Joseph Brodsky

Joseph Brodsky [Stuttgarter Zeitung]

from Joseph Brodsky’s On Grief and Reason:

A child’s ear is always sensitive to a strange, irregular sound. . . .

from a tyranny one can be exiled only to a democracy . . .

the fate of the polytheistic notion of time at the hands of Christian monotheism was the first leg of humanity’s flight from a sense of the arbitrariness of existence into the trap of historical determinism. . . .

The more ordered the life of a society or an individual, the more chance gets elbowed out. . . .

The best reason for being a nomad is not the fresh air but the escape from the rationalist theory of society based on the rationalist interpretation of history, since the rationalist approach to either is a blithely idealistic flight from human intuition. . . .

History is essentially a vast library filled with works of fiction that vary in style more than subject. . . .

it is better to agonize than to organize . . .

try not to blame anything or anybody . . . the moment that you place blame somewhere, you undermine your resolve to change anything . . . “to be social is to be forgiving” [Robert Frost] . . .

What your foes do derives its significance or consequence from the way you react. Therefore rush through or past them . . . don’t linger . . . do the forgetting . . .

a democracy — this halfway house between nightmare and utopia . . .

One dreams in dreams . . . and thinks in thoughts. A language gets into the picture only when one has to make those things public.