(There is something about Russia’s attitude to Germany that defies historical sense. Since an early age, I was told that Wagner was the greatest composer who ever lived, that Furtwangler was greater than Toscanini himself, and that Nietzsche was the Everest of philosophy. Mind you, I was told this by the very men and women who had the horrific war against Nazi Germany vivid in their memory and acutely painful in the wounds and scars, both physical and psychological, which the war had left them with for the rest of their lives. My maternal uncle Gleb Timofeyevich Gamazin, a much decorated war hero, whose portraits were carried across Red Square alongside with Stalin's during public demonstrations at the end of the war, had this favorite phrase to register his highest praise for superior workmanship: “Clean German work.” All this could be the subject of a separate entry, and maybe it will be, one day, but in the present entry’s specific context, it serves as an apt introduction. Indeed, as all of my friends and relatives concurred, Hitler’s attack on Russia in 1941 [sic!] was a crime not just against Russia, but against Germany herself. No matter what, they said, Germany’s greatness endures…)
No, Stalin never was in Bayreuth, but I stand by my title, as an excellent figure of speech. After all, Wagner truly was his favorite composer.
Stalin had an acute appreciation of greatness in all its creative genres, and his appreciation knew no national borders or prejudices. He saw Russia as a great repository of world culture, and nothing of human genius was alien to a Russian. Paraphrasing Terentius, “Russicus sum et nihil magnum mihi alienum puto.” (Do not remind me that Stalin was an ethnic Georgian and not a Russian: to anybody who has ever understood him, he was no less Russian than, say, Russia’s beloved Empress-Matushka Catherine the Great… of Anhalt-Zerbst!)
In this context, it should not come as a surprise that Stalin was a great admirer of Richard Wagner, that is of both his music and of his drama, just as how the composer wanted it to be. Stalin’s love for Wagner’s operas was bordering on an obsession, and in the midst of the terrible war against Hitler’s Germany, when everything of German origin seemed to be soaked in evil, Stalin just couldn’t resist the urge of getting his daily dose of Wagner, even if only for the twelve minutes of the Tannhäuser Overture or Isolde's Liebestod. (But The Ring was, of course, his hands-down favorite.)
What is no less amazing about this story is that many Russians, Stalin’s detractor Nikita Khrushchev among them, knew this well, but none would say anything disparaging about Stalin on this particular account, even long after de-Stalinization, when criticizing Stalin for every mortal sin was politically safe, and even rather fashionable, and when each of them had lost someone dear both to Stalin’s purges and to the unholy invasion of Wagner’s compatriots, and so, one would assume, they had a big axe to grind, both with Stalin and with Wagner himself.
But nothing of the kind. Loving Wagner has been the pinnacle of music appreciation. Even Khrushchev must have understood that. You could attack Stalin, Lenin, Marx, and even the Soviet power itself, and somehow get away with it, but Richard Wagner was unassailable!
No, Stalin never was in Bayreuth, but I stand by my title, as an excellent figure of speech. After all, Wagner truly was his favorite composer.
Stalin had an acute appreciation of greatness in all its creative genres, and his appreciation knew no national borders or prejudices. He saw Russia as a great repository of world culture, and nothing of human genius was alien to a Russian. Paraphrasing Terentius, “Russicus sum et nihil magnum mihi alienum puto.” (Do not remind me that Stalin was an ethnic Georgian and not a Russian: to anybody who has ever understood him, he was no less Russian than, say, Russia’s beloved Empress-Matushka Catherine the Great… of Anhalt-Zerbst!)
In this context, it should not come as a surprise that Stalin was a great admirer of Richard Wagner, that is of both his music and of his drama, just as how the composer wanted it to be. Stalin’s love for Wagner’s operas was bordering on an obsession, and in the midst of the terrible war against Hitler’s Germany, when everything of German origin seemed to be soaked in evil, Stalin just couldn’t resist the urge of getting his daily dose of Wagner, even if only for the twelve minutes of the Tannhäuser Overture or Isolde's Liebestod. (But The Ring was, of course, his hands-down favorite.)
What is no less amazing about this story is that many Russians, Stalin’s detractor Nikita Khrushchev among them, knew this well, but none would say anything disparaging about Stalin on this particular account, even long after de-Stalinization, when criticizing Stalin for every mortal sin was politically safe, and even rather fashionable, and when each of them had lost someone dear both to Stalin’s purges and to the unholy invasion of Wagner’s compatriots, and so, one would assume, they had a big axe to grind, both with Stalin and with Wagner himself.
But nothing of the kind. Loving Wagner has been the pinnacle of music appreciation. Even Khrushchev must have understood that. You could attack Stalin, Lenin, Marx, and even the Soviet power itself, and somehow get away with it, but Richard Wagner was unassailable!
No comments:
Post a Comment