Roman Epistles as a Genre Form in J. Brodskys Poetry
In the literature of ancient Rome the emergence of the epistolary genre was due to the widespread spread of epistolary creativity during the period of the end of the era of civil wars and the formation of the empire. Epistola became the only means of communication and obtaining information in the giant Mediterranean power, whose territories were located on three continents. The letters, which initially had a purely private character, acquired information content, socio-political and philosophical content, the value of a public historical document and, finally, the format of a propaganda leaflet during Cicero’s lifetime. Poets of the “Golden Age” actively used the wide possibilities of the epistolary genre. Horace creates an entire book of “Epistles”, filling it with a wide variety of content, from philosophy and didactics to irony and ridicule. Ovid continues the line of love outpourings in the book “Heroids”, creating in the spirit of rhetorical exercises the messages of mythological heroines to their lovers who left them. Joseph Brodsky often worked not only with ancient plots and motifs, which are described by Western and domestic literary scholars, but also with forms: genres, poetic meters, strophe, mainly of Roman literature, which was more accessible to him for ideological reasons. The Roman Empire as a political construct seemed more understandable to the poet due to its proximity to Russia and the United States. Solving, as it seemed to him, abstract poetic problems, he, in his own way, entered into competition with the poets of the “golden age” and, at the same time, answered the pressing questions of our time. The actualization of the ancient genre of epistles in Brodsky’s poetry will be the subject of discussion in this article. The best examples of the epistolary genre are Ovid and Horace, and their beloved teacher is Pushkin. What is present here is not so much imitation and stylization, but a direct dialogue that Brodsky, living in the postmodern era, conducts with mentors, often resorting to direct quotation, allusions, stylization, and also uses the method of reincarnation, immersion in the era and culture.
