A POSTCARD FROM FLORENCE? —
J. BRODSKY’S «ДЕКАБРЬ ВО ФЛОРЕНЦИИ»
MAIJA KÖNÖNEN
Many scholars have taken an interest in Brodsky’s poem «Декабрь во Флоренции»1. The interest is partly due to the setting of the poem — the golden city of Florence as a paradigm of classical, especially Renaissance art, and architecture, and partly the interest arises from the extraordinary metrical aspects2 of the poem; the use of terza rima — the very elaborate rhyme scheme, the use of compound rhymes along with enjambement, by which Brodsky achieves some original effects which fascinated the poet himself. Brodsky recalls the process of writing of “DF”3 as follows: «Я помню когда написал, был в полном восторге от себя, от своих рифм»4. In previous accounts of the poem it has been ascribed to Brodsky’s numerous travelogues. Contrary to placing the poem among ‘the voyages of Brodsky’, there are also some scholars and writers, for instance David Rigsbee5, who see “DF” as belonging to the genre of self-elegy, or to ‘the philosophical diary in verse’6 with its bitterly elegiac tone and meditations on the self. 
Let us first take a look at Brodsky’s Florence-poem in terms of a travelogue — «жанр путешествий», or «стихотворение путеводитель», оr even «жанр стихотворения глазами туриста»7 — all these terms have been used to describe the poem under scrutiny. First of all, it is obvious that the city presented in the text is Florence, although the name of the represented place is mentioned only in the title. Brodsky introduces the city to the reader not so much by describing the actual places that surround the lyrical subject, as by naming certain places, often the ones that are unmistakably recognisable as landmarks of Florence — the “musts” of every tourist visiting the capital of Tuscany. In addition to introducing places directly by their names, as e.g. the river Arno flowing through the city, or the “Old bridge” (Ponte Vecchio) crossing the Arno, or the palace of Signoria in the Second Stanza, Brodsky refers to certain edifices and monuments through an allusion to a person who is in some way connected with it — be it the architect who planned it, like Brunelleschi in Section Eight, whose masterpiece is Duomo, the famous dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, pictured by Brodsky as «громада яйца, снесенного Брунеллески». 
In descriptions of places this kind of elliptic representation — the implicitness surrounding the explicitness of a proper name — the naming of Brunelleschi without naming the totality, the cathedral itself — presupposes the presence of an implicit reader who is at least to some extent familiar with the object of description. This concerns depictions of famous Italian cities, Rome, Venice and Florence in particular. In the context of Western literature and art, a voyage to Italy is always perceived as a return to the sources of European culture. The impact of Italian architecture and art on Western culture has been so profound and extensive that Italian scenes seem familiar even to one who has never seen them in their original environment. Later, when visiting Italy, one will come across “familiar” sights and things that one knows already fragmentarily, in the totality of their natural surroundings8.
The same process takes place in Brodsky’s poem; in the final analysis, all these Brunelleschis, Cellinis and Lorenzos will form both a spatial and temporal synthesis in which the actual Florentine realias will be tied with their historical background, and which in turn, will give rise to various impressions and associations. Realiae turn to symbols. It is more than common in travelogues that Italian sights, pieces of art and interiors are attached with symbolic value. But again, the synthesis itself, as well as the emanation of symbolic significance, would not be possible without an implicit reader with the capacity to fill in the lacunae of the elliptic, metonymic text with his own impressions or memories. Actually, the less explicit the depiction, the more familiar the place and vice versa — the more detailed the presentation, the more unfamiliar, the more “strange” the place is to the reader’s experience9.
