THE LANGUAGE ZONE: JOSEPH BRODSKY AND THE MAKING OF A BILINGUAL POET by DARIA S. SMIRNOVA A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Comparative Literature and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2020 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Daria S. Smirnova Title: The Language Zone: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Comparative Literature by: Jenifer Presto Chairperson Katya Hokanson Core Member Kenneth Calhoon Core Member Tze-Yin Teo Core Member Mark Whalan Institutional Representative and Kate Mondloch Interim Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2020 ii © 2020 Daria S. Smirnova iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Daria S. Smirnova Doctor of Philosophy Department of Comparative Literature June 2020 Title: The Language Zone: Joseph Brodsky and the Making of a Bilingual Poet My dissertation unites several aspects of Joseph Brodsky’s writing under the arc of his development as a bilingual and transnational writer. I make the case that Brodsky’s poetic sensibility was originally transnational, i.e. exhibited an affinity with both foreign and domestic poetic traditions in pursuit of its own original poetics. I establish the trope of a speaker alone in a room as a leading poetic concept of Brodsky’s neo-Metaphysical style. The poems that are centered on this trope do not refer explicitly to the poetry of the British Baroque through intertextual references or imitation, which attests to the ability of Brodsky’s transnationally oriented poetry to process foreign traditions with subtlety and to incorporate key elements of it fully within his own idiom. I follow the new generation of researchers (Ishov, Berlina) in their attempt to “put Brodsky on the map of American studies” by paying close attention to Brodsky’s self-translation strategies and the reasons behind the negative reception of Brodsky’s English-language poetry during the time of its publication. Drawing on Jan Hokenson and Marcella Munson’s concept of the bilingual text, I discover in the “English Brodsky” the tendencies characteristic of most Modernist bilingual writing. My comparative analysis of the archival materials pertaining to the translation of the poem “Dekabrʹ vo Florentsii” (“December in Florence”) shows that Brodsky’s solutions as a self-translator aim at preserving the conceptual and stylistic iv unity of his bilingual oeuvre. I further read Brodsky’s English prose as an attempt to rehabilitate and explain his poetic credos: the insistence on formal versification, the importance of the continuity of the poetic tradition, and estrangement as the main function of the poetic utterance. I show that Brodsky’s English writing on Osip Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetaeva is self-revealing as it discloses the poet’s own motivations for writing prose. Analyzing Brodsky’s autobiographical essays “Less than One” and “In a Room and a Half,” I return to the trope of a room and read his prose as a form of translation commentary that provides his new audience with a rich cultural context that is essential for a full understanding of his bilingual project. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Daria S. Smirnova GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Vyatka State University of the Humanities, Kirov DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Comparative Literature, 2020, University of Oregon Master of Arts, Russian Literature, 2012, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, 2008, Vyatka State University of the Humanities AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: 19th and 20th century Russian Literature Translation and bilingualism PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Employee, University of Oregon, 2010-2020 Instructor of Russian, Liden & Denz Intercultural Institute of Languages, St Petersburg, Russia, 2012-2013 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: The American Council of Learned Societies' Emerging Voices Fellowship, a nomination from the University of Oregon, 2020 Translation Project Award, Oregon Center for Translation Studies, Global Studies Institute, University of Oregon, 2019 Global Oregon Research Award, Global Studies Institute, University of Oregon, 2016 vi PUBLICATIONS: Smirnova, Daria. “Review of Yuri Leving’s Shades of Laura: Vladimir Nabokov’s Last Novel The Original of Laura,” Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2016 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to express my deepest appreciation to Professor Jenifer Presto for her intellectual guidance and moral support that made this project possible. Many thanks to Professor Katya Hokanson for always willing to provide feedback on my writing and ideas. Special thanks are due to Professor Kenneth Calhoon for the unfailing support and encouragement he bestowed on me while in the role of the Head of the Department and after. I also thank Slavic Librarian Heghine Hakobyan for always finding a needle in the most chaotic haystacks of research materials. I also thank the Comparative Literature journal and the Global Studies Institute for funding my research at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 2016. In addition, I thank the graduate students at the Department of Comparative Literature and at the Russian, European, and Eurasian Studies Program for their friendly support and stimulating discussions. viii To my mother Lubov Smirnova for her patience and first lessons in everything. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 II. THE METAPHYSICAL ROOM: BRODSKY AND THE POETICS OF THE BRITISH BAROQUE .................................................................................................. 23 The Term “Metaphysical:” How Metaphysical is Brodsky’s Poetry? ................... 23 The Topos of a Room: The Metaphysical Conceit Reinvented ............................. 38 “Don’t Leave the Room…” ............................................................................. 40 “To L.V. Lifshitz” or “I Kept Saying that Fate Is a Game…” ....................... 47 “Noon in a Room” ........................................................................................... 57 III. BRODSKY’S SELF-TRANSLATIONS AS BILINGUAL TEXT ....................... 81 A Miracle or a Disaster: The “Dreyfus Affair” of English Brodsky ..................... 81 Writing from the Midzone: Continuity versus Dissimilarity in the Approach to (Self-)Translation ...................................................................................................88 Polemics with Weissbort’s Approach to Brodsky’s Self-Translation ............. 100 From Dekabr’ to December: Continuity in Brodsky’s First Self-Translation . 112 Birds of a Feather: Derek Walcott’s Translation ............................................. 133 IV. EXPANSION OF ISOLATION: BRODSKY’S TRANSLATION BETWEEN GENRES ...................................................................................................................... 147 Translating Culture ................................................................................................ 147 Translating the Self ................................................................................................ 156 Room as a Microcosm in Poetry and Prose ........................................................... 182 x Chapter Page V. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................... 202 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................. 213 A. THE DRAFT BY AN UNIDENTIFIED TRANSLATOR ............................... 213 B. THE TRANSCRIPTION OF “DECEMBER IN FLORENCE” TRANSLATION DRAFTS ................................................................................................................ 215 C. THE RHYME SCHEME .................................................................................. 226 REFERENCES CITED ................................................................................................ 228 xi LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Fig. 1. Tserkovʹ Sviatogo Velikomuchenika Dimitriia Solunskogo (The Church of Saint and Great Martyr Dimitry Solunsky, a “Greek Church”) ............................. 35 2. Fig. 2. Bolʹshoi kontsertnyi zal Oktiabrʹskii (The October Big Concert Hall (BKZ)) ................................................................. 36 3. Fig. 3. English translation by Barry Rubin, a draft ................................................ 121 4. Fig. 4. The graffiti, entitled “Don’t Leave the Room. Don’t Make a Mistake” .... 211 5. Fig. 5. A worker is whitewashing the graffiti of Brodsky ..................................... 212 xii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In 2016 I took a hiatus from my studies and returned to St. Petersburg, a place that Joseph Brodsky called his rodnoi gorod (native city) in his interviews. In preparation for writing this dissertation, I besieged The National Library of Russia, but the items that interested me the most in its Brodsky archive were marked by the sinister letter З [ze] which meant закрытый доступ (closed access). The letter was buzzing at me inhospitably; turning it into an О for открытый доступ (open access) promised to take months; it didn’t happen that year and hasn’t