A somewhat more lengthy one than I had in mind when I started writing.

Last night, at the Barbican Concert Hall in London, I heard (for the
first time) Shostakhovich's 13th Symphony. An awesomely superb
performance by St Petersburg's Mariinskii Theatre Orchestra and Chorus,
conducted by the quite astonishing Valeri Gergiev. I can't believe that
really good seats only cost us GBP30 a head, and I'm really pissed off
that we didn't buy tickets for the next two nights of the brief
Shostakhovich season before they were sold out.

The Symphony is, in fact, staggeringly powerful musical "air support"
as it were for five poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Or maybe Dmitri
Dmitrievich had finally found ground troops to back him up. (It's also,
IMHO, a great work of art, but that's irrelevant for the moment.)

Dates: these are the best years of the Kruschev thaw [Alex Filonov will
forgive my muddled Russian transliterations; he has my personal
assurance than I do know how to pronounce, however transliterated, at
least the name of Sergei Pavlovich Korolov, hero of all space cadets
:) )

It was first performed in Moscow on 18 December, 1962 -- just 9 weeks
or so after the Cuba crisis. The most smashing (I do not use the word
in the casual old Brit sense of "really good") part (movement isn't
really appropriate, but I leave that to musicologists) is the opening,
around a ferociously sung version of Yevtushenko's _Babii Yar_.
Whatever happened to him later, the young Yevtushenko was a pretty
gutsy bugger [1]. Found a gap in the status quo, shot through it and
had already become a massive best seller in a way that only in the USSR
was possible for poets. Even Stalin, who considered himself something
of a literary critic[2], was a little careful with chaps he considered
good poets. Persecution, sure; but Pasternak and even Akhmatova [3]
were let to live. Just. Stalin didn't mind fucking up their lives, but
he let them live them.

Patience, I'm getting to the point.

The "blow off the doors" bit is the 4th movement, built around
Yevtushenko's poem "Fear".
"Fear is dying in Russia now."
You'd have thought the irony (there are good English translations of
the poem on the Web, I hope) couldn't have been missed if it had been
melted into an anvil and dropped on the Politburo's head from 30,000
feet. But in case there was any doubt, Shoshtakhovich's music, sombre,
teeth-clenching and inspiring all at the same time, put it beyond all
confusion.

Russia has always been about fear, from long before 1917. And Russia
has always had Russians who'd refuse to put up with it. Damn, now I'm
sounding like Yevtushenko. But Dmitri Dmitrievich's music was what put
it beyond language.

But, at last the point: there was plenty of fear in 1983. Just not
shit-your-pants fear. And once the fear relaxes.... well, that's what
this is all about.
"Fear is dying in Russia"

It's a long time a-dying.

[1] Zima Junction -- or as often written and I think more accurately
from the point of view of pronunciation, but I claim no _russophonie_
--  Yuma Junction -- is the long one to read.

[2] And as a red rag to any bull, I'd have to say I'd rather be judged
as a poet (which I am not) by Stalin than by any PoMo Lit Crit Gender
Studies partyliner. Stalin seems genuinely to have recognized the merit
of good poetry; he had no compunction about Gulaging or shooting hack
poets who obeyed what they thought was the party line. But I digress.
Still, it's a footnote in a footnote.

[3] Best female poet by a country mile of the 20th century, even in
translation. Half the reason why I'll be learning Russian in my
retirement. But the pain, the pain. That was her job, dammit. Woman was
a poet and absolute top of the bleeding range. This isn't Sexton or
Plath, you know, spoiled little rich kids.
Try this one
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/akhmatova/akhmatova_ind.html
And remember, poetry in translation is like looking through a dirty
window. (Requiem is the poem, in case the cite doesn't take you
straight there.)

--
"The past resembles the future as water resembles water" -- Ibn Khaldun
My .mac. address is a spam sink. If you wish to email me, try a t lothian at
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