Doświadczenie emigracji w poezji Josifa Brodskiego
Émigré Experience in the Poetry of Joseph Brodsky

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses the experience of emigration, one of the major themes in Joseph Brodsky’s poetry. Adaptation to new conditions involved meeting “the Other”: the culture and space of the United States, and accustoming oneself to them. An important factor in the process was Brodsky’s nomadism, understood as the need to move, seeking one’s own identity and manifesting one’s freedom. The theme of exile in Brodsky’s poetry can be seen as a significant feature of twentieth-century literature. The poet often uses irony and self-irony to stress his distance to both the foreign space and his own negative emotions in relation to the place of exile. His early immigration texts are strongly charged emotionally, which is increased by his fear of forthcoming senility. Brodsky’s alienation is reflected in the spaces he describes, clearly showing isolation and loneliness. To adopt a new space, claim it as one’s own, it is necessary to know its traits and history, and to experience it sensually, discover its beauty. Heidegger calls it “contemplative thinking”. As such, the domestication has several levels: knowledge and aesthetic, sensual experience, which leads to acknowledging the presence of spiritual values. Assuming successive places as one’s own, as home, internalizing their spiritual content, one encounters the essence itself, the “being”. Brodsky was a citizen of the world, who felt and saw his own biography as a transcultural space. He was open to and acceptive of “the Other”, while maintaining his own identity and a distanced, critical point of view.

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