Europe Central (138 page)

154
Great Soviet Encyclopedia:
“In the 1930s, Soviet musical culture . . .”—
Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entisklopediia,
ed. A. M. Prokhorov, 3rd ed. (Moscow: Sovetskaia Entisklopediia Publishing House, 1973), ed. and trans. Jean Paradise et al. (New York: Macmillan, Inc., 1976), USSR volume, entry on music.

154 A. Akhmatova: “In this place, peerless beauties quarrel . . .”—Hemschemeyer version, “retranslated” by WTV.

156 Footnote on “Thousands Cheer”—This movie played at the Astor in September 1943. Bosley Crowther of
The New York Times
described it as a crowd-pleaser.

156 Shostakovich’s sister, Mariyusha, to their aunt: “Our greatest fault is that we worshipped him . . .”—Seroff, p. 180, slightly abridged.

157 A. Akhmatova: “Without hangman and gallows . . .”—Ibid., p. 665 (“Why did you poison the water . . . ,” 1935), “retranslated” by WTV.

157 “Music’s Kandinsky”—A two-page parallel between Shostakovich and Kandinsky is drawn by Gawriil Glikman (München), “Schostakowitsch, wie ich ihn kannte,” in Hilmar Schmalenberg, ed.,
Schostakowitsch-Gesellschaft e. V. (Hrsg): Schostakowitsch in Deutschland [Schostakowitsch-Studien, Band I]
(Berlin: Verlag Ernst Kuhn, Studia Slavica Musica, Band 13, 1998), pp. 189-90.

159 D. Zhitomirsky: “The despair of the lost soul”—Wilson, p. 95.

161 Shostakovich to the press: “I want to write a Soviet
Ring of the Nibelung
!”—Seroff, p. 191 (interview with Leonid and Pyotr Tur; exclamation point added).

161 Shostakovich to Nina: “All of her music has as its purpose . . .”—Seroff, p. 252 (actually, from DDS’s statement “About My Opera”).

162 Nadezhda Welter: “Sometimes one was overcome with a feeling of cold fear . . .” —Wilson, pp. 98-99.

165 Shostakovich to Nina: “Let’s at least get to the recapitulation . . .”—Loosely after Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 163 (the original context was the symphonies of Glazunov).

166 Shostakovich to Nina: “Lady Macbeth’s crimes are a protest . . .”—Richard Taruskin,
Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2000, paperback repr. of 1997 ed.), p. 501 (quoting a “program essay” by Shostakovich).

166 Shostakovich to Nina: “Can music attack evil?”—Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 234.

166 Shostakovich to Nina: “And Sergei, you see, my music strips him . . .”—Loosely after Seroff, p. 253 (from DDS’s statement “About My Opera”).

168 Shostakovich to E. Konstantinovskaya: “Well, Elena, you see how lucky it is that you didn’t marry me . . .”—Wilson, p. 110 (quoted from Sofiya Khentova; slightly altered).

168 Shostakovich to E. Konstantinovskaya: “Prisoners are wretches to be pitied, and you shouldn’t kick somebody when he’s down”—After Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 110.

169 V. Shebalin: “I consider that Shostakovich is the greatest genius . . .”—Wilson, p. 114 (Alisa Shebalina).

170 Shostakovich to Glikman: “The things you love too much perish”—After Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 78. The composer goes on: “You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear.”

170 Tukhachevsky: “One should practice large-scale repression and employ incentives”—Chaliand, p. 915 (“Counterinsurgency”).

172
Pravda
editorial on Shostakovich: “He ignored the demand of Soviet culture . . .” —Seroff, pp. 206-07.

173 Tukhachevsky: “I always get whatever I ask for.”—Very loosely based on words attributed to him in another context, in Alan Clark,
Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict 1941-45
(New York: Quill, 1985, repr. of 1965 ed., with new intro.), p. 33.

176 Tukhachevsky at the time of his arrest and execution: “I would have been better off as a violinist”—Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 97.

176 Shostakovich’s interrogation—I have made it far more brutal than it was. One source proposes that it might never have happened: An intensely sensitive man, Shostakovich may have so feared his imminent demise that he lost his ability to discriminate between what happened in fact and what only occurred in his tormented imagination. (This, again, was a common syndrome under the Terror.)—http:/
www.siue.edu/~aho/musov/basner/basner.html
, 6/20/2002 (“ ‘You Must Remember!’ ” Shostakovich’s alleged interrogation by the NKVD in 1937,” p. 3).

177 The Fifth Symphony as “a Soviet artist’s creative reply to just criticism”—We’re told that this phrase was not Shostakovich’s, but he acquiesced in the happy suggestion.

