The Man Who Brought Brodsky into English

Conversations with George L. Kline

Cynthia L. Haven

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English

Academic Studies Press
22 June 2021

Series: Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy

""A brilliant story of the three-decade-long collaboration of Joseph Brodsky and his loyal translator. Cynthia Haven draws a vivid portrait of George Kline-an intellectual, a friend, a war hero. These never-before-told stories, collected and painstakingly edited by Haven, fill in the glaring lacunae in Brodsky studies.""-Yuri Leving, author of Iosif Brodsky v Rime

Brodsky's poetic career in the West was launched when Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems was published in 1973. Its translator was a scholar and war hero, George L. Kline. This is the story of that friendship and collaboration, from its beginnings in 1960s Leningrad and concluding with the Nobel poet's death in 1996.

Kline translated more of Brodsky's poems than any other single person, with the exception of Brodsky himself. The Bryn Mawr philosophy professor and Slavic scholar was a modest and retiring man, but on occasion he could be as forthright and adamant as Brodsky himself. ""Akhmatova discovered Brodsky for Russia, but I discovered him for the West,"" he claimed.

Kline's interviews with author Cynthia L. Haven before his death in 2014 include a description of his first encounter with Brodsky, the KGB interrogations triggered by their friendship, Brodsky's emigration, and the camaraderie and conflict over translation. When Kline called Brodsky in London to congratulate him for the Nobel, the grateful poet responded, ""And congratulations to you, too, George!""

By: Cynthia L. Haven
Imprint: Academic Studies Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 228mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 333g
ISBN: 9781644695142
ISBN 10: 1644695146
Series: Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 22 June 2021
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

1. Introduction: To Please Two Shadows 2. A Love Affair with Language 3. The Leningrad poet and ""a gift fit for a king"" 4. How the KGB Defended Russian Poetry 5. The poet in exile: ""I'll live out my days..."" 6. The ""Good Lexicon"" Rule 7. Kline Takes Up the Gauntlet 8. ""What did you do in World War II?"" 9. Selected translations by George Kline 10. Occasional poems: George Kline, Joseph Brodsky 11. A bibliography of Kline's translations of Joseph Brodsky's poems 12. Kline Chronology 13. Afterword by Valentina Polukhina 14. Acknowledgements

Cynthia L. Haven is a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar and author of 2018's Evolution of Desire: A Life of Rene Girard, the first-ever biography of the French theorist. She has been a Milena Jesensk Journalism Fellow with the Institut fr die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna, as well as a visiting writer and scholar at Stanford's Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, and a Voegelin Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. Her Joseph Brodsky: Conversations was published in 2003. Her""Spirit of the Place"": Czesaw Miosz in California is forthcoming. She has written for The Times Literary Supplement, and has also contributed to The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, The Wall Street Journal, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and others. Her work has appeared in Russia's Zvezda and Colta.