Article

Name: Epistolary poetry in Joseph Brodsky’s English verses: “For Sara Jangfeldt on her 13th Birthday” in the context of poetical bilingualism

Authors: A. V. Kuzub, V. A. Sukhanov

National Research Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russian Federation

In the section Study of literature

Abstract: The paper focuses on Joseph Brodsky’s original English verse “For Sara Jangfeldt, on her 13th Birthday” (1989). The analysis reveals different aspects of Brodsky’s poetical thinking. Although Brodsky’s English poetry is a huge part of his literary legacy, it has not yet been studied enough and needs to be analyzed in order to clarify his aesthetic principles. The paper addresses the semantics of epistolary poetry, considering the verse “For Sara…” as one of the most revealing texts of the genre. A detailed analysis of the poem (object of portrayal, nature of poetical introspection, lyric character’s horizons and viewpoint, addressee’s distinctive fea-tures as a part of communicative interaction, system of characters, linguistic tools of represen-tation, modality, spacious organization) allows determining the frontier status of Brodsky’s English poetry, reflected in the combination of English and Russian linguistic tools and poetical systems and also in harmonic co-existence of English and Russian epistolary genre elements of different time periods in Brodsky’s English poetical epistles. The paper examines Brodsky’s poetical language as the author’s idiolect combining features of both English and Russian poetical languages.

Keywords: Joseph Brodsky, Russian poetry, English poetry, poetical analysis, epistolary poetry

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