The Functions of Religiously-Associated Terminology in the Poetry of Joseph

Brodsky

Olga A. Gasselblat

Post-Graduate Lecture A. I. Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University, St. Petersburg.

olyah77@mail.ru

Abstract: The material basis of this study is the poetry of Joseph Brodsky. Here we examine
several features of the way in which lexical items associated with religion function in poetic
language. We put forth examples and means of transforming the sense of religious terms in
their context.

Keywords: lexeme, textual associative-semantic field (TASF), lexical meaning, context,

semantic augmentation, religious language.

In order to examine the phenomenon of the textual associative-semantic field (TASF) of

'Religion' in the poetry of Joseph Brodsky, it was interesting to observe the quantitative and
qualitative characteristics of the religious lexical items in this poet's texts. We have undertaken a
study of the manner that context functions lexically within a religious semantics.

This analysis has allowed us to access the concept of how Religion, as realised by TASF,
relates to the core of the poet's individual and authorial world-view. While incorporating other
works, our conclusions are founded on a quantitative account of materials from the collection
‘Ostanovka v pustyne’ (consisting of 401 lexemes in total).

One may confirm the fact that the linguistic signature of the poet is oriented toward the
Hebrew Bible (373 word uses constituting 93% of all religious terms in the author's collected
works). From the New Testament there are citations of the names of the Apostle Paul and Pilate,
terms associated with the Birth of Christ (14 word usages) and terms associated with Paschal
themes (12 usages).

The TASF 'Religion' in Brodsky's lyrical works includes 17 sub-fields: 'God, The Lord',
'Biblical Personages', 'Biblical Citations', 'Christmas', 'Easter (The Paschal Resurrection of
Christ)', 'The Cross', 'Hell, Demonic Powers', 'Angelic Powers', 'Heaven', 'The Soul', 'Prayer',
'Faith/Belief', 'Church Buildings'. These sub-fields all unambiguously signify religion. Names
are also divided into the sub-fields 'Immortality', 'Star', 'The Heavens, light', which have a
religious context (Biblical names: 84 instances; God, The Creator, the Lord: 49 instances, Hell,
demonic powers, sin: 35 instances, Clerical implements: 33).
 In addition to these sub-fields, the collection presents a large group of hapax religious
terms and compounds (54 instances). This group includes usages that occur only once and are
associated with Christian worship. This group of terms in the texts is interesting of itself as it
coming from a poet with a negative assessment of the Church and alien to religious worship.

Realisation of the TASF 'Religion' in the lyric works of Joseph Brodsky involves
distinguishing a large quantity of biblical citations that have been transformed: 15 allusions in
the collection 'A Stop in the Wilderness', 92 allusions in the collected works.

1. … sozdavaja svoj mir po podobiju vdrug tvoemu («Ты поскачешь во мраке…»)

2. I v svalke tuč nad mačtoju kovčega širjaet golub v poiskax nočlega («Памяти поэта.
Вариант»)
3. Za Bož’im Noem vsled, my topim mir; iz vsex reptilij čelovek vsex bol’še jadobit
(«Элегия на смерть леди Маркхем»)
4. Sbegavšuju po lestnice odnu krasavicu v paradnom, kak Iakov, podsteregal
(«Почти элегия»)
Studying Joseph Brodsky's poetic world, it is essential to note that the poet often
equates things which are distant, heterogeneous, and often incompatible. The comparison makes
them of equal worth, but bears with it a violation of the value-hierarchy. In Brodsky's poetic
world 'the low' (indicated by common colloquial and non-standard lexemes) is set next to the
'high' (indicated by religious lexemes).

