What connected the great defectors Mikhail Baryshnikov and Joseph Brodsky: The Mouse and the Cat Joseph

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

On January 27, the famous ballet dancer and choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov turns 72 years old. In 1974, he escaped from the USSR, becoming one of the few defectors who managed to succeed in the profession in the United States. In emigration, fate brought him together with another famous fugitive - Joseph Brodsky, with whom they communicated until the poet's death. Baryshnikov was fond of poetry, and Brodsky did not like theater and ballet. What connected the two disgraced emigrants so closely, and why did Brodsky dedicated poetry to Baryshnikov?

In the USSR, the paths of the poet and the dancer moved in completely different orbits and never crossed. Joseph Brodsky was born in 1940 in Leningrad, during the war he lived in evacuation in Cherepovets, and after its end he returned back. He often changed schools, after the 8th grade he got a job at a factory as a milling machine operator, then changed several more professions - he worked as an assistant dissector in a morgue, a fireman, a photographer, and participated in geological expeditions. But at the same time he was constantly engaged in self-education and already in his youth realized that he was attracted most of all by literature.

Mikhail Baryshnikov was born 8 years later, in Riga (Latvia) - there his officer father was sent to serve. At the age of 10, he began studying at a ballet school. When Mikhail was 12 years old, his mother committed suicide. The father soon married a second time, and there was no place for his son in the new family. During a tour in Leningrad, he was offered to enter a choreographic school, he moved to Leningrad and since then did not communicate with his father.

In the same period, in the early 1960s, they started talking about Brodsky in Leningrad - after he performed at a poetry tournament in the DK im. Gorky. In 1963, during a speech at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev urged to eradicate among young people "sloths, moral cripples and whiners" who write in "bird jargon of idlers and half-educated people." One of the targets was Joseph Brodsky: in the same year, in the newspaper Vecherny Leningrad, in the article “Near-literary drone,” the authors branded the poet with shame. A year later, he was arrested for parasitism - although his poems were published in children's magazines, and publishers ordered translations for him, he was not officially employed anywhere, which at that time was considered a crime. Brodsky was tried and sentenced to 5 years of deportation from Leningrad to the Arkhangelsk region with compulsory involvement in labor.

Many famous writers tried to get him back from exile early, and in 1965 he was released. In the same year, the first collection of Brodsky's poems was published in the United States, and he himself increasingly communicated with foreign publishers. Soon after the poet returned from exile, he read his poems at the House of the Actor on Nevsky. It was there that Baryshnikov first heard him. True, they did not know each other personally at that time. In 1972, the poet was summoned to the OVIR and offered to leave the USSR, making it clear that there could only be a psychiatric hospital as an alternative.

In the meantime, Baryshnikov graduated from the choreographic school and was accepted into the troupe of the Opera and Ballet Theater. S. Kirov. His career developed rapidly, soon he performed leading classical roles in many productions. Since 1970Baryshnikov began performing abroad, and he began to receive offers from foreign impresario. At the same time, at home, academic performances could not satisfy his creative ambitions. In the summer of 1974 he went on tour to Canada and asked for political asylum there. It was creative rather than political reasons that motivated him to become a defector. In July of the same year, he made his New York debut in Giselle, and since then has performed many leading roles in classical and modern productions, becoming the premiere and then director of the American Ballet Theater. Later he left classical ballet and mastered a new direction - modern. In addition, Baryshnikov starred in several films in Hollywood.

Baryshnikov's choice was voluntary, Brodsky's emigration was forced. Before leaving, he even wrote a letter to Brezhnev asking him to allow him to stay in the USSR at least as a translator, but this request was never heard. In the United States, his further fate was successful - Brodsky taught at universities, became famous as the author of numerous essays, translated Nabokov's poems into English, published his own poetry collection in 1986, and a year later received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He defined himself as "a Russian poet, an English-speaking essayist and, of course, an American citizen."

Soon after Baryshnikov was in New York, he met Brodsky. From the second meeting, they switched to "you", about which the artist told: "". This friendship turned out to be long and strong - it lasted 22 years, until the poet's death. Baryshnikov was the first to whom Brodsky trusted his secrets and read new poems. He told him: "", or so: "". Very often the dancer became the addressee of his poems. In one of them in 1976, the poet wrote:

Brodsky always congratulated Baryshnikov on his birthday, sending him poems or a photograph with the signature:

In 1988, the artist and poet became co-owners of the Russian Samovar restaurant, where both often visited. But they were united rather not by partnerships, and not even by an interest in each other's work, but by a real kinship, regardless of their occupation. Brodsky wrote about his friend: "".

In 1992, the poet wrote a book about Venice and presented it to the artist on his birthday with a dedication:

Even before emigration, Brodsky suffered from angina pectoris. In 1978 he underwent heart surgery, after which he suffered 4 heart attacks. And the 5th was the last for him. It is surprising that he passed away on the night of January 27-28 - right after Baryshnikov's birthday, having managed to make him the last gift. He sent to a friend his collection "In the Environs of Atlantis" with the inscription:

The death of the poet was a great loss for Baryshnikov. The play "Brodsky / Baryshnikov", which premiered in 2015 in Riga, became a tribute to the memory of a devoted friend. According to the idea of the Latvian director Alvis Hermanis, throughout the entire production, only one actor remains on the stage - Mikhail Baryshnikov, who reads prose and poetry by Joseph Brodsky.

Baryshnikov said words about the poet that could be attributed to both of them: "".

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