Maxim Dikunov is a Russian sculptor working in the technique of figurative art, with a grotesque characteristic of this direction. The collection of the Voronezh Regional Art Museum named after Ivan Kramskoy features a reduced copy of the monument depicting Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak, one of the most famous children’s poets and writers of the 20th century.

Marshak is wearing a warm coat with a fur collar. A bird is sitting on the open palm of his right hand. To his left there is a girl hovering above the ground. The girl’s wings are made of a quilt and tied to her body by strings. According to the creator of the monument, this is Marshak’s muse, which inspires the author to write works for children. There is a version that the floating girl portrays the poet’s daughter Nathanael Samoilovna, who died in 1915 from burns, overturning a samovar with boiling water.

The original bronze monument was erected in Voronezh, opposite the house where the poet lived during the First World War. Samuil Yakovlevich was born in Voronezh in 1887. The writer spent his childhood in the suburban settlement of Chizhovka, where his father worked at a soap factory. The future poet spent his school years in the town of Ostrogozhsk. There, while studying at the gymnasium, he began to show his literary talent. In 1915, Marshak, already married, returned to Voronezh and lived in the apartment of his uncle, a well-known dentist in the city. Marshak asked to go to the front, but he wasn’t accepted because of his poor eyesight. Then the poet got a job at the factory as a translator of technical documentation, and devoted his free time to working with children.

In 1917, Marshak moved to Petrograd, where a few years later he published his first children’s poetry books: “The House that Jack Built, ” “Children in a Cage, ” and “The Tale of a Stupid Mouse.” Samuil Yakovlevich headed the Leningrad editorial office of Detgiz, Lengosizdat, and the publishing house “Molodaya Gvardiya.” He was also associated with the magazine “Chizh.” In 1937, the children’s publishing house he created in Leningrad was destroyed, and a year later Marshak moved to Moscow.