On Grief and Reason. Essay

This edition includes essays by Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), selected by the author himself. This collection was first published in New York in 1995 and became the last book printed that the great poet, translator, and playwright was destined to see. Most of the essays were written by Brodsky in English and only a few - in Russian. Some of the translations were done while the author was still alive and with his direct involvement. It includes historical and philosophical excursions, autobiographical plots, poetic analyses of poems by Russian and foreign classics, as well as the speech read by Brodsky at the Swedish Academy upon receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987.