St Petersburg полностью

The eccentric genius mask helped Sollertinsky survive. Celebrities arriving from the West always asked for a meeting with that “phenomenal scholar who knows fifty languages.”104 Sollertinsky in fact was fluent in at least two dozen languages (thirty-two, counting dialects), from Latin to Sanskrit; in the latter he usually made his most private diary notations. His vast and extremely varied knowledge coupled with the temperament of an activist quickly made Sollertinsky one of the leading proselytizers of the new art in Leningrad. He was an intimate of Bakhtin’s but also met frequently with Kharms and the other oberiuts and was highly esteemed by the choreographer Fyodor Lopukhov. Balanchine spoke respectfully of Sollertinsky to the end of his days.105 Sollertinsky had a photographic memory: after a quick glance at the most complex text, he could repeat it by heart. Shostakovich liked to remind us that Sollertinsky had memorized “all of Shakespeare, Pushkin, Gogol, Aristotle, and Plato.” When they met in 1927 Sollertinsky pronounced Shostakovich a genius, and the composer immediately fell under the spell of the scholar who was four years his senior and became his best friend.

Sollertinsky defended Shostakovich’s Nose from hostile critics, stating that “The Nose is not a product for instant use and disposal. It is a laboratory factory, where new music and theater language are being created.” Sollertinsky compared Shostakovich’s opera to the works of Swift and Voltaire. “The Nose has no positive characters: only masks.” Bakhtin would have called this work one of “carnival” but not of “dialogue.” Shostakovich made the leap from Gogol’s carnival world to Dostoyevsky’s dialogue world in the opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, based on the story of Nikolai Leskov, a Petersburg writer of the late nineteenth century whose careful treatment of every word and mastery of the phrase earned the respect of Zamyatin and the Serapion Brothers, who considered Leskov among their teachers.

A literary maverick, Leskov liked fanciful plots to which baffled critics did not know how to react. His “sketch” about the merchant wife Katerina Izmailova, whose fatal love leads her to commit multiple murders, had remained in obscurity for over a half century; Shostakovich’s opera brought it world fame. The paradox lies in the fact that Shostakovich had radically rewritten Leskov’s story; as Sollertinsky put it, “The evaluation of the roles has been changed: the victims become executioners, the killer—the victim.” In Shostakovich’s version, Katerina kills in self-defense and the composer vindicates her. Leskov’s misogynist work is transformed into a feminist apotheosis.

Sollertinsky believed that “in the history of Russian musical theater nothing of the scope and depth of The Queen of Spades appeared until Lady Macbeth.” In his operas Tchaikovsky sympathetically treated his women characters. Shostakovich continued that tradition. His Katerina is a “polyphonic” heroine, strong passions and deep emotions battle within her; she can be tender, passionate, caring, and cruel. Sollertinsky was among the first to note that killer Katerina’s part “is completely lyrical, with deeply felt melodies,” and that the opera as a whole has “a tragic—Shakespearean rather than Leskovian—sweep.”

Lady Macbeth has sharply contrasting parts: expressionist depictions of the brutish merchant life, satirical carnival vignettes of the police apparatus, and dramatic scenes from the life of hard labor, à la Dostoyevsky. Another striking similarity between Shostakovich’s opera and Dostoyevsky’s polyphonic novels is the criminal plot, which keeps the audience in constant suspense and develops in a sweeping way that leads to important social and philosophical conclusions.

Bakhtin discussed with his circle the idea of a special “polyphonic creative thought” that went beyond the limits of the novel. In his second opera Shostakovich showed himself to be the master of that type of thought. He does not judge Katerina Izmailova but gives her the opportunity to express herself through contradictory actions and emotions. This work was influenced by the Bakhtin circle’s aesthetics. A prominent participant in the circle, Sollertinsky was Shostakovich’s closest adviser in the years he was writing the opera. He was present at all the rehearsals, commenting freely, encouraging, inciting, and provoking the conductor, the soloists, and the composer.