The Complicity of the Real: Affinities in the Poetics of Brodsky and Mandelstam

Joseph Brodsky’s poetry has a strong metaphysical tendency, and his work has often been discussed in relation to the achievement of the English Metaphysical poets. The recognition of this kinship, initially at least, is attributable, on thematic and historical grounds, to the presence of such names as John Donne and Mary Stuart in the titles of his major poetic compositions. Brodsky’s interest in Donne (and the historical period of the Metaphysicals), of course, is far deeper than any superficial link afforded by the title of an elegy or a sonnet sequence. The substance and dialectical movement of Brodsky’s thought is reminiscent of pervasive preoccupations in the meditative verse of his English Metaphysical predecessors.