Romas, Tomas and Josifas

When the family of writers from Moscow, Lyudmila and Andrei Sergeyev, arrived for their first holiday in Palanga, they could not even imagine the impact that this holiday would have on the 20th century literature. They were to become a link, a kind of “East-West” bridge, which was constructed in Soviet times. In Palanga, the couple met the poet Tomas Venclova to whom they soon introduced their friend Joseph Brodsky. They also invited Brodsky to come to Vilnius. Brodsky began to visit Lithuania frequently where he not only wrote outstanding poems, but also healed spiritual wounds. In Vilnius, for the first time, Brodsky learned from Venclova about an exiled Polish poet named Czeslaw Milosz, whom Venclova had met previously.