Остановка в пустыне. Стихотворения и поэмы

The first book compiled by Brodsky

The collection of poems by Joseph Brodsky “Stopping in the Desert” was first published by the Chekhov Publishing House (New York) in 1970 . This was the poet’s first book, compiled by him (before that, the collection “Poems and Poems”, compiled without Brodsky’s participation, was published in the USA).

The history of the publication of “Stopping in the Desert” is interesting. Brodsky handed over the main part of the manuscript to the American professor and translator of his poems George Klein in Leningrad in June 1968. This was a dangerous undertaking both for the American who was smuggling the manuscript and even more so for Brodsky. After the recent trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel, the very phrase “transfer of manuscripts to the West” sounded like “espionage” or “betrayal of the homeland.” Immediately after its publication, responses to the book appeared in the emigrant press. In the New York “New Russian Word” dated July 7, 1970, one of the oldest emigration writers, Argus (M.K. Eisenstadt), welcomed the book as evidence of the resistance of the young intelligentsia to the Soviet regime.