Summer Literary Seminars

Reminiscences of Joseph Brodsky: Lithuanian Aspects

by Ramunas Katilius,Prof., Dr Sc
Principal Research Fellow
Semiconductor Physics Institute
Vilnius - Lithuania

This lecture was presented at the SLS Lithuania Program in Vilnius, Lithuania on July 28, 2009.

In 1966, soon after his return from the exile to the North of Russia, Joseph Brodsky, then a Russian poet in disgrace, later – an American essayist and Nobel Prize Winner – came to Lithuania, where he found new devoted friends, including us – the Katilius family. Our friendship, especially lively in 1967–72, first in Vilnius and then in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), lasted until his very departure into emigration, and beyond. I was among those who accompanied him while leaving Soviet Union. And I was among those who laid him to rest at San Michele in Venice in 1997. In my lecture I shall try to represent Joseph Brodsky as I knew him, outlining his status in the Soviet society and the inevitability of the conflict, and attempting to describe the background for the Lithuanian motifs in Brodsky’s poetry.

I was informed that everybody in this audience is quite familiar not only with the name of Joseph Brodsky, but also with his poems and essays. So there seems to be no need to introduce the poet, and I can directly begin with my topic as formulated above.

Wandering the narrow streets of Old Vilnius, you may find yourself on the Liejyklos street, and notice on the facade of the two-storey house on Liejyklos, number 1, on the wall of the upper storey, the memorial tablet telling by-passers that in this house the poet, later – the Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Brodsky used to stay in the years 1966 –1971. And then, being acquainted with the works of Brodsky, you may even remember that one of the parts of Brodsky's poem The Lithuanian Divertissement is titled ‘Liejyklos’.

For many years the apartment on the upper storey of that house belonged to the Katilius family. Me and my younger brother Audronis, we spent there our later childhood, adolescence, and most of our youth. Now I am going to tell you how it happened, that at the end of August 1966, Joseph Brodsky, not yet being acquainted with us but being invited by us, came to Vilnius, and already during the first hours of his presence in our flat read out his poems to his new friends.

For several years we were good friends with another Russian poet, translator of Robert Frost into Russian – Andrey Sergeyev, as well as his wife Liuda. They used to spend summer vacations in Palanga, the Lithuanian Baltic Sea resort. On their way back to Moscow after the vacations, they would usually stay a few days with us in Vilnius. In their turn, Sergeyevs knew Joseph Brodsky even before his exile to the North. So, in addition to being acquainted with Brodsky’s poetry, circulating in hand-written and type-written form, and with his biography (trial, exile) – as many others were, thanks to Western radio-stations (Liberty, Voice of America, BBC) – we also often heard Andrey’s and Liuda’s exciting narratives about Joseph as a person.

You see, in early sixties the young Leningrad poet Joseph Brodsky was actually very popular. He wrote in his personal original manner, ignoring the rules and regulations generally accepted by Soviet literature. Accordingly, his poetry was not published. However, he used to recite at literary evenings, and, most important, his poems were, as I mentioned, circulating in hand-written and type-written form. Though not being anti-Soviet (rather being just not Soviet), his poetry frightened the regime, primarily because of un-controllability of its growing popularity. And Soviet power reacted in its usual manner – you know how (trial, and exile).

Brodsky spent a year and a half in a village in the Arkhangelsk district. He returned to Leningrad in 1965 but, according to Andrey and Liuda, apparently it was easier for him to adapt to the lifestyle in a remote Russian village, than to re-acclimatize to the conditions of Soviet Megalopolis after return. Also, according to Sergeyevs, there were some personal troubles, and they were worried about him. For this reason, in August 1966 Andrey used to call Joseph from us regularly, every day, each time concluding that Joseph is definitely in a bad mood (probably hearing Joseph say something like “end of the world” or “it's a total mess” – „конец света“, „полный завал“).

In the course of one of these telephone conversations, the subject somehow naturally turned to the idea of Joseph’s possible visit to Vilnius. At some moment, Andrey shielded the telephone with his hand and whispered to us: “Joseph is in very low spirits”. Both of us, my brother Audronis and me, answered simultaneously: “Let him come over here, we are all in a good mood here”. Andrey repeated this phrase to Joseph. To-morrow at noon Joseph was already with us.

