I would like to thank Diane Koenker, David Cooper, the two anonymous readers for Slavic Review, and especially David Bethea for their valuable suggestions for this article.

1. Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, “Dnevnik pisatelia: Iz ‘Literaturnoi kollektsii'; Iosif Brodskii— izbrannye stikhi,” Novyi mir, 1999, no. 12: 199 Google Scholar.

2. See for example: Weststeijn, Willem G., “Brodsky and Sotzenicyn,” Russian Literature 47, nos. 3-4 (1 April-15 May 2000): 389-96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Natal'ia Ivanova, “'Menia uprekali vo vsem, okromia pogody …’ (Aleksandr Isaevich ob Iosife Aleksandroviche),” Znamia, 2000, no. 8:183-91; Losev, Lev, “Solzhenitsyn i Brodskii kak sosedi,” Zvezda, 2000, no. 5:93–98 Google Scholar; Igor'Efimov, “Solzhenitsyn chitaet Brodskogo,” in Gordin, I. A. and Murav'eva, I. A., eds., MirIosifa Brodskogo: Putevoditel’ (St. Peterburg, 2003), 399–409 Google Scholar; and in the same collection, Liudmila Shtern, “Gigant protiv titana, ili ‘Izzhazhdannoe okunan'e v khliabi iazyka',” 411- 22. Ranchin, Andrei M., Napiru Mnemoziny: Interteksty Brodskogo (Moscow, 2001)Google Scholar, provides a detailed and sophisticated analysis of how Brodsky revives and revises the Russian poetic tradition.

3. From Brodsky's interview in July 1995 (that is, after Brodsky decided not to visit St. Petersburg) with Dmitrii Radyshevskii, “Nadeius', chto delaiu to, chto On odobriaet,” in Polukhina, Valentina, ed., losif Brodskii: Bolshaia kniga interv'iu, 2d corrected and enlarged ed. (Moscow, 2000), 664 Google Scholar.

4. From Brodsky's letter to Anatolii Sobchak, quoted in Shtern, Liudmila, Brodskii: Osia, losif, Joseph (Moscow, 2001), 24 Google Scholar

5. Tolstaya, Tatyana, “On Joseph Brodsky,” in Pushkin's Children: Writings on Russia and Russians, trans. Gambrell, Jamey (Boston, 2003), 169 Google Scholar.

6. On the theme of the “last poet” in Brodsky's work, see for example Ranchin, , Na piru Mnemoziny, 253, 254Google Scholar.

7. Könönen, Maija, ‘Tour Ways of Writing the City“: St. Petersburg-Leningrad as a Metaphor in the Poetry of Joseph Brodsky (Helsinki, 2003), 17 Google Scholar.

8. Toporov, V. N., “Peterburg i peterburgskii tekst russkoi literatury,” in “Semiotika goroda i gorodskoi kul'tury: Peterburg,” issue of Trudy po znakovym sistemam 18(1984): 6 Google Scholar. Translation from Volkov, Solomon, St. Petersburg: A Cultural History, trans. Bouis, Antonina W. (Boston, 1997), xiv Google Scholar. (Also in Toporov, Peterburgskii tekst russkoi literatury [St. Peterburg, 2003], 8.)

9. Brodsky, Joseph, “A Guide to a Renamed City,” in Brodsky, Joseph, Less Than One: Selected Essays (London, 1987), 93 Google Scholar.

10. Könönen, , “Tour Ways of Writing the City, ”20 Google Scholar.

11. Verheul, Kees, Tanets vokrug mira: Vstrechi s Iosifom Brodskim (St. Petersburg, 2002), 178 Google Scholar.

12. Hellebust, Rolf, “The Real St. Petersburg,” Russian Review 62 (October 2003): 497–507 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotations from page 507. Intriguingly, the article's concluding paragraphs backtrack somewhat on its earlier deconstruction of die Petersburg text, appearing more at ease with the notion that the “victim-city” or the city as a “thing of beauty” might somehow redeem suffering.

13. Hellebust, , “The Real St. Petersburg,” 507 Google Scholar.

14. E. A. Baratynskii to Pushkin, first half of December (after 7 December) 1825, in Vatsuro, V. E., Gillel'son, M. I., Mushina, I. B., and Tur'ian, M. A., eds., Perepiska A. S. Pushkina, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1982), 1:416-17Google Scholar.

