Autumn hawk cry short analysis. Collection of scientific papers

The northwest wind lifts it above
gray, lilac, crimson, scarlet
Connecticut Valley. He's already
doesn't see the tasty promenade
chickens in a dilapidated yard
farms, gopher on the boundary.

Spread out on the air current, alone,
all he sees is a ridge of sloping
hills and silver rivers,
curling like a living blade,
steel in the jagged edges,
bead-like towns

New England. Dropped to zero
thermometers are like chests in a niche;
are cooling down, curbing the fire
leaves, church spiers. But for
hawk, these are not churches. Higher
the best intentions of the parishioners,

he soars in the blue ocean, with his beak closed,
with the metatarsus pressed to the stomach
- claws into a fist, like fingers -
feeling the blow with every feather
from below, sparkling in response with the eye
berries, holding to the South,

to the Rio Grande, to the delta, to the steamy crowd
beech trees hiding in powerful foam
herbs whose blades are sharp,
nest, broken shell
scarlet speckled, scent, shadows
brother or sister.

A heart overgrown with flesh, down, feather, wing,
beating with the frequency of trembling,
cuts like scissors,
driven by its own heat,
autumn blue, its
increasing due to

a brown spot barely visible to the eye,
point sliding over the top
ate; due to the emptiness in the face
a child frozen at the window,
couple getting out of the car
women on the porch.

But the updraft lifts him up
Higher and higher. In the belly feathers
stings with cold. Looking down
he sees that the horizon has darkened,
he sees, as it were, the first thirteen
states, he sees: from

Smoke rises from the chimneys. But just the number
pipes prompts the lonely
like a bird, how it rose.
Where have I gotten to?
He feels mixed with anxiety
pride. Turning over on

wing, he falls down. But the elastic layer
the air returns him to the sky,
into a colorless icy surface.
Evil appears in the yellow pupil
shine. That is, a mixture of anger
with fear. He again

is overthrown. But like a wall - a ball,
like the fall of a sinner - again into faith,
he is pushed back.
Him, who is still hot!
What the hell? Everything is higher. Into the ionosphere.
To an astronomically objective hell

birds, where there is no oxygen,
where instead of millet there is distant grain
stars What are the heights for two-legged people?
then for birds it’s the other way around.
Not in the cerebellum, but in the sacs of the lungs
he guesses: there is no escape.

And then he screams. From bent like a hook,
beak, similar to the screech of Erinyes,
breaks out and flies outwards
mechanical, unbearable sound,
the sound of steel cutting into aluminum;
mechanical, because not

intended for no one's ears:
human falling from a birch tree
squirrels, yapping foxes,
small field mice;
Tears can't flow like that
to no one. Only dogs

they turn up their faces. A shrill, sharp cry
more terrible, more nightmarish than D-sharp
diamond cutting glass
crosses the sky. And peace for a moment
as if shuddering from a cut.
Because it's warm up there

burns space, like here below,
burns his hand with a black fence
without gloves. We, exclaiming “out,
there!" we see a tear at the top
hawk, plus web, sound
inherent in small waves,

scattering across the sky, where
there is no echo where it smells of apotheosis
sound, especially in October.
And in this lace, akin to a star,
sparkling, frozen,
frost, in silver,

feathered, the bird floats to the zenith,
in ultramarine. We can see through binoculars from here
pearl, sparkling detail.
We hear something ringing above,
like broken dishes
like family crystal,

whose fragments, however, do not wound, but
melt in the palm of your hand. And for a moment
again you distinguish circles, eyes,
fan, rainbow spot,
ellipses, brackets, links,
spikelets, hairs -

former free feather pattern,
a map that has become a handful of nimble
flakes flying down the hillside.
And, catching them with your fingers, children
runs out into the street in colorful jackets
and shouts in English “Winter, winter!”

