Brodsky’s Nobel lecture - post 3/4

✳️ On June 4, 1972, Joseph Brodsky was put onto plane to Vienna by plaincloth KGB officers. A non-conformist alien in a totalitarian USSR he immediately found his place and role in free world. He has been Poet-in-Residence and Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Queens College, Smith College, Columbia University, and Cambridge University in England. In 1978, Brodsky was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at Yale University, and on May 23, 1979, he was inducted as a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1981, Brodsky was a recipient of MacArthur Foundation’s award for his works of “genius”. In 1986 a collection of Brodsky’s essays on the arts and politics won the National Book Critic’s Award for Criticism.

In 1987 Joseph Brodsky was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature - “for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity”. He delivered his Nobel lecture in Russian, with an authorized English translation.

🖋️

“Language and, presumably, literature are things that are more ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form of social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature towards the state is essentially a reaction of the permanent – better yet, the infinite – against the temporary, against the finite. To say the least, as long as the state permits itself to interfere with the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of the state. A political system, a form of social organization, as any system in general, is by definition a form of the past tense that aspires to impose itself upon the present (and often on the future as well); and a man whose profession is language is the last one who can afford to forget this. The real danger for a writer is not so much the possibility (and often the certainty) of persecution on the part of the state, as it is the possibility of finding oneself mesmerized by the state’s features, which, whether monstrous or undergoing changes for the better, are always temporary.

The philosophy of the state, its ethics – not to mention its aesthetics – are always “yesterday”. Language and literature are always “today”, and often – particularly in the case where a political system is orthodox – they may even constitute “tomorrow”. One of literature’s merits is precisely that it helps a person to make the time of his existence more specific, to distinguish himself from the crowd of his predecessors as well as his like numbers, to avoid tautology – that is, the fate otherwise known by the honorific term, “victim of history”. What makes art in general, and literature in particular, remarkable, what distinguishes them from life, is precisely that they abhor repetition. In everyday life you can tell the same joke thrice and, thrice getting a laugh, become the life of the party. In art, though, this sort of conduct is called “cliché”.

#josephbrodsky #nobel

Brodsky’s Nobel lecture - post 4/4

✳️ On June 4, 1972, Joseph Brodsky was put onto plane to Vienna by plaincloth KGB officers. A non-conformist alien in a totalitarian USSR he immediately found his place and role in free world. He has been Poet-in-Residence and Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Queens College, Smith College, Columbia University, and Cambridge University in England. In 1978, Brodsky was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters at Yale University, and on May 23, 1979, he was inducted as a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1981, Brodsky was a recipient of MacArthur Foundation’s award for his works of “genius”. In 1986 a collection of Brodsky’s essays on the arts and politics won the National Book Critic’s Award for Criticism.

In 1987 Joseph Brodsky was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature - “for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity”. He delivered his Nobel lecture in Russian, with an authorized English translation.

🖋️

“There are, as we know, three modes of cognition: analytical, intuitive, and the mode that was known to the Biblical prophets, revelation. What distinguishes poetry from other forms of literature is that it uses all three of them at once (gravitating primarily toward the second and the third). For all three of them are given in the language; and there are times when, by means of a single word, a single rhyme, the writer of a poem manages to find himself where no one has ever been before him, further, perhaps, than he himself would have wished for. The one who writes a poem writes it above all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of conscience, of thinking, of comprehending the universe. Having experienced this acceleration once, one is no longer capable of abandoning the chance to repeat this experience; one falls into dependency on this process, the way others fall into dependency on drugs or on alcohol. One who finds himself in this sort of dependency on language is, I guess, what they call a poet.”

#josephbrodsky #nobel

Henk de Pater recently wrote that we need 56 tons of steel to install 1 MW of solar.

In the next 5-8 years 🇪🇹 Ethiopia will see the yearly volume of installations at 10-40 MW of off-grid solar energy generation for commercial farms, light industrial facilities and other business users. It will require up to 2000 tons of steel — every year.

Can we replace imported steel with local wood - say, bamboo?

This poem by Joseph Brodsky is selected by Nobel Prize organization as a representation of his mastery for which he was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature for 1987,

== Seven Strophes (1981) ==

I was but what you’d brush
with your palm, what your leaning
brow would hunch to in evening’s
raven-black hush.

I was but what your gaze
in that dark could distinguish:
a dim shape to begin with,
later – features, a face.

It was you, on my right,
on my left, with your heated
sighs, who molded my helix,
whispering at my side.

It was you by that black
window’s trembling tulle pattern
who laid in my raw cavern
a voice calling you back.

I was practically blind.
You, appearing, then hiding,
gave me my sight and heightened
it. Thus some leave behind

a trace. Thus they make worlds.
Thus, having done so, at random
wastefully they abandon
their work to its whirls.

Thus, prey to speeds
of light, heat, cold, or darkness,
a sphere in space without markers
spins and spins.

#josephbrodsky

“GERD represents a sustainable socio-economic project for Ethiopia: replacing fossil fuels and reducing CO2 emissions, it will significantly contribute to the economic and social development of Ethiopia and neighboring countries”

— Moges Mekonnen, Communication Director of EEP, in an exclusive interview to Fana Broadcasting

🔺 Electricity won’t replace fossil fuels and reduce CO2 just by itself.

⚒️ Businesses need to invest in infrastructure, electric devices and processing lines, electric transportation and energy storage systems.

🇪🇹 GERD is an important step towards electricity abundance that we need for economic growth leading to prosperity of Ethiopians.

Just remember: 🇻🇳 to achieve same per capita level of electricity generation as Vietnam, 🇪🇹Ethiopia needs to have 85 Gigawatt. And 🇿🇦 to achieve same per capita level of electricity generation as South Africa we need to have 120 Gigawatt.

🔆 GERD is just a beginning of Ethiopian energy greatness.