15. On what Yury Kublanovsky terms Brodsky's “litigation with the almighty,” see “A Yankee in Russian Poetry: An Interview with Yury Kublanovsky,” in Polukhina, Valentina, Brodsky through the Eyes of His Contemporaries (New York, 1992), 200-14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. See Clark, Katerina, Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 3–4 Google Scholar.

17. Hammer, Mike and Daub, Christina, ‘Joseph Brodsky: An Interview,” in Haven, Cynthia L., ed., Joseph Brodsky: Conversations (Jackson, Miss., 2002), 155 Google Scholar.

18. On Brodsky's self-definition as a type of Calvinist, see for example Elan, Elizabeth, “An Interview with Joseph Brodsky,” in Haven, Joseph Brodsky: Conversations, 179 Google Scholar

19. The formulation “validation through persecution” is taken from Smith, G. S., “Russian Poetry: The Lives or the Lines? Presidential Address of the Modern Humanities Research Association read at University College London on 17 March 2000,” in Modern Language Review 95, no. 4 (2000): xi Google Scholar.

20. True, as Leonid Batkin notes, Brodsky is always rewriting his last will and testament. Yet it does seem appropriate to treat “August” as a special case, an ideal last word that hopes that it may not turn out to be so; the important point is that it is clearly intended as a final self-elegy, where Brodsky's poetic past flashes before his and our eyes. Batkin, Leonid, Tridtsat’ tret'ia bukva: Zametki chitatelia na poliakh stikhov Iosifa Brodskogo (Moscow, 1997), 319 Google Scholar.

21. The following is a selection (based to a large extent on Könönen's and Jennifer Jean Day's excellent studies) of the Brodskian texts (both pre- and postexile) where Pe crosstersburg plays an important role, whether literally as the location or symbolically: “Stansy,“ “Stansy gorodu,” “Bessmertiia u smerti ne proshu,” “Evreiskoe kladbishche okolo Leningrada,” “Ostanovkavpustyne,” “Shestvie,” “Peterburgskii roman,” “Otryvok,” “Pochti elegiia,” “S fevralia po aprel',” “Prachechnyi most,” “My vyshli s pochty priamo na kanal,“ “Ot okrainy k tsentru,” and of course various prose works written in English, most notably “Room and a Half,” “Less Than One,” and “A Guide to a Renamed City.” “Razvivaia Platona,“ “Polden'v komnate,” the “Chast’ rechi” cycle, and many of the poems addressed to Marina Basmanova may also be considered part of the Petersburg text. On Brodsky and Petersburg, see Könönen, , “Four Ways of Writing the City“; Ranchin, Na pint Mnemoziny, 256-84Google Scholar; and Jennifer Jean Day, “Memory as Space: The Created Petersburg of Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Brodskii,” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 2001). Könönen notes that few works of the 1980s are directly linked with Petersburg, “Ekloga 4—zimniaia” being an important exception. Nonetheless, typically Petersburg themes are addressed throughout the period 1972-1996, above all through portraits of Italian cities: “Dekabr'vo Florentsii,” “Rimskie elegii,” “Venetsianskie strofy,” “V Italii,” “Laguna,“ and of course Watermark. Könönen, , “Four Ways of Writing the City,” 10–11 Google Scholar.

22. For more on these matters see Herlth, Jens, “Poet i spletni (Ob odnom motive v poslednem stikhotvorenii Brodskogo),” in Fast, P. and Madloch, J., eds., Brodski w analizach i interpretacjach (Katowice, 2000), 93–112, esp. 93-95Google Scholar.

23. Brodskii, Iosif, Sochineniia losifa Brodskogo, ed. Gordin, Ia. A., 7 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1998-2001) 4: 204 Google Scholar. My translation. There are at least two excellent literal versions of this poem: one by G. S. Smith in his article ‘“Long Growing Dark': Joseph Brodsky's ‘August,'“ in Sandler, Stephanie, ed., Rereading Russian Poetry (New Haven, 1999), 248 Google Scholar; and the other by F. D. Reeve, in his review of Brodsky's Collected Poems in English, in Poetry 178, no. 1 (April 2001), 33-34.

