Monument "Brodsky Has Arrived"

The first monument in Russia dedicated to the poet, essayist, playwright, translator, and Nobel Prize laureate in Literature was unveiled on November 16, 2005, on Vasilievsky Island, in the courtyard of the Philological Faculty of Saint Petersburg State University.

There is a photo in which Joseph Brodsky is sitting on a suitcase at Pulkovo Airport on June 4, 1972 — the day he left the Soviet Union "forever." This suitcase was brought by his father, a military photojournalist, in 1948 from China, and it was with this trophy leather suitcase that Brodsky emigrated in 1972. Brodsky himself never returned or visited his homeland. The trophy suitcase was preserved by Brodsky’s longtime friend Veronika Shilts. It is now kept in the Anna Akhmatova Museum in the Fountain House, in the "American Cabinet of Joseph Brodsky" created there. According to available information, the initiator and curator of this project was the Diaghilev Arts Center. The unusual composition — a bronze suitcase (life-sized) with a tag bearing the poet’s name, a piece of granite, and a bronze head of Brodsky himself — was created by the well-known sculptor Konstantin Mikhelevich Simun. (Simun is the author of the monument "The Broken Ring," installed on the shore of Lake Ladoga.) After its unveiling, his work, titled "Brodsky Has Arrived" ("Brodsky Has Returned"), was both criticized and praised, often for the same reasons — for its boldness and originality. Seeing this monument is not easy, as it is located on the closed territory of the university. The address of the Philological Faculty of SPbSU is Universitetskaya Embankment, building 7-9-11.

Sources:

https://foto-history.livejournal.com/14891157.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/russian/russia/newsid_4444000/4444000.stm