Reviews

• Paradise, Plus Brodsky's Books

  There are approximately 150 pages of poems written by Russian born winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Joseph Brodsky. I have bought a Russian edition A Part of Speech many years ago and I was especially interested in English to read and compare. I am not keen on reading poetry every day but every time it happens something beautiful remains in the soul and helps working anywhere, ... mathematics, for example. The Russian edition A Part of Speech (a small cycle inside the book with the same title) I have read was printed in 2004, I guess without compiling by will of the author. So, it's a question: is there a difference? Frankly, be ready for a little surprise. There are fifteen poems in English text (184 line,1977) and twenty poems in Russian (244 lines). I believe that Russian publishers had their reasons to add five poems, but I believe to my heart too wishing to know what the poet had been created in 1977. And I said myself: `You lucky guy today, you will know what HE felt when HE wrote exactly'. Maybe fifteen minutes I thought it is a bit uncomfortable to read a Russian poet in English when you have opportunity to read in both languages. Now, I think I feel myself very well learning original composition of lines, feelings, and heart's vibrations of author. In Russian St. Petersburg (city the poet was born) middle aged men have a joke: `If you are 40 years old, you got up in the morning and you don't feel any pain, any hurt -- you are in the Paradise yet'. Many years I live in `the Paradise'. Plus Brodsky's books.

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