Tajemnica Pogrzebu Bobo
The Mystery of Bobo’s Funeral

Summary/Abstract: The poem Bobo’s Funeral (1972) is in such an encrypted form that its secret has still to be unraveled. Those who have written about it (Losev, Paramonov, Shraer) interpret it in a variety of ways, which testifies to the multi-layered nature of the text. My own view is that Bobo’s Funeral does not conform to any of the interpretations suggested, whether concrete or abstract. This paper provides analysis of the poem’s vocabulary, sounds, rhythm and imagery with references to Brodsky’s other poems and proves that Bobo’s Funeral is not about Akhmatova (Shraer) or the loss of fullness of being (Paramonov). My reading of Bobo’s Funeral can be summarized as follows: a highly personal biographical fact is incorporated into the poet’s world-view: nothingness, emptiness, hell, the word, language. For Brodsky, language was god and everything was sacrificed for it: personal life, health, love, children and fate itself. “Word swallows up the fate without a remnant”might serve as an epigraph to Brodsky’s works as a whole.

• Details
• Contents