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deliberately. By telling his family story in his adopted language,
he gave his parents a symbolic presence in America, in defiance
of the Russian government which had steadfastly denied them
permission to visit their only son in the U.S. Having been denied
giving them even a proper farewell, Brodsky shared his new
life with his parents by translating their late lives into English,
the language he expected would bear his own legacy forth
into posterity. English becomes a family plot, of sorts. A story
of posthumous liberation from Russia, the land of their birth,
and its pitiless bureaucracy. I find the process of translating a
poet’s work often carries with it this sort of memorial function,
whether that poet is alive or not. The translation carries with it
the looming awareness that we are not present to the original
poem bearing the poet’s living breath. But we are also moved
to celebrate the poem’s rebirth in a new tongue (if not a new
language); the translator is midwife to his own offspring.
Gregory Pardlo is an associate editor for the literary journal Callaloo and
a contributing editor for Painted Bride Quarterly in addition to being
a widely published poet and translator. He received an NEA Translation
Fellowship in 1996 and has served on NEA grants panels.
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National Endowment for the Arts