Poem by Joseph Brodsky "Love": the story of betrayal and forgiveness

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

Nobel laureate Iosif Brodsky has bypassed all his fellow writers in the number of dedications to one single woman - the mysterious "MB" All his poems were dedicated to the artist Marina Basmanova, whom the poet even considered his bride. However, fate decreed that the couple broke up - Marina went to Brodsky's friend on New Year's Eve. Nevertheless, this girl left such a deep mark in the poet's soul that even 7 years later, in 1971, he dedicated the poem "Love" to her.

Joseph Brodsky and Marina Basmanova first met on March 2, 1962 at a party in the apartment of the future famous composer Boris Tishchenko. The poet was not yet 22 years old, Marina is two years older than him. It was love at first sight. Since that day, they have never parted. We walked around the city, hand in hand, went to warm up in the entrances of the old houses of the Petrograd Side, kissed like possessed people and walked again, happy where their eyes were looking. Brodsky read her his new poems, and Marina could talk to him about painting for hours, took him to museums and exhibitions. Those around them unanimously agreed that they are extremely complementary to each other: impetuous, passionate Brodsky and calm, judicious Basmanova. Fire and Water. Moon and sun. Did Basmanova love Brodsky with the same ardor that he loved her? Hard to say. As for him, he simply idolized her!

But not everything was smooth even then. Neither Basmanova's father nor Brodsky's parents approved of their relationship. And most importantly, Basmanova herself did not want to get married. Lovers often quarreled and now and then "parted forever." After such quarrels, Joseph fell into a severe depression. Often he went to his friends Sterns, gloomy as a sphinx, with fresh bloody bandages on his wrists and silently smoked cigarettes in the kitchen one after another. Lyudmila Stern was very afraid that the impressionable poet would really lay hands on himself. Therefore, when Brodsky once again showed up to them with bandaged hands, Viktor Stern told him bluntly: “Listen, Osya, stop it, it's … to scare people. If you ever really decide to commit suicide, ask me to explain how it is done. " Brodsky heeded the advice, no longer "frightened", but this did not make anyone feel better.

Alas, this story was not without a banal love triangle. In the early 60s, Brodsky was close friends with Anatoly Naiman, Yevgeny Rein and Dmitry Bobyshev (all were part of Anna Akhmatova's closest circle, but she noted Brodsky more than others and promised him great poetic fame). Therefore, when on the eve of the new, 1964, Brodsky was hiding from the police in Moscow, fearing to be arrested for parasitism, he instructed Dmitry Bobyshev to take care of Marina during his absence. Nothing seemed to bode well. Dmitry brought Marina to his friends at their dacha in Zelenogorsk and introduced her as "Brodsky's girlfriend." The whole company greeted her cordially, but since the modest Marina spent the whole evening in silence, only occasionally smiling mysteriously, they quickly forgot about her and had a lot of fun. What happened next, no one really knows: either suffering from a lack of attention, or experiencing a long-standing sympathy for the handsome Bobyshev (who also wrote not bad poetry and was already published in the samizdat magazine of Aleksandr Ginzburg "Syntaxis"), but the quiet Marina spent this night with him. And in the morning she set fire to the curtains in his room, waking up the whole house with a naive cry: "Look how beautiful they burn!" Of course, all Brodsky's friends immediately announced a boycott to Bobyshev for such an obvious betrayal of a friend. He hastened to leave the dacha, but in his defense said: they say, I'm not to blame, she came herself, and when he hinted that Brodsky considered her his bride, she said, as she cut off: “I don't consider myself his bride, but what he thinks it's his business "…

When rumors about Marina's betrayal reached Brodsky, he rushed to Leningrad, spitting on everything. Years will pass, and he will remember it like this: “I didn't care whether they would tie me up there or not. And the whole trial later - it was nonsense compared to what happened to Marina …

Immediately from the station, he rushed to Bobyshev, where a difficult explanation took place, which made friends enemies for the rest of his life. Then he went to Marina's house, but she did not open the door for him. A few days later, Brodsky was arrested right on the street. He was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for a "forensic examination." Marina carried parcels to him there. Then the famous trial took place, which ended for Brodsky with a three-year exile in the Arkhangelsk region. Later, already living in America, he openly confesses to the same Lyudmila Stern: “It was so much less important than the story with Marina. All my mental strength went to cope with this misfortune."

In the village of Norenskaya, Arkhangelsk Region, Brodsky will write his best poems. What are the names alone! Songs of a Happy Winter, Slice of Honeymoon, From English Wedding Songs. And again thanks to Marina, who came to him and lived for a long time in very modest conditions. He was ready to forgive her everything, if only this fairy tale did not end, if only they were together. But … Bobyshev arrived, and Basmanova left with him. And then she returned. And so several times. Brodsky suffered, rushed about an empty house, but he could not change anything: they did not choose their love, like their homeland or their parents. In a series of these meetings and farewells in 1968, Basmanova and Brodsky had a son, Andrei. The poet hoped that now Marina would agree to formalize the relationship, but she was adamant. Clouds were gathering over Brodsky: people from the authorities unambiguously advised him to leave for the West. He hoped to the last that they would emigrate together: he, she and his son …

Brodsky left alone. But the love triangle broke up completely unexpectedly: the amazing Marina parted with Dmitry Bobyshev, preferring to raise Brodsky's son alone. (Soon Bobyshev emigrated to the USA, where to this day he successfully teaches Russian literature at the University of Illinois.) Brodsky's heart wound did not heal for a long time. Moreover, both literally and figuratively: heart attacks followed him one after another. For more than one year, he continued to devote poetry to Marina. As if in revenge for her betrayal, he changed women like gloves, never tired of repeating that he would never be able to get along with anyone under one roof, except with his beloved Mississippi cat.

Everything changed when one day, at a lecture at the Sorbonne, Brodsky saw Maria Sozzani among his Slavic students. The beautiful Italian woman of Russian origin was thirty years younger than the poet and … madly reminded of Marina Basmanova in her youth. They got married in 1991. Maria became not only a loving wife, but also a faithful friend and helper in all literary and publishing affairs. A year later, they had a lovely daughter, Anna-Alexandra-Maria Brodskaya. But all this will be later, later, later. And in 1971 he dedicated a poem to his "MB"

Love

Fans of modern poetry will be interested in learning and history of unresolved conflict Brodsky vs Yevtushenko … This conflict has been going on for half a century, however, its participants are now not the initiators themselves, but admirers of their work.