Why Joseph Brodsky was unable to achieve reciprocity from Mariolina Doria De Dzuliani

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

It is known that Joseph Brodsky was not only a talented poet and prose writer, but an even greater connoisseur of female beauty. He enjoyed success with the fair sex and at the same time absolutely categorically did not know how to accept defeat in romantic affairs. However, he rarely heard refusals from women. And the more painful was the rejection of the one to whom Joseph Brodsky dedicated the "Embankment of the Incurable."

First meetings

Once Mariolina decided to make an incredible journey across Russia, visiting several cities of the Soviet Union at once: Moscow, Leningrad, Veliky Novgorod and Kiev. Together with her friend Marina Ligabue, she went to the USSR, and a French friend asked her to take two pairs of jeans as a gift to the “Russian poet”, which, as you know, were in great deficit at that time in the country of victorious socialism.

Naturally, two Italians, one of whom knew only two words in Russian - "hello" and "dear", were immediately invited to visit Joseph Brodsky. They arrived at the house where the Brodsky family lived, and were surprised at the incredibly cramped rooms, the walls of which were tall bookshelves, and the ceiling seemed to be the roof of the building itself.

The Italians stayed in the hospitable house until two o'clock in the morning, and then went on foot to the hotel "Evropeyskaya", where they lived. Joseph Brodsky went to see off his new acquaintances, but on Nevsky, unknown in civilian clothes materialized out of the darkness, who soon took the poet away. As Mariolina, who knew Russian quite well by that time, understood that the people in civilian clothes were very angry, they swore at Brodsky for his communication with foreign women, and then took him away with them altogether.

Even this incident could not save the Italian woman from the ever-growing interest in Russia. There was a drop of Russian blood in her, inherited from her grandmother, a former prima donna of the opera stage. And Mariolina was not at all afraid of the cold climate, the lack of food and gray bread instead of desserts for tea. In the USSR, she worked on her dissertation on the history of Russia and at that time met wonderful people, smart, intelligent, very cultured and educated.

For the second time, Mariolina and Joseph Brodsky met in Moscow. The poet himself found the Italian woman in the library, where she worked with documents from morning to evening. He appeared suddenly, familiarly addressed Mariolina on "you" and promised to find her in Venice, where the girl lived. It was already clear then: Brodsky would have to leave the country from day to day.

Dreams and reality

After Joseph Brodsky had already settled in New York, with the very first money he received at the university, he bought tickets to the city that he had long dreamed of and where the beautiful Mariolina lived. He contacted her and announced his arrival.

She could not accommodate him in her house, but rented for him a very fashionable boarding house at that time. True, the poet himself wanted to live in a palazzo and this again unpleasantly cut the Italian woman, she did not understand why such a desire for luxury came from a person who was born and raised in the Soviet Union.

Later, in his "Embankment of the Incurable" Brodsky will write about the place where he happened to stay. Supposedly it was uncomfortable and smelled desperately of a toilet. Mariolina fundamentally disagrees with this. In her opinion, it was a very worthy and popular boarding house.

Every day, the poet appeared in the house where Mariolina lived, dined and dined with her family. He criticized the young woman's lifestyle and accused her of bad taste. They were just very different, like minus and plus.

Joseph Brodsky came to Mariolina's house every morning, almost always having taken several glasses of wine or something stronger before that. Already on the street, he began to shout words that seemed very indecent to the beautiful aristocrat, and she was constantly afraid that her neighbors would understand the meaning of the screams of this strange Russian and then she would be very embarrassed.

According to the memoirs of Mariolina Doria De Dzuliani, Brodsky was not too well-bred and behaved intrusively. All their conversations in the end ended with the poet confessing his desire to physically possess Mariolina. All these "conversations" were extremely unpleasant for her, besides, she was married and had two children.

Brodsky stayed in Venice for only a week, but the aristocrat still recalls those seven days as an enduring nightmare. Once, unable to withstand all this talk about physical attraction, Mariolina Doria De Dzuliani simply pulled Brodsky down the stairs of her own house.

Embankment of the Incurable

The poet wrote his essay at the request of the New Venice Consortium, which annually orders a work of art for Christmas in which Venice would be glorified. When Joseph Brodsky brought his manuscript, Luigi Zanda, who headed the Consortium in 1987, grabbed his head. In the "Embankment of the Incurable" Mariolina Doria De Dzuliani was constantly mentioned, and not in the best light.

Luigi frankly told the poet that the de Dzuliani family are very famous and respected people of Venice, and their indignation will not be limited only to words, they will certainly sue Brodsky and will definitely be able to win him. Brodsky was not going to change anything in his work, but Dzanga actually went to blackmail, promising not to pay a very substantial fee. Joseph Brodsky remade the book, deleting the well-known Venetian surname from it.

Since then, Mariolina Doria De Dzuliani has simply avoided meeting Brodsky. Every year he came to Venice for Christmas, but she, barely seeing the poet on the street, immediately changed the route. Only once in July 1995 did they meet.

In the restaurant of one of the Venetian hotels, Mariolina Doria De Dzuliani celebrated her son's birthday with her family. The birthday boy suddenly asked her what kind of person was impudently examining Mariolina. It was Brodsky. As soon as she paid attention to him. The poet immediately approached and tried to find out if she was offended by him because of the essay. The woman avoided answering, as a result, the conversation quickly exhausted itself, and they said goodbye. Six months later, Joseph Brodsky was gone.

Later, a friend who listened to Brodsky's lectures in New York confessed to Mariolina: the poet very often talked about a Venetian woman with whom he was connected more than love. And only after reading "The Embankment of the Incurable" she understood: it was about Mariolina Doria De Dzuliani.

But Mariolina herself, a professor of Slavic studies and a great admirer of Russian literature, did not even know that the poet was hiding his true feelings behind deliberate obsession.

His friends and family are stubbornly silent about his private life. Maria Sozzani is ready to discuss the work of her husband Joseph Brodsky, but she never supports a conversation about his personal life and about their family. Only one thing is known: Joseph Brodsky was very happy for the last five years of his life.