Reduced... to a crude formula, the Russian tragedy is precisely the tragedy of a society in which literature turned out to be the prerogative of the minority.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the tragedy of a society where only a small group engages with literature, leaving the majority disconnected from its value.
Joseph Brodsky reflects on the Russian tragedy as a societal issue where literature has become the privilege of a select minority, suggesting that when art and literature are confined to an elite, a significant part of society misses out on the profound insights and emotional connections that these forms of expression can provide. This situation creates a cultural divide, emphasizing the need for literature to be accessible to all for a truly enriched society.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of accessible literature in schools.
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.
If a writer knows what he or she is doing, I'll go along for the ride. If he or she doesn't... well, I'm in my fifties now, and there are a lot of books out there. I don't have time to waste with the poorly written ones.
I don't believe chance can play a role in my literature.
I found literary idols in Adrienne Kennedy, Nella Larsen, and Ntozake Shange, writers who'd dared to locate a sanctioned, forbidden space between white vulnerability and black invincibility.
There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
Put simply the novel stands between us and the hardening concept of statistical man. There is no other medium in which we can live for so long and so intimately with a character. That is the service a novel renders.
I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence.
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