24. Smith, , “Long Growing Dark,” 248-55Google Scholar; Batkin, , Tridtsat'tret'ia bukva, 290 Google Scholar; Vail', Petr, “Poslednee stikhotvorenie losifa Brodskogo,” in Gordin, Iakov, ed., Iosif Brodskii: Tvorchestvo, lichnost', sud'ba; Itogi trekh konferentsii (St. Petersburg, 1998), 5–7 Google Scholar; Herlth, , “Poet i spletni“; Ranchin, Na pint Mnemoziny, 235-36, 239, 274-75, 283Google Scholar; Levinton, Georgii, “Smert'poeta: Iosif Brodskii,” in Gordin, Iosif Brodskii:Tvorchestvo, lichnost', sud'ba, 190-215, in particular 200, 204 Google Scholar; Levinton, Georgii, “Tri razgovora: O liubvi, poezii i (anti)gosudarstvennoi sluzhbe,” in Rossiia/Russia (New Series) 1, no. 9 (1998): 245, 246, 276Google Scholar.

25. Vail', , “Poslednee stikhotvorenie losifa Brodskogo,” 5 Google Scholar.

26. See Losev, Lev, “Vstuplenie,” in Losev, Lev and Vail', Petr, eds., Iosif Brodskii: Trudy i dni (Moscow, 1999), 13–18 Google Scholar; and in the same volume, Dzheims Rais (James Rice), “O perepiske s I. Brodskim,” 19-20; Iosif Brodskii, “Pis'mo Dzheimsu Raisu,” 21-23. See also in the same volume Vail', “Rifma Brodskogo,” 5-9, and “Vsled za Pushkinym,” 24-28. The critical literature on the theme of “Pushkin and Brodsky” is of course extensive, and it is clear that Pushkin was of far more importance to Brodsky than he was willing or able to admit. See in particular: Valentina Polukhina, “Pushkin and Brodsky: The Art of Self- Deprecation,” in Andrew, Joe and Reid, Robert, eds., Two Hundred Years of Pushkin, vol. 1, “Pushkin's Secret“: Russian Writers Reread and Rewrite Pushkin (Amsterdam, 2003), 153-57Google Scholar; and Ranchin, Napiru Mnemoziny, especially 200-380.

27. Harold Bloom has written of how the “wholly mature strong poet” is peculiarly vulnerable in the last poetic phase, and that “this vulnerability is most evident in poems that quest for a final clarity, that seek to be definite statements, testaments to what is uniquely the strong poet's gift.” ( Bloom, Harold, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry [Oxford, 1973], 139-40Google Scholar). The reasons for Brodsky's dislike of the work of Harold Bloom is a complicated subject, as indeed are Bloom's writings themselves and the question of whether Bloom's writings on influence can be of help in studying Russian literature. Nevertheless, a case could certainly be made that Bloom's thesis illuminates Brodsky's practice in at least this poem. On the subject of Bloom and Russian literature, see in particular Befhea, David M., Realizing Metaphors: Alexander Pushkin and the Life of the Poet (Madison, 1998)Google Scholar; Sara Pratt (Sarah Pratt), “Garol'd Blum i ‘Strakh vliiania,'” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 20 (1996): 5-16; and my “'The Burden of Memories': Toward a Bloomian Analysis of Influence in Osip Mandelstam's Voronezh Notebooks” (D. Phil, diss., Oxford University, 1996). On Brodsky and Bloom, see for example Bethea, David M., Joseph Brodsky and the Creation of Exile (Princeton, 1994), xi, 10, 122-24, 138-39Google Scholar; John Givens, “The Anxiety of a Dedication: Joseph Brodsky's ‘Kvintet/Sextet’ and Mark Strand,” in ‘Joseph Brodsky,” ed. Valentina Polukhina, special issue, Russian Literature 37, nos. 2 -3 (15 February / 1 April 1995): 203-26.

28. Vail', , “Vsled za Pushkinym,” 25 Google Scholar.

29. Vail', , “Poslednee stikhotvorenie Iosifa Brodskogo,” 6 Google Scholar.

30. On Mandel'shtam's poem “Kuda mne det'sia v etom ianvare? …” as a crucial text in Mandel'shtam's “imitation of Pushkin,“see my article “Smert'avtorailismert'poeta? (Intel tekstual'nost’ v stikhotvorenii ‘Kuda mne det'sia v etom ianvare? …’)” in Lasunskii, O. G., Levinton, G. A., Makarova, O. E., Nerler, P. M., Perel'muter, V. G., Sokolova, M. V, and Freidin, Iu. L., eds., “Otdai menya, Voronezh …“: Tret'i mezhdunarodnye Mandel'shtamovskie chteniia; Sbornik statei (Voronezh, 1994), 200-14Google Scholar.

