It's all upsetting and insulting. The worst part is that these perversions have become commonplace, and no one stops to think how crazy it is. I'm judged on the basis of what I said or didn't say to Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones. Isn't that ridiculous? Newspaper articles should serve as means of judging Messrs. Smith and Jones! I have my music, and quite a bit of music it is, and let people judge me by my music. I have no intention of providing commentaries to it and I have no intention of telling how, where, and under what circumstances I was drenched by the "sweaty wave of inspiration."* Let poets confide such reminiscences to a trusting public; it's all lies anyway, and I'm not a poet.
I don't like talking about inspiration in general, it's got a suspicious ring. As I recall, I spoke of inspiration only once, and I was forced to do it. I was talking to Stalin. I was trying to explain how the process of composing music unfolds, with what speed. I could see that Stalin didn't understand, so I had to steer the conversation to inspiration.
"You see," I said, "it's inspiration, of course. How fast you write depends on inspiration." And so on. I blamed it on inspiration. The only time it's not shameful to speak of inspiration is when you need to toss words around. The rest of the time it's best not to mention it at all.
And I have no intention of doing a measure-by-measure analysis of my scores either. That's certainly not very interesting in Stravinsky's memoirs. So what if I inform you that in my Eighth Symphony, in the fourth movement, in the fourth variation, in measures four through six, the theme is harmonized with seven descending minor triads?
Who cares? Is it necessary to prove that you're erudite in the area of
*One of the ironic catch phrases of contemporary R.ussian life, borrowed from Df and Petrov's The Golden Calf.
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your own work? Stravinsky's example doesn't convince me. He should have left the analysis of his works to musicologists. I would have pref erred Stravinsky to tell more about the people he met and about his childhood.
Stravinsky describes his childhood well; as I said, I think those are the best pages of his memoirs. Usually it's revolting to read, "I was born into a musical family, Father played on a comb and Mother always whistled a tune." And so on and so forth. It's dreary.
Stravinsky was adept at answering journalists' questions-like a Cossack doing trick riding or chopping vines. But first of all, he didn't tell the truth. What he said was much too striking, and the truth is never that fascinating. (Sollertinsky once said that there is no rhyme for pravda [truth] in Russian. I don't know if that's so, but it's true that truth and advertising have little in common.) And second, Stravinsky and I are very different people. I found it difficult to talk to him.
We were from different planets.
I still recall with horror my first trip to the U.S.A.* I wouldn't have gone at all if it hadn't been for intense pressure from administrative figures of all ranks and colors, from Stalin down. People sometimes say that it must have been an interesting trip, look at the way I'm smiling in the photographs. That was the smile of a condemned man. I felt like a dead man. I answered all the idiotic questions in a daze, and thought, When I get back it's over for me.
Stalin liked leading Americans by the nose that way. He would show them a man-here he is, alive and well-and then kill him.
Well, why say lead by the nose? That's too strongly put. He only fooled those who wanted to be fooled. The Americans don't give a damn about us, and in order to live and sleep soundly, they'll believe anything.
Just then, in 1 949, the Jewish poet ltsik Fefer was arrested on Stalin's orders. Paul Robeson was in Moscow and in the midst of all the banquets and balls, he remembered that he had a friend called Itsik.
Where's Itsik? "You'll have your Itsik," Stalin decided, and pulled his usual base trick.
•Shostakovich made his fint trip to the United States in March t 949 for the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, which took place at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.
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Itsik Fefer invited Paul Robeson to dine with him in Moscow's most chic restaurant. Robeson arrived and was led to a private chamber in the restaurant, where the table was set with drinks and lavish zakuski.
Fefer was really sitting at the table, with several unknown men. Fefer was thin and pale and said little. But Robeson ate and drank well and saw his old friend.
After their friendly dinner, the men Robeson didn't know returned Fefer to prison, where he soon died. Robeson went back to America, where he told everyone that the rumors about Fefer's arrest and death were nonsense and slander. He had been drinking with Fefer personally.
And really, it's a lot easier living that way, it's more convenient to think that your friend is a rich and free man who can treat you to a luxurious ·dinner. Thinking that your friend is in prison is not pleasant. You have to get involved, you have to write letters and protests.
And if you write a protest you won't be invited the next time and they'll ruin your good name. The radio and papers will smear you with dirt, they'll call you a reactionary.
No, it's much easier to believe what you see. And you always see what you want to see. The mentality of the chicken-when a chicken pecks, it sees only the one grain and nothing else. And so it pecks, grain by grain, until the farmer breaks its neck. Stalin understood this chicken mentality better than anyone, he knew how to deal with chickens. And they all ate out of his hand. As I understand it, they don't like to remember this in the West. For they're always right, the great Western humanists, lovers of truthful literature and art. It's we who are always at fault.
I'm the one who gets asked, "Why did you sign this and that?" But has anyone ever asked Andre Malraux why he glorified the construction of the White Sea Canal,* where thousands upon thousands of people perished? No, no one has. Too bad. They should ask more often. After all, no one can keep these gentlemen from answering, noth-
*A canal in northern Russia, constructed on Stalin's orders between September 1931 and April 1933 by penal labor. Hundreds of thousands of workers died during its construction. Stalin cleverly turned this "concentrated labor on gigantic objectives, stunning the imagination with their grandiose scope" (a quote from a contemporary Soviet source) to propaganda aims. The talents of hundreds of writers, artists, and composers were used to glorify the White Sea Canal. See Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago.
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ing threatened their lives then and nothing threatens them now.
And what about Lion Feuchtwanger, famous humanist? I read his little book Moscow 1937 with revulsion. As soon as it saw the light of day, Stalin had it translated and printed in huge numbers. I read it with bitterness and contempt for the lauded humanist.
Feuchtwanger wrote that Stalin was a simple man, full of good will.
There was a time when I thought that Feuchtwanger had the wool pulled over his eyes too. But then I reread the book and realized that the great humanist had lied.
"What I understood is wonderful," he announced. What he und�rstood was that the political trials in Moscow were necessary-and wonderful. According to him, the trials favored the development of democratization. No, in order to write that, it's not enough to be a fool, you have to be a scoundrel as well. And a famed humanist.