Until that moment me and my wife Elia knew only his verses. Long before we got to know Joseph personally, Elia had a small notebook with dark-green covers – it is still kept in the family archives – where she used to write down Brodsky's poems from handwritten or typed copies circulating among friends and acquaintances.

The fact that Joseph quite readily took the offer to come to Vilnius is, of course, wonderful, but, maybe, not too strange. First of all, he trusted Andrey's advice. Then, he had never been in Lithuania before. And, actually not having a place to live on his own, it was quite natural for him to sometimes spend a week or two with friends – in Komarovo , in Crimea, or someplace else. The only exceptional thing in our story was that he was coming to stay with people he did not know. But, on the other hand, it was Sergeyevs who invited him.

Being familiar with his early poems, knowing the shocking story of his trial and exile, and having heard a lot about him from Sergeyevs, we did realize the significance of our new guest. And I have to admit, that the appearance – rather ordinary – of the young man getting out of the taxi almost disappointed me for a moment. But the first handshakes and a few phrases were enough to recognize a soul-mate and realize that “he is of our kindred” – only much more talented, of course.

We became friends almost immediately. Sergeyevs were leaving that evening, so we did not have much time to spend together. Liuda Sergeyeva hinted, that it would be nice to hear some poems – and Joseph started reciting. He continued until it was time to see Liuda and Andrey to the railway station. On the platform Liuda was encouraging Joseph – “we are leaving you in good hands”.

When we returned home, our first conversation between the three of us continued long into the night.

In our apartment on Liejyklos – in the dining-room, by the big round table – Joseph read his poems twice. The impression was awe. First of all, there was the power of the very poems: unexpected, strong and rich in scope; especially stunning were the poems written in exile. No less impressive was his manner of reciting: loud, modulated voice with unique, musical intonations, sometimes almost howling, and then lowering the pitch at the end of the strophe. Each verse was a drama that required total commitment.

As listeners, we felt participating in something grand, happening right here and now. Musicologist Yelena Petrushanskaya later described Brodsky's manner of reciting in the 60s in the following way:

We were those mesmerized contemporaries! Of course, we did not expect such an experience before we met him.

For the second reading, some days later, we gathered more of our friends – I think altogether there were 12, maybe 15 people. So, apart from us, there are more people in Vilnius who remember Brodsky's reciting manner.

Joseph stayed with us for about a week. What did we do in our, so to say, spare time, apart from listening to his poetry? We took long walks in the Old town, in daytime and at night, often accompanied by some of our friends – Juozas Tumelis, Pranas Morkus, Virgilijus Čepaitis, Ina Vapšinskaitė, as well as my brother Audronis. Joseph made friends with them very quickly.

The Liejyklos street, where we lived, follows the ancient line of the city wall, so it only takes a leisurely stroll of 15 or 20 minutes to reach almost any place in the Old town. And we did take advantage of our location. The nearest route started right around the corner and continued along St. Ignatius (Šv. Ignoto) street, leading to the Dominican monastery, closed long time ago. The monastery has an inner courtyard that can be reached only through the second floor of the building. The building was inhabited by ordinary people, and Joseph suddenly decided to try and rent a room there for a longer period, and even called at one of the flats. Someone opened the door, but, fortunately, there were no rooms for rent, and Joseph calmed down. Obviously, there was no way he could afford it.

I also remember our walk along the same St. Ignatius Street one late evening. At the end of that street, turning to the courtyards opposite to the Dominican monastery, one could get ON THE ROOF of a corps de garde, a ward-house – a small building with columns, pertaining to a large palace ensemble, the architectural style of which is somewhat alien to the Old town; it was built in the times of Russian Empire as a residence for the Governor-General (today the palace is used as the President's office).