31. Pasternak, Boris, Sobranie sochinenii v piati tomakh, ed. Voznesenskii, A. A., Likhachev, D. S., Mamleev, D. F., and Pasternak, E. B. (Moscow, 1989-1992), 3:525 Google Scholar. On the background to this poem, see Fleishman, Lazar', “Avtobiograficheskoe i ‘Avgust’ Pasternaka,” in Stat'i o Pasternake (Bremen, 1977), 103-12Google Scholar, and Barnes, Christopher, Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography, vol. 2, 1928-1960 (Cambridge, Eng., 1998), 277-86Google Scholar.

32. Vail', , “Poslednee stikhotvorenie Iosifa Brodskogo,” 5–7 Google Scholar.

33. On Pasternak and Brodsky, see for example Hethea., , Joseph Brodsky and the Creation of Exile, 140-73Google Scholar.

34. Pasternak, , Okrannaia gramota, in Sobranie sochinenii, 4:228-29Google Scholar. On Mandel'shtam's and Pasternak's very different views on the role of the poet in the early thirties, see for example my article “'Komu ne nadoeli lyubov’ i krov': The Uses of Intertextuality in Mandelstam's ‘Za gremuchuiu doblest'griadushchikh vekov,'” in Aizlewood, Robin and Myers, Diana, eds., Stoletie Mandel'shtama: Materialy simpoziuma (Tenafly, N.J., 1994), 136-54Google Scholar. On zhiznetvorchestvo (life-creation), see Paperno, Irina and Delaney, Joan Grossman, , eds., Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism (Stanford, 1994)Google Scholar.

35. Pasternak, , Sobranie sochinenii, 3:525 Google Scholar. Translation by Christopher Barnes, from Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography, 2:277.

36. Fleishman, Lazar, Boris Pasternak: The Poet and His Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. See for example the interview with Adam Michnik, “Samyi derzkii vyzov vlasti— ne interesovat'sia eiu,” (originally published in Polish) in Polukhina, , losif Brodskii: Bol'shaia kniga interv'iu, 652-53Google Scholar.

38. Pasternak, Boris, Sobranie sochinenii, 3:526 Google Scholar. Translation by Christopher Barnes, , from Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography, 2:278 Google Scholar.

39. Mandelstam, Nadezhda, Hope Abandoned: A Memoir, trans. Hayward, Max (Harmondsworth, England, 1976), 526 Google Scholar. Brodsky's witty answer to die badly worded question as to whether he wanted to return to Russia from exile, “to follow the example of Solzhenitsyn and Tsvetaeva” need not exclude, and perhaps betrays, a deeper fear (and acceptance?) of an analogous fate: “zhelania posledovat'primeru Tsvetaevoi tochno net” (I certainly have no desire to follow Tsvetaeva's example). From answers given to an audience in Manhattan in April 1995, published in Ogonek, No. 21, May 1995, reprinted in Polukhina, , losif Brodskii: Bol'shaia kniga interv'iu, 659 Google Scholar.

40. Herlth claims that this “August” of Annenskii seems to be a more direct influence on Brodsky's poem, but does not specify on what grounds. Brodsky may have been struck by the apparent allusion to Annenskii's “August” in the penultimate line of Mandel'shtam's “Kontsert na vokzale“: “Kogda zhe ty?” in Annenskii, “Kuda zhe ty?” in Mandel'shtam, making Annenskii's poem a point of origin for Mandel'shtam's necrology for Russian poets. Herlth, “Poet i spletni,” 99. Innokentii Annenskii, “Avgust” (1. “Khrizantema.” 2. “Elektricheskii svet v allee“), and “Avgust” (“Eshche goriat luchi pod svodami dorog“), in Stikhotvoreniia i tragedii, ed. A. V Fedorov (Leningrad, 1990), 61-62, 92.

