I've long had a fascination with commencement speeches as a kind of debased literary genre. I think it goes back to the crummy one I had to sit through on the baking astroturf of my own commencement, when Bill Cosby scolded me for not appreciating all the "opportunities" that he imagined had been dumped at my feet.
So around this time of year, I always feel a strange longing to search for better, paternal advice. And I sincerely wonder if there is out there some combination of words uttered by a successful person that could sum things up better, help one live a better life. I've long since concluded that when you are 21 and in the moment you can't even hear it. Is it even possible for such words to reach a young person, nervous and excited in what may be the first conscious Incredibly Important moment of their lives, a little frightened at the real world, rather sad that everything they've known is vanishing, suffering a hangover and wearing a ridiculous costume?
This month, purely by accident, I happened to come across the speech Joseph Brodsky gave at the University of Michigan in 1988, which is in his anthology On Grief and Reason.
It gets off to a rollicking start. "Life is a game with many rules but no referee," he said. "One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the Holy Book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose."
Well then. One knows from the start not to expect platitudes congratulating the graduates on all they've accomplished (which really, isn't much, to be honest) and how limitless and brilliant each and every one of their futures' is certain to be.
Brodsky was a remarkably complicated guy and doesn't fit nicely into expectations. He has different reputations here in the U.S., his adopted home, and Russia, which he left in the early 1970s (Soviet authorities were mercifully through with gulags and summary executions by then, content to call him a "social parasite" and just toss him out).
To Russians, he is known as an outstanding poet, and more than that -- as the true heir to the great unbroken thread of Russian poetry, the chosen heir of the Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Boris Pasternak (who despite Zhivago, Russians often think first as a poet). To Americans, he was best known as an essayist, frequently appearing in the New York Review of Books, writing thoughtful and grand essays about literature and the Life of the Mind befitting a major public intellectual (the kind that would never slum around with Tina Brown, or appear on cable television shout shows. In other words, the kind that doesn't seem to really exist anymore).
But Brodsky's life is full of incompleteness and sadness. For a great Russian poet, he spent much of his adult life after age 32 in the United States, in exile, where he died young of heart disease at age 55. And for a man who prized the precision and clarity of language and thought, even he admitted that he felt awkward writing in English. There are many striking thoughts and beautiful moments in his essays, but they are sometimes glib and digressive and it feels like he is flopping around in a way that must have been painful for him.
To the graduating Michigan students, he offered a few suggestions for life. "Ignore them if you wish, doubt them if you must, forget them if you can't help it: there is nothing imperative about them," he said. "Should some of it now or in the time to be come in handy to you, I'll be glad. If not, my wrath won't reach you."
There is something fatalistic about these, which I think sums up in large part the blunt, honest part of the fabled "Russian soul" that I admire.
They are pretty self-explanatory. "It will pay for you to zero in on being precise with your language," is the first. Then, "try to be kind to your parents." Sensible advice. But the whole thing drips with the conviction that the world kinda sucks, so find a way to make do.
He also doesn't want any whiners. "At all costs try to avoid granting yourself the status of the victim," he said. This perhaps, cuts right to it: "Try to respect life not only for its amenities but for its hardships too," he said. "They are a part of the game, and what's good about a hardship is that it is not a deception. Whenever you are in trouble, in some scrape, on the verge of despair or in despair, remember: that's life speaking to you in the only language it knows well."
Brodsky makes what might be a half-hearted effort to wrap it up in a hopeful bow at the end, talking about his love for Ann Arbor and the important place Michigan holds in his heart (it was his first home in the West when he was booted). He wishes them luck, acknowledging it is the kind of thing that exists and that you actually need to succeed in the world.
All in all, this is emphatically not the kind of speech your usual CEO or television anchorman would dare to give. It is positively unAmerican. Where are the self-deprecating jokes? the homilies about the unquestioned, solitary virtue of Hard Work? the cheap instructions to be a massively productive worker while taking the time to sniff the flowers and raise your kids?
The first time I read it, I was astonished at how grim and bleak it was, and how I would have left that ceremony blinking and confused and sad. But reading it again, I realize that yeah, I wish I'd heard that.
So around this time of year, I always feel a strange longing to search for better, paternal advice. And I sincerely wonder if there is out there some combination of words uttered by a successful person that could sum things up better, help one live a better life. I've long since concluded that when you are 21 and in the moment you can't even hear it. Is it even possible for such words to reach a young person, nervous and excited in what may be the first conscious Incredibly Important moment of their lives, a little frightened at the real world, rather sad that everything they've known is vanishing, suffering a hangover and wearing a ridiculous costume?
