I should go back and say something about [Joseph] Brodsky's life. Brodsky was a popular underground poet, his poetry was almost never published in the official press but his verse was written down, read and people would learn it off by heart, recite it and he became too well known and the authorities didn't like that. They accused Brodsky of being a parasite, of not having a job and said that he should be forced to take a job. And the court decided that he be exiled to the north of Russia to a kolkhoz or collective farm, to be there and do a useful job. He spent some time there… he was sentenced to five years exile on that collective farm but there was a great noise made, lots of people began to defend him, [Anna] Akhmatova amongst them – including some writers in the West – to put pressure on the authorities to free him. And after two years they let him go. It was there in exile that he became a great poet, it was there that he wrote probably almost all of his best poems. After that he returned to Leningrad, lived there for some time, but foreigners visited him all the time, he was very famous, his books were published in the West, they were banned in Russia. It is true that an offer was made to publish a book of his work in Russian but with the condition that there should be a poem about Lenin in it. He refused and so his book never came out. And after that he was told that if he went on acting like that they couldn't guarantee... that they couldn't guarantee anything. The state security service said that they would most probably arrest him again and that the best thing he could do was to go to the West. ‘Many Jews', they said, ‘are now being allowed to leave for Israel. Put in a request that you want to go to Israel'. Brodsky's answer was, ‘I don't want to go to Israel, I don't feel that I'm a Jew. Even though that's what I am in origin but I feel that I'm a Russian, a Russian poet, the Russian language is important to me, my Russian environment, literary and otherwise, and I don't want to leave at all'. Well, then the state security service said, ‘You can blame yourself if something bad happens to you'. Brodsky went to his friends, as well as to me, to ask what he should do. Everyone said go. Well, his time in emigration was successful, he became very famous in the West, he won the Nobel Prize, became a university professor and, so to speak, didn't do badly. Far from it.

Reikėtų grįžti atgal papasakoti apie Brodskio gyvenimą. Brodskis buvo toks populiarus pogrindžio poetas, jo eileraščių beveik nespausdino viešojoj spaudoj, bet jo eiles persirašinėjo, skaitė, mokėsi atmintinai žmonės, deklamuodavo ir pasidarė per daug garsus, tai valdžiai nepatiko, apkaltino Brodskį, kad jis yra parazitas, kad jis neturi jokio darbo, ir kad jį reikia prievarta įdarbinti. Ir teismas nutarė jį ištremti į Šiaurės Rusiją, į kolchozą arba kolūkį, kad tenai jisai būtų, dirbtų naudingą darbą. Jis ten išbuvo... jis buvo nuteistas penkeriems metams tokios tremties į kolūkį, bet kilo didelis triukšmas, jį pradėjo daug kas ginti, tame tarpe Achmatova, tame tarpe kai kurie Vakarų rašytojai, spausti valdžią, kad jį paleistų. Ir po dvejų metų jį paleido. Ten tremtyje jis ir virto didžiu poetu, jis ten parašė turbūt beveik ir geriausius savo eilėraščius. Po to jis grįžo į Leningradą, ten kurį laiką gyveno, bet pas jį visą laiką lankėsi užsieniečiai, jis buvo labai garsus, jo knygos buvo leidžiamos Vakaruose, Rusijoj nebuvo leidžiamos. Tiesa, jam siūlė išleisti knygą rusiškai, Maskvoje, bet su sąlyga, kad ten butų eileraštis apie Leniną. Jis atsisakė. Na ir jo knyga taip ir neatsirado. O po to jam buvo pasakyta, kad jeigu tu ir toliau šitaip elgsiesi, tai mes už nieką, mes nieko tau gero negalim garantuoti, Saugumas jam pareiškė, ir greičiausiai vėl areštuosime, ir geriausia tu važiuok į Vakarus. Dabar, reiškia, daugelis žydų yra leidžiami į Izraelį, paduok pareiškimą, kad nori išvažiuoti į Izraelį. Brodskis į tai pasakė- aš į Izraelį nenoriu, aš nesijaučiu žydas. Aš, nors ir esu tos kilmės, bet jaučiuosi rusas, rusų poetas, man svarbi rusų kalba, rusiška aplinka – literatūrinė ir kitokia – ir aš važiuoti visiškai nenoriu. Na, tada, pasakė saugumiečiai, kaltinkite pats save jeigu kas nors blogo su jumis atsitiks. Brodskis kreipėsi į bičiulius, taip pat ir į mane, klausdamas ką jam daryti. Visi jam pasakė – važiuok. Na ir jo emigracija buvo sėkminga, jis vakaruose labai išgarsėjo, gavo Nobelio premiją, virto universiteto profesoriumi ir, taip sakant, nepražuvo, anaiptol nepražuvo.