I also remember that there were a lot of prostitutes in Petrograd.
They came out in flocks onto Nevsky Prospect in the evening. This began with the war, they serviced the soldiers. I was afraid of the prostitutes too.
Our family had Narodnik* leanings-and, naturally, liberal views.
We had a definite understanding of right and wrong.
In those days I thought the whole world was that way. But now I see that our family was rather daringly freethinking, as compared with
*Narodnichestvo (from narod, "the people") was a radical political movement in nineteenthcentury Russia, which encompassed broad circles of the intelligentsia. The central idea of the Narodnilr.i was peasant democracy as the "Russian" path to socialism. The Narodnilci fought autocracy through agitation and terrorist acts. In the Stalinist period, the activities of the Narodnilr.i were hush� up and distorted.
7
the atmosphere at Prokofiev's house: they were much more reactionary there. To say nothing of the Stravinskys. After all, the family was supported by the Imperial Maryinsky Theater.
Our family discussed the Revolution of 1 905 constantly. I was born after that, but the stories deeply affected my imaginatiOn. When I was older, I read much about how it all had happened. I think that it was a turning point-the people stopped believing in the tsar. The Russian people are always like that-they believe and they believe and then suddenly it comes to an end. And the ones the people no longer believe in come to a bad end.
But a lot of blood must be shed for that. In 1 905 they were carting a mound of murdered children on a sleigh. The boys had been sitting in the trees, looking at the soldiers, and the soldiers shot them-just like that, for fun. Then they loaded them on the sleigh and drove off. A sleigh loaded with children's bodies. And the dead children were smiling. They had been killed so suddenly that they hadn't time to be frightened.
One boy had been torn apart by bayonets. When they took him away, the crowd shouted for weapons. No one knew what to do with them, but patience was running out.
I think that many things repeat themselves in Russian history. Of course, the same event can't repeat itself exactly, there must be differences, but many things are repeated nevertheless. The people think and act similarly in many things. This is evident, for example, if you study Mussorgsky or read War and Peace.
I wanted to show this recurrence in the Eleventh Symphony. I wrote it in 1 957 and it deals with contemporary themes even though it's called " 1 905." It's about the people, who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over.
That's how the impressions of my childhood and my adult life come together. And naturally, the events of my mature years are more meaningful.
For some reason no one writes about the humiliations of childhood.
They reminisce tenderly: I was so small and already independent. But in reality, they don't let you be independent when you're a child. They dress and undress you, wipe your nose roughly. Childhood is like old age. A man is helpless when he's old too. And no one speaks tenderly of olcl age. Why is childhood any better?
8
Childhood injuries last a lifetime. That's why a child's hurts are the most bitter-they last his whole life. I still remember who insulted me in the Shidlovskaya Gymnasium and even before that.
I was sickly as a child. It's always bad to be sick, . but the worst time to be sick is when there's not much food. And there were some very bad times with food. I wasn't very strong. The trolleys ran infrequently. When the trolley finally came, the cars were packed, and the crowds still tried to push in.
I rarely managed to get in. I didn't have the strength to push. The saying "The pushy ride cushy" was coined then. That's why I always left early to get to the Conservatory. I didn't even think of the trolley. I walked.
That's how it always turned out. I was always walking, and the others. rode by on the trolley. But I didn't envy them. I knew that there was no way that I could have got on, I was too weak.
I learned how to assess people, a rather unpleasant pastime, since it inevitably leads to disillusionment.
The supposedly marvelous years of youth are made for seeing the world through rose-colored glasses. For seeing merry things and beautiful objects. Clouds, and grass, and flowers. You don't want to notice the shady sides of glorious reality. You want to think that they're an optical .illusion, as was once suggested by a sarcastic writer.*
But willy-nilly you begin looking closer. And then you notice certain ugly phenomena, you begin to see what moves what, as Zoshchenko t put it, and what pushes what. And that makes you rather sad.
Well, not enough to plunge you into despair and pessimism, but a few doubts start gnawing at your youthful brain.
I worked in my youth as the piano player at the Bright Reel Theater-now called the Barricade. Every Leningrader knows the place.
•Daniil lvanovich Kharms (Yuvachev; 1906- 1 942), Dadaist writer, one of the most eccentric figures of Petrograd/Leningrad during Shostakovich's youth. He earned his living writing children's poetry. Kharms disappeared during the years of Stalinist terror. In the 1 960s his absurdist
"anecdotes" were widely distributed in samizdat.
tMikhail Mikhailovich Zoshchenko (1 895-1 958), satirist and playwright, a friend of Shostakovich. A brilliant stylist, he gained unheard-of popularity while still quite young. Zoshchenko noted dryly: "I write with compression. My sentences are short. Accessible to the poor. Perhaps that's why I have so many readers." After World War II, Zoshchenko was viciously attacked by the Party; "thoroughly rotten and decayed sociopolitical and literary physiognomy," "vile, lustful animal," "unprincipled and conscienceless literary hooligan," were a few of the official descriptions of Zoshchenko. "Let him get out of Soviet literature," a Party leader demanded, and the order was carried through. Zoshchenko's original literary style had a decided influence on Shostakovich's manner of expressing himself.
9
My memories of the Bright Reel are not very pleasant. I was seventeen and my work consisted in providing musical accompaniment for the human passions on the screen.
It was disgusting and exhausting. Hard work and low pay. But I put up with it and looked forward to receiving even that paltry sum.
That's how hard up we were then.
The owner of the theater was not an ordinary man. He was famous, no more and no less than an honorary citizen of Milan. And he re-.
ceived that citizenship for his scholarly work on Leonardo da Vinci.
The honorary citizen of Milan was called Akim Lvovich Volynsky, also known as Flekser. And he was, as I've said, a famous man, a critic in various fields of the arts. Before the Revolution, Volynsky headed a highly respectable journal, printed Chekhov and even Leo Tolstoy.
After the Revolution, Volynsky started a ballet school, because he knew the field inside out. You might say the entire ballet world trembled in anticipation of his lengthy, innumerable articles. The articles were long-winded and abstruse. The ballet world read them with trepidation.