Especially important for Brodsky is the theme of the Nativity. The poet himself in
reminiscences and interviews remarked frequently on his promise to write a poem each year on
Christmas. He tried to keep this promise to the end of his days. In his article 'Nikakoj
melodramy: Beseda s I. Brodskim’ the journalist Vitaly Amursky recalls Brodsky's words: “Each
year on Christmas I try to write a poem. It is the only birthday which I try to treat seriously, more
or less … I try to write a poem each Christmas as a way of congratulating Him who died for us.”
(citation)

Solzhenitsyn said that, for Brodsky, “…roždestvenskaja tema obramlena kak by v

storone, kak teplo osveščeeyj kvadrat” (Losev, 2011) (“the theme of the Nativity is framed as if
from the side, like a warmly lit square.”) The Christian mythos of the Holy Family is always
present in his creativity: the birth in a cave, the cosmic connection between the Holy Child and
and star, the stop in the desert during the Flight to Egypt. However, as many researchers have
noted, a love for the Gospel story was not related to the poet's faith in a personal salvation. The
only form of life after the grave that Brodsky recognises is in texts, as “a part of speech”. His pen
is more worthy than any religious ceremony: “Ot nego v vekax borozda dlinnej, čem u vas s
večnoj žizn’ju s kadilom v nej…” [‘Aere perennius’]

Joseph Brodsky wrote 23 poems dedicated to Christmas and New Years. They are usually
united into one Christmas cycle, but they are chronologically divided into two periods. The first
is the earlier, Soviet pre-exile (1961-73) period that included as a whole only 7 poems. These
texts contain a great deal of the poet’s personal sufferings and emotions, his involvement with
life, which was replete with loneliness and emptiness.

The second period was the later, American period (1987-95), which includes 16 poems.
These poems convey a cool eternity with nearly no personal emotional content, there is a certain
aloofness, as if the poet looks on life as a stifled and extraneous observer.

The Christmas cycle developed gradually over the whole of his life – a poem each year
with the exception of a decade's pause between his life in the Soviet Union and in exile. The
cycle speaks rather of the poet himself, the milestones of his formation, development, feelings
and thoughts.

Christmas-associated terms in the poet's work are stylistically neutral, used mostly in the
Christmas poems themselves, aside from the lexeme 'Christmas' found in his 'Verses on the death
of T.S. Eliot'. There they have a temporal meaning: “…Katolik, on dožil do Rožestva”.
For his Christmas poems two phenomena are characteristic:
1). the 'reversal' of the circumstances of the Christmas story,
Волхвы забудут адрес твой.
Не будет звезд над головой.
(dated “1 January 1965”).
2). The 'exchange' of the high with the low:
…нимб заменяют ореолом лжи,
а непорочное зачатье – сплетней,
фигурой умолчанья об отце…
(‘ANNO DOMINI’)
Out of the lexical semantic field 'Christmas' disappear terms such as 'Christmas tree',
'angel', they are not attributes of Brodsky's Christmas whilst the quantity of several other atomic
semantic components in comparison with their appearance in other periods is doubled: star (18),
the heavens (7), night (14), the Child (9), the Magi (6), the King (7). In Brodsky's Nativity, in
comparison with the texts of many other poets, there is a much greater quantity of terms
representing 'weather': snow (9), cold (5), wind (6), blizzard (purga) (3), snowstorm (metel’),
frigid cold (ljutaja struža), sleet (snežnaja krupa). The event in most cases takes place in a 'cave'
(10). In this way the author establishes the most inopportune conditions for the characters in the
Gospel story. In Brodsky's work the dominant tones that give a sense of the festival disappear.
Christmas for the poet is, above all, a miracle, and, secondarily, it is a historical and universal
event. Seven lexemes in the verse we have examined are used in the sense of 'miracle'.
The fragment presented below highlights another particularity in the representation of the
Religious concept.
В Рождество все немного волхвы.

В продовольственных слякоть и давка.

Из-за банки кофейной халвы
производит осаду прилавка
грудой свёртков навьюченный люд:
каждый сам себе царь и верблюд …
И разносчики скромных даров
в транспорт прыгают, ломятся в двери,
исчезают в провалах дворов,
даже зная, что пусто в пещере:
ни животных, ни яслей, ни Той,
над Которою – нимб золотой
(“24 December 1971”)
This fragment is interesting as an interpretation of the Christmas story. Brodsky's
Christmas describes the contemporary situation of celebrating a New Years that has preserved
festive activities without any of the traditional values. He names all of the characters in the
Christmas story and even establishes a sense of the festive, but what is left of the festival itself is
merely 'slush', 'crush (davka)', 'siege at the grocers (osada prilavka)', and there is no sacral
understanding: the cave is empty.