A. E. Skvortsov

MYTHOPOEICAL BASIS OF I.A. BRODSKY’S POEM “THE AUTUMN CRY OF A HAWK”

“The Autumn Cry of a Hawk,” a poem written by Brodsky in 1975, in the middle of his earthly journey, is one of the most noticeable and mysterious in his work. This work is original in everything, starting from the versification features, which cannot be found analogues in the Russian poetic tradition, and ending with the plot and compositional level, the severity of which is dissonant with most of Brodsky’s works. The main body of his poems is rational and meditative, and reference to a clear and logically impeccable plot is rare (see, for example, “Dedicated to Yalta”, “Post aetatem nostram”, “The New Jules Verne”). It is important that Brodsky himself, despite all his critical attitude towards his own work [Brodsky 1998: 6], singled out “The Autumn Cry of a Hawk” as one of his favorite creations. It is also known that many modern poets (A. Tsvetkov, S. Gandlevsky, L. Losev, Y. Kublanovsky, M. Eisenberg, T. Venclova) highly value this particular poem [Joseph Brodsky 1998: 28], which seems to , not by chance.

The plot of the poem is easy to retell: a hawk soars extremely high over the Connecticut River valley in late October on the waves of the northwest wind. The wind intensifies, the bird tries to go down, but the air flow lifts it higher and higher, and in the end it dies from lack of oxygen, managing to utter a cry of despair before death, so loud that all living creatures in the area can hear it. American children mistake hawk feathers and down falling from the sky for snow and shout: “Winter, winter!”

The benefit of the reduction performed, at a minimum, is that the narrative basis of the poem is exposed. It cannot fail to evoke associations that are fundamentally important for understanding the poet’s intention. Brodsky's plot correlates with the myth of Icarus.

Modern perception usually interprets myth in a simplified way, seeing it primarily as a story with a moral. In addition, today's reception is undoubtedly influenced by the Christian tradition, in the light of which the ancient plot is perceived as a completely “Dostoevsky” call to “humble yourself, proud man.” This attitude towards the kamikaze pagan is most impressively reflected in medieval painting. Pieter Bruegel on the canvas “The Fall of Icarus” (c. 1560) depicted the consequences of the flight like this: two legs stick out in the lower left corner of the canvas, and the entire foreground is occupied by pictures of the busy work of the peasants.

An alternative to a harsh sentence is a romantic interpretation of the myth. Here, the fiasco of Icarus is rethought as a feat of a lofty soul, inevitably perishing in the pursuit of unattainable ideals and therefore even more beautiful. But we should not forget that myth is ethically indifferent, and all attempts to present Icarus either as a sinner or as a hero are nothing more than a bold modernization.

If we perceive Brodsky’s text through the prism of an ancient plot, it becomes clear that the poet, embroidering his patterns on someone else’s canvas, is creating a new myth. But the author's message still remains unclear. First of all, Brodsky’s poem is oversaturated with an abundance of realistic details, which are, in principle, not characteristic of the archaic: mentions of climate features, geographical and biological details, interspersed with scientific vocabulary. The author seems to be trying to convince the reader of the protocol accuracy of the description of events.

However, as you read, the idea of ​​​​the plausibility of the plot is destroyed. Already in the fourth line it says about the hawk: “he (:) / doesn’t see the tasty promenade / chickens in the dilapidated yard / of the farm, a gopher on the boundary line”[Poetics 1986: 377]. The flight of hawks (birds of the accipiter family) actually takes place at an altitude of no more than a few hundred meters, and this flight, like everything in nature, is expedient. The hawk rises high only to see its prey from above, and not to admire the beauties of nature, because it is devoid of an aesthetic sense. In Brodsky, the hawk sees not rodents and birds, but “a range of sloping / hills, and a silver river, / winding like a living blade, / steel in the jagged rifts”. If this is a bird's-eye view, then it is one in which small details can no longer be distinguished.

The bird flies for the sake of flying. The following text only confirms this assumption. Almost a violation of the laws of nature begins. The hawk soars so high that "in the belly feathers / stings with cold"[Poetics 1986: 378]. Why does he need to climb higher and higher, where the air is thin and where even the towns of New England are similar? "with beads"[Poetics 1986: 377], unknown. Further - more: the wind is trying to throw the bird away "into the ionosphere"[Poetics 1986: 378], which begins fifty kilometers from the earth’s surface. Even military aircraft cannot fly at these altitudes.

