{"id":44741,"date":"2021-02-26T17:12:06","date_gmt":"2021-02-26T22:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=44741"},"modified":"2021-04-29T12:22:03","modified_gmt":"2021-04-29T16:22:03","slug":"joseph-brodsky-on-the-life-of-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2021\/02\/joseph-brodsky-on-the-life-of-books.html","title":{"rendered":"Joseph Brodsky on the Life of Books<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
Joseph Brodsky<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

“On the whole, books are less finite than ourselves. Even the worst among them outlast their authors. … Often they sit on the shelves absorbing dust long after the writer himself has turned into a handful of dust. Yet even this form of the future is better than the memory of a few surviving relatives or friends on whom one cannot rely, and often it is precisely the appetite for this posthumous dimension which sets one’s pen in motion.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

from “How to Read a Book” in <\/strong>On Grief and Reason<\/a>. <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

 
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\u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 <\/strong><\/p>\n
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Bilingual edition (English-German)
MOLOKO PRINT, 2020<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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SALUTE<\/em><\/strong>\n\nWhen my body expires\nI will vanish\u2014\u2014presto!\u2014\u2014\ndematerialized.\nIt's not science fiction.\nBefore I disappear,\nmay this sonnet\nhave a quantum effect\u2014\u2014\nthoughts at a distance\nempty of matter\u2014\u2014or\ntouched by starlight\nof the material world,\nlet these words salute you\nfrom beyond the point \nof no return.<\/strong>\n\n<\/strong><\/em>\n<\/pre>\n
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Your Obituary Is Waiting <\/strong><\/em>Phantom Outlaw Editions, 2019<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“On the whole, books are less finite than ourselves. Even the worst among them outlast their authors. … Often they sit on the shelves absorbing dust long after the writer himself has turned into a handful of dust. Yet even this form of the future is better than the memory of a few surviving relatives or friends on whom one cannot rely, and often it is precisely the appetite for this posthumous dimension which sets one’s pen in motion.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":44699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,18,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-44741","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-literature","9":"category-news","10":"category-political-culture","11":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/JoesphBrodsky-cropped.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-bDD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44741"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46125,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44741\/revisions\/46125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}