The semantic components 'night' (18) and 'emptiness' (18) are represented in these texts
in quantities predominant enough to represent a nuclear component in this semantic field. We
would add that the complex “navyučennyj ljud' ('tangling people') rhymes with the word
“verbljud” (camel), allowing one to observe a latent comparison: 'people like camels'. In the final
lines he lists the characters and elements which are missing. The motive 'absence, void' is
frequently repeated in Brodsky and is especially productive. In several of his verses Brodsky's
physical absence becomes the idealised form of existence (“Along with the heat in each house”,
“you have forgotten the village lost in the bogs”, “Dedicated to a chair”, “Letter to a Roman
Friend”, ‘The Funeral of Bobo' and many others).

The motive of 'emptiness, absence' is tightly linked with the motive of 'negation' in the
Christmas cycle, reflected in the use of a large quantity of the negative particles ne (25 instances)
and the intensifier ni (18 instances) in the description of the Nativity scene:

Ни волхвов, ни осла,
ни звезды, ни пурги
(‘Спать, рождественский гусь…’)

Волхвы забудут адрес твой.

Не будет звёзд над головой.
(“1 January 1965”)

…даже зная, что пусто в пещере:

ни животных, ни яслей, ни Той,

над Которою — нимб золотой.
Пустота. […]

Кто грядет — никому непонятно:

мы не знаем примет, и сердца
могут вдруг не признать пришлеца.
(“24 December 1971”)
Negation thus sets an atmosphere of void which is in fact the absence of the sacred in the
festival.

In Brodsky's Christmas cycle it is essential to take note of several other particularities

which distinguish the representation of Christmas in Brodsky's works from the representation of
the same subject in that of other poets. Brodsky names the Son and Father: 'fugitive (beglyj)‘,
'homeless (bezdomnyj)‘, 'a convict (kartožanin)' ('In the air hard frost and pine ...', 'Imagine,
striking a match...') Christ indeed, did not have a home: "And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes
have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his
head." (Mat. 8:18-22) He had spared himself from the persecution of Herod, the scribes and
the Pharisees, and from the people of Israel themselves, and in the end he was judged like a
criminal and betrayed to an ignominious death. In the poem 'In the air hard frost and pine...' the
biography of Jesus Christ is transferred into a contemporary criminal lexicon (twice convicted in
the Kresty court, a year and a half spent in exile, Brodsky was acquainted with this world):
 родился в пустыне, песок-солома,
и умер тоже, слыхать, не дома… (citation)
Thus it is worthy of note that Brodsky in his unique artistic world view embodies the
theme of the Nativity in a special way that extinguishes individual semes (i.e., semantic tokens)
in the lexemes and, in contrast, draws new semes into the 'Christmas' lexical semantic field in
opposition to the way in which it is traditionally perceived.
In Brodsky's texts individual metaphors occupy a special place. Basic to the poet's
metaphors and comparisons is juxtaposition, linear superimposition of completely incompatible
lexical items, comparison of things and conceptions drawn from polar opposites, namely, the
religious world and the worlds of war, prison, criminality and narrow-mindedness. In similes
these things acquire no unity, their absolute opposition can be preserved and a general
implicational semantic component can arise in them.

In similes and metaphors the link to the sense does not lie on the surface and emphasise
the link to the sound. It often seems that the poet simply likes the way certain words chime
together aside from their meaning and how far apart their mutual understanding lies. In
Brodsky's poetic texts this is most clearly manifested in sets of paradoxical, homogeneous
members combining religious terms and banal ones. For example, one may mention a feature of
the author's language in the sense that he uses certain lexemes that have both religious as well as
non-religious denotation only in a religious sense, i.e., 'magi', 'everlasting', 'heaven', 'the
heavens', 'star', 'spirit'.

One may determine several specific outlines of how the TASF 'Religion' transforms in
the world-view of an individual author.

