The “Good Lexicon” Rule

In our earlier conversations, you’ve described your friendship with Joseph Brodsky and your long collaboration together. In a 1974 piece in The Slavic Review, Helen Muchnic wrote this about it: “George Kline, collaborating with the poet, has translated most of his published work. He has done this with exemplary modesty and sensitiveness, and as successfully as anyone I know. The introduction he has supplied is an admirable piece of criticism, and his ‘Note on the Translation’ is a model of good sense.”¹ “On the Death of Zhukov” was singled out for particular praise. John Bayley, writing in the Los Angeles