Gorbunov and Gorchakov

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Gorbunov and Gorchakov (Template:Langx) is a poem by Russian and English poet, essayist, dramatist Joseph Brodsky.

Composition and plot

Gorbunov and Gorchakov is a forty-page long poem.[1]Template:Rp

Gorbunov and Gorchakov are patients in a mental asylum near Leningrad.[2]Template:Rp The poem consists of lengthy conversations between these two patients in the Soviet psychiatric prison as well as between each of them separately and the interrogating psychiatrists.[1]Template:Rp The topics vary from the taste of the cabbage served for supper to the meaning of life and Russia's destiny.[1]Template:Rp

In Sanna Turoma’s words, the psychiatric hospital of Gorbunov and Gorchakov as a metaphor of the Soviet State is one example of Brodsky’s perception of the Kafkaesque absurdity of Soviet surreality.[3]Template:Rp Gorbunov and Gorchakov mirrors the balance that Brodsky struck when he was compelled to weigh the benefits and dangers of psychiatric diagnosis in his dealings with the Soviet state.[4]

In the poem, fourteen cantos are named in a such way that the table of contents in Russian language has the rhyming structure of the sonnet:[5]Template:Rp

  1. Gorbunov and Gorchakov
  2. Gorbunov and Gorchakov
  3. Gorbunov in the Night
  4. Gorchakov and the Doctors
  5. A Song in the Third Person
  6. Gorbunov and Gorchakov
  7. Gorbunov and Gorchakov
  8. Gorchakov in the Night
  9. Gorbunov and the Doctors
  10. A Conversation on the Porch
  11. Gorbunov and Gorchakov
  12. Gorbunov and Gorchakov
  13. Conversations about the Sea
  14. Conversation in a Conversation

History

At the very end of 1963, Brodsky was committed for observation to the Kashchenko psychiatric hospital in Moscow where he stayed for several days.[5]Template:Rp A few weeks later, his second hospitalization took place: on 13 February he was arrested in Leningrad and on 18 February the Dzerzhinsky District Court sent him for psychiatric examination to ‘Pryazhka’ (Psychiatric Hospital No. 2[6] located on the Template:Ill) where he spent about three weeks, from 18 February to 13 March.[5]Template:Rp These two stints in psychiatric establishments formed the experience underlying Gorbunov and Gorchakov called by Brodsky ‘an extremely serious work.’.[5]Template:Rp The poem was written between 1965 and 1968 and published in 1970.[7]Template:Rp

Translations

There are several English translations of the poem including one by Carl Ray Proffer with Assya Kumesky,[8] one by Harry Thomas[1]Template:Rp and one by Alan Myers.

References

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External links

Template:Joseph Brodsky