179 Increase in the productive capacity of Leningrad since 1913—
Great Soviet Encyclopedia,
vol. 14, p. 385. However, the benchmark year was actually 1940, not 1941. I imagine that the accuracy (such as it was) of the statistic is unaffected.

179 “The critics” on Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony: “Nothing more than the recapitulation of a football match”—After Isaak Glikman,
Story of a Friendship: The Letters of Dmitry Shostakovich to Isaak Glikman 1941-1975, with a Commentary by Isaak Glikman
, trans. Anthony Philips (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2001; original Russian ed. 1993), p. xxxii.

179 Definition of a family: “A socio-biological community . . .”—
The Soviet Way of Life
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), p. 347 (ch. 8, “The Soviet Family”).

179 S. Volkov: “The feelings of the intellectual . . .”—Solomon Volkov,
Saint Petersburg: A Cultural History,
trans. Antonina W. Bouis (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 423.

180 Description of the Eighth Symphony—Based in part on my hearing of it, and in part on the score itself: Dmitri Schostakowitsch,
8. Symphonie Op. 65,
ed. nr. 2221 (Hamburg: Musikverlage Hans Sikorski, Taschenpartitur / Pocket Score; “SovMuz” [“Sowjetische Musik”] ser., n.d., 1991?; orig. comp. 1943).

180 Footnote:
Great Soviet Encyclopedia:
“The Communist Party and the Soviet government . . .”—Vol. 4, p. 334, entry on Great Patriotic War.

180 Hitler:
“Skizze B: Heeresgruppe Nord . . .”
—These maps, and the German military symbols referred to in this story and in “Opus 110,” “Breakout” and “The Last Field-Marshal” are derived from the reproductions of orders of battle in Kurt Mehner, ed.,
Die Geheimen Tagesberichte der Deutsche Wehrmachstführung im zweiten Weltkrieg 1939-45
(Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1987).

184 A. Zhdanov: “Either the working-class of Leningrad will be turned into slaves . . .” —Alexander Werth,
Russia at War 1941-45
(New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1964), p. 305 (trans. from Pavlov,
Leningrad v. blokade).

185
Current Biography
: “Early in 1941, Shostakovich completed his Seventh Symphony . . .”—Vol. 2, no. 5, p. 71 (May 1941, article on Shostakovich).

185 N. Mandelstam: “The whole process of composition . . .”—Nadezhda Mandelstam,
Hope Against Hope,
trans. Max Hayward (New York: Modern Library, 1999, repr. of 1970 trans.), p. 71.

186 Footnote: The two-note “Stalin motif”—Described in Ian MacDonald,
The New Shostakovich
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990), p. 157.

186 Mravinsky: “Everything has been heard in advance . . .”—Wilson, p. 140.

187 Shostakovich to
New Masses:
“The first part of the symphony . . .”—Seroff, p. 237. I have no knowledge that Glikman wrote this, but he did compose such things for Shostakovich from time to time.

188 Party activists to Shostakovich: “You will be called to the front when you’re required” —After Seroff, p. 236 (cabled dispatch to
New Masses,
28 October 1941).

188 Shostakovich to the “Party activists”: “Only by fighting can we save humanity from destruction” —Reeder, p. 255 (Shostakovich’s written application; abridged and Shostakovich-ized by WTV).

188 Shostakovich’s speech of recantation: “There can be no music without ideology, comrades! Music is no longer an end in itself, but a vital weapon in the struggle”—Abridged from Seroff, pp. 160-61
(New York Times
interview, to which I have added the word
comrades
).

189 Shostakovich: “If they hadn’t shot Tukhachevsky . . .”—Loosely after
Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitry Shostakovich as Related to and Edited by Solomon Volkov,
trans. Antonina W. Bouis (New York: Limelight Editions 2004, repr. of 1979 Harper & Row ed.), p. 103.

190 “I, I, I want to write about our time . . .”—After Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 154.

192 Shostakovich to himself: “I am a person . . . with a very weak character . . .”—After Khentova (Mineyev); original, p. 126, Mineyev, p. 9.

194 Shostakovich to Volkov: “I wrote my Seventh Symphony very quickly . . .”—Shostakovich and Volkov, p. 154.

194 Shostakovich to Glikman: Composition dates for the movements of the Seventh Symphony—Glikman, p. 3 (letter of 30 November 1941). My dates for the completion of the other two movements also follow this source (see p. 6; letter of 4 January 1942).

194 G. V. Yudin: “After a short pause . . .”—Wilson, p. 37.

194 L. Lebedinsky: “Frightening in its helplessness”—Wilson, p. 346.

195 Reduction of the bread ration on 2 September to a fourth of its previous level—
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
, vol. 14, p. 383 (entry on Leningrad).

