Joseph Brodsky.

Joseph Brodsky survived the Nazi siege of Leningrad during World War II. His father Aleksandr Brodsky was a professional photographer and his mother Maria Volpert was an interpreter, providing an intellectual atmosphere. He studied languages to read banned Western authors.

At 15, he dropped out of school in an act of disobedience against the Soviet system. Various jobs followed, including work in a morgue at the Kresty prison. At 16, he began writing poetry and translations. In 1961, he met the poet Anna Akhmatova at her dacha in Komarovo. She praised his poetry as enchanting and urged him to keep writing.

Brodsky’s first poetry collection was published in the United States in 1965 while he was still under Soviet censorship. The poem Isaac and Avraam 1963 led to his arrest for unofficial publication. Authorities tried him and sentenced him to five years of hard labor in 1964. Following protests from Anna Akhmatova and Jean-Paul Sartre, Soviet authorities commuted his sentence.

He emigrated to the United States in 1972, where he taught as a visiting professor at several universities. The Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987 followed, and he served as US Poet Laureate from 1991 to 1992. He also founded a Russian restaurant in New York and made a documentary film about Venice.

Brodsky’s first love was artist Marianna Basmanova, who inspired a collection of love poems. Their civil union remained unregistered due to Soviet obstruction, and their son Andrei was born in 1965. Brodsky never reunited with her or his son until after the Soviet collapse when Andrei visited New York.

In 1990, Brodsky married Maria Sozzani, a Sorbonne student of Russian-Italian heritage, and they had a daughter. He died of a heart attack on January 28, 1996 in Brooklyn Heights. He was buried on the island of San Michele in Venice, near the tomb of Sergei Diaghilev.

The Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987 and his service as US Poet Laureate anchor Brodsky’s legacy. Scholars still study and translate his works. In 2012, he was featured on a US postage stamp as part of the 20th Century Poets series, and in 2015 on a Russian stamp honoring the 75th anniversary of his birth. His poetry resisted Soviet censorship and his eloquent essays remain central to his reputation.