Joseph Brodsky citáty

„Preklad je umenie možného.“

—  Joseph Brodsky

„Politická prostitúcia je v podstate mužské zamestnanie.“

—  Joseph Brodsky

„Dobrý básnik je vždy nástrojom svojho jazyka - nie naopak.“

—  Joseph Brodsky

„The fact that we are living does not mean we are not sick.“

—  Joseph Brodsky

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

—  Joseph Brodsky

„Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse“

—  Joseph Brodsky

„The surest defense against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity.“

—  Joseph Brodsky

"A Commencement Address" (1984), delivered at Williams College; As quoted in: Robert Inchausti (2014) Thinking through Thomas Merton. p. 110
Kontext: 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. Something, in other words, that can't be shared, like your own skin: not even by a minority. Evil is a sucker for solidity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balanced sheets. Its proclivity for such things has to do with its innate insecurity, but this realization, again, is of small comfort when Evil triumphs.

„The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time.“

—  Joseph Brodsky, kniha Less Than One: Selected Essays

Zdroj: Less Than One: Selected Essays (1986), p. 28
Kontext: The formula for prison is a lack of space counterbalanced by a surplus of time. This is what really bothers you, that you can't win. Prison is lack of alternatives, and the telescopic predictability of the future is what drives you crazy.

„For darkness restores what light cannot repair. There we are married, blest, we make once more the two-backed beast and children are the fair excuse of what we're naked for.“

—  Joseph Brodsky

Quoted in: Drusilla Modjeska, ‎Beth Yahp (1995) Picador New Writing. Vol. 3-4, p. 13

„There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.“

—  Joseph Brodsky

Misattributed

„Man is what he reads.“

—  Joseph Brodsky

„The eye identifies itself not with the body it belongs to but with the object of its attention.“

—  Joseph Brodsky, kniha Watermark

Zdroj: Watermark

„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.“

—  Joseph Brodsky

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

—  Joseph Brodsky

„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.“

—  Joseph Brodsky

„[T]he longer you stay skeptical, doubtful, intellectually uncomfortable, the better it is for you.“

—  Joseph Brodsky

„Snobbery? But it's only a form of despair.“

—  Joseph Brodsky

„An object, after all, is what makes infinity private.“

—  Joseph Brodsky, kniha Watermark

Zdroj: Watermark

„It is the army that finally makes a citizen of you; without it you still have a chance, however slim, to remain a human being.“

—  Joseph Brodsky, kniha Less Than One: Selected Essays

Less Than One: Selected Essays (1986)