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I got caught up in the proletariat the way Marx describes it.

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
Marx
Caught
Way
Proletariat
Describes

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The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.
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For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.
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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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The government, the state, they're just objects of jokes rather than serious consideration. I can't possibly take them seriously.
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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.
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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.
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Poetry is what is gained in translation.
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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.
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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.
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I'm neither Catholic not Protestant. Protestant sounds good but I don't think I am.
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I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.
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An object, after all, is what makes infinity private.
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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.
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