Politics/Poetics

Abstract

Brodsky once happened to say: ‘Politics and poetry do have something in common — the letter p and the letter o’. A literalist might point out other common letters as well, and also that poetry in general, and Brodsky’s poetry in particular, always has political motifs — whether hidden or exposed — and that any text influences its reader’s political conduct in some measure. Brodsky is merely reminding us here of poetry’s autonomy and priority as a type of ideological activity.¹ This is particularly important for him as a Russian poet, inasmuch as the tradition of dealing with literature in political terms has been unusually long-lived on Russian soil.