Madness as Balancing Act in Joseph Brodsky's “Gorbunov and Gorchakov”

Abstract

This article examines the psychological connotations of Joseph Brodsky's “art of estrangement” in light of the psychiatric evaluations the poet underwent in 1963 and 1964 and his depiction of madness in the poem “Gorbunov and Gorchakov” (1965–68). Several years before the punitive uses of Soviet psychiatry came to the attention of samizdat readers, Brodsky was forced to weigh the dangers and benefits of psychiatric diagnosis in his dealings with the state. The balance that he struck is mirrored in “Gorbunov and Gorchakov,” in which the state's claim that “being determines consciousness” and Brodsky's claim that the “estranged” consciousness determines being are personified and placed in dialogue. The poem, which is set in a psychiatric hospital, indicates that the “art of estrangement” can lead to madness if consciousness strikes out too far on its own. By engaging with being in life and work, Brodsky kept consciousness grounded for the sake of sanity and self-definition.

Footnotes

• 1

  Joseph Brodsky, “Less Than One,” in his Less Than One: Selected Essays (New York, 1986), 3.

• 2

  Marx writes in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” See Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York, 1978), 4. Despite Brodsky's translation of bytie as “existence” and opredeliaet as “conditions” in the English-language “Less Than One,” I use the terms “being” and “determines” throughout my analysis.

• 3

  Brodsky, “Less Than One,” 3. Lev Loseff notes Brodsky's shift away from the conventional “heart” of Russian lyric poetry and toward the “brain” as the seat of poetic identity. See Loseff, “On Hostile Ground: Madness and Madhouse in Joseph Brodsky's ‘Gorbunov and Gorchakov,’” in Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture, ed. Ilya Vinitsky and Angela Brintlinger (Toronto, 2007), 94. Loseff makes the same point in alternate versions of his work on “Gorbunov and Gorchakov,” which include his “Shchit Perseia: Literaturnaia biografiia Iosifa Brodskogo,” in Iosif Brodskii, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, ed. Lev Losev, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 2011), 1:61–62; and Iosif Brodskii: Opyt literaturnoi biografii (Moscow, 2006), 141. The latter work has also appeared as Joseph Brodsky: A Literary Life, trans. Jane Ann Miller (New Haven, 2011).

• 4

  Brodsky left school at 15 and obtained a medical exemption from peacetime military service, as will be discussed below.

• 5

  Brodsky, “Less Than One,” 3.

• 6

  Iosif Brodskii, “Men'she edinitsy,” trans. V. Golyshev, Inostrannaia literatura, 1992, no. 10:234.

• 7

  See Viktor Shklovskii, “Iskusstvo kak priem,” in his Gamburgskii schet: Stat'i – vospominaniia – esse (1914–1933) (Moscow, 1990), 58–72.

• 8

  Svetlana Boym, “Estrangement as a Lifestyle: Shklovsky and Brodsky,” in Exile and Creativity: Signposts, Travelers, Outsiders, Backward Glances, ed. Susan Rubin Suleiman (Durham, NC, 1998), 254.

• 9

  Boym notes that the idea of the biography-less poet is challenged in Russia, where poets have often participated in creating their own biographical legends and where critical concepts such as Roland Barthes's “death of the author” were made lethally literal during Stalin's purges. See her Death in Quotation Marks: Cultural Myths of the Modern Poet (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 9–10. On the implications of Boym's observation for Brodsky see David M. Bethea, Joseph Brodsky and the Creation of Exile (Princeton, 1994), 11–12.

• 10

  Christina Daub and Mike Hammer, “Joseph Brodsky: An Interview,” in Joseph Brodsky: Conversations, ed. Cynthia L. Haven (Jackson, MS, 2002), 155.

• 11

  Tomas Ventslova and Iosif Brodskii, “Chuvstvo perspektivy,” in Iosif Brodskii: Bol'shaia kniga interv'iu, ed. Valentina Polukhina (Moscow, 2000), 343. See also Devid Betea and Iosif Brodskii, “Naglaia propoved’ idealizma,” in ibid., 537–38.

• 12

  The samizdat dissemination of reports of psychiatric abuse began at the end of the 1960s. Yet according to Vladimir Bukovsky, stories about punitive hospitalization were already circulating in the early 1960s, and would likely have reached Brodsky's ears. Vladimir Bukovsky, interview with author, Cambridge, England, March 27, 2012.

• 13

  Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway, Psychiatric Terror: How Soviet Psychiatry Is Used to Suppress Dissent (New York, 1977), 246–47. On Soviet punitive psychiatry see also Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway, Soviet Psychiatric Abuse: The Shadow over World Psychiatry (London, 1984); and Theresa C. Smith and Thomas A. Oleszczuk, No Asylum: State Psychiatric Repression in the Former USSR (New York, 1996).