This month, purely by accident, I happened to come across the speech Joseph Brodsky gave at the University of Michigan in 1988, which is in his anthology On Grief and Reason.
It gets off to a rollicking start. "Life is a game with many rules but no referee," he said. "One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the Holy Book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose."
Well then. One knows from the start not to expect platitudes congratulating the graduates on all they've accomplished (which really, isn't much, to be honest) and how limitless and brilliant each and every one of their futures' is certain to be.
Brodsky was a remarkably complicated guy and doesn't fit nicely into expectations. He has different reputations here in the U.S., his adopted home, and Russia, which he left in the early 1970s (Soviet authorities were mercifully through with gulags and summary executions by then, content to call him a "social parasite" and just toss him out).
To Russians, he is known as an outstanding poet, and more than that -- as the true heir to the great unbroken thread of Russian poetry, the chosen heir of the Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Boris Pasternak (who despite Zhivago, Russians often think first as a poet). To Americans, he was best known as an essayist, frequently appearing in the New York Review of Books, writing thoughtful and grand essays about literature and the Life of the Mind befitting a major public intellectual (the kind that would never slum around with Tina Brown, or appear on cable television shout shows. In other words, the kind that doesn't seem to really exist anymore).
But Brodsky's life is full of incompleteness and sadness. For a great Russian poet, he spent much of his adult life after age 32 in the United States, in exile, where he died young of heart disease at age 55. And for a man who prized the precision and clarity of language and thought, even he admitted that he felt awkward writing in English. There are many striking thoughts and beautiful moments in his essays, but they are sometimes glib and digressive and it feels like he is flopping around in a way that must have been painful for him.
To the graduating Michigan students, he offered a few suggestions for life. "Ignore them if you wish, doubt them if you must, forget them if you can't help it: there is nothing imperative about them," he said. "Should some of it now or in the time to be come in handy to you, I'll be glad. If not, my wrath won't reach you."
There is something fatalistic about these, which I think sums up in large part the blunt, honest part of the fabled "Russian soul" that I admire.
They are pretty self-explanatory. "It will pay for you to zero in on being precise with your language," is the first. Then, "try to be kind to your parents." Sensible advice. But the whole thing drips with the conviction that the world kinda sucks, so find a way to make do.
"The world is not perfect; the Golden Age never was or will be," he said. "The only thing that's going to happen to the world is that it will get bigger, i.e., more populated while not growing in size. No matter how fairly the man you've elected will promise to cut the pie, it won't grow in size; as a matter of fact, the portions are bound to get smaller. In light of that -- or, rather, in dark of that -- you ought to rely on your own home cooking, that is, on managing the world yourselves -- at least that part of it that lies within your reach, within your radius."And a few more bits, culled from a youth avoiding the wrath of arbitrary authorities, a senseless persecution, and an adulthood of radical acclaim. "Try not to stand out, try to be modest," he suggests, explaining that seeking to thrust yourself into the limelight, or assuming a superior air over your neighbors, "testifies to the failure of your imagination, to your disbelief in -- or ignorance of -- reality's unlimited potential."
He also doesn't want any whiners. "At all costs try to avoid granting yourself the status of the victim," he said. This perhaps, cuts right to it: "Try to respect life not only for its amenities but for its hardships too," he said. "They are a part of the game, and what's good about a hardship is that it is not a deception. Whenever you are in trouble, in some scrape, on the verge of despair or in despair, remember: that's life speaking to you in the only language it knows well."
Brodsky makes what might be a half-hearted effort to wrap it up in a hopeful bow at the end, talking about his love for Ann Arbor and the important place Michigan holds in his heart (it was his first home in the West when he was booted). He wishes them luck, acknowledging it is the kind of thing that exists and that you actually need to succeed in the world.
All in all, this is emphatically not the kind of speech your usual CEO or television anchorman would dare to give. It is positively unAmerican. Where are the self-deprecating jokes? the homilies about the unquestioned, solitary virtue of Hard Work? the cheap instructions to be a massively productive worker while taking the time to sniff the flowers and raise your kids?
The first time I read it, I was astonished at how grim and bleak it was, and how I would have left that ceremony blinking and confused and sad. But reading it again, I realize that yeah, I wish I'd heard that.
