"I’m happy with my life"
Joseph Brodsky
BY ALAIN ELKANN
Skinheads, Nazis and prejudices. Anti-Semitism is the child of Fear.
Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996) does not give way to pessimism: the past is a spent force, history does not repeat itself.
December 1st, 1992. The 1987 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, one of the greatest living poets, author of A Stop in the Desert and Roman Elegies, has just arrived in Rome. I meet the Jewish Russian writer in the bar of his hotel. He drinks tea and smokes, chewing on the filter of his Kent cigarette. I ask him:
Joseph, how do you see the revival of anti-Semitism in Europe?
This is what happens when society feels less politically and economically secure. In Germany it coincided with the period following the Weimar Republic. And Russia has never been secure economically. Anti-Semitism is a phenomenon.
