Speaking for Language
Speaking for Language J.M. Coetzee February 1, 1996 issue Reviewed: On Grief and Reason: Essays by Joseph Brodsky In 1986 Joseph Brodsky published Less than One , a book of essays. Some of the essays were translated from the Russian; others he wrote directly in English, showing that his command of the language was growing to be near-native. In two cases, writing in English had a symbolic importance to Brodsky: in a heartfelt homage to W. H. Auden, who greatly helped him after he was forced to leave Russia in 1972, and whom he regards as the greatest poet in English of the century; and in a memoir of his parents, whom he had to leave behind in Leningrad, and who, despite repeated petitions to the authorities, were never gran...