It's a maddening thing in itself to look at an old poem of yours. To translate it is even more maddening.
Interpretation
Reflecting on one's past work can be frustrating, especially when trying to reinterpret it.
In this quote, Joseph Brodsky expresses the complexity and frustration that comes with revisiting one's own past creative work, such as poetry. The act of translating or reinterpreting a poem can evoke intense emotions as it forces the creator to confront their previous self and the meaning of their artistic expression, highlighting the distance between the past and present.
In practice
In a poetry workshop, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of self-reflection in the creative process.
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.
I think the only person a writer has an obligation to is himself. If what I write doesn't fulfill something in me, if I don't honestly feel it's the best I can do, then I'm miserable.
Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition.
I love music, I've always done music, felt it on a spiritual level and I write for myself and not anybody else.
A folk song is what's wrong and how to fix it or it could be _x000D_ who's hungry and where their mouth is or _x000D_ who's out of work and where the job is or _x000D_ who's broke and where the money is or _x000D_ who's carrying a gun and where the peace is.
Two questions I can't really answer about fiction are 1) where it comes from, and 2) why we need it. But that we do create it and also crave it is beyond dispute.
The violinist is that peculiarly human phenomenon distilled to a rare potency - half tiger, half poet.
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