Joseph Brodsky was a great contrarian and believed, against the received wisdom of our day, that good writing could survive translation. He was right, I think, though you had to wonder when you saw how badly his own work fared in English. But then perhaps the Russians hadn't expelled a great poet so much as exposed us to one of their virulent personality cults. Yet Brodsky's essays are interesting. Composed in a rather heroically determined English, clumsily phrased and idiomatically challenged, they are still inventive and alive. There are suggestive analyses of favorite poems by Hardy, Rilke, and Frost in this book, and a moving meditation on the figure of Marcus Aurelius. Though too often Brodsky goes on at self-indulgent length, he usually recaptures our attention with a characteristic aside: "The fact that we are livingdoes not mean we are not sick."

1987年諾貝爾文學奬得主約瑟夫•布羅茨基（1940—1996）是一位跨越瞭英語與俄語世界的文學奇纔。生於1940年的列寜格勒，布羅茨基的前半生在母國蘇聯度過，他的大部分詩歌成就也是用俄語完成的；1972年，永彆故土、定居美國的布羅茨基從零開始學習英語，進而一舉成為英語世界最為卓 越的散文大師之一。誠如他在一次采訪中所給齣的自我認知：“我是一名猶太人；一名俄語詩人；一名英語散文傢。” 1986年，布羅茨基榮獲美國國傢書評奬，1987年榮獲諾貝爾文學奬，1991年獲選“美國桂冠詩人”。其代錶作品有詩集《詩選》、《詞類》、《緻烏拉尼亞》，散文集《小於一》、《悲傷與理智》等。