On one of those days we went to Trakai; some other day Pranas Morkus drove us in his car to Kaunas. There also we explored the old town – the Cathedral; the tomb of Maironis (a poet of Lithuanian national renaissance); the Town Hall and its Square; the Gothic facade of the so-called “Perkūnas house”; the church of Vytautas. Joseph was impressed by the stone embankment of the Nemunas River; he asked when it was built. “Before the war, during Smetona's rule” – we said (Antanas Smetona was the President of Lithuania in nineteen-thirties). “You had a good president” – was Joseph's conclusion. After that we crossed the river to see a beautiful panorama of the Old town from the opposite steep bank of Nemunas. There Joseph rewarded his Lithuanian friends for their efforts by saying something like this: “What do we care for Europe, if Europe is here!”

Joseph's friendship with Tomas Venclova also dates back to this first visit to Lithuania. When Joseph arrived here in 1966, Tomas Venclova – our close friend – was actually not there; he returned a couple of days later and immediately came to see us. He and Joseph shook hands in our doorway. Elia recalls that Tomas looked somewhat nervous; perhaps revealing his reverence to Joseph's talent (which he always insisted on being superior – with modesty not so common in the world of arts). Anyway, from that day their friendship very quickly grew to a close and life-long relationship of, as Andrey Sergeyev put it, brothers of the quill, and equal partners in poetic dialogue. Me and Elia saw the growth of this extraordinary friendship of the two poets, being witnesses to their converse both in Vilnius and in Leningrad.

The day before Joseph left Vilnius, Pranas Morkus took us – Joseph, Tomas, Elia, and me – to Sudervė, a village not far from Vilnius, famous for its rotunda-like church with rare acoustics. There Joseph had a long conversation with the parish priest. The priest, Adolf Trusewicz, thirty years later described the episode in the interview to the Polish writer Jacek Podsiadlo. In that interview, the priest also tells how Joseph came to Sudervė for the second time, a couple of years later, accompanied by Anastasia Braudo, a young organ player from Leningrad (we knew her quite well too). This is how priest Trusewicz describes it:

When we returned to Vilnius from Sudervė, we went to visit Virgilijus Čepaitis and his wife, now late Natali Trauberg. She was translating religious literature for samizdat – the unofficial press; Joseph immediately had an argument with her over translation priorities: whether it is more important to translate religiously-philosophical writings by Chesterton, which Natali adored very much and was actually translating, or should the priority be given to the sermons of John Donne, so much respected by Joseph.

After spending about a week in Vilnius, Joseph went to Palanga on the Baltic Sea (the trip was arranged by Juozas Tumelis). There Joseph spent much time with Petras Juodelis, Juozas's father-in-law – a writer and art expert, pre-war Lithuanian intellectual, who spent years in Stalin's Gulag. They obviously liked each other, walking and talking together for hours.

During that week our conversations with Joseph ranged from simple down-to-earth matters like “where should we go today”, through jokes and short funny verses he would create on-the-fly (like an epigram for my brother, meaning approximately this: “collecting together all that's been poured down the throat of this blond, would make a bottle as big as a dome”) – up to quite serious, even existential matters. Of course, we also discussed things about the society. We did not feel any significant difference in our views. Moreover, in some sense our and Joseph's views on many things probably grew and developed in the course of our conversations and close relationship. That was likely the origin of the “Lithuanian theme” in Joseph's poetry. A Moscow-based literature scientist Viktor Kulle writes:

Brodsky's understanding of Lithuania's position under the Soviet rule is lively illustrated by the Polish writer Wiktor Woroszylski in his sketch about the meeting with Brodsky and Venclova in Vilnius in 1971. Remembering their conversation as they walked through the Old Town, Woroszylski writes:

It should be noted, that although, apart from a few people (including us), no-one in Lithuania new Brodsky personally, there was some general interest towards his personality and his poetry – mainly due to the broadcasts of western radio stations, in Russian as well as in Lithuanian, which were giving Joseph Brodsky the attention he deserved. Many people in Lithuania, not even necessarily interested in poetry, knew about Brodsky, and saw him as some example of resilience, some model of behavior that may be somehow relied upon in their own relations with the Soviet regime. So it is fair to say that the affection was mutual.

