Skip to content

Unlike everyone else

by

Robert Richman
September 1986
login
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
  • Dispatch
  • TNC+
  • Events
  • Subscribe
  • Donate
Vol. 42, No. 10 / June 2024
login
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
  • Dispatch
  • TNC+
  • Events
  • Subscribe
  • Donate
  • Joseph Brodsky, 44 Morton Street, New York. Photo: Czeslaw Czaplinski.
    Books
    September 1986

    Unlike everyone else

    by

    Robert Richman

    A review of Less Than One by Joseph Brodsky.

    An education in discernment.

    Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series.

    Bookstore

    • Share on Facebook
    • Share on Twitter
    • Share on Email

    Less Than One is the first collection of prose writings by the forty-six-year-old Russian émigré poet Joseph Brodsky, who has lived and worked in New York City since his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1972. Judging from some of his remarks here, it isn’t surprising that Brodsky hasn’t issued a volume of his prose before. For Brodsky considers prose to be distinctly inferior to poetry. Whereas the latter, as Brodsky says in his essay on Osip Mandelstam, “is an extremely individualistic art,” a poet’s “turning to prose,” as he writes elsewhere, may be “a kind of literary nostalgie de la boue, a desire to merge with the (writing) mass, to become, at last, ‘like everyone else.’” This fear of conformity helps explain the style of Less Than One. The difficult transitions and unexpected turns of thought are Brodsky’s way of making prose—“that a priori ‘normal’ form of communication with a reader”—into something uniquely his own. Here is a typical paragraph from the essay entitled “Flight from Byzantium”:

    Any movement along a plane surface which is not dictated by physical necessity is a spatial form of self-assertion, be it empire-building or tourism. In this sense, my reason for going to Istanbul differed only slightly from Constantine’s. Especially if he really did become a Christian—that is, ceased to be a Roman. I have, however, rather more grounds for reproaching myself with superficiality; besides, the results of my displacements are of far less consequence. I don’t even

    A MESSAGE FROM THE EDITORS

    New to The New Criterion?

    Become a subscriber to receive ten print issues and gain immediate access to our online archive spanning more than four decades of art and cultural criticism.

    Subscribe
    read full article
    purchase article
    Robert Richman‘s book of poems, Voice on the Wind, was recently published by Copper Beech Press.

    This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 5 Number 1, on page 84

    Copyright © 1986 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com

    https://newcriterion.com/article/unlike-everyone-else/

    Books in this Article

    Joseph Brodsky

    Less Than One: Selected Essays

    Farrar, Straus and Giroux

    Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 512 pages, $21

    ORDER
    Popular Right Now
    • The masterpiece of our time
      by Gary Saul Morson
    • All the rage
      by Victor Davis Hanson
    • Protecting America’s promise
      by Ronald S. Lauder
    • The soul of Strauss
      by Glenn Ellmers
    • Lenin everlasting
      by the Editors

    • Share on Facebook
    • Share on Twitter
    • Share on Email

    Related Articles

    • Idol temptations on the Adriatic
      Author
      Robert D. Kaplan
    • Old guys
      Author
      William Logan
    • All over the map
      Author
      William Logan
    • Auden remembered
      Author
      Robert Richman

    More from this Author

    View All

    • Prosody atrocities
    • Edwin Muir’s journey
    • Shorter notice
    • George Mackay Brown, 1921-1996
    • Luminous particulars

Subscriptions

  • Log In

Explore

  • Current Issue
  • Archive
  • Dispatch
  • TNC+
  • Culture
  • Poetry
  • Art
  • Music
  • Theater
  • Books
  • About
  • Subscribe
  • Donate
  • Bookstore
  • Newsletters
  • Poetry Submissions
  • Advertise
  • Reader Services
  • Gift Subscription
  • Join Our Circle
  • Become A Friend
  • Galliard Society
  • Hilton Kramer Fellowship
  • Edmund Burke Award
  • RSS Feeds
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy

COPYRIGHT © 1982-2024, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

A site by Beck & Stone

  • Log In
  • Subscribe
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
  • Dispatch
  • TNC+
  • Subscribe
  • Gift Subscription
  • Donate
  • Culture
  • Art
  • Poetry
  • Music
  • Theater
  • Books
  • Facebook
  • X
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Soundcloud
  • About Us
  • Bookstore
  • Reader Services
  • Newsletters
  • Subscribe
  • Advertise
  • Gift Subscription
  • Donate
  • The Edmund Burke Award
  • Join Our Circle
  • Become a Friend
  • Galliard Society
  • Hilton Kramer Fellowship
  • Poetry Submissions
  • RSS Feed
  • Contact Us

COPYRIGHT © 1982-2024
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

A site by Beck & Stone

Sign into your account




Lost your password?

Become a subscriber

Enjoy unlimited access.

Subscribe

Current subscribers may register for online access.