Under lifelong pressure from the Stalinist state, being a coward was the only sensible choice
My hero was a coward. Or rather, often considered himself a coward. Or rather, was placed in a position in which it was impossible not to be a coward. You or I would have been cowards in his position, and had we decided to be the opposite of a coward – a hero – we would have been extremely foolish. Those who stood up to power in those days were killed and members of their family, friends and associates were disgraced, sent to camps, or executed. So being a coward was the only sensible choice.
He was Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich who, more than any other composer in the entire history of music, felt the daily, yearly, lifelong pressure of power. He wrote his First Symphony in 1926 at the age of 19; it was a worldwide success; three years later its dedicatee was arrested and shot. They executed the dedicatees of symphonies? Yes, and musicologists. And anyone who looked remotely suspicious to Stalin’s paranoid eye.
Continue reading...
0 comments:
Post a Comment