The The Magic of Poetry

The The Magic of Poetry
Every great artist — poet, writer — is a magician and a seer.
Without a connection to the Creator, creativity is impossible.
The poet is a mystic.
In a mysterious and incomprehensible way, the poet speaks with God more than a priest does — more than an ordinary person. His chosenness is a cross, a suffering, a happiness, and a destiny he carries all his life.
Alexander Pushkin once said:
“I wish to live, so that I may think and suffer.”
In the same secret language, God speaks to the poet, for the poet is the conduit of His thoughts.
In a state of inspiration, God allows the poet to understand that the poet himself is a gift.
Raising his gaze to the heavens, Joseph Brodsky suddenly understands — or rather feels — that he himself is an incomprehensible gift.
Just as Nabokov is suddenly illuminated by the thought that he carries within himself the mystery of God and the Gift.

Brodsky goes even further. His longing for God compels him to write Christmas poems year after year. He attempts to return to that place, those events, that space and time in which he may once have participated — perhaps in previous incarnations.
Year after year, with almost fanatical persistence, he returns to the stable, to the Infant, to the Star, to Bethlehem, to the Magi.
Even the name Joseph is symbolic.
Was Joseph himself somehow connected to the events of that time?
He is drawn to the element of fire. Fire is constantly present in his poetry. Moreover, for a magician, dialogue with God is impossible without the element of fire
He also smoked heavily.
This, too, is a subconscious attraction to fire.
In the end, he burns himself with fire.
Was Joseph Brodsky connected to water?
Very strongly.
His bond with the element of water is especially visible in the second half of his life. His attraction to water led him to live in Venice. If one reads carefully, water is everywhere in his poetry — almost in every poem.

The star gazed into the cave from the depths of the universe — and it was the gaze of the Father.
And that Father was Joseph Brodsky.
— G.