In an account of a journey the referents of the text are situated both in the extra-textual space, in the depicted city, and in the intra-textual space, in the poetical constituents of the (re)constructed textual universe. Brodsky’s Florence will be rewarding for a reader capable of following in his imagination the route taken by the lyrical subject of the poem. As a consequence, the reader may share the visual impressions of the cityscape evolving in the process of his wanderings. In descriptions of voyages to Italian cities one of the principal motives is the observation of historical layers in the surrounding cityscape. Each of the famous cities has its own significant period of time with which it is constantly associated. Florence is appreciated for its Renaissance philosophers, scholars and artists. Furthermore, they each have come to symbolize a particular kind of space in European literary tradition. Florence, for instance, surrounded by the Tuscany hills, is characterized as a clearly demarcated, enclosed space — an impeccable, perfect realm of its own, opposing the undetermined, vague Venetian space which is conceived as being under constant transformation10.
Do the above mentioned features of typically Florentine time and space manifest themselves in Brodsky’s “postcard” from Florence? As was already noted, the use of metonymic, elliptical expressions is characteristic of Brodsky’s Italian poem. If we take Section Six, for example, where we will find the lyrical hero sitting in a cafe, observing the view opening up behind the window, we will read the following description of the things that attract his eye: 
<...> Солнечный луч, разбившийся о дворец, о 
 купол собора, в котором лежит Лоренцо,
 проникает сквозь штору <...> 
He sees a cathedral with a cupola and someone, Lorenzo by name, lying inside, whom he cannot see but whom he knows to be there. It may well be that our lyrical hero has just visited the church, and exhausted, popped into a cafe for a cup of espresso. 
Lorenzo is, without doubt, Lorenzo de Medici, the Duke of Urbino who is buried in the Medici Chapel of the Church of San Lorenzo. It is worth mentioning that Lorenzo’s tomb with its famous statues presenting Dawn and Dusk — as is the statue of Lorenzo himself, “the Thinker”, represented in profound meditation — are all masterpieces of Michelangelo. Both Lorenzo and Michelangelo associate the setting of Brodsky’s poem to the golden past of the city, to the period of Italian Renaissance. Besides, by these fragmentary clues we can locate the cafe on Piazza San Lorenzo. As we have seen, by merely calling a thing, or a historical figure in this particular case, by proper name, Brodsky invokes a whole historical period. Moreover, a period which has not only become the symbol of the city, but which the poet himself esteemed highly11. These kinds of chains of associations rooted in citations of names, places, as well as other reminiscences that may lead through other citations to various interpretations, are abundant in Brodsky’s poetics.
Visual perception is the sense of a tourist par excellence, with the help of which he tries to understand the life around him. Brodsky’s lyrical “I” is not an exception in this respect — it is mainly through visual impressions that he conveys the Florentine genius loci. But what distinguishes a tourist’s look from the gaze of a non-tourist, how does his glance select its objects? It occurs in tales of a journey that the author or, as in Brodsky’s poem, his lyrical substitute, gets reduced to a characteristic, most often to his eyes. Brodsky’s “poetics of subtraction”12 is not a new device in the context of travelogues, if we take into account that the same poetic device was used by such authors as D. H. Lawrence, among others, in his travel books concerning Italy13. Brodsky’s “tourist” is “all eyes” in Section Two, where «глаз, мигая, заглатывает, погружаясь в сырые сумерки, как таблетки от памяти, фонари» and in Stanza Six; «глаз в полумраке кепки привыкает к нимфам плафона, к амурам, к лепке». The tourist’s eye is said to catch all that is unique or asthonishing in his new surroundings. His eye focuses on things and phenomena that have something fascinating in them, it may as well be something disgusting or strange as of extraordinary beauty or splendour. The main thing is that it strikes the eye of the passing tourist by its absorbing appearance. 