1. The most striking feature of the 'Religion' field's semantic transformation that we have
described is the combination in the micro-context of lexical items involving opposites or
contrasting semantics and, as a result, a stylistic lowering of religious terms as a result of
combining this terminology with elements of the vernacular, the primitive, jargon and even
invective. The juxtaposition of linguistic elements can occur on the basis of contradiction: spirit,
idea, spiritual / material, corporeal; eternal / temporary; life / absence of life; singularity /
multiplicity; authentic / imagined; necessary / possible; wise / mad; divine / demonic; high / low;
Christian / pagan. Alternatively this may also occur on the basis of a common semantic
component (especially in similes): 'invisibility', 'anguish', 'solitude', 'the unknown', 'army',
'property of heaven (prinadležnost’ nebu)’, 'executing orders (ispolnenie proučenij)’, 'bowing
down, worship'. Lexical contract and lowering of stylistic register are characteristic of each of
these fragments, but they are more clearly realised in the examples:
 Как падший ангел, глушит водку…(«Элегия")

…и шастающий, как Христос, по синей

глади жук-плавунец («Эклога 5-я»)

То ли пулю в висок, словно в место ошибки перстом, то ли

дернуть отсюдова по морю новым Христом («Конец прекрасной эпохи»)

2. A frequent transformation of the 'Religious' field is the combination of religious

terms with military ones. It seems that this is the confluence of two circumstances. From one in
order to achieve certain artistic and aesthetic goals the more sacral and high co-occurs with the
frightening and murderous. From the other one can identify general semantic components in
these lexical groups: 'protection', 'invisibility' (with the lexemes 'sniper', 'camo-suit'), 'the
hierarchical', 'phantasm' that make juxtapositions possible (9 examples in all). There is one
example of a combination of religious terms with prison terminology: Vot počemu nezrimy
angely […] skol’zjat belofinnami v maskxalatax”. («Эклога 4-я»)

3. Important meaning in Brodsky's creative work is given to fragments with

'crossroads-type situations', 'exchanging the high with the low'. More often than not this 'turn'
surrounds the situation of the Birth of Christ where the poet removes the main figures and
exchanges the sacral with the vulgar. The motif of 'absence' in the Christmas verses could be
reflecting Soviet reality in its absence of sacred holidays.

Волхвы забудут адрес твой, / Не будет звезд над головой …

Даже зная, что пусто в пещере:/ Ни животных, ни яслей, ни Той / Над Которою –
нимб золотой (“24 December 1971”)

4. The poet's texts involve many motivic repetitions. Most repetition occurs with the
Christmas motif. As a linguistic image of the world, for Brodsky it is a core concept. Another
repeated motif is the image of the archangel Gabriel with the trumpet. The author transforms this
apocalyptic image into something with ironic content used in mundane descriptions. In the
context of these verses everyday life and existence for the poet himself is the Apocalypse, the
Judgement Seat: “Ne ty li, Gavriil, podul v trubu, a tko-to gromko laet …” («Большая элегия
Джону Донну»)

5. In Brodsky's works insects (flies, diving beetles, etc.) as symbols of insignificance and
evanescence co-occur with religious images possessing the world of the eternal, spiritual and
ideal. In several textual fragments the poet has conjured the image of the 'heaven of insects': “I
šastajuščij, kak Xristos, po sinej / Gladi žuk-plavunec («Эклога 5-я»)

6. Characteristic of Brodsky is the use of religious language in a mundane context. In

completely divergent passages he is able to use of religious terminology: in the description of a
windmill, a fine breakfast, spaces, household plumbing, and the like. There is frequent use of
juxtaposed religious lexemes and those of the material world on the basis of which the
distinction of the immaterial / material, the sacred / profane, empty. Religious lexemes in the text
and lexemes of the material world are often listed together like members of a common species:

... В камзоле, башмаках, в чулках, в тенях,

за зеркалом, в кровати, в спинке стула,

опять в тазу, в распятьях, в простынях,

в метле у входа, в туфлях. («Большая элегия Джону Донну»)

Швабра, епитрахиль пыль не сотрут…(«Натюрморт»)

Ночной кислород наводняют помехи, молитва, сообщенья о погоде, известия…

(«Литовский ноктюрн»)

7. Several examples with aesthetic significance employ religious terms in technical

metaphors: the lexemes biplane, aeroplane, anti-aircraft gun.

