The Artistic Images of Post-Death in the Poetry by Joseph Brodsky and Olga Sedakova

The article analyzes how Joseph Brodsky and Olga Sedakova depict the posthumous existence of a human. Brodsky holds an agnostic view on the world, tending to a positivism. The poet concentrates on depicting the Homeric horror of the very fact of death and its inevitability. Olga Sedakova tends to the Christian view of the world, taking into account the experience of the catastrophes of the 20th century, literature after Auschwitz. Unlike the traditionalist image of Paradise, Sedakova sees in it not only ‘incredible happiness’, but also an experience of tragedy and compassion, which leads her to a very unconventional form of idyll.