Thus, realistic details of the bird’s life, it turns out, only create the illusion of reality. But the toponymy and geography in the poem are, to put it mildly, questionable. A hawk soars over New England, the oldest region of the United States, and even sees "like the thirteen first / states"[Poetics 1986: 377], which in itself is surprising, because we are talking about a territory of considerable scale. A bird flies over Connecticut, heading "to the South, / to the Rio Grande". It is not entirely clear which Rio Grande is meant - the Rio Grande del Norte, which lies in the South-West of North America, or the Mexican Rio Gande de Santiago. But even if we are talking about the first, closer one, then it is about a couple of thousand kilometers in a straight line from Connecticut.

It is obvious that all these supposedly accurate signs serve to create not a realistic, but a symbolic picture. Now let's turn to the actual image of the hawk.

Ornithological imagery is presented in the literature of the most ancient times and has a diverse character - from the embodiment of archaic totems to the play on emasculated emblems. Images of birds are divided into three groups: fantastic (Firebird, that is, Phoenix, Sirin, Roc bird, etc.), real-life, but endowed with extraordinary properties (swan, kingfisher-Alkonost-Halcyona, raven, etc.) and actually feathered, embodying one or another author's idea (nightingale, eagle, sparrow, blackbird, parrot, etc.). For the new and contemporary poetic tradition, the second and especially the third groups are important. Writers value realistic images endowed with additional symbolic functions. The nightingale is the leader here by a wide margin. But in Brodsky’s poem, neither the mellifluous nachtigal, nor the carrion-eating raven, nor the eagle compromised by heraldry, nor the overly refined swan would satisfy the author’s intention.

At first glance, the poet's choice is strange. The hawk is a bird of prey, not a songbird, and, therefore, the motif of singing, connecting the bird with the poet, seems to disappear. The hawk also rarely plays the role of a totem and does not evoke stable symbolic associations in the Eurocentric reader. The connection of the hero of the poem with ancient Egyptian mythology, where the hawk/falcon occupies one of the central places (symbol of the sky), is unlikely. For Brodsky’s poetics, the ancient and Judeo-Christian traditions are significant, while others seem irrelevant (the semi-parody poem “Letters of the Ming Dynasty” is an exception that only confirms the rule). However, it should be remembered that the poet’s lyrical hero sometimes appears as a non-anthropomorphic creature, and an unusual, sometimes scary creature (the Octopus Wasp from “The New Jules Verne”, the newt from the poem of the same name).

It remains to be assumed that the hawk is still the poet’s alter ego. The conclusion follows from the entire logic of the poem, but we also have at our disposal the testimony of Brodsky’s contemporaries and friends. It is also remarkable that in 1972 Brodsky wrote a humorous message to his friends - V. Solovyov and E. Klepikova, which contains the following lines: “In general, they look / like two smart pigeons, / that the Hawk was invited to visit, / and the Hawk forgot about anger" (quoted from [Soloviev 2001: 87]). Further, Solovyov writes: “In three months, “Hawk” will leave for America and three years later he will write in Connecticut the poem “The Autumn Cry of a Hawk”: a comparison carelessly thrown into a healthy verse will be developed into a long verse plot - 120 lines” (ibid.). Apart from the “length”, Solovyov does not note any other merits of the verse and, moreover, does not offer its interpretation (see Solovyov’s even more expressive review of this work - [Soloviev 2001: 311]). S. Gandlevsky, who did not know Brodsky personally, writes as a well-known, or at least obvious, fact: “The principled individualist Brodsky, who compared his fate with that of a lonely hawk, died and soon became an idol of the general public” [Genis 1999: 326 ] . But even here the precise remark is not expanded into a conceptual explanation of this fact. Brodsky’s friend and colleague in the poetry workshop, Lev Losev, came closest to the meaning of the poem: “Heaven, air and the soaring of the soul, inseparable from personal death: from the “Great Elegy to John Donne” (almost earlier) - this is a constant motif in Brodsky’s poetry. Its purest embodiment is “The Autumn Cry of a Hawk". Bypassing the rich Russian and European tradition of the development of this motif, Joseph starts from the original source, from the Horace Ode (Ode. Book 2, Ode 20)" [Kelerbay 2000: 361].