Над одною шестой / В небо ввинчивал с грохотом нимбы свои / Двухголовый святой
(«Ночной полет»)

Цифры на циферблатах скрещиваются

Подобно прожекторам ПВО в поисках серафима («Римские элегии»)

Ибо в открытом море больше не узнаешь

Силуэт парохода, и профиль аэроплана,

Растерявший все нимбы.

Выглядит в вышних странно («Кончится лето. Начнется сентябрь»)

8. One other feature may be called the constant appeal to God in without invective,
essential to Brodsky's poetic texts. The sub-field of this lexeme is subjected to diverse and
unexpected transformations in its connotations and composition: “Točno ‘čižika’ podbiraet ruka
Gospodnja” («Эклога 4-я»).

Determining the features of the TASF's transformation in context can explicate the
important conceptual marks of the authorial, linguistic world-view. This is especially the case
with the materialisation of spiritual objects mixing and, in consequence, levelling the 'exalted' of
the spiritual world with the low, earthly and corporeal.

Particular features of the TASF 'Religion' in Brodsky's creative work is the contrast of
adherence to rules with the laws of creativity. The whole world emerges through the creation
established by the poet not out of its own accord but by the law of his subjective authorial vision.

Research allows one to access how religious lexical units in the poet's texts function in an
unusual manner that transcends the reader's 'normative expectation'. The author transforms the
semantic unit that comprises the TASF 'Religion' according to the contextual juxtaposition of
religious terms with lexical units of differing origins on the basis of the likeness / difference of
semantic components. This grants the implication of semantic dislocation augmenting the
signification of religious lexemes. New semantic components Brodsky adds to the TASF
'Religion' can be illustrated by the following:

The physical condition of sleep, the condition of a victim, space (landscape), furtive
movements (figments), movements of the soul, feelings (weeping, impotence); playful melody,
the prison are conveyed into the associative-semantic sub-field God, the Creator, Lord.

The semantic components and associations sin, incessant chatter, the captive, falling
asleep, weeping, a faceless crowd, killing, are taken into the sub-field Angelic Powers.

Food lines, shopping, greed, are taken into the associative-semantic field Christmas.

Note is taken of the following means of contextual implication which promote a

transformation of the traditional manifestation of the TASF 'Religion':

1. The use of 'oppositional' metaphors (or similes),

2. The creation of sets of paradoxical homogeneous members,

3. Individual authorial composition,

4. Stylistic lowering:
 То ли пулю в висок, словно в место ошибки перстом, то ли дернуть отсюдова по
морю новым Христом («Конец прекрасной эпохи»)

5. Provocative punning rhyme,

И вот я грустный вчиняю иск

тебе, преподобный отец Франциск:

узрев пробоину, как автомат,

я тотчас решил, что сие – стигмат. («Письмо в бутылке»)

Страстная. Ночь.

И вкус во рту от жизни в этом мире,

как будто наследил в чужой квартире

и вышел прочь! («Письмо в бутылке»)

6. New connotative components and compositional possibilities adopted into

the sub-field God, The Lord, Creator.

Не та ль во тьме прикрыла взор рука,

которая повсюду здесь маячит?

Не ты ль, Господь? Пусть мысль моя дика,

но слишком уж высокий голос плачет… («Большая элегия Джону Донну»)

И палец, вращая диск

зимней луны, обретает бесцветный писк

"занято"; и этот звук во много

раз неизбежней, чем голос Бога («Темза в Челси»)

We propose that the features of the TASF 'Religion' are as follows:

1). The unorthodox religiosity of the poet's own personality

2). The particularities of poetic discourse as a whole.

With no presumption of making a complete description of the features which have been noted in
the process analysing the poet's texts expressed in the TASF 'Religion', we note that the
transformation of the field here examined takes place not only at the lexical level. In a broad
sense, grammatical semantics is also transformed in a manner characteristic for the usual
understanding of the TASF 'Religion'. The poet creates his own world where the categories of
space, time, existence, are creatively filled with the authorial vision.

The passages with semantic conditions that use religious lexemes denoting religious
objects and understanding are characterised by the same 'reverse' semantics which occurs at the
lexical level. The author's religious lexemes are 'laden' in the conditions of 'sleep', 'void', 'the
muted', 'the isolated'. There is a mixture of polar opposites set in existential structures: 'being'
of the religious and the 'being' of the 'void', 'death' and 'sleep'. In this way incompatibility and
heterogeneity occur not only in lexical composition, but also in subtextual elements, in the text's
deep semantics.

