SOURCE: "From Exile to Affirmation: The Poetry of Joseph Brodsky," in Studies in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 17, No. 2, Summer, 1993, pp. 365-83.

In the following essay, Patterson examines the theme of exile in Brodsky's works, stating that "Brodsky regards his exile not as a political condition but as an existential condition, one that is characteristic of his condition as a human being."

Joseph Brodsky is a poet whose concern with language is a concern for the sacred. In an interview with Nataliya Gorbanevskaya he says, "If I were to begin to create some form of theology, I think it would be a theology of language. In this sense, the word is really something sacred for me." The sacred, however, manifests itself only as something lost. The poet engages in his effort to join word and meaning not in the midst of the sacred but in a movement toward the...