Let's go back to the original source. The transformation of the creator into a bird and the depiction of this metamorphosis is a motif that goes back in Russian poetry to Derzhavin’s “Swan”. Piit rearranged the famous 20th ode of “Book Two” of Horace, replacing, as necessary, the quantitative verse with a syllabic tonic, and the Mediterranean toponymy with Russian [Derzhavin 2002: 391-392]. The original reads: "Non usitata nec tenui ferar / pinna biformis per liquidum aethera / vates neque in terris morabor / longius invidiaque maior (:) // iam iam residunt cruribus asperae / pelles et album mutor in alitem / superne nascunturque leves / per digitos umerosque plumae. / / iam Daedaleo notior Icaro / visam gementis litora Bosphori / Syrtisque Gaetulas canorus / ales Hyperboresque campos"[Khodasevich 1989: 110] - “Not ordinary and not weak I will ascend / with a wing, two-shaped, through the flowing ether, / a poet, and I will not hesitate (stay) on the earth / further, and (I will rise) higher than envy (:) // Now, now the roughness is already hugging my shins / skin, and I turn into a white bird, / and smooth feathers appear on top / on my fingers and shoulders. // Now, Daedalus is more glorious than Icarus, / I will see the shores of the roaring Bosphorus, / and Syrtes of Getul, a song / bird, and the Hyperborean fields.".

Let us note that the Quirite mentions the figures of the Greek myth, but only in order to rise against their background. The swan, of course, does not face thoughtless death a la Icarus, but he is not attracted by the pragmatic flight of Daedalus, saving his own skin. Real geographical names in Horace's ode create a picture no less fantastic than Brodsky's exactly two thousand years later. Starting from Pacis Romana, the bird sees far in all directions of the world and, in particular, surveys the Hyperborean fields, that is, almost the current Central Russian landscapes.

When comparing the texts of Horace and Brodsky, one can see how the modern poet imitates the features of Latin syntax with its unusually complex inversion and enjambment, making it difficult for the reader to perceive. This is by no means a formal imitation of the ancestral text: syntactic difficulties materially express the motive of physical difficulties, overcoming, ascent-flight. The rhyme of the poem also serves this purpose ( awsavs). It is atypical not in itself, but in combination with the construction of the sentence. Precise, sometimes almost punning rhymes (“scarlet/dilapidated”, “above/promenade”, “outside/for not”) are obscured by the structure of the phrase and the rhythmic features of the accented verse. This catchy technique is generally characteristic of Brodsky [Works, 2: 114; Mayakovsky 1968: 97], whose syntax experienced a certain influence of the Latin classics, although indirectly - through the baroqueness of the English “school of wit” of the 17th century. (D. Donn, R. Creshaw, J. Herbert, etc.). If harmony is formed in a verse, it turns out to be non-classical. It is interesting that Brodsky tried to preserve the transfers so dear to him in the authorized English translation, where they naturally look less exotic [Works, 4: 49-52].

From the formal features of a particular verse it is necessary to move on to the concept of the relationship between the poet and language according to Brodsky. The idea, crystallized in the “Nobel Lecture,” that language is not the poet’s instrument, but quite the opposite—the poet is the instrument of language, has long become common in the literature about Brodsky (see, for example, [Mandelshtam 1990: 250-252 and Virgil 1994: 15 ], fortunately the author himself repeated it tirelessly [Polukhina 1997; Poetics 1986; Joseph Brodsky 1998: 40-44]. In the same context we read: “(:) the language tells him (the poet - A.S.) or simply dictates the next line When starting a poem, the poet, as a rule, does not know how it will end, and sometimes he is very surprised by what happened, because it often turns out better than he expected, often his thought goes further than he expected" [Polukhina 1997: 17 ). In another work dedicated to Tsvetaeva, whom Brodsky considered “the first poet of the twentieth century” [Gandlevsky 2001: 59], he sharpens the problem: “(:) than further the poet enters into his development, thus - involuntarily - higher his demand for the audience - and thus this audience - is narrower. (:) the reader becomes the author’s projection, hardly does not coincide with any living creature.(:) the author addresses his words into oblivion, into Khoronos" [Pushkin 1977: 81-82. - Here and below, bold italics are mine. - A.S.]. "The Autumn Cry of a Hawk" is essentially a living illustration of this idea. The poet , according to Brodsky, always tries to take the note higher, the idea higher - and he masterfully embodies the dry theory into a tragic and frighteningly visible image.