Anyhow, the lyrical “I” in “DF” does not only tell about the things that he sees around him during his walk in the centre of Florence, but he pays attention also to the gaze of other living creatures. In Section Three «кошки заглядывают под скамейки проверяя, черны ли тени», and further down in the same stanza a girl with golden curls falls a prey to «несытыe взгляды молодых торговок».The emphasis on visuality gives an impression that looking and being looked at are essential aspects of the Italian lifestyle. Paraphrasing Auden’s Italian poem “Good-Bye to Mezzogiorno”, we could say that “for southeners living means to-be-visible-now, while northerners mean by life a Bildungsroman”. The significance of the visual sense could, perhaps, be a consequence or, for that matter, a reason for the inversion of the interior and exterior spaces that, according to Martinet14, is characteristic of Italian space conveyed in travelogues. The inversion takes place in the mind of the observer. She mentiones the faade of Santa Maria del Fiore as an example of the inversion — with its mosaics it reminds the tourist of its interior. Or, as in Brodsky’s poem, where life is actually lived outdoors, on the streets which are crowded and full of noise. The presented interiors, like the staircase and apartment of Casa di Dante in Section Five are half empty, almost ghostly silent places, not to mention the cafe with its dust and dirty marble in Section Six. 
As a matter of fact, Brodsky does not focus on the interiors or exteriors as such, but his glance concentrates on lines between spaces. How many doors, windows, faades, surfaces and thresholds appear in his Florence! On the other hand, after his laconical discovery of the beauty of the city, right in the beginning of the poem, the lyrical hero makes a conscious gesture that draws a line between him and the surrounding reality. By raising the collar he restricts his glance, prevents it from wandering and turns his eyes straight forward or up to the sky to the silhouettes of the cupolas, or down to the river or to the pavement. His glance is selective, it fixes on certain objects only.
The selection of the objects of description in “DF” has given cause for some scholars to conclude that the poem is actually about the position of an exile rather than a travelogue. Aleksei Losev15, among others, maintains that exile is the very opposite of travel, that the gaze of an exile is directed in to his inner world where he sees the fleeing images of his homeland. Consequently, the constituents of Brodsky’s Florentine landscape would have been picked up by the poet for the reason that they remind him of not being at home. They remain alien to him and he himself remains an outsider in the surrounding alien world. The eyes of a tourist, in Losev’s words, see constantly new, different places, whereas an exile always sees the same place called the non-fatherland. It is precisely in this difference of the glances that the elegiac aspects find their form of manifestation in “DF”.
The theme of comparison of Florence to St. Petersburg, the native city of the poet, runs through the poem, albeit expressed in some instances by means of indirect allusions and various subtexts. The name of the city, St. Petersburg/Leningrad, is not once uttered. The outlines of the lost Russian city appear simultaneously within the represented space of the Florentine loci. It is in these instances that the glance of the lyrical “I”, protected from the world by his raised collar, turns from the surrounding reality into the inner world of his personal experience, from the surrounding landscape into the intimate mindscape. The most obvious reminiscenses of Petersburg cityscape are in Section One , where the city is described as «вторая Флоренция с архитектурой Рая» and in Section Eight where the cupola of the Dome «вызывает слезу в зрачке, наторевшем в блеске куполов». The last stanza as a whole, with its theme of non-return, could be looked upon as an archetypal description of an exiled poet, separated from his native language: 
Есть города, в которые нет возврата.
Солнце бьется в их окна, как в гладкие зеркала. То
есть в них не проникнешь ни за какое злато. —
Там всегда протекает река под шестью мостами.
Там есть места, где припадал устами
тоже к устам и пером к листам. И
та, рябит от аркад, колоннад, от чугунных пугал;
на языке человека, который убыл.
As for the thematics of the poem, it seems to be an inversion of the common theme in Russian literature of the past centuries, namely that of “Italy in St. Petersburg”. What Brodsky actually does here is that he writes about the presence of St. Petersburg in Florence. However, he does not do it by means of depicting Italy through St. Petersburg, which, according to Toporov16, has never occurred within the Russian literary tradition. St. Petersburg may be outlined by means of the Italian code embedded in it, but the opposite way is not possible.
The Florentine layer of the theme of “Italy in St. Petersburg” in Russian literature is presented to a great extent with Dantean overtones. The figure of Dante, with his tragic destiny of a banished poet and with his Divine Comedy, dominates the image of Florence in Russian belles lettres, especially in the works of Mandelstam17. In the motto of Brodsky’s poem taken from Achmatova’s poem «Данте», the theme of an exiled poet is revealed. The line chosen by Brodsky — «Этот, уходя не оглянулся...» — for an epigraph, once again emphasises the motive of a glance, in this case a glance back to the past.
