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TESTIMONY
The memoirs of Dmitri ShostakovichAs related to and edited by
SOLMON VOLKOV
translated by Antoninaw BovisProscenium Publications
4th edition (October 1984)
Paperback 1.05" x 9.24" x 6.15". 289 pp
ISBN 0-879-10021-4by Vishrut Jain
The authenticity of Testimony has been questioned. There are arguments for (at Music Under Soviet Rule: "Testimony pro Testimony") and against (at Shostakovich Myths Debunked: "How Volkov Faked Testimony") Volkrov's truthfulness in reporting this account of Shostakovich's life. However, I consider it a matter for literary historians to decide - remember, any book about any famous figure for written by the man himself, is always controversial. So let's treat this question with a pinch of salt and read the book for its own internal merits.
- Vishrut JainWhen I was growing up in India, the socialist rhetoric was still strong and ties with USSR were flourishing. Books by Mir Publication were imported almost for free, and their high quality, both in substance and printing, made them the staple for my generation. Frequent cultural exchanges exposed us to many fine exponents of Russian music (I remember a fantastic show violinist who could literally make his violin smoke during performances of Paganini!). The Soviet propaganda projected a nation that was happy, strong and worked collectively towards the common good. Age, maturity and growing awareness made us realise that there was and had always been trouble in paradise.
Shostakovich's "golden years" were spent under Stalin's regime where he was branded a formalist musician (a virtual death sentence during those times), and constantly harassed by the authorities. Stalin was personally interested in Shostakovich and through his life played a deadly cat-and-mouse game, letting him live while wiping away his close associates and condemning his work time and again. Exit "1984" and "Brazil", this book is a detailed and painful chronicle of the real thing.
The introduction and the preface prepare a lot of ground by establishing Volkov's credentials and portraying Shostakovich as a yurodivy - a peculiarly Russian version of a socially-conscious, religious anarchist who communicates opaquely on the prevailing social climate. However, the man who emerges from the body of the book doesn't really seem to see himself in that light. In fact he seems to have contempt for confirmed yurodivys who were a legion in Leningrad. He certainly wasn't religiously inspired even if one could fit a Jew in the essentially Christian yurodivy framework. The man who emerges is one who has decided to say two plus two is five or six or seven or whatever the Big Brother wants it to be, while whispering in a Gallileian aside "but it is four". Like his music, the man seems hard to pin down to any particular category, even one as broad as yurodivy. What is certain is that he was a survivor, and he survived while millions of others - artists or peasants - perished.
The book abounds in hundreds of snippets that send chills down your spine. Talking about Hamlet's conversation with Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, where Hamlet says he's not a pipe and won't let people play him, Shostakovich comments in a marvelous aside. "It's easy for him (to say), he's a prince after all. If he weren't, they'd play him so hard he wouldn't know what hit him" (p.63).
It is not a secret that Shostakovich often allowed himself to be "played". Internal justifications for his action are simple. "A beggar stops worrying as soon as he becomes a beggar, and a roach isn't terribly upset about being a roach…. Life goes on, I had to live and feed my family. I had an infant daughter who demanded food and I had to guarantee food for her as best as I could" (p.87).
Western intellectual tradition has expected its artists to sacrifice themselves for their principles and their art before the world gets around to honouring them. Shostakovich had no delusions of such grandeur. "Withering away of illusions is a long and dreary process, like a toothache. But you can pull out a tooth. Illusions, dead continue to rot within us. And stink. And you can't escape them. I carry all of mine around with me" (p.63).
Testimony deals with music in a most oblique way - through musicians, society and power structures, all of which were inextricably woven into Shostakovich's music. His reminiscences of Glazunov, his former teacher, and the tales of his legendary drunkenness would be hilarious if they were also not so pathetic. Shostakovich himself found solace in vodka later on in life. His tales about Yudina, the legendary pianist, are scathing and cutting in the extreme, dismissing her yurodivy antics as hysteria and empty show.
In his reminiscences about others, Shostakovich enthralls us with his power of minute observation, but also shocks us with the unkindness and directness of his remarks, especially towards his rival "greats" like Stravinsky and Prokofiev, whom he seem to treat like performing show monkeys. He certainly wasn't one who suffered (the ones he thought) fools gladly. Yet pages are filled with his warm admiration for the writer Gogol and for Rimsky-Korsakov, for whose music Shostakovich had the highest regard. In fact, Shostakovich's prodigious intelligence and his deep familiarity with the world of art and literature drips from every page of this book.
Shostakovich steers clear of discussing his own work in any depth, frequently criticising similar inclinations in writings of other composers. Music according to him must speak for itself. In his hesitation, one is reminded that this man was psychologically scarred for life due to hardships of his early years. He found his works to be outlets for his innermost musings. He is still too scared to reveal these thoughts to us. What he reveals is his fear of his own success in the West which made him a marked man at home. "…[E]very report of the success of the Seventh or the Eighth (Symphonies) made me ill. A new success meant a new coffin nail" (p.106).
He also explains his reluctance to communicate with Western journalists on his infrequent trips abroad. "Every one of these pushy fellows wants me to answer his stupid questions 'daringly' and these gentlemen take offence when they don't hear what they want. Why do I have to answer? Who are they? Why do I have to risk my life? And risk it to satisfy the shallow curiosity of a man who doesn't give a damn about me!" (p.151).
In the final analysis, this is a powerful book, a terrifying book, and all the more so for not being fiction but fact. Don't read this book expecting to find out how "in (Shostakovich's) Eight Symphony, in the fourth movement, in the fourth variation in measures four to six the theme is harmonized with seven descending minor triads" (page 151). This book says little about specific works. It tries to say very little about the man himself. But inevitably the both the man and his music are reflected in the description of social clime, characters sketches and literary quotes that are dispersed through the book.
Shostakovich was an extremely intelligent, extremely bitter man quite apart from being one of the most gifted composers of this century. Expect to love and admire this man, and loathe the world that he lived through to leave us such wonderful legacy.
This book is available from Borders (Wheelock Place) or Amazon.com.
Vishrut Jain has just returned from Korea. Thanks for the "veggies".
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503: 29.5.1999. up.23.6.1999 ©Vishrut Jain
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