• 14

  Victor Nekipelov, Institute of Fools: A Dissident's Memoir of His Detention in the Most Notorious Soviet Psychiatric Institution, trans. Marco Carynnyk and Marta Horban (New York, 1980), 21.

• 15

  Ibid., 29.

• 16

  The definition of this diagnosis will be discussed below, along with its legal implications.

• 17

  Losev, Iosif Brodskii, 37, 291n.77; Dzhon Kopper, “Amkherst Kolledzh: 1974–1975,” in Iosif Brodskii: Trudy i dni, ed. Lev Losev and Petr Vail’ (Moscow, 1998), 53; “Statsionarnaia ekspertiza,” March 11, 1964, Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 8131, op. 31, d. 99616, l. 58ob.

• 18

  Loseff, “On Hostile Ground,” 91–92. See also Losev, “Shchit Perseia,” 37; idem, Iosif Brodskii, 80, 86.

• 19

  “Statsionarnaia ekspertiza,” ll. 58ob.–59.

• 20

  “Zasedanie suda Dzerzhinskogo raiona g. Leningrada,” March 18, 1964, GARF, f. 8131, op. 31, d. 99617, l. 232.

• 21

  “Statsionarnaia ekspertiza,” l. 59ob.

• 22

  The legal standard for non-imputability (nevmeniaemost'), as defined in Article 11 of the Russian Criminal Code, was the inability to evaluate and control one's actions as a result of mental disturbance or illness. See Ministerstvo iustisii RSFSR, Ugolovnyi kodeks RSFSR: Ofitsial'nyi tekst s izmeneniiami na 1 avgusta 1962 g. i s prilozheniem postateino sistematizirovannykh materialov (Moscow, 1962), 9–10.

• 23

  “Statsionarnaia ekspertiza,” l. 59ob.

• 24

  Ibid.

• 25

  Ibid.

• 26

  Ibid., l. 59.

• 27

  Ibid., l. 59ob.

• 28

  Ia. M. Kalashnik, Sudebnaia psikhiatriia (Moscow, 1961), 305.

• 29

  Ibid., 307–8.

• 30

  Ibid., 316.

• 31

  The psychiatrist Vladimir Lupandin writes that Andrei Snezhnevskii, director of the Institute of Psychiatry of the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences and chief architect of the “sluggish” schizophrenia diagnosis, told him that he had declared Brodsky schizophrenic in 1972, when the question of the poet's expulsion from the Soviet Union had been brought before him. See Lupandin, “Karatel'naia psikhiatriia: Vospominaniia ochevidtsa,”Moskovskie novosti, August 12, 1990, cited in Loseff, “On Hostile Ground,” 92.

• 32

  Loseff, “On Hostile Ground,” 91. See also Losev, “Shchit Perseia,” 37; and idem, Iosif Brodskii, 140.

• 33

  “Zasedanie suda Dzerzhinskogo raiona g. Leningrada,” l. 238.

• 34

  “Spravka,” February 15, 1964, GARF, f. 8131, op. 31, d. 99616, l. 6.

• 35

  “Zasedanie suda Dzerzhinskogo raiona g. Leningrada,” l. 239.

• 36

  Ibid., l. 242.

• 37

  Frida Vigdorova to Roman Andreevich Rudenko, February 20, 1964, GARF, f. 8131, op. 31, d. 99616, ll. 10–13. Loseff notes that Anna Akhmatova's diary contains a draft of a similar letter citing Brodsky's “schizoid psychopathy” (“On Hostile Ground,” 92). See also Losev, Iosif Brodskii, 86.

• 38

  “Zasedanie suda Dzerzhinskogo raiona g. Leningrada,” l. 232.

• 39

  Loseff, “On Hostile Ground,” 92–93. See also Losev, “Shchit Perseia,” 37; and idem, Iosif Brodskii, 73, 86.

• 40

  Loseff, “On Hostile Ground,” 92. See also Losev, “Shchit Perseia,” 61; and idem, Iosif Brodskii, 141.

• 41

  Helen Benedict, “Flight from Predictability: Joseph Brodsky,”Antioch Review 43 (Winter 1985): 13–14.

• 42

  Lars Kleberg, Svante Veiler, and Iosif Brodskii, “Ia pozvolial sebe vse, krome zhalob,” in Iosif Brodskii: Bol'shaia kniga interv'iu, 429. The phrase “violation of proportions” (narushenie proportsii) is from Brodsky's telling of the same anecdote in Solomon Volkov, Dialogi s Iosifom Brodskim: Literaturnye biografii (Moscow, 1998), 71.

