I've been on a Shostakovich kick lately, which is the best way to put it, since it in no way implies I am familiar with his work. I'm not. But his story is interesting. He was engaged in a nearly-lifelong fight against Stalinist/Soviet censorship, a fight to which he mostly capitulated, simply to survive. He publicly denounced his own work on multiple occasions to save his neck. He refused to leave Leningrad before the Nazi siege, and was evacuated by the Russian government to rehearse a piece of music to increase the morale of troops. He tried to join the Red Army but was refused for reasons of poor eyesight, so he joined the fire brigade instead. Here's a picture of him on the cover of Time magazine, in his fire brigade uniform:
An interesting story, but you can read about him elsewhere. The reason I'm writing this is that I am blown away by this piece of work from 1937, a 2-minute song using a poem by Alexander Pushkin titled "Rebirth."
The lyrics are as follows:
An artist-barbarian with his lazy brush
Blackens the painting of a genius
And senselessly he covers it
With his own meaningless scribbling.
But with the years, the alien colors
Flake off like threadbare scales;
The creation of the genius emerges
Before us in its former beauty.
Thus vanish the illusions
From my tormented soul
And in it appear visions
From original and innocent times.
There are 4 of these poems by Pushkin set to music as part of Opus 46 of his 5th Symphony, but they weren't included in the original performance, due to the danger of engaging in free expression under the Stalinist regime. In light of the censorship he had to endure, it is clear that the "artist-barbarian" was Stalin, and the "genius" was Shostakovich; he was telling the world (and himself), that when these lazy, artless barbarians are finally gone, the original, innocent work will remain.
It's an idea we need to revisit.
Considering that Shostakovich wrote this in 1937 (and the poem is even older than that), I see it as a pre-emptive, unwitting indictment of the vices of postmodernism. It's an indictment of the laziness of the conceptual art crowd, those who think that something is art because they say it's art, but who can't produce anything of their own. Shostakovich may have been referring to Joseph Stalin, but he could just as easily have been referring to the vast majority of fake artists from the end of the 20th century through the present day.
Beyond that, the poem could be referring to the censors of any era, the "community standards" police, the "hate speech" enthusiasts, those who take it upon themselves to "cleanse" society of all its "degenerate filth," anyone who would silence its dissidents in the name of "protection, purity, and safety." As history has always shown, in a communist regime, the arts are always the first to go.
I find it very encouraging. Stalin is famous for being one of the world's most-notorious mass murderers; he created nothing, intimidated everybody, and in the end, his name is synonymous with terror and evil. In like manner, all the fake art today will be remembered as the fraud it is, the money-laundering scheme that fooled even greater numbers of people than Stalin murdered, but in the end, the original, innocent work of genius will be all that remains.
The censors and barbarians have never prevailed.
An interesting lecture, for more information:
