Olga Bogdanova, Elizaveta Vlasova, Maria Buraia, Ekaterina Zhilene

The “Journey to Istanbul” by Joseph Brodsky (reality and metaphor)

Ad Alta: Journal of interdisciplinary research, Journal №.: 12/01 (Volume 12, Issue 1), June, 2022. – рр. 187-192.

ISSN 1804-7890, ISSN 2464-6733 (online)  (WoS) 

The purpose of the study is to identify the formal and stylistic features of I. Brodsky’s artistic narrative in the essay “Journey to Istanbul”. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the fact that it offers a different judgment from the traditionally accepted in criticism both about the structural framework of the narrative and about the origins of the imaginary-negative pathos of the narrative facing the East. During the analysis, a number of dual motives were found in the text of the essay (namesake heroes, mirrors, reflections, dreams, etc.) and it was showed that the journey undertaken by Brodsky’s auto-hero was not spatial, but temporal, anger directed at Istanbul was a sublimation of his own naivety and utopian dreams of returning to his “hometown”. 

Keywords: Brodsky; essay; prose and poetry; metaphor and metonymy; strategy of duality.