Why re-read Brodsky, the poet of bad Russia

Exiled and persecuted in his country and adopted in America, the intellectual, “like fish on the sand”, resisted, survived and reminds us of the value of literature, of its political power, as a teacher of humanity

Where freedom is lacking, life trudges and the possible future struggles to exist. “Sometimes in that chaos, in the crazy dark days, / A sound arises, a word echoes.” Since last February, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia is still underway, the “special military operation”, as President Vladimir Putin has defined it. Taking into account the fact that “we are only parts / of a large whole from which a thread unravels”, we write about Iosif Brodsky, “I am a Jew, a Russian poet and a US citizen”. All the quotation marks are from him.