Brodsky in English by ZakharIshov. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2023. 296 pp. $120.00. ISBN 978‐0‐8101‐4599‐3

The English language and its poetry were central to Joseph Brodsky’s creative evolution, and his published work in English—original, translated, and self-translated—helped lift him to the status of Nobel Prize winner and American Poet Laureate. It can justifiably be said that in order to understand Brodsky, we must understand his relation to English. Zakhar Ishov’s Brodsky in English offers a comprehensive, well-researched, judicious treatment of the subject that is likely to become the authoritative account. We already have a wealth of commentary: detailed studies of Brodsky’s poetic self-translations by Alexandra Berlina (2014) and Natalya Rulyova (2022) (neither of them acknowledged here, oddly), as well as numerous opinions and analyses of the poet’s English put forward in essays, reviews, and interviews. Ishov’s distinctive project is “to reconstruct the history of the unlikely phenomenon of the anglophone Brodsky” with the aim of illuminating the full significance of his embrace of English (p. 14). He shows how Brodsky sought to be recognized as a poet in the English-speaking world, though not necessarily as an English-language poet, and even aspired to have an impact on contemporary American poetry (and, to be clear, Ishov’s focus is Brodsky’s poetry and not his literary essays). As Seamus Heaney observed, Brodsky had a love for English verse that amounted “almost to a possessiveness” (p. 13). Ishov’s first two chapters on Brodsky’s early career in Leningrad establish why Brodsky took an early interest in English-language poetry, and why he was so committed to the classicist tradition of Russian poetry: Brodsky, like many of his generation, sought out foreign and prerevolutionary models that had been purged from Soviet literature. (Ishov nicely observes that the British Thirties poets Brodsky loved—chiefly W. H. Auden—similarly recuperated traditional models in the wake of historical disaster.) This context is essential for understanding why Brodsky so fiercely defended formal English-language poetry, as well as the formal translation of Russian poetry into English: for him it was a matter of preserving humanist values. Brodsky expressed his opinion publicly in reviews of free-verse translations of Russian but had to confront practical challenges in working with translators of his own poetry. Ishov follows the evolution of his approach from his collaboration with his first translator, George Kline, through the lengthy process of creating A Part of Speech, published by Farrar, Straus, Giroux in 1977, to which an all-star team of poets, including Anthony Hecht, Richard Wilbur, and Howard Moss, contributed translations (and Derek Walcott helped edit the final manuscript). Brodsky corrected them all, even Wilbur, who had produced a flawless formal version of “Six Years Later.” Without getting too deeply into the weeds, Ishov shows that what Brodsky sought from his translators was not strict form per se but how it was realized in his poems—not the meter, typically variable dol'nik, but the actual rhythm (what Brodsky called “the beat”). Brodsky also insisted on preserving the rhyme patterns, despite the fact that English-language poetry is not friendly to feminine rhymes, which are plentiful in Russian poetry. These patterns sounded “foreign” to his translators, who did not always receive his changes well. But his approach was consistent and grounded in principle, and he continued to pursue it. By the end of the 1980s he was his own principal translator, “coining his own idiolect in English” not just in his translations but in the original English poems he began to write alongside his Russian poetry (pp. 177–78). Ishov largely refrains from judging or defending Brodsky’s practice, while documenting the often negative reactions it provoked. His purpose, admirably realized in this book, is to explicate what Brodsky was attempting to achieve as a poet in English. He concludes that Brodsky was seeking to “translate himself,” that is, to be true to his own sensibility in a new language. He compares Brodsky’s practice to the latter-day trend in translation studies toward a “foreignizing” approach that seeks to leave a foreign language imprint on the English translation. He also offers us the perspective of several of Brodsky’s friends and collaborators, with whom he conducted interviews included as appendices. The poets among them, Mark Strand and Derek Walcott, express respect and admiration for Brodsky’s commitment to writing in English. Ishov’s book does the same, inviting us to see what an extraordinary thing Brodsky accomplished in becoming an American poet.