Brodsky studied only 7 classes in high school, and he became unbearably boring. He dropped out and went to work in the factory. At the plant, he also did not last long, only six months. Then there was work on the lighthouse, in the crystallographic laboratory, in the morgue. For a while he worked as a handyman in a geological expedition and a stoker in a bathhouse.
When Joseph Alexandrovich emigrated to the United States, despite the lack of special education, immediately received an invitation to teach at five American colleges. He did unusual exercises: there were no lectures and seminars. He talked with his students and told about his favorite writers. At the same time he always drank coffee and smoked a lot.
Despite the lack of higher education, Brodsky read a lot. Therefore, he was surprised that students who study literature can not boast of the same. One day Brodsky sat down at the typewriter and wrote a list of books that everyone should read. Today we publish photos of these records and the list of books with links to resources where you can buy them.
1. “Bhagavad Gita” (buy on Litres.ru →).
2. “Mahabharata” (buy at Litres.ru →).
3. “The Epic of Gilgamesh” (buy at Labirint.ru →).
4. The Old Testament (buy on Litres.ru →).
5. Homer. “Illyada”, “Odyssey” (download free on Litres.ru →).
6. Herodotus. “History” (buy on Litres.ru →).
7. Sophocles. Plays (download free on Litres.ru →).
8. Aeschylus. Plays (buy at Labirint.ru →).
9. Euripides. Pieces: “Ippolit”, “Bacchante”, “Elektra”, “Phoenician” (buy on Litres.ru →).
10. Thucydide. “History of the Peloponnesian War” (buy on Amazon.com →).
eleven. Plato. “Dialogues” (buy on Litres.ru →).
12. Aristotle. “Poetics”, “Physics”, “Ethics”, “On the soul” (download free on Litres.ru →).
13. Alexandrian poetry (buy on Amazon.com →).
14. Lucretius. “On the nature of things” (buy at Labirint.ru →).
15. Plutarch. “Comparative biographies” (buy on Litres.ru →).
16. Virgil. “Aeneid”, “Bucoliki”, “Georgiki” (buy on Litres.ru →).
17. Tacitus. «Annals» (buy on Labirint.ru →).
18. Ovid. “Metamorphoses”, “Heroes”, “Science of Love” (buy at Litres.ru →).
19. New Testament (buy on Litres.ru →).
20. Suetonius. “The Life of the Twelve Caesars” (buy on Litres.ru →).
21. Marcus Aurelius (buy at Litres.ru →).
22. Catullus (buy on Litres.ru →).
23. Horace (buy on Litres.ru →).
24. Epictetus (buy on Litres.ru →).
25. Aristophanes (buy at Litres.ru →).
26. Elian. “Colorful stories”, “On the nature of animals” (buy on Amazon.com →).
27. Apollodorus. “Argonavtika” (buy on Amazon.com →).
28. Michael Psell. “Chronography” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
29. Gibbon. “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” (download free on Litres.ru →).
thirty. Plotinus. “Enneads” (buy on Litres.ru →).
31. Eusebius of Caesarea (Pamphylus). “Church history” (download free on Litres.ru →).
32. Boethius. “Consolation of philosophy” (buy on Amazon.com →).
33. Pliny the Younger. “Letters” (buy on Amazon.com →).
34. Byzantine verse novels.
35. Heraclitus of Ephesus. «Fragments» (buy on Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
36. Augustine. “Confession” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
37. Thomas Aquinas. “The sum of theology” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
38. “Flowers of St. Francis” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
39. Niccolo Machiavelli. “Sovereign” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
40. Dante. “Divine Comedy” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
41. Franco Sacchetti. Novels (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
42. Icelandic sagas (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
43. Shakespeare. “Anthony and Cleopatra”, “Hamlet”, “Macbeth”, “Henry V” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
44. Rabelais (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
45. Bacon (buy on Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
46. Martin Luther (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
47. Calvin (buy on Amazon.com →).
48. Montaigne. «Experiments» (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
49. Cervantes. «Don Quixote» (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
50. Descartes (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
51. “Song of Roland” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
52. “Beowulf” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
53. Benvenuto Cellini (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
54. Henry Adams. “Education of Henry Adams” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
55. Hobbes. “Leviathan” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
56. Pascal. “Thoughts” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
57. Milton. “Paradise Lost” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
58. John Donne (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
59. Andrew Marvell (buy on Amazon.com →).
60. George Herbert (buy on Amazon.com →).
61. Spinoza. “Treatises” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
62. Stendhal. “Parma monastery”, “Red and black”, “The life of Henri Brylar” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
63. Swift. “Gulliver’s Travel” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
64. Lawrence Stern. “Tristram Shandy” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
65. Choderlo de Laclos. “Dangerous communications” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
66. Montesquieu. “Persian letters” (buy on Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
67. Locke. “Two Treatises on the Board” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy at Amazon.com →).
68. Adam Smith. “Welfare of Nations” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
69. Leibniz. “Discourse on metaphysics” (buy on Amazon.com →).
70. Hume (buy on Amazon.com →).
71. “Federalist’s Notes” (buy on Amazon.com →).
72. Kant. “Criticism of Pure Reason” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
73. Kierkegaard. “Fear and trembling”, “Either” or “Philosophical crumbs” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
74. Dostoevsky. “Notes from the Underground”, “Demons” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
75. Goethe. “Faust”, “The Italian journey” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
76. Tocqueville. “Democracy in America” (buy on Amazon.com →).
77. De Custine. “The Journey of Our Days” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
78. Eric Auerbach. “Mimesis” (buy on Amazon.com →).
79. Prescott. “The Conquest of Mexico. Conquest of Peru “(buy on Amazon.com →).
80. Octavio Paz. “Labyrinth of loneliness” (buy on Amazon.com →).
81. Carl Popper. “The logic of scientific discovery”, “Open Society and its enemies” (buy at Litres.ru →, buy on Amazon.com →).
82. Elias Canetti. “Mass and power” (buy on Amazon.com →).
Poetry, recommended for reading
English, American: Robert Frost, Thomas Hardy, William Butler Yeats, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Wisten Hugh Auden, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop.
German: Rainer Maria Rilke, Georg Tracl, Peter Huhhel, Ingeborg Bachmann, Gottfried Benn.
Spanish: Antonio Machado, Federico García Lorca, Luis Sernooda, Rafael Alberti, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Octavio Paz.
Polish: Leopold Staff, Czeslaw Milosz, Zbigniew Herbert, Wisława Shimborsk.
French: Guillaume Apollinaire, Jules Seperevilles, Pierre Reverde, Blaise Cendrars, Max Jacob, Francis Jamm, Andre Freno, Paul Eluard, Victor Segalen, Henri Michaud.
Greek: Constantine Cavafy, Yorgos Seferis, Yannis Ritsos.
Dutch: Martinus Neihof (“Avatar”).
Portuguese: Fernando Pessoa, Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
Swedish: Gunnar Ekelef, Harry Martinson, Werner Aspenstrom, Tumas Tranströmer.
Russian: Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelstam, Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Vladislav Khodasevich, Viktor Khlebnikov, Nikolai Klyuev, Nikolai Zabolotsky.
