BOOKS
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himself.
If
a critic is disposed to engage in any kind of textual analy–
sis, he could do worse than to take these essays as a model.
There is also a very moving memoir about his early life with his
parents, with the seductive title of "In a Room and a Half," the writ–
ing of which jumps at you as he recalls his boyhood through a film of
sadness and nostalgia. His description, peppered with a sprinkling
of the impishness of the rebellious boy charged with hooliganism by
the Soviet police, is particularly engaging.
But the most provocative piece in the book, called "Catastrophes
in the Air," is a biting and disturbing probe into the quality of Soviet
fiction since the Revolution. The essay stretches the limits of criticism
as it goes far beyond the usual critiques of a literature produced in
what Brodsky believes to be the most tyrannical and cruelest state in
all of history. We know about the tragic fate of the arts in a police
state; and we saw the writing of the dissidents as a reassuring sign of
intellectual and personal courage. But Brodsky goes more deeply into
the destruction of the Russian mind and of the bold and inventive
spirit that produced the very great Russian literary tradition. Brodsky
argues that the vulgarity and the lies of the ruling ideology not only
have put their stamp on the obedient Soviet writers but also have af–
fected the imagination of the dissidents. It is not that Brodsky fails to
appreciate the wholly admirable achievements of the dissidents, many
of whom are his friends. But, says Brodsky, instead of continuing the
dissonant tradition of nineteenth-century Russian fiction, that reached
its peak in the novels of Dostoevsky (whom, it will be recalled, Nietz–
sche called the "great psychologist"), the dissidents have been satisfied
with heroic gestures of defiance and rejection. They failed, argues
Brodsky, to break out of the mold of a banality and vulgarity that is
imposed on the entire society. Their rejection ofthe political system,
according to Brodsky, uses the same literary means that the official
writers employ to conform to the regime. This is a view I find con–
vincing, even though I do not have an intimate knowledge of the lit–
erary and political atmosphere in Russia. But I did sense the back–
wardness of Russian prose today. In a review I wrote in
Commentary
of Pasternak's
Doctor Zhivago,
I indicated that it was a conventional
novel, despite its heroic intentions . I thought that even the boldest
Soviet writers were cut off from Western literature; but I was not
prepared to make the sweeping indictment Brodsky now advances.
The implications of Brodsky's criticism of Soviet writing and
the culture that produced it reach beyond a political condemnation of
the Soviet Union. They go to the heart of the dilemmas of Western