Research has exposed new aspects of Brodsky's work as a poet of deep religious
sentiment who set his work at the fulcrum of the Christian word upon which the order of his
world-conception functions. The Bible is one of the organisational principles of Brodsky's poetry
– a poet formed in the Postmodern and Post-Christian era.

The importance of this research is confirmed not only by our observations of the
functioning of religious terms in the work of Joseph Brodsky, but also in that of several of the
Silver Age poets. Setting examples of Brodsky's use of religious terms alongside these poets
allows us to speak of how specific use of the provocative (epatage) with religious language is
present not only in Brodsky but is, as a whole, characteristic of the poetic language of the Silver
Age. Furthermore, we have even observed repetition of provocative constructions. One may say
that Brodsky, a student and inheritor of the Silver Age's poetic tradition (as research has noted),
draws on their experience.

It appears that the features of the TASF 'Religion' noted here in Brodsky's texts are also
characteristic of the texts of Maria Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelstam and other
poets. The contexts we observe with certain religious lexemes presented in the Dictionary of the
Language of Russian Poetry in the 20th Century and in the poetic corpus NKRJa. From the
aggregate poetic contexts of the authors selected from the Silver Age, passages that illustrate
more vividly a non-normative conception of religious language have been selected (for example,
The Angel-Table Waiter).
 For Brodsky's texts and the representatives of the Silver Age there are characteristic
repetitions of certain forms:

1. The Angel-Table Waiter. In Brodsky:

Комната с абажуром. Ангелы вдалеке

галдят, точно высыпавшие из кухни официанты

(Zamërzšij kisel’nij bereg…)

In Kuzmin:

Ангел служит при буфете,

Но в оранжевой полоске

Виден быстрый нежный тóрок

У послушливых ушей.

(Zvezda Afrodity)

The juxtaposition of lexemes in context emerges on the basis of the common semantic
component: 'to serve'.

Using the composition 'archangel' ('angel') and 'trumpet' in relation to the biblical text. In
Tsvetaeva:

Ты, курчавый,

Архангелом вопишь в трубу.

Ты -- над Московскою Державой

Вздымаешь радугу – дугу

(Brat’ya)

In Pasternak:

Степь, как архангел, трубила в трубу,

Ветер горланил протяжно и властно

(Proščan’e)

У Блока:

Навстречу жаждущей мечте

 Лучи метнулись заревые

И трубный ангел в высоте

(Kogda ya prozreval vpervye…)

Замолкли ангельские трубы,

Немотствует дневная ночь

(Kogda ya prozreval vpervye…)

In Brodsky:

Спят всадники. Архангел спит с трубой.

И кони спят, во сне качаясь плавно.

И херувимы все -- одной толпой,

обнявшись, спят под сводом церкви Павла

(Bol’šaja èlegija Džonu Donnu)

The transformation of the TASF 'Religion' is also typical for the poets of the Silver Age and,
probably, is a feature of the transformations characteristic of poetry as a whole. This is perhaps
because the sphere of religiosity is closely linked with verbal creativity: both from the onset
imply service to the Word (the Word as God or the word as Poetry). In this case one can recall
the whole of Russian religious and philosophical literature as starting from the Gospel of John
and expressed by Joseph Brodsky himself.

Bibliography:

1. Brodsky, J. A. Stixotvorenija i poémy, 2 vols, 2nd edition. L. V. Losev, Ed. St.

Petersburg: Puškinsky Dom Press, Vita Nova, 2012.

2. V. P. Grigoriev, Ed. Slovar' jazyka russkoj poézii XX veka. Moscow, 2003.

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This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial
or not-for-profit sectors.
 About the Author:

Olga Alexandrovna Gasselblat is a post-doctoral lecturer in the Russian Language

Department of the A. I. Herzen Russian State Pedagogical University, St. Petersburg.
olyah77@mail.ru

Gasselblat OA – Post-graduate lecturer. Russian State Pedagogical University

AI Herzen, St. Petersburg.