Josef Brodsky never lived in Fountain House, nor has he ever visited here. But as the fates decree, his spiritual connection with Anna Akhmatova had already begun in the 1960s, while both of them were still alive, and continued on a new level after their deaths.
In 2003, the Josef Brodsky Memorial Foundation and widow of the poet, Maria Brodskaya, presented the Anna Akhmatova Museum in Fountain House with furnishings from the author’s home in the small American town of South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is there that Brodsky taught at Mount Holyoke College from the beginning of the 1980s. Included in the effects were a desk, escritoire, table lamp, armchair, sofa, posters from the poet’s Italian travels, his library, postcard collection and photographs of the interiors made by Naomi Palmers.
    When journalists who knew of Brodsky’s almost ceaseless travel around the world (Scotland, Turkey, Italy, Sweden, Netherlands, England, Mexico, Finland, France) asked him where he felt most at home, he answered “The clearest feeling that I am in my own environment comes in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Home is a place where you are not asked superfluous questions. There, no one asks them, there is no one there, except myself”. The house in South Hadley was decorated by Brodsky following his own ideas: the furniture is like that of his parent’s home, with photos of the people near and dear to him on the walls, views of cities which remained in his poems and his memory, reproductions of the paintings of old masters, and many, many books.

    Today, some of the things that had at one time surrounded Brodsky can be seen in the collection of the Museum of Anna Akhmatova at the Fountain House. Based on photographs, the museum curators have tried to envisage the appearance of Brodsky’s South Hadley study, with the understanding that it would be impossible to recreate the exact atmosphere. It is, however, possible to surround visitors with a great number of authentic artefacts which may help us to imagine the context of Brodsky’s life and the landmarks of his poetic biography.
    Standing within the poet’s American study one can feel keenly the record of the trial which was held in Leningrad in March of 1963 concerning the case of the “parasite and renegade” as it was called by local communist officials and other authorities. This record was made during the trial by writer Frida Vigdorova and then distributed in typewritten copies. The text of the court proceedings is read by his friend, the writer, historian and co-editor of Zvezda magazine, Yakov Gordin.
    Within the study you can also watch video interviews with the poet where he talks about life and death, about the loneliness of the poet in the world, and about the destiny of his generation.