197 Shostakovich to Glikman: “I suppose that critics with nothing better to do . . .” —Glikman, p. xxxiv, somewhat Shostakovich-ized.

197 “For the first time we can cry openly. Not one of us here hasn’t lost somebody . . .” —After Shostakovich and Glikman, pp. 136, 135.

198 Zhukov’s strategic Muse: “Stalin will be the savior of Europe”—Actually, Zhukov deplored Stalin’s military incompetence.

200 Akhmatova: “In Pushkin’s day one did not expose everything about oneself” —Chukovskaya, p. 15; slightly “retranslated” by WTV.

203 Shostakovich to S. Volkov: “Fear of death may be the most intense emotion of all” —After Shostakovich and Glikman, p. 180.

204 Shostakovich: “It’s always easier to believe what we want to believe . . . The mentality of a chicken.”—Ibid., p. 199.

208 Activists to Shostakovich: “ . . . you’re waiting for the Germans”—Punin, p. 207 (entry for 30 July 1944, accusations overheard on returning to Leningrad from evacuation; slightly altered). Shostakovich was actually evacuated as early as 1 October, but because I have wanted to associate him with the beginning of a Leningrad winter, I delayed his departure for two weeks.

208 Shostakovich’s mother: “Of course Mitya . . .”—Seroff, p. 175 (letter from Sonia Shostakovich to her daughter Zoya,
ca.
1929).

208 Various information on troop strengths, casualties, military organization, etc.—John Ellis,
World War II: A Statistical Survey
(New York: Facts on File, 1983). Sometimes these figures have been simplified by me for narrative purposes. For instance, when I write in reference to the Red Air Force “four regiments to a division, two divisions to a corps,” I omit to state that this was true as of 1943, and that a division might sometimes be three regiments instead of four, a corps anywhere from two to four divisions. Ellis’s data make occasional appearances not only in this story but also in “Breakout” and “The Last Field-Marshal.”

214 Doubling of Leningrad’s bread ration in February 1942—
Great Soviet Encyclopedia
, vol. 14, p. 383 (entry on Leningrad).

215 Olga Berggolts: “This man is stronger than Hitler!”—Harrison E. Salisbury,
The Nine Hundred Days: The Siege of Leningrad
(New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 522.

215 The émigré Seroff: “Today the ‘average’ American . . .”—Op. cit., p. 3.

215 Quotations from the Seventh in the
Dictionary of Musical Themes
—Barlow and Morgenstern, p. 438.

215 The bourgeois critic Layton: “This naive stroke of pictorialism . . .”—Robert Simpson, ed.,
The Symphony
(New York: Drake Publishers, Inc., 1972), vol. 2 (“Mahler to the Present Day”), p. 208 (article on Shostakovich).

215 The disdainful intellectuals—Here is one of them, discoursing on the so-called “masterpiece tone”: “Its reduction to absurdity is manifest today through the later symphonies of Shostakovich. Advertised frankly and cynically as owing their particular character to a political directive imposed on their author by state disciplinary action, they have been broadcast throughout the United Nations as models of patriotic expression.” —Virgil Thomas, “Masterpieces,” 25 June 1944, in Sam Morgenstern, ed.,
Composers on Music: An Anthology of Composers’ Writings from Palestrina to Copland
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1956), p. 496.

215 Moses Cordovero: “God does not behave as a human being behaves . . .”—Daniel C. Matt, comp. and trans.,
The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), p. 83 (“The Palm Tree of Deborah,” in “The Ten Sefirot”).

216 Glikman: The “decent-sized divan,” &c—Op. cit., p. xli. I have changed “steal” to “shoot.”

216 Shostakovich to Glikman: “You know, Isaak Davidovich . . .”—Loc. cit., but I have de-Glikmanized this into something much more downcast and hesitant.

217 Wolfgang Dömling: “It is because of this historic aura . . .”—Liner notes to the Sony Classical recording of the Seventh (New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein conducting, recording in New York City, 22-23 October 1962).

219 Hitler’s order: “Stage 1, make a junction with the Finns . . .”—General Walter Warlimont,
Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939-45,
trans. R. H. Barry (Novato, California: Presidio Press repr. of 1964 ed.; original German ed. 1962), p. 254.

219 Leningrad as “that city which Dostoyevsky likens to a consumptive girl blushing into beauty briefly and inexplicably”—Somewhat after Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
Uncle’s Dream and Other Stories,
trans. David McDuff (New York: Penguin Classics, 1989), p. 75 (“White Nights”).

UNTOUCHED

222 Epigraph—Republic of Poland, Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
German Occupation of Poland: Extract of Note Addressed to the Allied and Neutral Powers
(New York: Greystone Press,
ca.
1941), p. 80 (Appendix 1, proclamation of October 28, 1939, by Governor-General Frank).