Authors
Natasha Rulyova1; 1 University of Birmingham, UK Discussion
A lot of Joseph Brodsky’s writing in prose and in verse is inspired by his travels. Some of his poems have been described as travelogues because they are linked to particular places visited by the poet, such as ‘December in Florence’, ‘In England’, ‘Lithuanian Nocturne’. A few poems have direct references to the genre of the postcard in their title, specifically: ‘A Postcard’, ‘A Postcard from France’, ‘Postcard from Lisbon’, ‘A Postcard from the City of K.’ [‘Otkrytka iz goroda K.’], and ‘A Postcard with a Toast’ [‘Otkrytka s tostom’]. Most of these texts have already been analyzed in detail, while Brodsky’s actual numerous postcards, which he sent from all over the world to his friends and acquaintances have so far remained untouched by researchers. This paper will shed light on what Brodsky’s postcards contain, where they were sent from and who were their lucky recipients by analyzing a selection of postcards held in the Brodsky archive at the Beinecke Library, Yale University. The essay will partly draw on Jan-Ola Östman’s discussion of postcards as a ‘semi-public’ media because they are ‘explicitly personal, but implicitly public’. Brodsky’s postcards share these characteristics, even though some of them are written not to just one person but a group of friends; they contain personal notes, drawings and draft poems. The paper will examine selected postcards from different periods of the poet’s life written in both English and Russian. 