• 43

  For Brodsky's remark on his psychiatric experiences see Jane B. Katz, Artists in Exile (New York, 1983), 52. On the poet's self-pathologization see Losev, “Shchit Perseia,” 7; and Loseff, “On Hostile Ground,” 93.

• 44

  Brodsky, “Less Than One,” 21.

• 45

  Carl R. Proffer, “A Stop in the Madhouse: Brodsky's ‘Gorbunov and Gorchakov,’”Russian Literature Triquarterly 1 (Fall 1971): 342–51.

• 46

  Ibid., 348–49.

• 47

  Loseff, “On Hostile Ground,” 94, 99. See also Losev, “Shchit Perseia,” 66; and idem, Iosif Brodskii, 146.

• 48

  Loseff, “On Hostile Ground,” 94, 97–98. See also Losev, “Shchit Perseia,” 64–65; and idem, Iosif Brodskii, 141–44.

• 49

  For a detailed discussion of the formal attributes of “Gorbunov and Gorchakov” see Losev, “Shchit Perseia,” 60–66; Loseff, “On Hostile Ground,” 93–99; and Losev, Iosif Brodskii, 140–46.

• 50

  Brodskii, “Gorbunov i Gorchakov,” in his Stikhotvoreniia i poemy 1:222. All translations of passages from “Gorbunov and Gorchakov” are mine.

• 51

  Ibid., 225–26.

• 52

  Birgit Fait and Iosif Brodskii, “U menia net printsipov, est’ tol'ko nervy …,” in Iosif Brodskii: Bol'shaia kniga interv'iu, 566–67.

• 53

  On Brodsky's criticism of both Marx and Freud see Bethea, Joseph Brodsky, 42; Valentina Polukhina, Joseph Brodsky: A Poet for Our Time (Cambridge, England, 1989), 55, 100; and Losev, Iosif Brodskii, 99–100, 143, 162, 173.

• 54

  Brodskii, “Gorbunov i Gorchakov,” 217.

• 55

  Ibid. Brodsky laments the photograph-like fragmentation of memory in his 1985 essay “In a Room and a Half,” reflecting his identification with Gorchakov, whose dreams are similarly photographic and bound to being. See Brodsky, “In a Room and a Half,” in Less Than One: Selected Essays, 492.

• 56

  Brodskii, “Gorbunov i Gorchakov,” 218.

• 57

  On the centralization of Soviet physiology under the aegis of Pavlovian theory in 1950 see Ethan Pollock, Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars (Princeton, 2006), 136–67. On the 1951 centralization of Soviet neuropathology and psychiatry, specifically, see George Windholz, “Soviet Psychiatrists Under Stalinist Duress: The Design for a ‘New Soviet Psychiatry’ and Its Demise,” History of Psychiatry 10:39 (1999): 329–47; and Benjamin Zajicek, “Scientific Psychiatry in Stalin's Soviet Union: The Politics of Modern Medicine and the Struggle to Define ‘Pavlovian’ Psychiatry, 1939–1953” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2009), 369–409.

• 58

  Brodskii, “Gorbunov i Gorchakov,” 223.

• 59

  Ibid., 223–24.

• 60

  Ibid., 236.

• 61

  Ibid., 228–29.

• 62

  Ibid., 232.

• 63

  Ibid.

• 64

  Ibid., 225.

• 65

  Ibid.

• 66

  Ibid., 219.

• 67

  Ibid., 230.

• 68

  Ibid., 222. The words “cranberry syrup” pay tribute to Aleksandr Blok, who, Loseff notes, lived on the Priazhka embankment where the hospital stands (Loseff, “On Hostile Ground,” 91; Brodskii, “Gorbunov i Gorchakov,” 514 [notes]). In Blok's 1906 play The Little Showbooth, a clown reveals he is “bleeding cranberry juice.” See Blok, “Balaganchik,” in his Sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh (Moscow, 2009), 4:18–19.

• 69

  Benedict, “Flight from Predictability,” 13; Losev, “Shchit Perseia,” 39; Loseff, “On Hostile Ground,” 92; Losev, Iosif Brodskii, 140.

• 70

  Brodskii, “Gorbunov i Gorchakov,” 222.

• 71

  Ibid., 244.

• 72

  Losev, “Shchit Perseia,” 41; idem, Iosif Brodskii, 100.

• 73

  Brodskii, “Gorbunov i Gorchakov,” 236.

• 74

  On the concept of a “part of speech” see Polukhina, Joseph Brodsky, 159, 174.

• 75

  Brodskii, “Gorbunov i Gorchakov,” 236.

• 76

  Ibid., 237.

• 77

  Ibid., 239.

• 78

  Ibid., 240.

• 79

  Ibid., 232.

• 80

  Ibid., 243.

• 81

  Brodsky, “Less Than One,” 11–12.

• 82

  Ibid., 21.