41. This may be one of those rare (?) instances where a poet is indeed indebted to critics. See for example Ronen, Omry, An Approach to Mandel'shtam (Jerusalem, 1983)Google Scholar; Freidin, Gregory, A Coat of Many Colors: Osip Mandelstam and His Mythologies of Self-Presentation (Berkeley, 1987), 187-94Google Scholar; Boris Gasparov, “The ‘Golden Age’ and Its Role in the Cultural Mythology of Russian Modernism,” in Gasparov, Boris, Hughes, Robert P., and Paperno, Irina, eds., Cultural Mythologies of Russian Modernism: From the Golden to the Silver Age (Berkeley, 1992), 1–16 Google Scholar; Boris Gasparov, “Tridtsatye gody—zheleznyi vek (k analizu motivov stoletnego vozvrashcheniia u Mandel'shtama,” in Gasparov, , Hughes, , and Paperno, , Cultural Mythologies of Russian Modernism, 150-79 (translated as “The Iron Age of the 1930s: The Centennial Return in Mandelstam” by John Henriksen, in Sandler, Rereading Russian Poetry, 78-103)Google Scholar; B. M. Gasparov, “Eshche raz o funktsii podteksta v poeticheskom tekste ('Kontsert na vokzale’),” in Gasparov, B. M., Literaturnye leitmotivy: Ocherki russkoi lileratury XX veka (Moscow, 1994), 162-86Google Scholar.

42. See Pavlov, M., “Brodskii v Londone, iiul’ 1991,” in Osip Mandel'shtam, Sokhrani moiu rec K, vol. 3, comp. Lekmanov, O., Nerler, P., Sokolova, M., and Freidin, I. (Moscow, 2000), ch. 2:34, 36, for a transcription of this discussionGoogle Scholar.

43. It is obviously significant for Brodsky and his poem that not only are Akhmatova and Pasternak (like Annenskii) major Russian poets with heart problems, “serdechniki,“ but also for both of them (on the evidence provided here) “August” seems to be the most terrible month.

44. Hughes, Robert P., “Pushkin in Petrograd, February 1921,” in Gasparov, Hughes, and Paperno, Cultural Mythologies of Russian Modernism, 211 Google Scholar.

45. Gasparov, , “The Iron Age of the 1930s,” 80 Google Scholar.

46. Smith, “Long Growing Dark,” 250 and 336n4, suggests reasons why these towns may not necessarily be in the United States. The closed shutters and “railway square” seem more suggestive of southern Europe: this deliberate blurring perhaps betrays another of the poem's fears—not only when or how but where the poet will die. Perhaps even more to the point, and following Pushkin's constant question to himself in this matter as well as in the former, Brodsky wonders where will he be laid to rest. One may recall Nabokov's observation that, “in common with Pushkin, I am fascinated by fatidic dates“—clearly Brodsky is too. Nabokov, Vladimir, Strong Opinions (New York, 1990), 75 Google Scholar.

47. Lev Losev, quoted in Smith, “Long Growing Dark,” 336n4, argues for this being a New England town, more precisely, Amherst; other readers are convinced that Brodsky had in mind some specific traffic lights in South Hadley.

48. Brodsky, Joseph, Peresechennaia mestnost': Puteshestviia s kommentariiami, ed. and afterword, Petr Vail’ (Moscow, 1995), 156-57Google Scholar.

49. Shtern's account of her conversations with Brodsky at the end of December 1995 and on 19 January 1996 reveals his doctors’ insistence that their patient undergo surgery as soon as possible, certainly before the start of the semester at the end of January, and Brodsky's fear both of undergoing medical treatment and of not undergoing it. When asked during the phone call on 19 January why he had not gone for the operation, Brodsky replied: “I'm frightened. I know that this is my only chance…. If I can manage to last out until the end of the semester … I'll go in the Spring…. But I'm so frightened.“ Shtern, , Brodskii: Osia, Iosif, Joseph, 265 Google Scholar.

50. “Paraphrasing the philosopher, one could say that writing poetry, too, is an exercise in dying.” Brodsky, “The Child of Civilization,” in Brodsky, , Less Than One, 123 Google Scholar.

51. Pushkin, A. S., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, ed. Bonch-Bruevich, V. D., 17 vols. (1937-59, repr., Moscow, 1994; hereafter PSS), 3.1:330 Google Scholar.

