What was Shostakovich to do ? He could not and did not want to enter into open conflict with the authorities. Yet it was clear to him that total submission threatened to become a creative dead end. He ·chose another path; whether consciously or not, Shostakovich became the second (Mussorgsky was the first) great yurodivy composer.
The yurodivy is a Russian religious phenomenon, which even the cautious Soviet scholars call a national trait. There is no word in any other language that can precisely convey the meaning of the Russian word yurodivy, with its many historical and cultural overtones.
The yurodivy has the. g�ft to see and hear what others know nothing about. But he. tells the world about his insights in an intentionally paradoxical way, in code. He plays the fool, while actually being a persistent exposer of evil and injustice. The yurodivy is an anarchi�t and individualist, who in his public role breaks the commonly held
"moral" laws of behavior and flouts conventions. But he sets. strict limitations, rules, and taboos for himself.
The origins of yurodstvo go back to the fifteenth century· and even earlier; it existed as a noticeable phenomenon until the eighteenth century. During all that time, the yurodivye could expose things and remain in relative.safety. The authorities recognized the right of the yur-xxv
odivye to criticize and be eccentric-within limits. Their influence was immense. Their confused prophetic words were heeded by tsars and peasants alike. Yurodstvo was usually innate, but it might also be taken on voluntarily, "for Christ's sake." A number of educated men became yurodivye as a form of intellectual criticism, of protest.
Shostakovich was not the only one to become a "new yurodivy."
This behavior model had gained a certain popularity in his cultural milieu. The young Leningrad Dadaists, forming the Oberiu Circle, behaved like yurodivye. The popular satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko created. a consistent yurodivy mask for himself, and he had a deep effect on Shostakovich's personal manner and expression.
For these modern yurodivye the world lay in ruins and the attempt to build a new society was-at least for the time being-an obvious failure. They were naked people on a naked earth. The lofty values of the past had been discredited. New ideals, they felt, could be affirmed only "in reverse." They would have to be conveyed through a screen of mockery, sarcasm, and foolishness.
These writers and artists chose unremarkable, crude, and purposely clumsy words to express the most profound ideas. But these words did not carry a simple meaning; they had double or triple implications. In their works, street speech grimaced and clowned, taking on mocking nuances. A joke was transformed into a parable, a child's ditty into a terrifying examination of "la condition humaine. "
It goes without saying that the yurodstvo of Shostakovich and his friends could not be as consistent as that of their historical models. The yurodivye of the past had abandoned culture and society forever. The
"new yurodivye" left in order to remain. Their attempt to rehabilitate traditional culture with methods borrowed from the arsenal of anticulture, even though it had deliberate moralizing and sermonizing overtones, took place in a secular context.
Shostakovich set great store by this bond with Mussorgsky, who, wrote the musicologist Boris Asafiev, "escaped from some internal contradiction into the region of semi-preaching, semi-yurodstvo. " On a musical plane, Shostakovich had seen himself as Mussorgsky's successor; now he tied himself to him on a human level as well, occasionally playing the "idiot" (as even Mussorgsky's closest friends had called him).
Stepping onto the road of yurodstvo, Shostakovich relinquished all xxvi
responsibility for anything he said: nothing meant what it seemed to, not the most exalted and beautiful words. The pronouncement of familiar truths turned out to be mockery; conversely, mockery often contained tragic truth. This also held for his musical works. The composer deliberately wrote an oratorio "without envoi,"' in order to force the audience to seek out the message in what appeared at first glance to be an insignificant vocal work.
His decision was not made suddenly, of course; it was the result of much vacillation and inconsistency. Shostakovich's everyday behavior was determined to a great degree-as was the behavior of many authentic old Russian yurodivye "for Christ's sake" -by the reaction of the authorities, which were sometimes more intolerant, sometimes less.
Self-defense dictated a large portion of the position of Shostakovich and his friends, who wanted to survive, but not at any cost. The yurodivy mask helped them. It is important to note that Shostakovich not only considered himself a yurodivy, but he was perceived as such by the people close to him. The word "yurodivy" was often applied to him in Russian musical circles.
Shostakovich periodically returned throughout his life to this yurodstvo, with its traditional concern for oppressed people. It took on various forms as the composer's body and spirit matured and then withered. When he was young, it set him apart from the leaders of
"left" art, such as Meyerhold, Mayakovsky, and Eisenstein. Pushkin has a famous line about "calling for mercy for the fallen." Shostakovich could claim to share Pushkin's concern for the fallen after 1927; for this theme is important in the composer-yurodivy's two operas_,.
The Nose, based on the Gogol story (completed in 1928), and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, based on the Leskov story (completed in 1 932).
In Gogol's story the characters are treated as masks, but Shostakovich turns them into human beings. Even the Nose, who separated himself from his owner, Major Kovalyov, and strolled about Petersburg in uniform, takes on realistic traits in Shostakovich's treatment.
The composer is interested in the interaction between the faceless crowd and the individual; he carefully explores the mechanism of mass psychosis. We care about the Nose, driven to death by frenzied townspeople, and we <:are about "noseless" Kovalyov.
Shostakovich used the story plot merely as a springboard, refracting xx vii
events and characters through the prism of a completely different writer with a different style-Dostoevsky.
In I.Ady Macbeth of M tsensk District (the opera was called Katerina lzmailova in a later, second edition) the connection with Dostoevsky is also apparent. An example is the depiction of triumphant, all-pervasive police power. As in The Nose� Shostakovich brings his characters into collision with the police machine.
In both instances a criminal case is used to draw the "stations of the cross" of his characters with more clarity. He vulgarizes the already vulgar and intensifies colors by the use of harsh, strident contrasts.
In I.Ady Macbeth, Katerina Izmailova murders for love and Shostakovich exonerates her. In his interpretation, the heartless, oppressive, and powerful men who are killed by Katerina are actually criminals and Katerina is their victim. The finale of the opera is very important.