Brodsky in English

A deeply researched account of Joseph Brodskys evolution in English as a self-translator and a poet in translation

Joseph Brodskys translations of his own Russian-language poems into English new originals have been criticized for their un-Englishness, an appraisal based on a narrow understanding of translation itself. With this radical reassessment of the Nobel Prize winners self-translations, Zakhar Ishov proposes a fresh approach to poetry translation and challenges the assumption that poetic form is untranslatable.

Brodsky in English draws on previously unexamined archival materials, including drafts and correspondence with translators and publishers, to trace the arc of Brodskys experience with the English language. Ishov shows how Brodskys belief in the intellectual continuity between his former life in the Soviet Union and his new career in the United States, including as Poet Laureate, anchored his insistence on maintaining the formal architecture of his poems in translation, locating the transmission of poetic meaning in the rhythms of language itself. This book highlights Brodskys place within the long history of the compromises translation must make between linguistic material and poetic process. See more