Enjambement as an “Operator” of Irony in the Poetry of I. A. Brodsky

The basis of enjambement as well as the basis of comic forms is discrepancy. For comic ones this is a conditional discrepancy between expected and real; for enjambement, it is a discrepancy between the syntactic and rhythmic division of the verse. Despite the longest tradition of enjambement research in general, the ironic potential of this technique is insufficiently described in literary studies.

The article examines enjambement as a means of giving irony a way in the poetry of I. A. Brodsky. Irony and a rational, critical picture of the world are one of the key properties of Brodsky’s poetry, and the enjambement becomes an exponent of such an outlook. With the help of enjambements (including “prolonged”), Brodsky destroys the expectation associated with clichés and obviousness, and thereby makes the statement content-unstable and paradoxical. Poetic transfer helps the reader to “linger” in his expectation of the “right” word, and then be deceived in this expectation, which gives rise to an ironic effect and turns out to be part of Brodsky’s “extra-authoritarian” poetic thinking.