MAY 11
Why don’t they write études, exercises, for the orchestra? It is especially necessary for “melding” all the sounds to form a particular “orchestral” tone.
Ilya just proposed that I join his circle and present a piece on art. I still don’t know whether I’ll accept the invitation, but I am considering it. I have a very interesting idea for such a piece: “Description of the Contemporary Musical Moment.” It seems to me that what characterizes the current moment is a longing for strength, for power … And, when it comes right down to it, not only in music …
JUNE 19
Listening to Glière’s quartet. In a sense, there is a parallel between newer trends in visual art—pointillism, impressionism—and modern music. In painting, there is haziness, lyricism, and, the main thing, something ineffable, a lightness. A picture covered in points and strokes seems to be covered with a light veil of air. In music, there is polyphony, complexity, also an indistinct lyricism, as well as that same elusiveness.
It is, naturally, a good thing that these parallels exist.
This means there is an idea, a theoretical basis, common to all art forms.
Now I want to write, to write a great deal.
They are playing vivace, the third movement …
They finished the scherzo, a small, elegant part.
But, altogether, it’s complex. I like this composer, Glière.
He creates a heady mixture of the Russian style with modernism.
The Russian melody alternates with its striking absence.
The fourth movement begins with an Oriental theme.
This quartet develops in the most complex possible way.
A decadent treatment in the Eastern theme, on the violin.
Here is something strange. Some sort of new, sinister touch or flavor.
And again the Russian melody.
AUGUST 4
“Where words fall short, music begins. Impotent in conveying an act of will, music can, with deep intensity, reveal the inner state of a human being, expressing pure emotion.”
AUGUST 20
I haven’t written in over two weeks. Many things have come to pass. I started the Commercial Institute, and, most important, the music conservatory! My dream came true! I managed to do it.
I’ve got so many plans for this year—they would fill an abyss!
I’ll study music very hard. At Christmas there will be five exams to pass, and in May another four. I’ll also take some classes in German. I’ll be at the university for four whole years. Everything I need for “real life,” with a residence permit. After that, it’s goodbye to music, and pedagogy, and to travel … All I’ll have to look forward to is working as a lousy bank clerk—with an annual bonus. Little by little, you plod away, until you realize it’s too late to quit your post … If I give up music as well, I’ll die. There are times when I live completely in dreams, when I retreat from everyday reality altogether. There is a great deal of Rudin and Peer Gynt in me …
I’m afraid that, through my own weakness, I’ll never realize a hundredth part of my dreams.
NOVEMBER 5
A terrible day. Tolstoy has died. I’m now completely calm, and I even feel comforted to recall how, half an hour ago, I was standing in the darkened entrance hall, sobbing into my handkerchief, and terrified that someone would notice me. After the tears, my heart was less heavy. Truly, one pours out grief through tears.
They’re selling little pamphlets on the streets. My chest constricted; somehow I felt scared, and I walked past the people reading the pamphlets with a sinking heart. The rain pours down, slow, stupefying, inexorable.
In the window of a store was a large portrait of Tolstoy, and a little piece of cardboard next to it: “Died November 4, 1910.”
I came home. Shall I tell them? No, I won’t.
Whenever you get a piece of news, your first thought is: I have to hurry and tell others! But I won’t say anything at home.
Even though the world, the whole world, is grieving, I’m constantly thinking of myself. I heed my own thoughts, sympathize with my own grief, think about the sad expression on my face.
In Odessa, Genrikh is probably crying, too. Lying in bed, crying. My closest friend, my elder brother. It’s a pity that he’s not here with me.
I’m standing by the table, and the rain is pouring down. I can’t hold it back: “Mama, Tolstoy is dead.” I couldn’t stop myself from crying, and I ran out into the dining room, into the front hall, and cried my heart out … But they understand nothing.
I wonder to myself: Is this a general law of some sort? Or is it our personal family tragedy? Why can’t my parents—good, loving people—understand how we live, what we live by? Why do they understand neither my feelings nor my ideas? Will I really be the same way when I grow up? And will my children look at me with indignation and think: “Father is so good and loving, but I have nothing to talk to him about. He’s buried in his own concerns, his own world, boring and dull”? No, that can’t happen to me! I have given my word that I’ll try to understand my children’s lives, even share a common life with them. But I still don’t know—is it even possible?
NOVEMBER 5
Tolstoy isn’t dead! He’s alive! A message was sent to the whole world by telegraph that he had died, but it turns out the message was false!
NOVEMBER 7
Yes, Tolstoy has died; only it happened today, November 7, at 6:00 a.m. I (again, I!) received the information with absolute calm. My grief was already spent beforehand …
At one time, I said the following: Death is such a terrible thing that it’s best not to think about it at all. Someone who thinks constantly about death will probably see no meaning in life, not just in the larger sense of life, but in the sense of our small, day-to-day matters. A person like that might as well go hang himself.
But people don’t hang themselves, so that must mean that there is sense in our day-to-day matters. So you ought not to think about death.
These thoughts seemed so resonant, so well constructed in my mind, but when I put them down on paper they sound naïve and half formed, simply childish. But I know what I want to say. A person has died—so, right away, everyone should just forget about that person. I once said that when I am on my deathbed I will tear up all my photographs, my papers, and I’ll ask my children not to talk about me. I’ll forbid them to wear mourning garments.
We must hasten and push forward the processes that time sets in motion anyway.
In general, the entire past, everything you can’t bring back, is terrible and oppressive. Life rushes by at an extraordinary pace.
“Life is but a moment.” This is why we can’t allow memories to poison the present, the only thing that has meaning. What could be more fleeting than time?
NOVEMBER 8
There are times when I positively can’t stand my parents. It usually happens when I talk seriously to them. When I don’t see them for a while, I start to miss them. Once, I was telling an acquaintance about my father, and I talked so much that I almost started weeping; I was choked with tears. But now it’s even unpleasant to me that I have to have dinner with them. We are complete strangers, yet I am for some reason dependent on him for my survival. When we have to go somewhere together (which I try always to avoid), I begin to jabber and to spew all kinds of nonsense so as not to say nothing at all. He takes no interest in me whatsoever; he doesn’t respect me, or my convictions and habits, at all. Yet he loves me all the same, most likely. A strange kind of love!
I feel that I get angry and annoyed with them, for the most part because of trivial things. A lot of the time, my only fault is that I tell them things I shouldn’t; I goad them into discussions that don’t convince them. Now I find I talk to them less and less.