Before going into a detailed analysis concerning the numerous Dantesque allusions in the poem under examination, it is, perhaps, worth noting that Brodsky, almost without exception, refers to the most familiar passages in “The Divine Comedy”, not only in “DF” which is the most Dantesque of Brodsky’s poems18, but also in his other works, such as «Пятая годовщина», «1972», «Я входил вместо дикого зверя в клетку», «Келломяки» and «Двадцать сонетов к Марии Стюарт», among others19. 
As examples of Brodsky’s most obvious reminiscences from Dante’s Comedy in “DF” we could mention the “atmosphere of the wild forest” with its beasts in the First Section, which refers to the prologue in the First Canto of Inferno. “The second Florence with its architecture of Paradise”, as well as the Sixth Stanza’s goldfinch with its terzine sounding in the air of the city of Ravenna — Dante’s burial place — are obvious allusions to Alighieri. Love that can move stars in Section Seven is taken from the last Canto of Paradise, from the very end of “The Divine Comedy”. Consequently, the dwelling of an exiled poet on his “non-return” to the beloved city in the last section, which we quoted above, refers simultaneously to Brodsky’s Petersburg and to Dante’s Florence. The parallels between the biographies of the two exiled poets are catalogued in the final stanza. The plural form in the beginning of the stanza discloses the doubling of the object of description: 
Есть города, в которые нет возврата <...>
в них не проникнешь ни за какое злато. 
The gold suggests the fact that Dante was offered a possibility to return to Florence provided that he would pay a reasonably large sum of money as a fine for his “crimes”. 
The Dantesque loci in the Florentine landscape of Brodsky are to be found in Section Two where he mentiones two actual sites connected to Dante’s destiny: 
<...>
твой подъезд в двух минутах от Синьории 
намекает глухо, спустя века, на 
причину изгнанья <...>. 
Palazzo della Signoria was the seat of the Republican Government where the decision on Dante’s banishment was made. In fact, Dante was a member of the Signoria for some time before his enforced exile. By the lines «твой подъезд в двух минутах от Синьории» Brodsky refers to Dante’s home museum, Casa di Dante, situated on Via Dante Alighieri. The interior of the house is depicted in Section Five.
As we have seen, the structure of the whole poem is based on the principle of double exposure, of superimposition of two poets and of two cities, Dante Alighieri and Joseph Brodsky, Brodsky’s St. Petersburg and Dante’s Florence. However, there is a third layer hidden in the text exposed and analysed in detail by David Bethea20. In addition to Dante, the poem has a second addressee embedded in the epigraph — Mandelstam and his poem «Ленинград», written in December 1930. As Bethea21 notes, nearly every detail in the poem is simultaneously Dantesque and Mandelstamian. Moreover, the details of Mandelstam’s «Ленинград» are scattered throughout Brodsky’s poem: the notion of forbidden return, the tears of recognition, the streetlamps, the time of the year, the themes of death and memory etc. 
Thus, Brodsky’s poem depicting a walk of the lyrical hero visiting Dantean sites in Florence hides in itself not only the Brodskian St. Petersburg, but the presence of another banished poet and his city of Leningrad-St. Petersburg. It is said to be typical of Brodsky to search for archetypal doubles. Dante certainly suits well for an archetype of a banished poet, Mandelstam is not a bad option, either22. The elaborate threefold structure of the poem is reflected in the lexical and thematical content of the poem. If we follow the thematical analysis of Mandelstam’s «Ленинград» written by Yury Levin23, we shall see that the core of Brodsky’s poem, like that of Mandelstam’s, is to be found in the three “meetings” that take place in the text. The first meeting is between the lyrical subject/a poet and his city. The second encounter is with some persons associated to the city, and the third one is described by Levin as “the lyrical ‘I’ in the city”.
