A new Joseph Brodsky museum opens today, April 8, in the village of Norenskaya in the Arkhangelsk region, TASS reports.
The museum is situation in the house where the future Nobel laureate lived in internal exile, after being convicted of parasitism.
After being found guilty, Brodsky spent 18 months in the village between March 1964 and September 1965, staying in a room of the house of the Pesterev family. He wrote 80 poems during his time there, publishing some in the local newspaper. His sentence was commuted in 1965 and he left Norenskaya.
In 2013 regional authorities purchased the Pesterev house, which was in very poor condition by that time. Local businessmen funded the complete rebuilding of the home and its conversion into a museum.
The museum will make Norenskaya a place of pilgrimage for Brodsky lovers from different countries, schoolchildren and university students, said the press service. Visitors can see the bed on which the poet slept, his table and chair, as well as other household items. The museum also includes documents and information from museums and archive collections, photographs, recollections, ethnographic materials, music, films and books from the early 1960s.
In March a virtual poetry platform “100 Verse of Joseph Brodsky in Norinskaya and about Norinskaya” was launched on the website of the Konoshskaya Central District Library. Audio and video performances of the works of Joseph Brodsky are being posted on the website by anyone who wants to participate.
Joseph Brodsky’s flat in his hometown of St. Petersburg, then Leningrad, is set to become a museum later this year. “Brodsky’s apartment is fully preserved as it was during his life here,” said Mikhail Milchik, President of the Joseph Brodsky Museum Foundation. “The kitchen is completely the same – even the old wood stove is there, though nobody uses it.”
According to Milchik, the museum will display the poet’s personal belongings, letters and archive photos. The rest of the apartment will contain an exhibition dedicated to Brodsky’s era – the museum will show how the poet and his contemporaries lived in 1970s Leningrad. Poetic readings, thematic exhibitions and movie screenings will also be held in the apartment, which will become a cultural center for Brodsky enthusiasts.
Russkiy Mir Foundation Information Service
