Brodsky Abroad: Empire, Tourism, Nostalgia

306 Pages·2010·1.72 MB·English

by  Sanna Turoma

Brodsky Abroad

Brodsky Abroad
Empire, Tourism, Nostalgia
Sanna Turoma
the university of wisconsin press
Publication of this volume has been made possible, in part, through support from the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
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5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Turoma, Sanna.
Brodsky abroad: empire, tourism, nostalgia / Sanna Turoma.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn978-0-299-23634-2 (pbk.: alk. paper) — isbn978-0-299-23633-5 (e-book)
1. Brodsky, Joseph, 1940–1996—Travel. I. Title.
pg3479.4.r64t87 2010
811´.54—dc22
2009040639
for
Tony, Anniina, and Mummi

Contents
Acknowledgments / ix
Note on Translations and Abbreviations / xi
Introduction / 3
1 Exile, Tourist, Traveler / 17
2 A Travel Guide to Imperial Mythologies: Leningrad / 63
3 A Postcolonial Elegy: Mexico / 84
4 The Metropolitan Man and the Third World: Rio de Janeiro / 105
5 Time, Space, and Orientalism: Istanbul / 118
6 Staging Cultural Differences: Venice / 152
Conclusion / 224
Notes / 229
Bibliography / 271
Index / 284

Acknowledgments
In 1995 Joseph Brodsky visited Finland and read his poetry at the Helsinki
Festival. Watermark, his book-long essay on Venice, had just been translated
into Finnish. I was present at a press conference and witnessed the nervous
fingering of cigarettes and idiosyncratic English, which had by then become
his trademark.
Years later I took up the task of writing a dissertation on Brodsky’s poetry.
This book is an outcome of that work. The first steps of the work were taken
under the guidance of Professor Pekka Pesonen and Professor Natalia Basch -
makoff. I am grateful to both for their help and support. The discussions and
activities shared by the junior and senior research staffat the Department of
Slavonic and Baltic Literatures and Languages at the University of Helsinki
were a necessary starting point for my further explorations in the field. A
major bulk of the research for this book was conducted at Columbia Univer-
sity in New York, where I had a chance to work with the graduate community
at the Slavic Department in 2000–2003. I benefited greatly from the rigor-
ous academic environment at the Columbia graduate school, some of whose
members have remained close colleagues and friends. I especially wish to
thank Professor Boris Gasparov, my instructor, for his scholarly generosity
and guidance. The two examiners of my dissertation, Professor David Bethea
and Doctor Aleksandra Smith, shared with me their enlightened ideas about
Brodsky and their invaluable commentary on my work. I am especially in-
debted to Professor Bethea for his encouragement and support in turning the
dissertation into a book. Professor Bożena Shallcross, one of the reviewers of
ix