Nobel poet Joseph Brodsky‘s interactions with his translators were not always harmonious; in fact, sometimes they were downright contentious. Yet there was often a good deal of mutual affection nevertheless – sometimes even devotion.
My interviews with his first translator, the eminent Bryn Mawr philosopher and Slavic scholar George L. Kline, are the basis of my volume, The Man Who Brought Brodsky into English: Conversations with George L. Kline. Kline was one of the key figures in bringing Brodsky to the U.S., and one of the first in the West to recognize his importance as a poet, translating his early 1963 poem Elegy for John Donne, which I was pleased to include in my book (it hadn’t been republished since his first 1973 collection), and bootlegging manuscripts out of the USSR.
Poet and translator had a long tradition of exchanging birthday and holiday messages in verse, often delivered via telegram. It demonstrates the playful friendship that bound the poet and this translator, even through the rough patches when they disagreed about how to translate a line. But, I must admit, it must have taken some courage to send poems to the man who would win a Nobel.
I published several of the poems in the book. Here’s one I missed that I recently found among my papers. It’s dated 1975 – just three years after his expulsion from the U.S.S.R., and sent as a mailgram to Venice, where the poet was spending his holidays:
According to The New York Times Wet Venice has been saved from sinking. So let your spirits with her climb, While light heads banish heavy thinking.
There. How many people would dare to scribble short poems to a world-class poet? I’m rather glad the unassuming scholar did.
Tags: George Kline, Joseph Brodsky