks Of The Human Race?

Every Individual Ought To Know At Least One Poet From Cover To Cover: If Not As A Guide Through The World, Then As A Yardstick For The Language.

The Delirium And Horror Of The East. The Dusty Catastrophe Of Asia. Green Only On The Banner Of The Prophet. Nothing Grows Here Except Mustaches.

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.

In The West You Have Every Opportunity For Civilization To Triumph.

It Would Be Enough For Me To Have The System Of A Jury Of Twelve Versus The System Of One Judge As A Basis For Preferring The U.s. To The Soviet Union. I Would Prefer The Country You Can Leave To The Country You Cannot.

I Don't Want To Dive Into That Mud Slide, Which Is What I Consider The Literary Process.

For The Poet The Credo Or Doctrine Is Not The Point Of Arrival But Is, On The Contrary, The Point Of Departure For The Metaphysical Journey.

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.

Exhilarating Feeling

In The End, Like The Almighty Himself, We Make Everything In Our Image, For Want Of A More Reliable Model; Our Artifacts Tell More About Ourselves Than Our Confessions.

If There Is Anything Good About Exile, It Is That It Teaches One Humility. It Accelerates One’s Drift Into Isolation, An Absolute Perspective. Into The Condition At Which All One Is Left With Is Oneself And One’s Language, With Nobody Or Nothing In Between. Exile Brings You Overnight Where It Would Normally Take A Lifetime To Go.

Life—the Way It Really Is—is A Battle Not Between Good And Bad, But Between Bad And Worse

Love Itself Is The Most Elitist Of Passions. It Acquires Its Stereoscopic Substance And Perspective Only In The Context Of Culture, For It Takes Up More Place In The Mind Than It Does In Bed. Outside Of That Setting It Falls Flat Into One-dimensional Fiction.

In General, With Things Unpleasant, The Rule Is: The Sooner You Hit Bottom, The Faster You Surface.

As A Form Of Moral Insurance, At Least, Literature Is Much More Dependable Than A System Of Beliefs Or A Philosophical Doctrine. Since There Are No Laws That Can Protect Us From Ourselves, No Criminal Code Is Capable Of Preventing A True Crime Against Literature; Though We Can Condemn The Material Suppression Of Literature - The Persecution Of Writers, Acts Of Censorship, The Burning Of Books - We Are Powerless When It Comes To Its Worst Violation: That Of Not Reading The Books. For That Crime, A Person Pays With His Whole Life; If The Offender Is A Nation, It Pays With Its History.

The Formula For Prison Is A Lack Of Space Counterbalanced By A Surplus Of Time. This Is What Really Bothers You, That You Can't Win. Prison Is Lack Of Alternatives, And The Telescopic Predictability Of The Future Is What Drives You Crazy.

What I Like About Cities Is That Everything Is King Size, The Beauty And The Ugliness.

A Language Is A More Ancient And Inevitable Thing Than Any State.

Snobbery? But It's Only A Form Of Despair.

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.

Creativity Is An Unending Exercise In Uncertainty.

When I'm Not Writing Or Reading, I'm Thinking About Both.

What Concerns Me Is That Man, Unable To Articulate, To Express Himself Adequately, Reverts To Action. Since The Vocabulary Of Action Is Limited, As It Were, To His Body, He Is Bound To Act Violently, Extending His Vocabulary With A Weapon Where There Should Have Been An Adjective.

For Darkness Restores What Light Cannot Repair.

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.

I'm 100 Percent Jewish By Blood, But By Education I'm Nothing. By Affiliation I'm Nothing.

If I Can Get Somewhere, I'm All Right. If Not, I'm Miserable.

I Grew Up In The Sort Of Cultural Milieu That Always Regarded Conversations About The Political Discourse As Tremendously Low-brow.

The Eye Identifies Itself Not With The Body It Belongs To But With The Object Of Its Attention.

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.

If A Poet Has Any Obligation Toward Society, It Is To Write Well. Being In The Minority, He Has No Other Choice. Failing This Duty, He Sinks Into Oblivion. Society, On The Other Hand, Has No Obligation Toward The Poet.

I'm Neither Catholic Not Protestant. Protestant Sounds Good But I Don't Think I Am.

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.

The Surest Defense Against Evil Is Extreme Individualism, Originality Of Thinking, Whimsicality, Even - If You Will - Eccentricity. That Is, Something That Can't Be Feigned, Faked, Imitated; Something Even A Seasoned Imposter Couldn't Be Happy With.

How Delightful To Find A Friend In Everyone.

Poems, Novels - These Things Belong To The Nation, To The Culture And The People. They've Been Stolen From The People And Now The Stolen Things Are Being Returned To Their Owners, But I Don't Think Their Owners Should Be Grateful To Receive Them.

Language And, Presumably, Literature Are More Ancient And Inevitable, More Durable Than Any Form Of Social Organization. The Revulsion, Irony, Or Indifference Often Expressed By Literature Toward The State Is Essentially The Reaction Of The Permanent-better Yet, The Infinite-against The Temporary, Against The Finite.

Robert Frost's Triumph Was Not Being At John Kennedy's Inauguration Ceremony, But The Day When He Put The Last Period On "west-running Brook.

No Matter Under What Circumstances You Leave It, Home Does Not Cease To Be Home. No Matter How You Lived There - Well Or Poorly.

This Is The Generation Whose First Cry Of Life Was The Hungarian Uprising.

Perhaps Art Is Simply An Organism's Reaction Against Its Retentive Limitations.

Persecution Mania Is Still Around. In Your Writing, In Your Exchanges With People, Meeting People Who Are In Russian Affairs, Russian Literature, Etcetera.

The Constitution Doesn't Mention Rain.

Cherish Your Human Connections: Your Relationships With Friends And Family. Even Your Super Weirdo Creep Cousin.

Relatives And Friends

The Government, The State, They're Just Objects Of Jokes Rather Than Serious Consideration. I Can't Possibly Take Them Seriously.

Perhaps The Best Proof Of The Almighty's Existence Is That We Never Know When We Are To Die.

Tragedy, As You Know, Is Always A Fait Accompli, Whereas Terror Always Has To Do With Anticipation, With Man's Recognition Of Hisown Negative Potential--with His Sense Of What He Is Capable Of.

If They Had Wanted To Punish Me, They Should Have Kept Me In A Communal Apartment. Then I Would Have Become A Wreck.

What Should I Say About Life? That It's Long And Abhors Transparence.

...in The Business Of Writing What One Accumulates Is Not Expertise But Uncertainties. Which Is But Another Name For Craft.

An Object, After All, Is What Makes Infinity Private.

Life Is A Game With Many Rules But No Referee. One Learns How To Play It More By Watching It Than By Consulting Any Book, Including The Holy Book. Small Wonder, Then, That So Many Play Dirty, That So Few Win, That So Many Lose.

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