52. Aleksandr Sumerkin, “Iosif Brodskii (24 maia 1940-28 ianvaria 1996),” supplement to Russkaia mysl', no. 4126 (16-22 May 1996), iv. Quoted in Shtern, , Brodskii: Osia, Iosif, Joseph, 267 Google Scholar.

53. As so often in Brodsky's work, the coexistence here of high tragedy and lowly surroundings recalls W. H. Auden, most notably his “Musée des Beaux Arts” (1938).

54. Brodsky, , “Sidia v teni,” Sochineniia, 3:255-61Google Scholar.

55. “Tombeau” here refers to Lawrence Lipking's extension of Stéphane Mallarmé's term, as developed in his The Life of the Poet: Beginning and Ending Poetic Careers (Chicago, 1981). Many of the most stimulating recent studies of English and American elegies concentrate on elegies for poets, both those in which the dead or dying poet is the precursor poet or the author of the elegy himself. See for example Ramazani, Jahan, Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney (Chicago, 1994)Google Scholar and the same author's Yeats and the Poetry of Death: Elegy, Self-Elegy, and the Sublime (New Haven, 1990). In the Russian literary tradition, the sub-genre of the “Smert’ poeta'” poem would seem to correspond to the tombeau, and the “Pamiatnik” or “Exegi monumentum” could be seen as akin to the summing up process termed “harmonium” by Lipking, although what he usually means by this is the epic that crowns a life's work (the Aeneid, Divine Comedy, Faust, etc.).

56. Mandel'shtam, Osip, Sochineniia v dvukh tomakh, ed. Nerler, P. M. and Averintsev, S. S. (Moscow, 1990), 2:169-70Google Scholar.

57. Herlth also points out the clash of high and low styles and poetic meanings in the second stanza, though my interpretation of these details differs somewhat from his (and from Ranchin's). Herlth, “Poet i spletni,” 100; Ranchin, , Na piru Mnemoziny, 235-36, 239Google Scholar.

58. Khodasevich, Vladislav, “Pushkin,” in Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh (Moscow, 1996-97), 1:489-90Google Scholar. Brodsky's lines allude to Khodasevich's “Pamiatnik,” a poem written on 28 January 1928 that describes the poet's wish that his monument be placed at a crossroads. Khodasevich, Vladislav, Sobranie sochinenii, ed. Malmstad, John and Hughes, Robert, 5 vols. (Ann Arbor, 1983-90), 1:211 Google Scholar. For perhaps the most controversial accusations of careerism on Brodsky's part (and far more besides), see Craig Raine's “A reputation subject to inflation,“Financial Times, 16 November 1996, books sec, 19.

59. Raine especially seems guilty of various misunderstanding both of individual words and poems and of what being a Russian poet actually entails.

60. Mandel'shtam, Osip, “Razgovor o Dante,” in Mandel'shtam, Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh, ed. Nerler, P. and Nikitaev, A. T. (Moscow, 1993), 3:226 Google Scholar. For a thoughtprovoking study of Mandel'shtam's poetics, see Glazov-Corrigan, Elena, Mandel'shtam's Poetics: A Challenge to Postmodernism (Toronto, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61. Polukhina's and Losev's readings (from private communications with Smith and quoted by him in “Long Growing Dark,” 338ral9) view the knight, crossroads, river, and star as symbolic of the heroic destiny and posthumous fame of the true Russian poet. The river here is presumably the river of time from Derzhavin's last poem, “Reka vremen v svoem stremlen'i,” as well as being the Neva and Lethe. Ranchin's argument that the “Lucifer“ connection is an allusion to “Prorok” is not fully convincing; Lucifer's presence here is more likely a broader allusion to the theme of the fallen angel, and in particular to Bloom's reading of Milton's Satan as the paradigm of the strong but belated poet. Ranchin, , Napiru Mnemoziny, 235-36Google Scholar. Bloom, , Anxiety of Influence, 19–45 Google Scholar. But see also Levinton, “Tri razgovora,” 246.

62. Brodskii, , Sochineniia, 3:191 Google Scholar. On this poem as a “Pamiatnik,” see Valentina Polukhina's “Exegi monumentum Iosifa Brodskogo,” Literaturnoe obozrenie, 1999, no. 4:63-72. Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii, 1:161-62.

63. Robert Frost, “A Servant to Servants,” in Frost, Robert, Early Poems, ed. Faggen, Robert (Harmondsworth, England, 1988), 87 Google Scholar.

