Life & Wisdom Quote by Joseph Brodsky

Patriotism, in Brodsky's hands, isn’t a flag to salute but a medium to protect. The line lands like a rebuke to the expected script: in the 20th century, especially in the Soviet sphere Brodsky knew intimately, patriotism was loudly performed and constantly demanded. He flips it, insisting that for a writer, the only allegiance that can’t be faked is linguistic. You can cheer at parades, sign the right petitions, even suffer in the right way; but your sentences will still betray whether you respect truth, precision, and the lived texture of your culture.

The intent is both ethical and defensive. Brodsky, exiled and prosecuted for "social parasitism", understood how states try to annex language itself: slogans replacing thought, euphemisms laundering violence, official speech narrowing what can be said and therefore what can be imagined. His patriotism is a refusal to let public language become a graveyard of meanings. The "attitude toward language" implies care: attention to nuance, resistance to cliche, suspicion of ready-made phrases that smuggle ideology as common sense.

Subtextually, it’s also an argument for the writer’s jurisdiction. Nations can strip you of citizenship, but they can’t repossess your grammar. For Brodsky, language is the real homeland: portable, intimate, and stubbornly sovereign. To write well is to keep that homeland from being occupied.