XLIV 28th December 2005
One of Victor Hugoʼs best impromptu lines, as a master of bouts-rimés, was seen by the painter Hector Giacomelli wandering about Paris, in Boulevard des Italiens, on a piece of cardboard belonging to a blind beggar:
Like Belisarius and like Homer, blind,
With but a child to guide his feeble steps,
The hand which feeds this pauper bread
He will not see. God sees it in his stead.
Throughout the history of eleven years of our work on the Lesz- czyn farm we encountered many unknowns and numerous surprises with which we had to learn to accommodate. The great unknown is the wicked weather which for every farmer anywhere on Earth is dry when it should be wet and cold when one needs warmth, but there are others and the secret is to bend with them and feel a ready contingency in your hands. Even if it only is an ability not to cry in the face of tragedy. Well, one way or another we often face quite blind, our Leszczyn events, and somehow manage to produce the manna for the white bread, with our perplexing, periodic ineptitudes, years gone - years come, being forgiven and served by nature or the hand of God.
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam conducted by Mariss Jansons performed Shostakovichʼs Seventh ʻLeningradʼ Symphony, at the Barbican tonight - receiving seven standing ovations; there was a moment of silence, of breath held and then a spontaneous burst of the audience of joy, gratitude and tribute.
The symphony was commenced by Shostakovich in Leningrad, in the first days after the German invasion, as the city was being surrounded and cut off from the rest of the country; to the sound of guns approaching and in the view of workers battalions being formed and marching to defend its boundaries. He composed the first three movements in the besieged city and finished the work shortly after being evacuated to Kuybishev, where it had its first performance on the 5th of March 1942. But the most moving performance - took place in the surrounded Leningrad: on the 8th of August - by few remaining regular players, supported by amateur musicians, all given extra rations, to keep up their failing strength in the starving city. In those darkest days of the war, with German armies moving across the heartland of Russia, on to Caucasus, the symphony was received as a call of defiance and belief in victory. The ʻinvasion themeʼ with quiet tapping of the drum and flute playing a tune of deliberate banality - grows and grows, while repetition becomes unbearable, until the whole orchestra howls it out, as though fixed to the nightmarish spot.
Some see this music as supreme response to all powerful forces of evil, not just to the Nazis, but also to the Communist dictatorship. What is in the mind of the artist, when creating the art, is important to him, in the intimacy with his work as a tool; but what matters in the world at large is how the hearer receives his creation. Those at the time saw it as a call to resistance and to hope in victory, whether they were Sir Henry Wood in London, or Toscanini in New York, or conductors in Russia and the free world. That is a fact. Today some may take a different view, but interpreting it by assigning, seeking or guessing what the artist meant is a search for an argument to justify your own view. Much is made nowadays - of comparing the excesses of Communism with those of Nazism, but on a balanced view there is little comparison between the two. The Communist means, unjustified as they may often have been, were done in the name of a noble if misunderstood idea - calling for justice, an argument often met in the world before. It was often argued by finest individuals, defending a Jesuit view: in service of the good, a view which Idsanism does not accept. But those of the Nazisʼ were done in the name of a brutal, decayed thesis. The best proof is that the glories of the Russian Patriotic War are in the open, for all to see, and the belief in communism is shared by nearly half of the world today, while the tales of the Nazi deeds are scrounging in the underground cellars. The invasion of Iraq identifies more easily with those excesses, it appears without any vision of justice, which is ʻthe least - necessaryʼ to justify a savagery committed, it has no music to suit it, though it repeats and repeats ad infinitum the banality of brutality and force.
There is a thin sound of violin and piccolo flute running like a womanʼs wail, mounting to great drum opposition, which then resolves before coming back to it, into opposing sounds sometimes verging on cacophony - it breaks to a jolly trot, as if to contrast someone looking for a trivialising way in world struggles - the final movement begins with a not-quite-march tempo, a dramatic sense of momentum, the fire smouldering not quite burning to a gradual build up, to major conclusion, returning to the opening theme and a clear statement of victory and restoration of peace, leading to the glory of Socialism and Slavonic soul in Europe.
Listening to this music of glory and hope, a clear thought comes to mind that the leadership for unity of Europe will now be accredited to Slavs, the only group of people who had at no time in history given the lead. To the great European movements: the Latin nations had given the 16th century, in their Renaissance; the Anglo-Saxons and Germanic peoples gave the lead in the 17th century with Reformation; the French led with the enlightenment and Revolution in 18th century, whilst Europe led the world in the 19th century with its expansion - and America held the 20th with the tenacity of her achievement. Each of these movements was an attempt at unification of human culture, each excellent in itself and led to another, the next one, when fulfilled - the last one now finished, and passing, as others did.
A new step is needed now: to recast the world in the spirit of Real Civilisation; here on this continent it beckons naturally to a people who have made the greatest sacrifices in the century of strife, and who glimpsed, the new society in their idealistic socialist vision: much, that it needs perfecting - and who therefore are best suited to lead it. That the Serbs, Poles, Russians, Macedonians, Czechs or Bulgars, that the Slavs, leading other Europeans, should see this as their special aim. Not in a Pan-Slavic ideology, but because the next step of the civilisation will be based on the tenets of equality and dignity of man enshrined in Socialism of which they all had deepest experience and still hold dear. They can engage their unique emotions and their tenacious womenfolk with a feminine view of the world, in establishing unity: peace and progress - as a dominant philosophy for the next step of Civilisation. The Dream is here, Shostakovich may or may not have seen it, but his music awakens a vision of hope.