64. Pushkin seems to associate death with the phonetics and semantics of “za” (perhaps naturally, given its literal meaning of “beyond“). His August 1836 self-elegy “Kogda za gorodom, zadumchiv, ia brozhu” (When, pensive, I wander outside the city) ( Pushkin, , PSS, 3.1:422 Google Scholar) is one of the hidden subtexts of Brodsky's poem and a key link in the intertextual chain leading back to Thomas Gray's “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.“

65. Pushkin, , PSS, 6:130-31Google Scholar. Translation from Pushkin, Alexander, Eugene Onegin, trans. Johnson, Charles (Harmondsworth, England, 1979), 170 Google Scholar.

66. Herlth, “Poet i spletni,” esp. 101-10.

67. Pasternak, , Sobranie sochineniia, 1:390-91Google Scholar. Translation by France, Peter, Poets of Modern Russia (Cambridge, Eng., 1982), 92–93 Google Scholar. As B. M. Gasparov notes, “the death of the poet” becomes the “most powerful myth-creating motif in the post-Revolutionary epoch.“ Pasternak's poem is central to Levinton's extremely valuable exploration of the theme of the death of the poet in Brodsky's work (and in the wider poetic tradition). Gasparov, “The 'Golden Age’ and Its Role,” 13. Levinton, “Smert'poeta: Iosif Brodskii.“

68. Lermontov, M. I., “Smert'poeta,” in Sobraniesochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh (Moscow, 1961-62), 1:412-14Google Scholar; Pushkin, “la pamiatnik sebe vozdvig nerukotvornyi,” PSS 3.1:424.

69. Brodskii, , Sochineniia, 2:193-94Google Scholar. Translation from Brodsky, Joseph, Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems, trans. Kline, George L. (New York, 1973), 66.Google Scholar

70. Pushkin, Aleksandr, Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse, trans. Vladimir, Nabokov, abridged ed., 2 vols. (Princeton, 1990), vol. 2, part 2:52–53 Google Scholar. See also Fennell, John, “Pushkin,” in Fennell, John, ed., Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature: Studies of Ten Russian Writers (London, 1973), 43–44 Google Scholar.

71. On the possible meanings of “Aleksandriiskii stolp,” see in particular Proskurin, Oleg, PoeziiaPushkina, HiPodvizhnyipalimpsest (Moscow, 1999), 275–300, esp. 275-82Google Scholar; and Ranchin's analysis of the monument theme in Brodsky's work, Na piru Mnemoziny, 204-22, in particular note 4, 217-18.

72. Vail', “Poslednee stikhotvorenie Iosifa Brodskogo,” 6.

73. Brodsky, , “Fin de Siécle,” in Sochineniia, 4:73.Google Scholar

74. Ranchin, Napiru Mnemoziny, esp. 35-36; Ranchin, A. M., “Tri zametki o polisemii v poezii Iosifa Brodskogo,” in “Etiudy o Brodskom,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 56 (2002): 203 Google Scholar.

75. Brodskii, , Sochineniia, 4:202 Google Scholar. On this poem, see Anatolii Naiman, “'Aere perennius': Zametki dlia pamiatnika,” Novyi mir, 1997, no. 9:193-97; and in the same volume, Nikolai Slavianskii, “Tverdaia veshch',” 197-203; and Naimart's brief reply, “Replika vsled',” 203.

76. Akhmatova, Anna, Stikhotvoreniia ipoemy, ed. Zhirmunskii, V. M. (Leningrad, 1977), 26–27 Google Scholar. Translation by Vladimir Markov and Merrill Sparks in Modern Russian Poetry: An Anthology with Verse Translations, ed. and introduction, Vladimir Markov and Merrill Sparks (Alva, Clackmannanshire, Scotland, 1966), 257. The reference to the statue in Brodsky's final stanza may also allude to the tradition of poems on statues in the works of Pushkin, Annenskii, Akhmatova and others (and particularly on statues of or connected with Pushkin), or indeed to the whole Pavlovsk-Tsarskoe Selo cultural tradition. On such themes, see: Toporov, Peterburgskii tekst russkoi literatury, esp. 223-33; Losev, Lev and Scherr, Barry, eds., A Sense of Place: Tsarskoe Selo and Its Poets; Papers from the 1989 Dartmouth Conference Dedicated to the Centennial of Anna Akhmatova (Columbus, Ohio, 1993)Google Scholar; and Sandler, Stephanie, Commemorating Pushkin: Russia's Myth of a National Poet (Stanford, 2004), 175-98Google Scholar. On Akhmatova's poem, see Sandler, , Commemorating Pushkin, 183-88Google Scholar, and R. D. Timenchik, “Akhmatova i Pushkin (Razbor stikhotvoreniia ‘Smuglyi otrok brodil po alleiam …’),” in Pushkinskii sbornik, vol. 1 (Riga, 1968), 124-31.

