"Today there is a concert by enemy of the people Shostakovich." Or take this example: In those years my name wasn't welcomed enthusiastically in print unless, of course, it was used in a discussion about struggles against formalism. But it happened that I was assigned to review a production of Otello in Leningrad and in my review I did not say ecstatic things about the tenor Nikolai Pechkovsky. I was swamped with anonymous letters saying in effect that I, enemy of the people, did not have long to tread on Soviet soil, that my ass's ears would be chopped off-along with my head.
They really loved Pechkovsky in Leningrad. He was one of those tenors who know three things to do with their hands while singing: gesture toward yourself, away from yourself, and to the side. When Meyerhold heard Pechkovsky in the role of Gherman in The Queen of Spades, he told everyone, "If I run into him in a dark alley, I'll kill him."
A German musicologist came to Leningrad before the war-and nothing interested him, not music, not concerts, nothing. Everyone at the Composers' Union was sick and tired of him. What could they do with the man? Finally someone suggested, Would you like to go to see Pechkovsky? The German brightened. "Ohh! The famous pervert!" and hurried off. Everyone sighed in relief, Pechkovsky had saved the day.
Actually, Pechkovsky's life took an unfortunate turn and he spent quite a lot of time in the camps. If I had known that ahead of time I would never have permitted myself to say anything negative about 1 1 5
him. But in those days I stood a greater chance of ending up in the camps than he did.
Because after the articles came the "Tukhachevsky affair." It was a terrible blow for me when Tukhachevsky was shot. When I read about it in the papers, I blacked out. I felt they were killing me, that's how bad I felt. But I wouldn't like to' lay it on too thick at this point. It's only in fine literature that a person stops eating and sleeping because he's so overwrought. In reality, life is much simpler, and as Zoshchenko noted, life gives little material to fiction writers.
Zoshchenko had a firm philosophy on the matter-a beggar stops worrying as soon as he becomes a beggar, and a roach isn't terribly upset about being a roach. I wholeheartedly agree. After all, life goes on, I had to live and feed my family. I had an infant daughter who cried and demanded food and I had to guarantee food for her as best I could.
"The author's feelings before the grandeur of Nature are indescribable." Naturally, without sparing color and in broad strokes, I could describe my depressed condition, my moral torment, my constant strong fear, not only for my own life but for the lives of my mother, sisters, wife and daughter, and later my son. And so on. I don't want to deny that I went through a bad period. Perhaps the careful reader will understand that or perhaps he'll just skip all this drivel and think, munching a piece of candy, "Whatever made me read this book? It's just upsetting me before bedtime."
When I picture an idiot like that, I don't even want to go on reminiscing. I just sit with a feeling of guilt, when there isn't anything really that I'm guilty of.
The greatest specialist in depression, despair, melancholy, and such, of all the people I've met in my life, was Zoshchenko. I think I'm talking too much about myself, and these memoirs are not about me, they're about others. I want to talk about others first and about me only tangentially.
So, about Zoshchenko. It's a fact that cobblers go about without shoes, and there's no better confirmation of the truism than Zoshchenko. He was the most popular humorist of my youth and he's just as popular now, despite all the bans and persecution. Millions of people laughed over his stories. Perhaps they weren't very aware or cul-1 1 6
tured readers, maybe they laughed when they should have cried. They laughed over those works of Zoshchenko's that I personally consider tragic. But my opinion isn't important here. Zoshchenko was considered a great humorist, but in fact he was a man thoroughly riddled by depression and melancholy.
I'm not ref erring now to his tragic literary fate or to the fact that he was forced to write more and more poorly, so that I can't read his last works without a feeling of bitterness and disillusionment.
No, Zoshchenko was dying of depression when there was nothing to foreshadow his sad fate, when he had fame and money. Zoshchenko's ennui wasn't a literary affectation. He really did nearly die of depression....,-he couldn't leave the house and he couldn't eat. They gave him medicine and injections, but to no avail. Zoshchenko was still a young man, just 'twenty-seven, and he decided to battle his illness on his own, without the help of doctors, because the doctors, he was sure, didn't understand the cause of his terrible and extraordinary depression.
Laughing sadly, Zoshchenko told me about his visit to a psychiatrist. Zoshchenko described his dreams, in which he saw tigers and a hand reaching out toward him. The doctor was a specialist in psychoanalysis and immediately replied that the meaning of these dreams was very obvious to him. In his opinion, little Zoshchenko had been taken to the zoo at too tender an age and an elephant frightened the child with his huge trunk. The hand was the trunk, and the trunk was a phallic symbol. And therefore Zoshchenko had a sexual trauma.
Zoshchenko was certain that the doctor was mistaken. His fear of life stemmed from other causes, he felt, because not all our impulses can be reduced to sexual attraction. Fear can take root in a man's heart for social reasons too.
Zoshchenko maintained that fear based on social causes could be even more powerful and could take over the subconscious. I agree with him completely. It's true that sex plays an important part in this world and no one is free of its effect. But illness can spring from other causes and fear can be produced by other forces.
Fear arises from cruder and more substantial causes-fear of losing food, or fear of death, or fear before a horrible punishment. Zoshchenko said that a man ill with this kind of fear can remain basically normal and reveal his illness in just a few bizarre actions, that is, a 1 1 7
few eccentricities. He felt that these eccentricities were a better guide to the cause of the illness than dreams, because the bizarre behavior was almost always infantile. The adult behaved like a child, or rather, he tried to be one. This playing at being a child seems to help the adult avoid danger, helps him avoid contact with dangerous objects and dangerous forces.
The patient begins to maneuver every which way, and when �he disease takes this turn everything hinges on the strength of the patient's psyche as against the strength of the illness. Because if the fear grows, it can lead to a total collapse of the personality.
The person tries to avoid dangerous phenomena and that leads to thought of suicide. What is suicide? Zoshchenko explained it to me.
He explained that death can look like salvation. The point is that a child doesn't understand what death is, he only sees that death is absence. He sees that you can escape danger, can get away and hide from danger. And that escape the child calls death, because death is not frightening to him.