The meeting with the city in “DF” is an encounter with Florence and St. Petersburg/Leningrad, the object of the rendezvous is doubled. The features of the Italian city replicate the outlines of its Russian counterpart. A similar doubling of the object takes place in Mandelstam’s poem — it begins as a return to the Leningrad of the 1930s, then suddenly it takes the shape of the poet’s childhood’s St. Petersburg. The addressee of the poem, the “you” in the first stanza, “who will not return here” is doubled, as we have already mentioned, signifying both Dante and his Russian companion in misfortune — Mandelstam. Brodsky’s rendezvous with people in his poetic city turns out to be a meeting with deceased colleagues, i.e. with the same kind of «голоса мертвецов» as Mandelstam’s acquaintances remaining in his «Ленинград». More or less of a sepulchral nature also are thе historical figures from Lorenzo to Brunelleschi that Brodsky mentions in his elegy. 
The chains of associations constructed by Brodsky in this realm of the dead are drawn with virtuosity. As Ranchin has noted24, reminiscences in Brodsky’s poetry are just the visible tip of the iceberg of subtexts. Various subtexts constitute a chain which leads from one cited work to others that are not explicitly alluded to in the text. As an example of an alternative chain of association brought forth by a hidden subtext, let us take a second look at Lorenzo in Section Six. 
We have already identified Lorenzo as referring to the sepulchre of Lorenzo de Medici located in the Medici Chapel of the church of San Lorenzo. However, after discovering the Mandelstamian subtext, a different conclusion on the subject becomes possible. If we assume that Brodsky’s Lorenzo is not Lorenzo de Medici lying in San Lorenzo, but instead his namesake Lorenzo Ghiberti, a Renaissance architecture and sculptor whose tomb is situated in the church of Santa Croce, we might find here a link to Mandelstam’s as well as Dante’s cities and works. Lorenzo Ghiberti designed the famous “Gates of Paradise”25, the eastern doors to the Baptistery, alias San Giovanni on Piazza de Duomo, the favorite church of Dante, according to Burckhardt26, where he was baptised and where he would have liked to be crowned as the poet laureate of Florence. “Il mio bel San Giovanni” — a quotation from “The Divine Comedy” appears as the epigraph of Achmatova’s poem «Данте» which, apart from indicating to Alighieri, as was mentioned, alludes to Mandelstam as well. The gates of Paradise by Ghiberti are regarded as a prototype of the gates of the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg, the cupola of which is perceived as a modification of Brunelleschi’s “egg” in Florence27. As is well known, Mandelstam has a poem about the Kazan Cathedral, which as an architectural whole, bears resemblance to the St. Peter’s Dome in Rome. In his poem «На площадь выбежав, свободен / Стал колоннады полукруг — / И распластался храм Господень, / как легкий крестовик-паук...» Mandelstam does not mention the gates, but he notices the non-Russian atmosphere of the edifice, despite the Russian architect Voronihin. The special atmosphere surrounds the visitor upon entering the portico which makes one feel like being a Russian in Italy (Here Mandelstam looks upon the theme of “Italy in St. Petersburg” as that of “Russia/St. Petersburg in Italy”): 
<...>
А зодчий не италианец. 
Но русский в Риме, — ну так что ж! 
Ты каждый раз, как иностранец, 
Сквозь рощу портиков идешь. <...>
Consequently, Lorenzo has a double identity, not unlike the addressee of the poem. A double, or in some cases, a triple structure seems to underlie the whole poem. One shell is hidden inside another — Brunelleschi’s cupola made of red brickwork conceals the golden domes of St. Petersburg.
The third theme distinguished by Levin in Mandelstam’s «Ленинград» — the theme of the lyrical “I” in the city — is part of the double exposure as well. “I” becomes “you” through the shared biography of the three poets, and consequently Florence becomes Leningrad in its two manifestations — the Leningrad of Brodsky’s youth and the St. Petersburg-Leningrad of Mandelstam’s works. If the spatial model of the Dantesque universe in the Divine Comedy, as Yury Lotman28 maintains, resembles a continuum consisting of some paths of individual destinies which intersect each other, in Brodsky’s poem the great number of coincidences in the lifepaths of the three main heroes make it look more like a three-line highway. 
