Joseph Brodsky and Anna Akhmatova. In a deaf-mute universe

Brodsky and Akhmatova — iconic names in the history of Russian poetry. In his Nobel lecture, Brodsky named Akhmatova one of the "sources of light" to whom he owes his poetic fate. Meetings with Akhmatova and her poems connected Brodsky... with the poetic tradition of the Silver Age. St. Petersburg philologist Denis Akhapkin examines the episodes of the lives and works of the two poets in his book, showing the profound interconnection between the two poetic systems. Life events are intricately refracted through the prism of poetic lines, becoming facts not just of biography, but of literary biography — and some features of Akhmatova's poetic language are well heard in Brodsky's poems. The book combines a discussion about the fates of the poets with a discussion about specific poems and their slow reading.