Russian Literature Professor Lev Loseff was recently awarded a fellowship from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in order to complete his annotated bilingual edition of the works of poet Joseph Brodsky.
Lesoff was one of the 182 artists, scientists and scholars to receive the prestigious award. The foundation received over 2,900 applications for cash grants totaling over six million dollars.
"I can say I was elated," a laughing Loseff said of his acceptance.
He said that he is especially enthusiastic to begin work on his project because of the "urgency" he perceives in doing so. While Lesoff admitted that "the complete annotated edition of a great poet's poetry is a common thing," he feels that Brodsky's poetry holds a special place in literary and cultural history and that the poet's recent death makes the publication of his works especially important.
"The uniqueness of Brodsky was that he was the one and only Russian American poet," Lesoff said.
Indeed, Brodsky penned poems in both Russian and English, spending parts of his career in the former Soviet Union as well as the United States.
"To fully appreciate his poetry in either language you have to be able to read it in both languages," Lesoff explained. For this reason, part of his project will involve providing literal translations of and analytical commentary on Brodsky's works, but he assured The Dartmouth that he will not attempt to convey the aesthetic quality of the originals in his adaptations.
"It won't be an artistic translation " I wouldn't dare," he said. The poet's connection to the College is not limited to this scholarly effort, however.
"He was not a stranger to Dartmouth," Lesoff said. In fact, Brodsky delivered a commencement address to the graduating class of 1989 entitled "In Praise of Boredom."
"It was one of the most unusual commencement addresses in the history of Dartmouth," Lesoff remembered. "The audience was flabbergasted" at Brodsky's creative effort to give "not just the usual pep talk," but a serious philosophical dissertation on the human condition.
While Brodsky's attempts to explore such issues won him acclaim at Dartmouth, they earned him the scorn of the Soviet government, which arrested him on charges of "social parasitism" and sent him to a forced labor camp in northern Russia in the early 1960s.
"It meant simply that the Soviet authorities of the time didn't like that he was writing politically incorrect poetry," Lesoff explained.
According to Lesoff, Brodsky's experiences in the labor camp changed the poet both physically and emotionally. After his release, "he was very, very sensitive to the injustices and cruelty in the world, especially in his later English poetry," said Lesoff, who attributed Brodsky's premature death of heart disease to his time spent in the camp.
Yet Brodsky was able to transcend hardship through his art.
"It was such a magic life," Lesoff recalled, adding that his close friendship with the poet would aid him in the biographical essay which he plans to include in his book of poems and commentary.
"We were good friends since we were young," he said. "And we maintained a close relationship until his untimely death four years ago."
The friendship was placed under geographical strain, however, when Brodsky was forced to leave the Soviet Union. But soon after the poet's egress, Lesoff found out that he himself would have been one of the government's next targets.
"I, myself, after Brodsky's departure was under pressure by the authorities, partly due to the fact that I participated in the underground publication of Brodsky's works," he said.
Both he and his wife, Nina Lesoff, a professor of international languages at the College, immigrated to the United States with their two children shortly after Brodky's defection. The family did not find the cultural transition easy, however.
"It was difficult because there was so little in common between these two cultures and these two worlds," Lesoff recalled. He attributed his quick cultural assimilation to the scholarly environment in which he placed himself.
"The academic world is somewhat more cosmopolitan and international in its nature," he said
Lesoff has already written several volumes of literary analysis and has even written quite a bit of his own poetry in the Russian language.
"As far as time and labor investment [this current work is] not unlike some of the other projects I have done before," he said. "But it's very different in nature and that's what excites me."
In many ways it's a unique undertaking and that's what excites me."