77. Pushkin, , “Vospominaniia vTsarskom Sele,“PSS, 1:60–64 Google Scholar.

78. Smith, , “Long Growing Dark,” 255 Google Scholar.

79. Brodsky, , “Less Than One,” Less Than One, 32 Google Scholar.

80. For a thought-provoking analysis of the use of the “you” form in Brodsky's work, see E. A. Kozitskaia-Fleishman, “'la byl kak vse': O nekotorykh funktsiiakh liricheskogo ‘ty' v poezii I. Brodskogo,” in Polukhina, V. P., Fomenko, I. V., and Stepanov, A. G., eds., Poetika losifa Brodskogo: Sbornik nauchnykh trudov (Tver', 2003), 107-27Google Scholar.

81. The words “Bud'ty prokliat” seem to refer to the threat both to and from the poet in a variation on Evgeny's challenge to Peter, “Uzho tebe!” (Just you wait!) in The Bronze Horseman; more broadly, as G. S. Smith notes, this situation reflects Pushkin's “sculptural myth” and its various reincarnations in Russian literature. Above all, of course, it reminds us that a poem that started with small towns may in fact be about the city whose very being, and thus the literary tradition it created as well, was placed under a curse (which may or may not be a blessing in disguise for Russian culture) from the outset. Smith, “Long Growing Dark,” 254. See also Ranchin, , Napiru Mnemoziny, 275 Google Scholar.

82. Del'vig, A. A., Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, ed. Tomashevskii, B. V. (Leningrad, 1959), 96–97 Google Scholar. On this poem as a key subtext of Mandel'shtam's “Kontsert na vokzale,” see Ronen, An Approach to Mandel'shtam, xvii

83. Ranchin, , Napiru Mnemoziny, 275 Google Scholar.

84. Pushkin, , PSS, 3:278 Google Scholar. Translation from Donald Rayfield, ed. and trans., The Garnett Book of Russian Verse (London, 2000), 103.

85. Pasternak, , Sobranie sochinenii, 3:511 Google Scholar.

86. Mandel'shtam, , “Skriabin i khristianstvo,” Sobranie sochinenii, 1:201 Google Scholar.

87. “The poet Vladislav Khodasevich called this relationship between kenotic poet and benighted, tormenting folk at the foot of the cross krovavaia pishcha—a bloody repast.” Bethea, , Brodsky and the Creation of Exile, 11 Google Scholar.

88. “When the sword avers the pen to be mightier, let us beware, for that will only occur in a police state.“ Hollander, John, The Work of Poetry (New York, 1997), 62 Google Scholar.

89. Translation from Polukhina, , Brodsky through the Eyes, 259 Google Scholar. (Letter originally published by Iakov Gordin in Neva, no. 2 (1989), 165-66.)

90. As J. M. Coetzee notes, in the essay entitled “Letter to Horace,” “Brodsky plays with the conceit that Horace hasjust completed a spell on earth in the guise of Auden, and that Horace, Auden, and Brodsky himself are thus the same poetic temperament, if not the same person, reborn in successive Pythagorean metamorphoses. His prose attains new and complex, bittersweet tones as he meditates on the death of the poet, on the extinction of the man himself and his survival in the echo of the poetic meters he has served.” Brodsky frequently refers to his hero-worship of the lives and works of his favorite poets, most notably in the Nobel prize speech, in ways that suggest that he genuinely believed that one can be a reincarnation of a precursor poet. The view is not, of course, an uncommon one; but to think that one might in some way be a reincarnation of Pushkin or Mandel'shtarn leads to far more than literary anxiety, as Brodsky well knew. Coetzee, J. M., “Speaking for Language,” New York Review of Books 43, no. 2 (2 January 1996): 31 Google Scholar.