The Week… In love with Joseph Brodsky

November 15, 2010 by · 1 comment

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.

Photo: nathalielaure

If there is any substitute for love, it is memory.

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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.

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The poetic notion of infinity is far greater than that which is sponsored by any creed.

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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.

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For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

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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.

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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.

Photo: cytoon

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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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.

Photo: pilax

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.

Photo: aditya_rakhman