“The Autumn Cry of a Hawk” is also a kind of creative biography. Physical and metaphysical motives are captured here: the appearance of Brodsky himself, his hawkish profile, the inescapable loneliness he jealously nurtured [Works, 1: 64-65], farsightedness, both literal and poetic, and finally, separation from the earth - and death on the very high note.

The bird is lifted by the element of air; the poet is carried along by the element of language. The heartbreaking cry of a hawk, "not / intended for anyone's ears"[Poetics 1986: 379], is nothing more than the song of a modern poet turned into emptiness.

Yes, the flight of a hawk is externally comparable to the flight of Icarus, but the similarity is deceptive. Icarus flies freely towards the sun and looks up, neglecting the hateful songs of the earth. The hawk, against its own will, soaring above the ground higher and higher, its gaze is riveted on it - and thus the sphere of what it sees is expanding. Icarus flies joyfully and ingloriously dies. The hawk flies up in horror and screams desperately. The result of the flight of Icarus is the fall. The crowning glory of a bird's flight is a cry, for the bird itself, falling, had already died in the rarefied atmosphere. The sound a hawk makes from its own body "like the screech of Erinyes", the voice of fate itself, is the main achievement of a living being, because his inhuman music climbs even higher than he himself.

One classic wrote about another: a poet dies when he lacks air. Brodsky radically rethinks this textbook idea. The hawk/poet literally dies from lack of air, but does not die in a stuffy atmosphere, where external forces prevent him from living, but gives up his life in the mountainous heights, where he drove himself, desperately trying to get back and realizing that there is no way back.

The world from the cry of a bird is precisely because for a moment "It's like he's shaking from a cut" that the poet does not follow anyone's tastes. He does his job not for the kind reader or listener, but for the language and for other poets. Much in such a detached position explains Mandelstam’s symptomatic statement: “Specific people, the “philistines of poetry” who make up the “rabble”, allow “to give them (poets - A.S.) bold lessons” and are generally ready to listen to anything, as long as it is on the premise the poet's exact address was indicated" [Joseph Brodsky 2000: 149].

Brodsky is far from alone in his abstraction from the reader. Moreover: he operates within the framework of a tradition dating back over two thousand years (cf. the finales of Virgil’s “Aeneid” [Volkov 1998, 416], Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” [Losev 2001: 385] and the 30th ode of “Book Three” of Horace [ Horace 1970, 176]). Returning to his native land, Brodsky follows not so much the line of Mayakovsky ( “I / ear / with a word / am not used to caressing; / a girl’s ear / in curls of hair / with semi-obscenity / not to fall apart, touched”[Kelerbay 2000: 185]), as much as Pushkin: the poet, hearing the voice of the Muse, suddenly becomes wild and harsh and runs away from the vain world "On the shores of desert waves, / In the noisy oak forests:"[Ovid 1977: 23], not at all wanting to share the delights of inspiration with just anyone. It is remarkable that, having barely heard the divine verb, the poet’s soul "will perk up, / Like an awakened eagle" . Khodasevich, a poet of the late Pushkin galaxy, spoke even more decisively on the same topic: “We are forgotten - and that’s not bad. / After all, we both perish and sing/ Not for a girlish sigh "[Soloviev 2001: 143]. Brodsky, as it were, summarizes the responses of his predecessors, concentrating them in an expressive and shocking image. The poet and the world have different, although parallel, paths. It is not the modern Orpheus who should focus on the world, - on the contrary, the world should at least from time to time experience emotional shocks from poetic creations.Art cannot be tamed, it does not serve for entertainment, moreover, it does not serve anything at all except the Muses.

