THE POET AND THE CAPSULE. MARGINALIA TO AN ESSAY BY JOSEPH BRODSKY ‘THE CONDITION WE CALL EXILE’
Authors: Sobolevskaya Elena 
Published: July 2024

The paper deals with the interpretation of Joseph Brodsky’s essay “The Condition We Call Exile”. The distinct originality of this essay is due in no small part to the special symbolic image of the poet and language in their inseparable relationship. This symbolic image allows us to rethink the relationship between the poet and language closer to their deep essence and immersed, actually, in the deep symbolic context. In the case of the poet, exile and its attendant circumstances are directly related to the very way of being in the world, to the very nature of the exile in the deepest sense of the word: speaking, thinking, verse-and-life-composition – to the language in the sphere of which the poet directly resides. In the case of the poet, exile and its attendant circumstances are directly related to the very way of being in the world, to the very nature of the exile in the deepest sense of the word – to the language in the sphere of which the poet directly resides.
The poet’s consciousness is inevitably directed to language, or rather to the language environment, and mainly to the environment of his native, mother tongue. Being isolated from the usual conditions of life, far away from the empirical homeland and native culture, the poet still remains with the language.
Exile in this case works as a sort of trigger, awakening and prompting the poet to realise language in its special status — as a kind of symbolic body: as a capsule, a kind of cocoon or mother’s womb, and not just a womb, but a kind of foetus bubble (amniotic sac or membrane) that serves literally for the surviving, preserving and further forming of the one who is inside it. In other words, language acts as a particular, specifically arranged lifeworld. To the extent that the poet turns to society and to poetry as a form of public consciousness, the further the poet is distanced from Poetry, from Language, i.e., from the lifeworld that preserves and protects him as a poet. To the extent that the poet turns exclusively to the clear, accomplished past or to the dark, unfulfilled future, exclusively to the temporary earthly homeland, to the known audience, or to the visible, somehow reachable community, he also distances himself from his genuine service. Exile does not diminish the poet, but calibrates, tests, reveals, in the end, his own measure in relation to the world and language. The poet’s lifeworld, his native, mother tongue, of which he is a carrier, makes it possible, regardless of time and location, to build a house – to create a poem. And neither exile, nor banishment, nor occupation, nor any kind of social isolation can deprive the poet of the right to such house-building. In the sphere of the poet’s lifeworld, it is possible to distinguish a layer of universal cultural meanings, a certain universal cultural milieu. These cultural meanings are constituted anew in the horizon of this or that existential-language experience. The ontology of a creative person is not only his own spiritual body, his works, his thoughts, his dreams, but also the surrounding world that envelops him, embraces him, gives him spiritual nourishment and support. The soul of the poet, whether in a foreign land or in his native land, should be curled around with the word, with his native, mother tongue, and not be subdued by the flesh.