Eleusis. The heritage of values in the poetry of Josif Brodski Cover Image

Eleuzis : dziedzictwo wartości w poezji Josifa Brodskiego
Eleusis. The heritage of values in the poetry of Josif Brodski

Author(s): Ewa Nikadem-Malinowska
Subject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Studies of Literature, Russian Literature, Eastern Slavic Languages
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warmińsko-Mazurskiego w Olsztynie

Summary/Abstract: Greek philosophy fertilized European science and art. Greek culture as a cradle of, first, the Roman culture and then, the European one is a culture of values and conceptions. Values group themselves around a person, conceptions around their spiritual life. Both deter mine the sense and specificity of anthropocentrism that, ages ago, allocated man a place, the centre of the world created by him. Its value and beauty have been confronted on the basis of millenary patterns. The present work treats of universal values as a synthesis of the faith in man, from the man of ancient Greece through the present age. Presented in this way Brodski's creation is to show a person who, exiled from his homeland, not only does not cease to be the synthesis of its culture but, in fact, also becomes the synthesis of the European culture thanks to the common values, inherited after the cultural predecessors. The essence, the heart of the European culture is its set of values elaborated on throughout the centuries. If we look at Europe form this perspective, we will notice Greece expanding and swallowing up the barbarian continent. The traces of this process are to be found in all the arts performed until this day, in the development of thought, in spiritual life. Josif Brodski's poetry enveloped in itself all the best that the European culture had to offer it.

  • Issue Year: 2005
  • Issue No: X
  • Page Range: 67-81
  • Page Count: 5
  • Language: Polish