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A Shadow Play: Joseph Brodsky’s Reading of W. H. Auden

“A Shadow Play: Joseph Brodsky’s Reading of W. H. Auden” aims to clarify Auden’s influence on Brodsky’s poetic works. Brodsky’s first reading of Auden’s “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” ignited a turning point of his poetic career because Auden’s words “Time worships language” struck him like an epiphany and revelation. From that time on Brodsky assimilated Auden’s poems and adapted them into his poems. “Verses on the Death of T. S. Eliot,” “The Hawk’s Cry in Autumn,” and “Daedalus in Sicily” were written in imitation of Auden’s motif, poetic forms and metaphysical style. As time passed, however, Brodsky also developed an anxiety with regard to Auden’s influence, but that anxiety lasted for a short time in comparison with the dedication he showed to his precursor throughout his literary career. Brodsky’s poems, then, might be read as a shadow play, in which his love of Auden could be echoed beneath the superb language invention.