SOURCE: Akhmadulina, Bella, and Valentina Polukhina. “An Interview with Bella Akhmadulina.” In Brodsky's Poetics and Aesthetics, edited by Lev Loseff and Valentina Polukhina, pp. 194-204. London: The Macmillan Press, 1990.

In the following interview, Akhmadulina discusses the influence of Joseph Brodsky on her work and on Russian poetry as a whole.

[Polukhina]: Bella Akhatovna, it seems to me that you are one of the few Russian poets who does not suffer from a ‘Brodsky complex’. How do you explain this apparent complex? Do you feel other poets suffer from it, or is it just my own fantasy?¹

[Akhmadulina]: Valya, my dear, I don't quite understand what you mean. Do you think that some poets feel themselves somehow shrunken in stature before Brodsky, or are you talking of his influence?

I'm not talking about his influence in any positive way, nor how his stature and greatness is comprehended, but about...