Thus, the tonality of Brodsky’s poem is not clearly minor, as it might seem on a superficial reading. On the contrary, here the new non-classical harmony, according to the paradoxical intention of the author, is optimistic precisely because the hawk/poet, fulfilling his high “useless” mission, follows the natural course of things, and nature excludes tragedy.

Now it becomes clear why the poem opens with the lines “The northwest wind lifts it over the / gray, purple, crimson, scarlet / Connecticut valley.”[Poetics 1986: 377]. If the hawk is the author’s protagonist, then, remembering that Brodsky’s hometown of Leningrad is in the north-west of Russia, the reader will understand a hint of purely personal circumstances: the poet is in America, but is inspired by the frosty air of his fatherland. The final lines, where the children catch the down of a bird and "shouts in English: "Winter, winter!"[Poetics 1986: 380] create a ring composition. The “Northwest” wind initiates the poem, and “winter” naturally concludes it, for the images of cold, winter, snow in Brodsky’s poetry metonymically represent the Motherland (see “Eclogue 4 (winter)”, “Roman Elegies”, IX, and also [Genis 1999: 254]).

In Brodsky's poetics, a color scheme with predominant shades of blue is also associated with cold. It is no coincidence that the bird, having died, "floats (:) in ultramarine"[Poetics 1986: 379]. The verb and noun directly point to another fundamentally important association: water element, sea or ocean, in this case smoothly transformed into air. Water in Brodsky’s poetics is the primary element from which everything came and into which everything will ultimately sink [Losev 2001: 58-66]. The image of sea water is almost always synonymous with the poet’s image of time. As a wave washes away a wave, so do the hours - evenly and dispassionately. Merging with water-time is one of the author’s favorite themes. And the implicit hint of it again convinces that, dissolving into the elements, the hero of the poem achieves the highest realization of his creative and life task.

Now it is also understandable why “The Autumn Cry of a Hawk” is valued primarily by poets. Another unaddressed message from Brodsky - no more and no less than a modern poetic credo. It replaces the banal theme of “the poet and the people,” burdened with inescapable sociality, with the existentially merciless “poet and language.” This makes the art of versification in current conditions much more dramatic, but also takes it to a fundamentally different level, when for a poet the misunderstanding of his contemporaries is not a tragedy, because he should not count on an immediate response.

So, three sources, three components of “The Autumn Cry of a Hawk” are the essence of mythology, literary tradition and the ars poeticae of Brodsky himself. Of course, the proposed reading of the poem does not pretend to reduce its perception only to such a speculative scheme. It can be interpreted more broadly, for any interpretation of a poetic work is an inevitable simplification.

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Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Oden und Epoden (Lateinish/Deutsch). - Stuttgart, 1990. - 328 p.

