References, interesting quotes, diary moments, and thoughts along the way
A Kantian analysis of hiccups
"Well, you tell him where to shove his pickled mushrooms. You do far better studying the hiccup, i.e., to undertake research on the drunken hiccup, in its mathematical aspects...
'Dear God Almighty!' I hear on all sides. 'Surely there's more to life than that, there must be something...'
' But there isn't!' I shout. 'That's just my point. There really isn't. There's nothing else.'
I'm not a fool. I'm well aware there are such things as psychiatry and extra-galactic astronomy and the like. But I mean, really, that's not for us. All that stuff was foisted on us by Peter the Great and Dmitri Kibalchich, and our calling lies in an entirely different direction. Yes, and I'll lead you in that direction if you're not going to be awkward. Of course, you'll say: 'This calling of yours is vile and false.' But I'll tell you, I'll repeat what I've already said: 'There are no false callings, every profession deserves respect.'
So, the hell with you! You can leave all that extra-galactic astronomy to the Yanks, and the psychiatry to the Germans. Let all those Spanish bastards go watch their corridas, let those African shits build their Aswam dam, go ahead, the wind'll blow it down anyway, let Italy choke on its idiotic bel canto, what the hell!
And meanwhile, I repeat, we'll turn to the hiccup."
Moscow - Petushki, Venedikt Yerofeyev
Shostakovitch, Yevtushenko, the five poems and the Land of Endless Expectations
I moved to Russia in 1993 above all driven by the music Dmitry Shostakovitch. One of his most powerful (and hardest to listen to) works is his 13th Symphony, which is for both orchestra and choir, and sets five poems by the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko to music. The titles and themes of those five poems are a kind of broad brush overview of Soviet life. While I was developing In the Land of Endless Expectations, I noticed that the themes that I saw around me, mirrored quite closely (but not identically) the themes of the five poems - memory, fear, career (fortune/intelligentsia), women, humour (a thread of absurdity in literature through Gogol, Bulgakov, Yerofeev, Kurkov and so on). Whether this was coincidence, or operation of the subconscious, or just because Yevtushenko and Shostakovitch had covered themes that are universal in a Soviet/Russian context, I don't know. But here are links to the five movements/poems on Youtube:
I Babi Yar
II Humour
III At the Store
IV Fears
V A Career
A lot of western music critics bend over backwards trying to identify Shostakovitch's music as 'anti-Soviet', or at least 'critical of the Soviet regime' - and therefore good. Nearly every concert programme note includes the words "anti" or " against" and "Soviet" somewhere in the same sentence. It's as if one symphony might almost be regarded as better than another because it demonstrated more 'anti-Soviet' feeling than another. This has always irritated me as a way to evaluate music. Life, music, art - at least, if it is any good - is not so black and white, good and bad, pro- and anti-. You don't have to be a dissident to be a great composer. The music, and Yevtushenko's words, speak for themselves.
Kerch landscape
We have all heard of the Normandy landings during WWII, but in the West few people have heard of the amphibious landings at Kerch. They were some of the most ambitious amphibious landings in history. The technique used was crude - with relatively little preparation or bombardment, instead of using landing craft, merchant ships were simply driven onto the shore and soldiers had to jump over the side to reach the shore. Perhaps not surprisingly, the result was ultimately the near total destruction of the Soviet forces involved.
