Quote

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.

Joseph Brodsky

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Joseph Brodsky
Age: 55 †
Born: 1940
Born: May 24
Died: 1996
Died: January 25
Author
Dramaturge
Essayist
Playwright
Poet
Translator
Writer
St. Petersburg
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky
Doctrine
Contrary
Poet
Journey
Credo
Point
Arrival
Arrivals
Departure
Metaphysical

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Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse
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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.
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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.
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For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.
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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.
Joseph Brodsky
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The Constitution doesn't mention rain.
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If they had wanted to punish me, they should have kept me in a communal apartment. Then I would have become a wreck.
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Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family. Even your super weirdo creep cousin.
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Poetry is what is gained in translation.
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I don't want to dive into that mud slide, which is what I consider the literary process.
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If I can get somewhere, I'm all right. If not, I'm miserable.
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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.
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I'm a bad Jew, a bad Russian, a bad everything.
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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.
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Man is what he reads.
Joseph Brodsky
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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.
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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.
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The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
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On the whole, love comes with the speed of light separation, with that of sound.
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Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.
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