Saturday, November 11, 2023

What the poet said about veterans

 Joseph Brodsky, the Nobel-winning poet, said this about military service:

“Service in the Soviet Army takes from three to four years, and I never met a person whose psyche wasn’t mutilated by its mental straightjacket of obedience. It is the army that finally makes a citizen of you; without it you still have a chance, however slim, to remain a human being.”

 

I think the idea of citizen soldiers and sailors is essential to democracy. Paradoxically, I see his point.

• Source: Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One: Selected Essays; New York: Farrar Straus Girous, 1986. The title essay is on pp. 3-33. The quote is on p. 24. It’s online here:

https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/0305/Brodsky%252520Less%252520Than%252520One.pdf

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