Joseph took some interest in the Lithuanian language, too. For example, he noticed that my wife Elia calls me Romai – that is, uses a vocative case instead of nominative. Joseph also started addressing me with a vocative, which, of course, was very pleasing. He also learned the Lithuanian spelling of his name, and sometimes used it to sign poems that he brought to us. In our family archive we still keep two sheets of paper with poems, handwritten by Joseph and signed in Lithuanian – J. Brodskis.

One of these two signatures is replicated on the already-mentioned memorial tablet installed on the house on Liejyklos street.

We tried to count, how many times Joseph came to Lithuania during those six years from 1966 till 1972 – it turns out we know of 8 visits, which is quite a lot.

In 1973 Joseph wrote to me and Elia, already from emigration, from a motel in Columbus, Ohio:

“At night I often dream of “the Pursuit” [that is “Vytis”, the historical national emblem of Lithuania] ... Strange thing – I miss Lithuania as if I lived there for years, not just for three months – in total...” (my translation from Russian).

Let me note that three months is obviously a slight exaggeration, but it actually shows that Joseph had very warm memories of Lithuania.

In 2000, at the conference dedicated to Joseph Brodsky's 60th anniversary in St. Petersburg, I was making a presentation about Brodsky's Lithuanian publications; and after that presentation Lilia Pann, an American literary scientist, an expert in Russian literature, asked me: why Brodsky loved Lithuania so much? I don't remember now my answer, but the interesting fact is that the question itself contained a statement: Brodsky loved Lithuania.

Now let me move to the next stage in our friendship with Joseph – the period between 1967 and 1972, when me and Elia lived in Leningrad, not far from the Pestelia street, where Joseph lived.

At the end of 1966, an institute of physics in Leningrad (the Semiconductor institute of the Academy of Sciences) offered me a permanent job, so me and Elia moved to Leningrad. Just before Christmas, a month before our first son Andrius was born, we settled in a room of 30 square meters in a very big so-called communal flat (the term “communal” meaning that there were several families living in one big flat) in the center of the city. One kitchen for 10 families, and one bathroom, too. But the ceiling was 5 meters high, beautifully molded, our windows overlooking a boulevard. But, most importantly, we found ourselves living just two blocks away from the Muruzi house, where Joseph lived with his parents – a short walk by side-streets, or two stops by trolleybus.

Thanks to Joseph, these five and a half years (before Joseph’s emigration) in the life of our family were so intense and emotionally rich, that even today, looking back over the following 37 years, that period feels exceptionally bright.

I have already mentioned that by lucky coincidence we happened to live nearby, so our relationship was intensive. At times we would see each other every day, sometimes twice a day. Often Joseph would bring and recite poems that he just created. Elia was making nice meals, and we talked – those endless talks of the sixties. As in Vilnius before, there was a lot of joking; Joseph was often telling funny stories, half real, half masterly fabled by him. We had a wonderful feeling that we are all glad to be together.

Sometimes Joseph would come late in the evening, when little Andrius was already asleep. If he wanted to read some poems for us, we would go to the kitchen, which, as I mentioned, we shared with neighbors. Even if he started reciting in a low voice, it was soon getting louder and louder, making me and Elia tremble with fear the some neighbors will come out and make a scandal. Strangely, although our neighbors were quite diverse, both in the sense of education and in other matters, and these night readings were not so rare, none of the neighbors ever complained. Perhaps they felt that something almost sacred is going on, and they should not intervene.

Ever since we came to stay in Leningrad, Joseph started introducing us to his friends. Already during the first months of our residence there we got to know Uflands, Naymans, Gordins, Lifschitz's, Yevgeniy Reyn, Tania Nikolskaya, and others. Some people came to our place (like on the Christmas Eve of 1967), some we would visit, but most often we would meet at Joseph's – especially on the 24th of May, Joseph's birthday.

Westerners, on study trips to Leningrad for their doctorate studies in Slavonics, would inevitably meet Joseph, and he often brought them to our place. This way we got to know Faith Wigzell, Liz Robson, Liz Winter, Samuel Ramer, Kees Verheul.