The theme of the “I” in the city is that of separation and non-return. Brodsky’s play with phenomena forming a pair, e.g. «разбившись попарно, население гуляет напоминая новых четвероногих» in First Stanza and the whole Seventh Stanza deals with the thematics of separation, loss and loneliness: 
Выдыхая пары, вдыхая воздух, двери 
хлопают во Флоренции. Одну ли, две ли 
проживаешь жизни, смотря по вере, 
вечером в первом осознаешь: неправда, 
что любовь движет звезды (Луну — подавно), 
ибо она делит все вещи на два — 
даже деньги во сне. Даже, в часы досуга, 
мысли о смерти. Если бы звезды Юга 
двигались ею, то — в стороны друг от друга.
Everything in the world of the lyrical hero is divided in two, even dwellings on death. This might, perhaps, suggest his understanding of banishment as his first death and the life in exile as his second incarnation. In fact, Brodsky’s29 statement about the positive aspect of emigration echoes this view. Brodsky perceives emigration as a state in which the writer during his lifetime already shares the same destiny with his books; both stand on the shelf collecting dust. This, according to him, is an experience of the life beyond. You no longer speak in the name of a nation, but just for yourself. The first life is yet another echo of “The Divine Comedy” also. In the underworld Dante has to assure the shadows of the deceased who will not cease wondering about the shape of Dante, which differs from theirs, that he still belongs to the first life, although he was given a chance to visit the second life — life after death30.
As we have seen «Декабрь во Флоренции» acts as a focal point, drawing together several meanings, integrating the most diverse subtexts, of which the Dantean and Mandelstamian layers are the main components. “DF” is a reminiscence of another poems, their secret double which moves from Florence towards the lost home in St. Petersburg. It is not a mere travelogue, nor a simple juxtaposition of the good old hometown with the strange, indifferent abroad, as it has been sometimes looked upon31. The ache and nostalgia for home are present but their presence is not overwhelming. The presence of St. Petersburg in the capital of Tuscany does not erase the unique outlines of Florentine cityscape. 
In the final analysis, Losev’s32 assertion that Brodsky, like his great Italian predecessor, sees his lost city everywhere, that his gaze is that of an exile and not that of a tourist, is admittedly correct, but in my opinion, does not tell the whole truth about the subject.
I would rather agree with George L. Kline33, who sees in Brodsky’s poetry, despite the sense of loss, separation and estrangement, a courageous acceptance of the pain and absurdity of human existence — a kind of being-at-home in homelessness — a condition that he shares with his great predecessors.
NOTES
1	See, for instance, Kline 1990: 70–73, Bethea 1994: 63–73, Полухина 1993: 230–232, Крепс 1984: 178–193.
2	Studies of the metrics of “DF” — three triple feminine rhymes AAABBBCCC with its rare, in contemporary Russian poetry, nine-line stanza, see Scherr 1986: 207, 345, and Scherr 1990: 183, Kline 1990: 81, Polukhina 1989: 213–215. 
3	Here and hereafter abbreviation “DF” stands for «Декабрь во Флоренции» (Бродский 1997: 3. 111–113).
4	Бродский 1995: 174.
5	Rigsbee 1999: 111.
6	See: Полухина 1993: 230.
7	Крепс 1984: 178–180.
8	Martinet 1996: 8–10.
9	Ibid.: 6, 12.
10	Ibid.: 4–9.
11	«Что для меня Италия? Прежде всего то, откуда все пошло. Колыбель культуры. В Италии произошло все, и потом полезло через Альпы. На все, что к Северу от Альп, можно смотреть как на некий Ренессанс. То, что было в самой Италии, разумеется, тоже Ренессанс — вариации на греческую тему, но это уже цивилизация. А там, на севере — вариации на итальянскую тему, и не всегда удачные» (Бродский 1995: 183). For Brodsky’s conceptions about Italy and Renessaince, see also Volkov 1998: 201–202.
