Although I am losing my Soviet citizenship, I do not cease to be a Russian poet.
Interpretation
The loss of nationhood does not diminish one's identity or creative essence.
Joseph Brodsky expresses that while he may be losing his Soviet citizenship, his identity as a Russian poet remains intact. This highlights the idea that artistic and personal identity can transcend political and national affiliations, emphasizing the enduring nature of creativity and self-expression despite external changes.
In practice
During a discussion about the impact of political changes on art and creativity.
Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
Imagine that we are sitting in an ordinary room. Suddenly we are told that there is a corpse behind the door. In an instant the room we are sitting in is completely altered; everything in it has taken on another look; the light, the atmosphere have changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed and the objects are as we conceive them. That is the effect I want to get in my film.
How many writers are there... who, breaking up their subject into details, destroy its life, and defraud us of the whole by their anxiety about the parts.
I detest talking about myself. There is a reason why people pick up an instrument and put it between themselves and the rest of the world.
What's so powerful about the Psalms are, as well as they're being gospel and songs of praise, they are also the blues.
I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don't like to arrange things. If I stand in front of something, instead of arranging it, I arrange myself.
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