Joseph made us meet Carl & Ellendea Proffer (ARDIS publishers)as soon as they happened to be in Leningrad. We liked each other; and we likewise cared about Joseph, so we also became fast friends. During their rather frequent visits, Proffers would often come to our home, sometimes bringing their children too. We had a very cordial relationship.

People sometimes ask me, whether me and Joseph were equal in our friendship. I may try to answer.

Once, during a walk, Joseph told me, speaking of Pasternak, Mandelshtam, Cvetayeva, and Akhmatova, that their achievements are not final. There is a need for the next step. He said this in a very casual manner, and in very casual circumstances – we were standing by a kiosk near the Taurida Garden. And I felt some concern in his voice –“there is a need”.

What I am trying to say is that he did appreciate the talent that he has, as well as obligations that it brings. But, I think, it was never a basis for him to be exceptional. And, therefore, his relationships with friends were never marred by questions like “equal or not equal”.

At the end of August 1968, during Soviet invasion to Czechoslovakia, Joseph, who usually avoided any politics in poetry, brought to us a draft of a poem which started as follows:

За Саву, Драву и Мораву,
за Лабу, за Дунай, за Влтаву,
за реки – символы свободы,
за то, что пришлым эти воды
не вычерпать солдатской каской, …

To Sava, Drava, and Morava,
To Laba, to Danube, to Vltava
To rivers symbolizing freedom!
All foreign armies that may see them
Can't make them dry with soldier's helmets…

– and so on, three strophes with variants. And the closing strophe, also unfinished:

За Саву, Драву и Мораву
за Лабу, за Дунай, за Влтаву.
За наш позор, за вашу славу
скрестим со сталью вороненой
хрусталь Богемии граненый…

To Sava, Drava and Morava,
To Laba, To Danube, to Vltava
To our shame and to your glory
We raise Bohemian cut glasses
Though burnished steel across them passes…

Joseph often used to say, in different situations, that “it is necessary to try and take an even higher note”, by which he meant “doing more than you can”. Soviet invasion to Czechoslovakia brought such pain and anger, that he tried to do something he had never done before – write a poem on a burning political topic. However, political situation was changing quickly. The words “to your glory” remained hanging in the air – with forces so uneven, Czech glory had no chance to last. The Prague Spring ended in defeat, made even more bitter as it was covered with some fake peace agreement.

Joseph left the poem unfinished. Later he told me that it was no longer clear what to write about. So an attempt “to take a higher note” in that case was unsuccessful... This unfinished poem still has not been published.

We witnessed also the creation of the Lithuanian Divertissement (1971). In our family archives we have three documents, partly typed, partly handwritten by Joseph, that reflect the development of this cycle. The first, draft version has six numbered parts. The verses are typed on sheets of paper cut in half and glued bottom-to-top, making a single vertical strip containing the whole cycle. The dedication on top reads Homage to Thomas Venclowa, then goes the Neringa verse, and so on. This draft contains a lot of handwritten corrections – some parts are crossed out, with new variants written on the other side of the sheet.

The second document contains a note addressing me: Dear Romas, this is the 1st part of that Divertissement, for Tomas. This new part, the Introduction, was absent in the first draft. The third document, titled Lithuanian Divertissement. For Tomas Venclova, already contains all seven parts, typed as a fair-copy, but still with two lines crossed and re-written by hand.

This “triptych” of manuscripts is especially dear to us. Not only because it is about Lithuania, but also because Joseph brought these drafts to us separately, one following another two-three days apart, so me and Elia were directly witnessing the process of poetic creation.

It was Lithuanian Divertissement that Joseph Brodsky read five year later, in 1976, already in emigration, while attending a conference of Santara–Šviesa, a federation of liberal Lithuanians abroad. One of the participants of the event described her impression of Brodsky's appearance this way: “His words sounded like some mystic melody, like liturgical intonations of an orthodox priest. Maybe I felt this magic because I could not understand the words, but words loose their importance when the poet is able to create such an atmosphere as Brodsky created”. As Joseph recited, the Lithuanian translation of the Divertissement was read to the public, in parallel, by the poet Jurgis Blekaitis – this was actually the very first translation of Joseph Brodsky's poetry into Lithuanian language.

