| Gorbunov and Gorchakov | |
| Title Orig: | Gorbunov i Gorchakov |
| Translator: | Carl Ray Proffer and Assya Kumesky (one translation), Harry Thomas (another translation), Alan Myers (one more translation) |
| Author: | Joseph Brodsky |
| Country: | Russia |
| Language: | Russian |
| Genre: | poem |
| Pub Date: | 1970 |
| Media Type: | |
Gorbunov and Gorchakov (Russian: Горбунóв и Горчакóв) is a poem by Russian and English poet, essayist, dramatist Joseph Brodsky.
Gorbunov and Gorchakov is a forty-page long poem.[1]
Gorbunov and Gorchakov are patients in a mental asylum near Leningrad.[2] The poem consists of lengthy conversations between these two patients in the Soviet psychiatric prison as well as between each of them separately and the interrogating psychiatrists.[1] The topics vary from the taste of the cabbage served for supper to the meaning of life and Russia's destiny.[1]
In Sanna Turoma’s words, the psychiatric hospital of Gorbunov and Gorchakov as a metaphor of the Soviet State is one example of Brodsky’s perception of the Kafkaesque absurdity of Soviet surreality.[3] Gorbunov and Gorchakov mirrors the balance that Brodsky struck when he was compelled to weigh the benefits and dangers of psychiatric diagnosis in his dealings with the Soviet state.[4]
In the poem, fourteen cantos are named in a such way that the table of contents in Russian language has the rhyming structure of the sonnet:[5]
At the very end of 1963, Brodsky was committed for observation to the Kashchenko psychiatric hospital in Moscow where he stayed for several days.[5] A few weeks later, his second hospitalization took place: on 13 February he was arrested in Leningrad and on 18 February the Dzerzhinsky District Court sent him for psychiatric examination to ‘Pryazhka’ (Psychiatric Hospital No. 2[6] located on the) where he spent about three weeks, from 18 February to 13 March.[5] These two stints in psychiatric establishments formed the experience underlying Gorbunov and Gorchakov called by Brodsky ‘an extremely serious work.’.[5] The poem was written between 1965 and 1968 and published in 1970.[7]
There are several English translations of the poem including one by Carl Ray Proffer with Assya Kumesky,[8] one by Harry Thomas[1] and one by Alan Myers.