Joseph Brodsky’s ‘New stanzas to Augusta’ [‘Novye stansy k Avguste’]. Another suicide attempt

Abstract

   The article is devoted to J. Brodsky’s poem ‘New stanzas to Augusta’ [‘Novye stansy k Avguste’] (1964), which later gave its name to the collection printed in 1981. In her thorough analysis of the poem’s text and poetics, the author points out its pretexts (G. G. Byron, D. Alighieri) and intertexts, reconstructs the facts of the poet’s biography at the core of ‘New stanzas,’ and compares various interpretations of the work (L. Kolobaeva’s, L. Losev’s, and V. Polukhina’s, among others). The title’s reference to Byron may suggest that, like the English original, the form of the ‘new stanzas’ will be that of the lyrical hero addressing his beloved (Augusta). However, Brodsky’s lyrical narrative reveals a different purpose — rather than an excited lyrical monologue dedicated to a new Augusta, it is an imitation of a written confession, an attempt to use a seemingly epistolary form to talk about all that had befallen him lately (the betrayal by his beloved and a friend, the arrest, the trial, and the exile). The scholar believes that Brodsky’s poem contains an implied plot of a contemplated suicide and the overcoming of this intention by talking to ‘Augusta’ — his star and love.