Watermark (Naberezhnaya Neistselimykh)

'The Embankment of the Incurable' is one of Joseph Brodsky's most famous essays, written in English in 1989. This autobiographical work is dedicated to Venice, the poet's impressions of the city, and his encounters with it—imaginary and real. According to Lev Losev, in both English and Russian, it 'reads like a poetic text par excellence.' The Embankment of the Incurable does not exist on modern maps of Venice, but in the early 17th century, this name was given to the site of a plague hospital. It is part of the modern Zattere embankment; plaques commemorating the hundreds of thousands of victims of the epidemic can still be seen there: 'Zatte, formerly the Incurable.' John Updike wrote: 'The essay 'The Quay of the Incurables' is an attempt to transform a point on the globe into a window onto a world of universal experience, the private experience of a chronic Venetian tourist into a crystal whose facets would reflect the fullness of life... The primary source of the light emanating from these facets is pure beauty.' In this edition, the essay is published in two languages—Russian and English (translated by Grigory Dashevsky).