Moreover, his compositions became more and more introspective as he entered his "late" period. The theme of reflection, of self-analysis, always characteristic of . his music, took on a different sound: before it was music for others, about himself in conflict and interrelationships with others; now it was about himself for himself.
The composer's health, never very good, was failing rapidly. In 1966 he developed heart trouble, the ne�t year he broke his leg; his bones had become fragile and a careless sharp movement could have painful consequences. His condition was never definitively diagnosed.
Treatment brought only temporary relief.
Now Shostakovich appeared in public only with his young third wife, Irina Supinskaya. She had to help him to sit and stand, would hand him his coat. His mouth could be seen to tremble, as though he were about to cry. Public appearances were extremely difficult for him. At home he seemed much calmer and more self-confident. Yet playing his compositions on the piano cost him great pain; when he offered his right hand, he supported it with his left. He was seriously training himself to write with his left hand, in case his right gave way completely.
The image of death now dominated his works. The influence of
• In his last years he wrote to me: "Music is good, not evil. Poetry is good, not evil. Primitive, but oh, so true!"
xi
Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death is profoundly reflected in his Fourteenth Symphony (1969). The music is permeated with inconsolable anguish; "Death is all-powerful," the soloist in this symphony proclaims. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn could not · accept this, as a dissident and as a deeply religious Christian. He and Shostakovich had a falling out, despite their cordial relations up to then.* The dissidents demanded political action rather than introspection. The government was for them a much more urgent antagonist than death. Moreover, Shostakovich's refusal to put his signature on the dissidents' political statements was, they felt, nothing less than capitulation. For the first time, the composer was seen as an opportunist rather than a yurodivy.
He was dying. His long, lonely journey was coming to an end, but he saw it as having gone nowhere. In that sense, as in many others, he was a true Dostoevsky hero-the man who, moving forward with . dizzying velocity, is actually, if you look closely, motionless. His music of this final period expressed fear before death, a numbness, a search for a final sanctuary in the memory of future men; explosions of impotent and heartbreaking anger. Sometimes Shostakovich seemed most to fear that people would think he was repenting, asking for forgiveness. He was dying an "underground man."
Shostakovich died at the Kremlin Hospital-reserved for the eliteon August 9, 1 975, of heart failure, according to the physicians. The obituaries in the West were unanimous: "One of the greatest twentieth-century composers and a committed believer in Communism and Soviet power" (London Times); "He contributed a decisive statement to the musical history of the century" (Die Welt); "A committed Communist who accepted sometimes harsh id,eological criticism" (The New York Times) .
We live in a world without mercy. It sees the artist as gladiator and demands from him, in the words of Boris Pasternak, "total death, seriously." And the artist complies, offering his death as the price of his achievement. It was a price Shostakovich paid long before he died.
• Shostakovich was ambivalent toward Solzhenitsyn. He thought highly of him as a writer, and felt that his life had been extraordinarily courageous. But he also felt that Solzhenitsyn was creating an image of "luminary" for himself, aspiring to be a new Russian saint. This ambivalence was reflected in two of his compositions, which were produced in quick succession after Solzhenitsyn's expulsion to the West in 1974. In the vocal suite on the poems of Michelangelo, Shostakovich used the poet's angry lines about the expulsion of Dante from Florence to address Solzhenitsyn with poignant music. And then appeared the satiric piece "Luminary" with parodic words from Dostoevsky's The Possessed.
xli
TESTIMONY
'IESE are not memoirs about myself. These are memoirs about other people. Others will write about us. And naturally they'll lie through their teeth-but that's their business.
One must speak the truth about the past or not at all. It's very hard to reminisce and it's worth doing only in the name of truth.
Looking back, I .�ee nothing but ruins, only mountains of corpses.
And I do not wish to build new Potemkin villages on these ruins.
Let's try to tell only the truth. It's difficult. I was an eyewitness to many events and they were important events. I knew many outstanding people. I'll try to tell what I know about them. I'll try not to color or falsify anything. This will be the testimony of an eyewitness.
Of course, we do have the saying "He lies like an eyewitness."
Meyerhold* liked to tell this story from his university days. He studied
•vsevolod Emilyevich Meyerhold (1 874-1 940), director and actor, theorist of the avant-garde theater, a friend and patron of Shostakovich. In 1928 Shostakovich was responsible for the music in the Theater of Meyerhold and later he wrote the music for the premiere of Mayakovsky's comedy The Bedbug. (Subsequently Shostakovich invariably refused Meyerhold's proposals of collaboration.) Not only were Meyerhold's productions extremely popular, but his name was 3
law at Moscow University, you know. A professor was lecturing on testimony when a hooligan rushed into the classroom and created a disturbance. A fight broke out, they called in the guards, who removed the troublemaker. The professor suggested that the students recount what had just happened.
It turned out that each told a different story. Everyone had his own version of the fight and his own description of the hooligan, and· some even maintained that there had been several hooligans.
Finally the professor admitted that the whole incident had been staged to demonstrate that future lawyers should know what eyewitness testimony was worth. They were young people with good eyesight and their accounts of what had just transpired varied. But witnesses were sometimes elderly. And they described things that happened long ago. How can you expect them to be accurate?
But nevertheless, there are courts of law where one seeks the truth and where everyone gets his just deserts. And that means that there are witnesses who testify before their own consciences. And there is no more horrible judgment than that.
I didn't spend my life as a gaper, but as a proletarian. I worked hard since childhood, not at seeking my "potential," but in the physical sense of the word. I wanted to hang around and look, but I had to work.
Meyer hold used to say, "If there's a rehearsal at the theater and I'm not there yet, if I'm late-look for the nearest row. I adore rows."