The northwest wind lifts it over the gray, purple, crimson, and scarlet Connecticut Valley. He no longer sees the delicious promenade of a chicken in the yard of a dilapidated farm, or a gopher on the boundary line. On the air current, spread out, alone, all he sees is a range of rolling hills and the silver of the river, winding like a living blade, steel in the jagged riffles, the beaded towns of New England. Thermometers that have dropped to zero are like chests in a niche; the church spiers freeze, curbing the fire of leaves. But to the hawk, these are not churches. Above the best thoughts of the parishioners, he soars in the blue ocean, with his beak closed, with his metatarsus pressed to his stomach - claws into a fist, like fingers - sensing with each feather the blow from below, sparkling in response with his eye berry, pointing south, towards the Rio Grande , into the delta, into a steaming crowd of beech trees, hiding in the powerful foam of grass, whose blades are sharp, a nest, a broken shell with scarlet speckles, a smell, the shadows of a brother or sister. A heart overgrown with flesh, down, feathers, a wing, beating with a trembling frequency, as if with scissors, it cuts, driven by its own warmth, the autumn blue, increasing it due to a brown spot barely visible to the eye, a dot sliding over the top of the spruce; due to the emptiness in the face of a child frozen at the window, a couple getting out of a car, a woman on the porch. But the upward flow lifts it higher and higher. There is a sting of cold in the belly feathers. Looking down, he sees that the horizon has darkened, he sees, as it were, the first thirteen states, he sees smoke rising from the chimneys. But it is precisely the number of pipes that tells the lonely bird how it rose. Where have I gotten to? He feels pride mixed with anxiety. Turning over onto the wing, he falls down. But the elastic layer of air returns it to the sky, to the colorless icy surface. An evil shine appears in the yellow pupil. That is, a mixture of anger and horror. He falls again. But like a wall - a ball, like a sinner's fall - he is pushed back into faith again. Him, who is still hot! What the hell? Everything is higher. Into the ionosphere. Into the astronomically objective hell of birds, where there is no oxygen, where instead of millet there is cereal from distant stars. What is heights for bipeds is the opposite for birds. Not in the cerebellum, but in the sacs of the lungs, he guesses: there is no escape. And then he screams. From a beak bent like a hook, similar to the squeal of Erinyes, a mechanical, unbearable sound breaks out and flies outward, the sound of steel digging into aluminum; mechanical, because it is not intended for anyone’s ears: human, a squirrel falling from a birch tree, a yapping fox, small field mice; No one's tears can flow like that. Only dogs lift their muzzles. A piercing, sharp scream, more terrible, more nightmarish than the D-sharp of a diamond cutting glass, crosses the sky. And the world seems to tremble for a moment from the cut. For there, above, heat burns the space, just as here, below, a black fence burns a hand without a glove. We, exclaiming “there!” We see above the tear of a hawk, plus a cobweb inherent in sound, small waves scattering across the sky, where there is no echo, where there is a smell of the apotheosis of sound, especially in October. And in this lace, akin to a star, sparkling, bound by frost, frost, in silver, feathered with feathers, the bird floats to the zenith, into ultramarine. Through binoculars we see pearls from here, a sparkling detail. We hear something ringing above

Mikhail Kozakov said about his work in one of his interviews: “... When you choose poetry, you are always alone, you are responsible for yourself, you don’t need anyone. No scenery, no light... I read poetry not only for the public, I read it largely for myself. Reading poetry is as if you are serving mass, as if you are a priest... You should strive only for final harmony, so that... both the public and your soul have something going on, harmonizing into some kind of harmonious building that you are building by reading these poems and inserting something of yourself about this poet or this poem. Joseph Brodsky once said that ideally you whisper every poem in God’s ear. So you have to try to read, perform, improvise so that later you feel: yes, it worked.”

Autumn hawk cry

The northwest wind lifts it above
gray, lilac, crimson, scarlet
Connecticut Valley. He's already
doesn't see the tasty promenade
chickens in a dilapidated yard
farms, gopher on the boundary.

Spread out on the air current, alone,
all he sees is a ridge of sloping
hills and silver rivers,
curling like a living blade,
steel in the jagged edges,
towns similar to beads.....
1975

During his lifetime, Joseph Brodsky was rarely able to read an impartial word about his work - fate cast too bright a light on his texts. Several very interesting articles appeared in “samizdat”, in emigrant publications, and with the beginning of “perestroika” in Russia, but understanding Brodsky’s work as a whole is a matter for the future... and a very difficult matter. His ironic, completely contradictory poetry does not fit into any concepts.

In his mature years, Brodsky did not like talking about his work. And about literature in general. In his value system, life is more important than literature. At the same time, he saw nothing in life “except despair, neurasthenia and fear of death.” Except suffering and compassion.

But Brodsky’s poems argue with the author: there is, there is something other than despair and neurasthenia...
Even Brodsky's darkest and coldest texts are very comforting. He speaks about loneliness, despair and hopelessness with such fervor that none of his contemporaries achieved in poems about happy love and fraternal union with people.

