Russia has opened it first museum to dissident poet Joseph Brodsky in the remote house where he lived after being sent into internal exile by the Soviet authorities. The museum - in the abandoned former farming village of Norinskaya, around 600 kilometres (370 miles) north of Moscow - commemorates the Nobel-prize winning poet, whose brooding verses clashed with the Soviet ideology and led ultimately to his emigration to the West.
The young poet, then just 23, was sent into exile in 1964 to work at a collective farm after a court convicted him of "parasitism" in an infamous trial that became a symbol of Soviet oppression of the arts.
Brodsky - who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 - later reflected that the 18 months he spent there were among the best periods of his life as he wrote prolifically from the rustic abode that he rented from a local family, at a time when electricity was not yet available.
The house had fallen into disrepair as the village emptied, and it took over a decade to realise the dream of turning into a memorial to the poet, said local newspaper editor Lyubov Cheplavina, who initiated its creation.
"Our youth gets really fascinated with Brodsky because of his independent spirit," Cheplavina told AFP. "People remember him."
Comments
Comments are closed.