The list of books recommended by Joseph Brodsky, Nobel Prize in Literature

Do you know who Joseph Brodsky was? If you know that he was a Russian-American poet, do you know anything else about his peculiar life? Do you know what he studied and how he got to be Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987? In this article we will tell you almost everything about him and we will also discover what was the list of recommended books that he advised his Mount Holyoke students.

Did you know this about Joseph Brodsky?

• He was born and raised in the ancient city of Leningrad, current Saint Petersburg.
• He left school when he was only 15 years old Or rather, he was expelled, and at that time he had up to 7 different and occasional jobs (mechanic, in a morgue, in a factory, in greenhouses, etc.).
• Since he left school he turned autodidact: He read book after book and this led him to have a good future job.
• Was renowned translator, He was good at it and they put him in charge of it.
• He gave literature classes in different American universities.
• He wrote a lot of poetry in Russian but also in English, which would be his new language once he moved to the United States.
• Besides poetry, he would do essays and plays.
• He passed away in 1996 in New York.

Books you recommended

In one of his literature classes, Joseph Brodsky recommended to his students a very comprehensive list of books that according to him were necessary to read to be able to maintain a fluent and extensive conversation with someone. They are as follows:

1. Hindu sacred text «Bhagavad Gita »
2. Mythological epic text from India: "Mahabharata"
3. "The Epic of Gilgamesh"
4. The old testament
5. Iliad, Odisea from Homer
6. Nine history books, Herodotus
7. Tragedies by Sophocles
8. Tragedies de Aeschylus
9. Tragedies by Euripides
10. "The Peloponnesian War"by Thucydides
11. "Dialogues", from Plato
12. Poetics, Physics, Ethics, Of the soul of Aristotle
13. Alexandrian poetry
14. «Of the nature of things » by Lucrecio
15. «Parallel lives", by Plutarco
16. "Aeneid", who are "Bucolic », who are "Georgian », by Virgilio
17. "Annals", by Tacitus
18. "Metamorphosis", who are "Heroidas », who are "Art of loving », by Ovid
19. New Testament Book
20. "Lives of the twelve Caesars", by Suetonio
21. "Meditations", by Marco Aurelio
22. «Poems», by Cátulo
23. «Poems», by Horacio
24. "Speeches", by Epícteto
25. «Comedies», by Aristophanes
26. "Various History", who are "On the nature of animals ”, by Claudio Eliano
27. "Argonáuticas", by Apollonius of Rhodes
28. "Lives of the Emperors of Byzantium", by Miguel Psellos
29. "History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire", by Edward Gibbon
30. "Enneads", de Plotinus
31. "History of the Church", by Eusebio
32. "Consolation of philosophy", by Boecio
33. "Cards", by Pliny the Younger
34. Byzantine poetry
35. "Fragments", by Heraclitus
36. "Confessions", of San Agustín
37. «Summa Theologica», of Saint Thomas Aquinas
38. «Little flowers», of Saint Francis of Assisi
39. "Prince", by Niccolò Machiavelli
40. "Comedy", by Dante Alighieri
41. "Three hundred novels"by Franco Sacchetti
42. Icelandic Sagas
43. William Shakespeare with his plays «Antony and Cleopatra », who are "Hamlet », who are "Macbeth » Y "Henry V »
44. François Rabelais books
45. Francis Bacon books
46. Selected works, Luther
47. Calvin: "The institution of the Christian religion"
48. Michael de Montaigne: "Essays"
49. Miguel de Cervantes: "Don Quixote"
    
50. Rene Descartes: "Speeches"
51. Rolando's song
52. B
53. Benvenuto Cellini
54. "The Education of Henry Adams" by Henry Adams
55. "Leviathan" by Thomas Hobbes
56. "Thoughts" by Blaise Pascal
57. "Paradise Lost" by John Milton
58. John Donne Books
59. Andrew Marvell Books
60. George Herbert Books
61. Richard Crashaw Books
62. "Treaties", by Baruch Spinoza
63. "The Charterhouse of Parma", who are "Red and black », who are "Life of Henry Brulard », by Stendhal
64. "Gulliver's Travels", by Jonathan Swift
65. «Life and opinions of the gentleman Tristram Shandy », by Laurence Sterne
66. "Dangerous relationships", by Choderlos de Laclos
67. "Persian letters", by Baron de Montesquieu
68. "Second treaty about the civil government", by John Locke
69. "The Wealth of Nations", by Adam Smith
70. "Discourse on metaphysics", by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
71. All of David Hume
72. 'The Federalist Papers'
73. "Critique of Pure Reason", by Immanuel Kant
74. "Fear and trembling", who are "Either one or the other », who are "Philosophical crumbs », by Søren Kierkegaard
75. "Memories of the subsoil", who are "The demons", by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
76. "Democracy in America", by Alexis de Tocqueville
77. "Splendor", who are "Travel to Italia", by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
78. "Russia", of Astolphe-Louis-Léonor and Marquis de Custine
79. "Mimesis", by Eric Auerbach
80. "History of the conquest of Mexico", de William H Prescott
81. "The Labyrinth of Solitude, by Octavio Paz
82. The logic of scientific research », who are "The open Society and Its Enemies", by Sir Karl Popper
83. "Mass and power", by Elias Canetti