12	See e.g. Bethea 1994: 65.
13	Martinet 1996: 15.
14	Ibid.: 6.
15	Лосев 1977: 320, see also Kline 1990: 70 –71.
16	Топоров 1990: 49–50.
17	Ibid.: 78–80.
18	Kline 1990: 81.
19	For Dantean allusions in the mentioned poems, see Баткин 1997: 312–315, Ранчин 1998а: 84, Ранчин 1993: 478, Polukhina 1999: 83.
20	Bethea 1994: 66–71.
21	Ibid.: 68.
22	Search for doubles, according to Venclova, allows the poet to examine himself from above, or to see himself “in the past tense” — «завершенное время», as if his life was already completed (Венцлова 2000: 359). For Brodsky’s doubles, see, e.g. Полухина 1996: 391–407.
23	Левин 1998: 20–22.
24	Ранчин 1998б: 39.
25	A note to “December in Florence” in J. Brodsky: Collected Poems in English (Brodsky 2000: 514) maintains, mistakenly in my opinion, that “architecture of Paradise” refers only to Ghiberti’s bronze doors of the Baptistery in Florence. St. Petersburg’s architecture is not taken into account as a potential referent.
26	Burckhardt 1999: 145–146.
27	Топоров 1990: 58.
29 	Jangfeldt 1987: 449.
30	See Purg. VIII: 58–60. Unlike souls of the departed, Dante breathes and a ray of light is refracted when it meets his body, whereas light penetrates the immaterial “bodies” of the souls who, apart from this, cast no shadow. Besides, the synecdochal expression used by Brodsky in Section Five to depict the lyrical subject — “body in a cloak”, which is usually conceived as part of Brodsky’s poetics of estrangement and subtraction, obtains another meaning in this context. It is parallel to the description of Dante’s figure and attire in the realm of shadows. In Inf. XXIII: 94–96, for instance, Dante’s answer to the hypocrites who ask his identity is as follows: “E io a loro: “I’ fui nato e cresciuto / sovra ‘l bel fiume d’Arno alla gran villa, / e son col corpo ch’i ‘ho sempre avuto <...>” (“Born I was in the great town, and from lad to man grew up, on the fair stream men know as Arno, and am with the body I’ve always had”). These lines are echoed in Brodsky’s another poem about Petersburg, namely in «Полдень в комнате», Section Three: «Я родился в большой стране, в устье реки...» (Бродский 1997: 3. 173–179), as well as in «Я родился и вырос в балтийских волотах...» (Бродский 1997: 3. 131).
31	See, e.g. Крепс 1984: 190.
32	See page 5, Лосев1977: 320.
33	Kline 1990: 78.
LITERATURE
Бродский 1997: Бродский И. Сочинения Иосифа Бродского. СПб.: Пушкинский фонд, 1997. Т. 3.
Бродский 1995: Бродский И. Пересеченная местность. Путешествия с комментариями / Сост. и автор послесл. П. Вайль. М., 1995.
Brodsky 2000: Brodsky J. Collected Poems in English. N. Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
Баткин 1997: Баткин Л. Тридцать третья буква. Заметки читателя на полях стихов Иосифа Бродского. М., 1997.
Венцлова 2000: Венцлова Т. Бродский о Мандельштаме // Russian Literature. 2000. XLVII. С. 357–367. 
Крепс 1984: Крепс М. О поэзии Иосифа Бродского. Ann Arbor; Michigan: Ardis,   1984.
Левин 1998: Левин Ю. О. Мандельштам. Разбор шести стихотворений. 2. «Ленинград» // Левин Ю. Избранные труды. Поэтика. Семиотика. М., 1998. С. 17–24.
Лосев 1977: Лосев А. «Ниоткуда с любовью...». Заметки о стихах И. Бродского // Континент. 1977. № 14. С. 307–331.