The Lithuanian Divertissement, as well as the Lithuanian Nocturne, written later, are dedicated to Tomas Venclova. In his turn, Tomas Venclova in Soviet Lithuania was having less and less possibilities for literary work, and he openly joined the movement for civil rights, becoming a dissident and one of the founders of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group; he wrote an open letter to the Central Committee of the Lithuanian Communist Party, and openly strove for emigration. All this could bring very serious trouble – he could have been arrested, or put into a psychiatric clinic.

Everywhere – in Vilnius, in Leningrad, in Moscow, and abroad – Tomas's friends were very much worried. Joseph did not just worry – he acted. He arranged for the translation of Tomas's poems into English, he looked for relations with the community of Lithuanian emigrants, and actively defended Tomas in the American press – for example, writing a large article about Venclova for the New York Review of Books.

When Tomas Venclova finally arrived to the United States in early 1977, Joseph was actively helping him to join the academic circles.

Much later, in 1991, already a world-renown figure and a Nobel Prize Winner, Brodsky, not forgetting his ties with Lithuania, together with two other poets – Tomas Venclova and Czeslaw Milosz, made a historic appeal, protesting against the bloody events of January 1991 in Vilnius. The appeal was published by the New York Times on January 15, 1991:

The poet's conflict with the System in metaphysical sense was unsolvable; but in the down-to-earth reality the necessity for some solution was rapidly growing. The Soviet regime itself already wanted it. They grew increasingly tired of hearing Brodsky's name all the time, again and again forbidding to publish, being constantly reproached by the West, and so on.

On the 10th of May, 1972, Brodsky was called to “ОВИР”, the Soviet migration office, where the officer told him that he must submit documents for leaving the country, and made it clear that the decision on his departure is final and unquestionable.

Joseph agreed immediately. It was the only reasonable answer possible. Joseph, knowing the ways of the regime, clearly understood that the decision was made at the highest level, and there is no acceptable alternative.

Three weeks later, on the 4th of June, me and other friends gathered at the Pulkovo airport to see him off. Joseph was leaving Soviet Union by the Soviet Airlines flight to Vienna. An interesting detail: Joseph's mother Maria Moiseevna, who spent all her life in Russia, was so suspicious of the government, that she strictly bid Joseph not to eat or drink anything they would give him on the plane.

It must be said, that Joseph was not flying into emptiness. Already back in 1968 Wystan Hugh Auden himself agreed to write (and actually wrote in 1970) a preface to the book of English translations of Brodsky's poetry: Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems (translations by George Kline), published by Penguin Books in London (1973), and by Harper & Row in New York (1974). Numerous translations were also published in American and British periodicals, and there were two books in Russian, published in the United States even earlier.

By lucky coincidence, Carl Proffer (Michigan University professor of Slavonics, expert and publisher of Russian unofficial literature, and Joseph's publisher) was in Leningrad, when Joseph was told by the authorities to leave the country. Upon hearing this, Carl immediately returned to Ann Arbor, got an appointment with the Rector and, as Carl himself later described it, told him that the University of Michigan now has a chance that it never had before and may not have in the future – to get a poet of a global scale; and told him about Joseph Brodsky.

On the 4th of June Carl was waiting at the Vienna airport for the plane from Leningrad, holding an invitation for Joseph to become a Poet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan. Moreover, the very next day Proffer and Brodsky found W. H. Auden himself at his summer house not far from Vienna, and some days later Joseph already flew to London with Auden to make an appearance at the Poetry International festival, together with Robert Lowell, Stephen Spender, Seamus Heaney, and other famous poets.

Back in the days of Joseph's trial, Anna Akhmatova – in many ways Joseph's mentor – said a phrase that I like and agree with: “What a biography they are making for our red-head!” I always understood this phrase this way: if Joseph will endure, the whole thing will turn to his advantage, he will win, not them – the Soviets. It is a matter of resilience and perseverance, in more general terms – a matter of personality. And Joseph did endure. Not completely undamaged, of course. It was probably hard on his health too. But he came out unbroken, and with no anger. He always referred to his exile in the North as “there, in the village” or “in my village”.