Brodsky Joseph Alexandrovich (May 24, 1940, Leningrad - January 28, 1996, New York), Russian poet, prose writer, essayist, translator, author of plays; also wrote on English language. In 1972 he emigrated to the USA. In the poems (collections “Stop in the Desert”, 1967, “The End of a Beautiful Era”, “Part of Speech”, both 1972, “Urania”, 1987) the understanding of the world as a single metaphysical and cultural whole. The distinctive features of the style are rigidity and hidden pathos, irony and breakdown (early Brodsky), meditativeness realized through an appeal to complex associative images, cultural reminiscences (sometimes leading to the tightness of the poetic space). Essays, stories, plays, translations. Nobel Prize (1987), Knight of the Legion of Honor (1987), winner of the Oxford Honori Causa.

Lyrics:

The northwest wind lifts it above
gray, lilac, crimson, scarlet
Connecticut Valley. He's already
doesn't see the tasty promenade
chickens in a dilapidated yard
farms, gopher on the boundary.

Spread out on the air current, alone,
all he sees is a ridge of sloping
hills and silver rivers,
curling like a living blade,
steel in the jagged edges,
bead-like towns

New England. Dropped to zero
thermometers are like chests in a niche;
are cooling down, curbing the fire
leaves, church spiers. But for
hawk, these are not churches. Higher
the best intentions of the parishioners,

He soars in the blue ocean, with his beak closed,
with the metatarsus pressed to the stomach
- claws into a fist, like fingers -
feeling the blow with every feather
from below, sparkling in response with the eye
berries, holding to the South,

To the Rio Grande, to the delta, to the steamy crowd
beech trees hiding in powerful foam
herbs whose blades are sharp,
nest, broken shell
scarlet speckled, scent, shadows
brother or sister.

A heart overgrown with flesh, down, feather, wing,
beating with the frequency of trembling,
cuts like scissors,
driven by its own heat,
autumn blue, its
increasing due to

A brown spot barely visible to the eye,
point sliding over the top
ate; due to the emptiness in the face
a child frozen at the window,
couple getting out of the car
women on the porch.

But the updraft lifts him up
Higher and higher. In the belly feathers
stings with cold. Looking down
he sees that the horizon has darkened,
he sees, as it were, the first thirteen
states, he sees: from

Smoke rises from the chimneys. But just the number
pipes prompts the lonely
like a bird, how it rose.
Where have I gotten to?
He feels mixed with anxiety
pride. Turning over on

Wing, he falls down. But the elastic layer
the air returns him to the sky,
into a colorless icy surface.
Evil appears in the yellow pupil
shine. That is, a mixture of anger
with fear. He again

Overthrown. But like a wall - a ball,
like the fall of a sinner - again into faith,
he is pushed back.
Him, who is still hot!
What the hell? Everything is higher. Into the ionosphere.
To an astronomically objective hell

Birds where there is no oxygen,
where instead of millet there is distant grain
stars What are the heights for two-legged people?
then for birds it’s the other way around.
Not in the cerebellum, but in the sacs of the lungs
he guesses: there is no escape.

And then he screams. From bent like a hook,
beak, similar to the screech of Erinyes,
breaks out and flies outwards
mechanical, unbearable sound,
the sound of steel cutting into aluminum;
mechanical, because not

Intended for no one's ears:
human falling from a birch tree
squirrels, yapping foxes,
small field mice;
Tears can't flow like that
to no one. Only dogs

They turn up their faces. A shrill, sharp cry
more terrible, more nightmarish than D-sharp
diamond cutting glass
crosses the sky. And peace for a moment
as if shuddering from a cut.
Because it's warm up there

Burns space, like here below,
burns his hand with a black fence
without gloves. We, exclaiming "out,
there!" we see a tear at the top
hawk, plus web, sound
inherent in small waves,

Scattering across the sky, where
there is no echo where it smells of apotheosis
sound, especially in October.
And in this lace, akin to a star,
sparkling, frozen,
frost, in silver,

With feathers down, the bird floats to the zenith,
in ultramarine. We can see through binoculars from here
pearl, sparkling detail.
We hear something ringing above,
like broken dishes
like family crystal,