Watermark: An Essay on Venice

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'Reading Brodsky's essays is like a conversation with an immensely erudite, hugely entertaining and witty (and often very funny) interlocutor' Wall Street Journal 
 
Watermark is Joseph Brodsky's witty, intelligent, moving and elegant portrait of Venice. Looking at every aspect of the city, from its waterways, streets and architecture to its food, politics and people, Brodsky captures its magnificence and beauty, and recalls his own memories of the place he called home for many winters, as he remembers friends, lovers and enemies he has encountered. Above all, he reflects with great poetic force on how the rising tide of time affects city and inhabitants alike. 
 
Watermark is an unforgettable piece of writing, and a wonderful evocation of a remarkable, unique city. 
 
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Joseph Brodsky died in January 1996. His last post was Five Colleges Professor of Literature at Mount Holyoke College. In 1987 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Brodsky's other collection of essays Less Than One is being reissued alongside On Grief and Reason in Penguin Modern Classics.

Selected Essays

Less Than One

'Genius ... bringing ardent intelligence to bear upon poetry, politics and autobiography' Seamus Heaney 
 
Essayist and poet Joseph Brodsky was one of the most penetrating voices of the twentieth century. This prize-winning collection of his diverse essays includes uniquely powerful appreciations of great writers: on Dostoevsky and the development of Russian prose, on Auden and Akhmatova, Cavafy, Montale and Mandelstam. These are contrasted with his reflections on larger themes of tyranny and evil, and subtle evocations of his childhood in Leningrad. Brodsky's insightful appreciation of the intricacies of language, culture and identity connect these works, revealing his remarkable gifts as a prose writer. 
 
'Sparkles with intellect, and combines the precision of scholarship with the passion of the poet' The Times 
 
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

'Sparkles with intellect, and combines the precision of scholarship with the passion of the poet'

'Genius ... bringing ardent intelligence to bear upon poetry, politics and autobiography'

Joseph Brodsky died in January 1996. His last post was Five Colleges Professor of Literature at Mount Holyoke College. In 1987 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Brodsky's other collection of essays On Grief and Reason is being reissued alongside Less than One in Penguin Modern Classics.

Essayist and poet Joseph Brodsky was one of the most penetrating voices of the twentieth century. This prize-winning collection of his diverse essays includes uniquely powerful appreciations of great writers: on Dostoevsky and the development of Russian prose, on Auden and Akhmatova, Cavafy, Montale and Mandelstam. These are contrasted with his reflections on larger themes of tyranny and evil, and subtle evocations of his childhood in Leningrad. Brodsky's insightful appreciation of the intricacies of language, culture and identity connect these works, revealing his remarkable gifts as a prose writer.

Essays

On Grief And Reason

'His prose has the energy and precision of a master, and, at times, the moral authority of a prophet'

'One of the English language's great essayists ... a book to be thankful for'

Joseph Brodsky died in January 1996. His last post was Five Colleges Professor of Literature at Mount Holyoke College. In 1987 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Brodsky's other collection of essays Less Than One is being reissued alongside On Grief and Reason in Penguin Modern Classics.

In this richly diverse collection of essays, Joseph Brodsky casts a reflective eye on his experiences of early life in Russia and exile in America. With dazzling erudition, he explores subjects as varied as the dynamic of poetry, the nature of history and the plight of the émigré writer. There is also the humorous tale of a disastrous trip to Brazil, advice to students, a homage to Marcus Aurelius and studies of Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, Horace and others. The second volume of essays following Less Than One, this collection includes Brodsky's 1987 Nobel Lecture, 'Uncommon Visage'.

Joseph Brodsky

Ann Kjellberg

1968-1996

Self-educated, intense, impulsive and unmoored, Joseph Brodsky emerged in mid-century Russia as a poetic virtuoso, recognized by such greats as Anna Akhmatova as their worthy heir. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972. Together, the poems in this volume unfold the project that, as Brodsky saw it, the condition of exile presented: 'to set the next man - however theoretical he and his needs may be - a bit more free'. 
 
This edition includes poems translated by Derek Walcott, Richard Wilbur and Anthony Hecht, and poems written in English or translated by the author himself. It surveys Brodsky's tumultuous life and illustrious career, and presents many of the poems that secured his reputation as one of the century's major voices.

Joseph Brodsky

Books by Joseph Brodsky

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