The Mortal Motives of the Poem “I Do Not Ask for Immortality from Death...” by J. Brodsky

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of Joseph Brodsky’s poem “I Do Not Ask for Immortality from Death…” (1961), which has not previously been subjected to a detailed philological analysis, a number of images and motives of which cause discrepancies. The research is undertaken in order to comprehend the role of the theme and motives of death in the formation of the poetic world of this early poem and later poetic texts by Brodsky. The authors differentiate the synchronic and diachronic approaches to the perception of the text of the poem “I Do Not Ask for Immortality from Death…” and identify the constants of the artistic perception of the lyrical hero, the author’s alter ego at different stages of the poet’s work. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the fact that for the first time it deciphered the unclarity that caused serious difficulties for critics (the images of the “pink corner” and the “crushed spider”) and emphasized the conditions for the emergence of images of death, time, and immortality in Brodsky’s texts that are cross-cutting for all creativity. As a result, it has been proved that the nature of the philosophical mood of the lyrical hero and the poetic world of Brodsky’s poems as a whole is largely related to his psychophysical state, an early fatal diagnosis - “heart defect”.