In 1972 the situation was repeating. Forced emigration became in fact a part of this “biography they were making” for Joseph. Yes, it was an enormous challenge for his abilities and his whole personality. And again he was the winner. He became a much desired professor for American universities, joined the American literary elite, his books of essays in English would be sold out immediately – there is no need to continue the list of achievements.

Here I may tell a little funny story. This was several years after Joseph moved to the United States. Ellendea Proffer came to Leningrad, and, telling us how things are with Joseph, was actually complaining. She was saying that, well, people in America are so diverse, that the range of opinions and views is huge. But Joseph, when making some public speech, has a unique ability to say something that suddenly offends everyone. I tried to comfort her, reasoning that opinions may differ about things that are already known. If everybody feels offended by some idea, it probably means that the idea is completely new. And new ideas are sometimes worth a Nobel Prize... As it turned out later, my joke was prophetic.

Before leaving, Joseph warned us, that when he leaves, his poems will probably become illegal at home, and that his friends are likely to have trouble with authorities. However, there seemed to be no direct vengeance from the authorities towards the admirers of Joseph's poetry; at least they did not go that far as to make possession of his verses a direct crime. Some KGB officer was reported saying, as they searched somebody's flat for other reasons and found a heap of typed verses, that “writings of the American poet Brodsky are of no interest to us”. Nevertheless, Vladimir Maramzin, who compiled an unpublished full collection of Joseph's pre-emigration works, and Mikhail Heifetz, who wrote an introductory article to this home-made edition, and late professor Yefim Etkind, who made a review for the collection, all experienced direct hits from KGB.

Joseph's mother Maria Moiseevna was trying to visit her son for years and years. The authorities invariably replied, that if she wants to leave forever, there would be no obstacles, but there is no way they would allow a temporary visit. Joseph's parents did not want to leave forever. The only remaining possibility for Joseph was to call them often, while they still lived, and when they died, soon one after another, to put memories of them into verses.

Me and Joseph – we wrote to each other. I hope that some day at least a part of this correspondence may be published. In 1988 our family returned to Lithuania. From there we sometimes called Joseph. After Lithuania regained independence, we were seriously discussing a possibility for Joseph to come to Vilnius (in other words, me and my brother Audronis were inviting him – again). Joseph was quite positive about it, but, unfortunately, that plan was never fulfilled.

In March 1996 it was me flying from Vilnius to New York to pay a tribute to our late friend by reciting The Dominicans, from the Lithuanian Divertissement, during the Memorial Service for Joseph Brodsky at the Cathedral of Saint-John the Divine in New York. A year later me and my wife Elia participated in the re-burial ceremony, putting the poet's remains to rest at the San Michele cemetery in Venice.

In Lithuania, the death of Joseph Brodsky caused grief and deep sorrow. There were several memorial events, the most notable held at the Vilnius University and lead by Joseph's friends from Poland, Russia, and United States – Czeslaw Milosz, Yevgeniy Rein, and Tomas Venclova.

3 books of Lithuanian translations of Joseph Brodsky's poetry and essays are published in Lithuania so far. I have one of them here – a bilingual edition with numerous photos and facsimiles of Joseph's drawings.

In 2000, a memorial tablet, which I mentioned earlier, was put up on the wall at Liejyklos number 1. I had the honor to lead the opening ceremony, attended by three Nobel Prize Winners – Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, and Guenter Grass. The President of the Republic of Lithuania Mr. Valdas Adamkus was also there, and gave a speech. As a conclusion to my presentation, I would like to quote the English translation of an excerpt from that speech:

I am grateful to Alan Myers for sending me the text of the Lithuanian Divertissement translated by him. I am grateful to my son Ramunas Katilius Jr., who translated the verses from За Саву, Драву и Мораву…, and recited them as well as The Lithuanian Divertissement during the presentation.

Ramunas KATILIUS, Prof., Dr Sc
Principal Research Fellow
Semiconductor Physics Institute
Vilnius, Lithuania