Лотман 1992: Лотман Ю. Заметки о художественном пространстве: 1. Путешествие Улисса в «Божественной комедии» Данте // Лотман Ю. Избранные статьи: В 3 т. Таллинн, 1992. Т. 1. С. 448–456.
Полухина 1993: Пoлухина В. Ландшафт лирической личности в поэзии Иосифа Бродского // Literary Tradition and Practice in Russian Culture / Ed. by V. Polukhina, J. Andrew and R. Reid. Amsterdam et al., 1993. С. 229– 245.
Полухина 1996: Пoлухина В. Метаморфозы «я» в поэзии постмодернизма: двойники в поэтическом мире Бродского. Модернизм и постмодернизм в русской литературе и культуре // Studia Russica Helsingiensia et Tartuensia V: Slavica Helsingiensia 16. Helsinki, 1996. С. 391–407.
Ранчин 1993: Ранчин А.  «Римский текст» Иосифа Бродского // Russian Literature 1993. XXXIV. С. 471–486. 
Ранчин 1998а: Ранчин А. Еще раз о Бродском и Ходасевиче // НЛО. 1998. № 32. C. 84–90.
Ранчин 1998б: Ранчин А. Иосиф Бродский: поэтика цитаты // Русская словесность. 1998. № 1. С. 36–41.
Топоров 1990: Топоров В. Н. Италия в Петербурге // Италия и славянский мир. М., 1990. С. 49–81.
Bethea 1994: Bethea D. M. Joseph Brodsky and the Creation of Exile. Princeton; New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Burckhardt 1999: Burckhardt J. Italian renessanssin sivistys (Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien), WSOY. Helsinki (1956), 1999.
Dante1979: Dante A. La Divina Commedia / Testo critico della Società Dantesca Italiana riveduto, col commento scartazziniano rifatto da Giuseppe Vandelli. Milano: Ulrico Hoepli Editore-Libraio, 1979 (1929). 
 Dante 1965: Dante A. The Divine Comedy / Text with translation in the metre of the original by G.L.Bickersteth. Oxford: Shakespeare Head Press,  1965.
Jangfeldt 1987: Jangfeldt B. Estetiken är etikens moder. Ett samtal med Joseph Brodsky // Joseph Brodsky: Att	behaga en skugga. Valda essäer. Borås. Wahlström & Widstrand,  1987. P. 439-452. 
Kline 1990: Kline G. L. Variations of the Theme of Exile. Brodsky’s Poetics and Aesthetics. Еd. by V. Polukhina and L. Loseff. London et al.: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1990. P. 56–88.
Martinet 1996: Martinet M.-M. Le voyage d’Italie dans les littératures européennes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996.
Polukhina 1989: Polukhina V. Joseph Brodsky. A Poet for our Time. Cambridge, New York et al.: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Polukhina 1999: Polukhina V. “I, Instead of a Wild Beast, Entered the Cage”. Joseph Brodsky. The Art of a Poem // Ed. by Lev Loseff and Valentina Polukhina. Houndsmills; London et al.: MacMillan Press Ltd., 1999. P. 68–91.
Rigsbee 1999: Rigsbee D. The Styles of Ruin. Joseph Brodsky and the Postmodernist Elegy // Contributions to the Study of World Literature. Westport; Connecticut et al.: Greenwood Press.  1999. N 93.
Scherr 1986: Scherr B. P. Russian Poetry: Meter, Rhythm, and Rhyme. Berkeley-L. A.; London: University of California Press, 1986. 
Scherr 1990: Scherr B. P. Beginning at the End: Rhyme and Enjambment in Brodsky’s poetry. Brodsky’s Poetics and Aesthetics / Ed. by V. Polukhina and L. Loseff. London et al.: The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1990. P. 176–193.
Volkov 1998: Volkov S. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky. A Poet’s Journey through the Twentieth Century. N. Y.; London et al.: The Free Press,   1998.