215 The disdainful intellectuals—Here is one of them, discoursing on the so-called “masterpiece tone”: “Its reduction to absurdity is manifest today through the later symphonies of Shostakovich. Advertised frankly and cynically as owing their particular character to a political directive imposed on their author by state disciplinary action, they have been broadcast throughout the United Nations as models of patriotic expression.” —Virgil Thomas, “Masterpieces,” 25 June 1944, in Sam Morgenstern, ed., Composers on Music: An Anthology of Composers’ Writings from Palestrina to Copland (New York: Greenwood Press, 1956), p. 496.
215 Moses Cordovero: “God does not behave as a human being behaves…”—Daniel C. Matt, comp. and trans., The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticism (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), p. 83 (“The Palm Tree of Deborah,” in “The Ten Sefirot”).
216 Glikman: The “decent-sized divan,” &c—Op. cit., p. xli. I have changed “steal” to “shoot.”
216 Shostakovich to Glikman: “You know, Isaak Davidovich…”—Loc. cit., but I have de-Glikmanized this into something much more downcast and hesitant.
217 Wolfgang Dömling: “It is because of this historic aura…”—Liner notes to the Sony Classical recording of the Seventh (New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein conducting, recording in New York City, 22-23 October 1962).
219 Hitler’s order: “Stage 1, make a junction with the Finns…”—General Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939-45, trans. R. H. Barry (Novato, California: Presidio Press repr. of 1964 ed.; original German ed. 1962), p. 254.
219 Leningrad as “that city which Dostoyevsky likens to a consumptive girl blushing into beauty briefly and inexplicably”—Somewhat after Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Uncle’s Dream and Other Stories, trans. David McDuff (New York: Penguin Classics, 1989), p. 75 (“White Nights”).
222 Epigraph—Republic of Poland, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, German Occupation of Poland: Extract of Note Addressed to the Allied and Neutral Powers (New York: Greystone Press, ca. 1941), p. 80 (Appendix 1, proclamation of October 28, 1939, by Governor-General Frank).
223 Official military history: “The church is untouched”—Der Sieg in Polen, herausgegeben vom Oberkommando der Wehrmacht; with a foreword by Field-Marshal Keitel himself (Berlin: Zeitgeschichte-Verlag, 1940), p. 129. The actual word used is unversehrt.
224 Emblems of Panzer divisions, 1941-42—Werner Haupt, A History of the Panzer Troops 1916-1945, trans. Dr. Edward Force (West Chester, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 1990; original German ed. 1989), p. 178.
225 Depictions of runes—Rudolf Koch, The Book of Signs, Which Contains All Manner of Symbols Used from the Earliest Times to the Middle Ages by Primitive Peoples and Early Christians, trans. Dydyan Holland (New York: Dover Publications, 1955, repr. of 1930 ed.), pp. 100-04.
226 Various descriptions of Third Reich architecture in Berlin, and its wartime and postwar fate—Based on Speer, chs. 5, 6 and 10; and on photographs and text in Mark R. McGee, Berlin from 1925 to the Present: A Visual and Historical Documentation (New York: The Overlook Press, 2002, abr. repr. of 2000 German ed.).
226 Göring: “The greatest staircase in the world”—Speer, p. 192.
228 Epigraph—Louis Harris Cohen, The Cultural-Political Traditions and Developments of the Soviet Cinema 1917-1972 (New York: Arno Press, 1974), p. 93 (Karmen on Mikhail Slutsky’s “One Day of War,” 1942).
Some details and dates of Roman Karmen’s life derive from the film retrospective catalogue (dedicated to him) published by the Modern Art Museum in New York, 1973. Others come from Roman Karmen: Retrospektive zur XIV. Internationalen Leipziger Dokumentar- und Kurzfilmwoche (Leipzig: Staaatliches Filmarchiv der DDR, 1971). I have also made use of the many photographs in the Ognev book, which has been cited already in the Käthe Kollwitz story. No doubt I should have used Roman Karmen v vospominankyakh sovremennikov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1983), but never got around to it. I am sorry to say that I have also failed to consult the undoubtedly informative Roman Karmen by N. Kolesnikova, G. Senchakova and T. Slepneva (Moscow: 1959). Miscellaneous career information on Karmen and L. O. Arnshtam derive from S. I. Yutkevich et al., ed., Kinoslovar v dvukh tomakh, vol. 1 (A-L) (no place of publication; prob. Moscow: Izdatelstvo “Sovestskaya Entsiklopediya,” 1966), pp. 672-74 and 112-13, respectively.
229 Roman Karmen and Elena Konstanintovskaya seem to have married in Spain sometime 1936 and 1937, since Konstantinovskaya is said to have “brought back a husband from Spain.” When they divorced is unknown to me, but it might well have been as soon as 1938 or 1939, given the long trips which Karmen set out on almost immediately after their return to the USSR. In this book I have imagined that they married in 1936 and divorced in 1943, after Stalingrad and before Kursk.
229 “We were soldiers…”—Slightly altered from Roger Manvell, Films and the Second World War (New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1974), p. 128.
229 Great Soviet Encyclopedia references to Roman Karmen—Vol. 11, p. 457 (biographical entry on Karmen himself), vol. 12, p. 368 (entry on filmmaking) and vol. 19, p. 214 (entry on film technology).
229 Yuri Tsivian: “He’s, well, let’s say he’s an official classic…”—Interviewed over the telephone by WTV, 2002.
230 Influence of Käthe Kollwitz on Karmen—Invented, as is his attendance at Otto Nagel’s exhibition of 1924. “The Sacrifice” would have been a plausible influence, since it not only was made shortly before the show (1922), but was also a very powerful image.
232 “Unusual angles, the most incredible positioning of the camera…”—Modern Art Museum catalogue, unnumbered second page.
232 Kara-Kum temperature of one hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit (I am skeptical) —Modern Art Museum catalogue, unnumbered p. 9.
233 Vertov: “Link all points in any temporal order.”—Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette Michelson, trans. Kevin O’Brien (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), p. xxvi (“From Kino-Eye to Radio-Eye,” 1929). (Vertov named himself; his original given name was Denis Arkadievich Kaufman.)
234 K. Simonov: “As we watched the films sent in by Karmen [spelled “Carmen” throughout this document] from far off Spain…”—Modern Art Museum catalogue, unnumbered p. 11 (slightly abridged).
234 Dziga Vertov: “The filmings in Spain represent an indisputable achievement…” —Op. cit., pp. 142-43 (“The Truth About the Heroic Struggle”). These two sentences were widely separated in the original.
234 Drobaschenko: “A man filled with energy and elegance.”—Roman Karmen: Retrospektive, p. 77 (Sergej Drobaschenko, “Roman Karmen”), trans. WTV.
235 Elena’s doings in Spain—All invented (except for her Order of the Red Star), since I could find out nothing definite about her. According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 10, p. 603 (entry on Spanish history), more than two thousand Soviet volunteers, mostly pilots and tank operators, fought in Spain.
235 Footnote: Fates of Mirova, Koltzov, Ehrenburg—Burnett Bolloten, The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution (Chapel Hilclass="underline" The University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 308. Mirova disappeared on her return to Moscow in 1937; Koltzov was arrested in 1938 and died in the Gulag in 1942; he was eventually rehabilitated.