From: Iain Strachan (iain.strachan.asa@ntlworld.com)
Date: Sun Aug 24 2003 - 06:46:56 EDT
David,
Thanks for these comments. A few observations in response:
I wrote:
> >
> > I think this is the very point I'm trying to make. These "outliers"
> > have
> > the effect of enriching our lives, be it with beautiful music or
> > wonderful
> > inventions (e.g. would be be having this conversation over the
> > internet if
> > it were not for the brilliance of the tragic genius Alan Turing?)
> >
> > But their own lives and their own genes maybe don't have as good a
> > chance of
> > being propagated as someone who is ordinary and "dull" (which as
> > the Larkin
> > poem I cited suggests may be a key to happiness).
> >
> > So, back to the straight religious question; is "genius" a gift
> > from God?
> > Is it a curse? I regard Mozart's music as a gift for which I'm
> > grateful;
> > the way it resonates with ones mind (it has been said that Mozart
> > has
> > soothing and healing properties); and the extraordinary ability it
> > has to
> > carry you along in its flow - almost as if you were creating the
> > music
> > inside your own head. But was this "gift" a gift for Mozart
> > himself?
>
You replied:
> The question is composite. Mozart's music is a gift to others, certainly.
> To himself? Apparently he enjoyed his facile improvisation, and the fact
> that it gave him entree to palaces. Did he enjoy the occasional
> obsessiveness? There must have been some positive feeling, unless we
> attribute it totally to obsessive compulsion, just more complex than
> hand-washing. If pleasurable, how intense vs. negative consequences?
> There is no easy answer, and probably great difficulty in trying, at this
> late date, to disentangle the many factors. Consider also whether Mozart
> would have developed as he did without his father's continual pressure.
> What endowments and environmental factors caused his development? To what
> extent was it pleasurable as opposed to avoidance of pain?
>
I think really that he didn't have much choice about it. I've often read
the same about poets; they HAVE to write. So one has to ask the question
whether such gifts are bestowed by God for a purpose (for others). D. M.
Thomas writes in his introduction to the translations of selected poems of
Anna Akhmatova (Akhmatova and Shostakovich were mutual admirers), the
following:
"Can it be by chance that the worst of times found the best of poets to wage
the war for eternal truth and human dignity?"
(Akhmatova's famous poem "Requiem" describes the 300 days she spent in
queues outside prisons in Leningrad waiting for news of her son - who
eventually went to labour camp. It was too risky to leave the poem in any
form lying around during the Stalin terror, so AA whispered it to trusted
friends in the privacy of her flat, and they all committed it to memory.
Then all copies of the script were destroyed & it was only reconstructed
from their collective memories and published in the 1960's when it became
possible to say such things. In the poem, she describes herself as "an
exhausted mouth through which hundreds of millions of my people are crying
out".
I wrote:
> Is
> > there an element here of suffering to bring happiness (salvation) to
> > others;
> > eg Elgar's music uplifting others, but not himself. Shostakovich
> > once said
> > that even if they cut off his hands he would continue to write
> > music, if
> > necessary holding the pen in his mouth. It was his mission; his
> > destiny in
> > life to compose music; and in doing so, many found temporary release
> > from
> > the appalling business of living under Stalin. I just wonder if
> > there isn't
> > something a bit Christ-like in all this.
> >
> > Iain
>
> As for Elgar, Beethoven was a gift to him, but I don't know if his music
> was a gift to himself. It is a gift to us, surely, but would he have
> suffered less by not being involved. Shostakovich indicates that he had
> to compose. Would trying to break the pattern have produced greater
> happiness for him, whatever it did for others? Getting away from Stalin
> is another matter.
>
> There are a host of different compulsions, to success in business
> (sometimes at all costs), to theft, to family (parents, wife, children,
> relatives--sometime mutually exclusive), to power, to self-abnegation,
> etc. To what extent can we ascribe Christlikeness to all these
> manifestations? What reflects loving a neighbor as oneself, perhaps. But
> is this adequate in failure to love God? Finding a similarity in one
> factor does not give much evidence for an identity, or even a broad
> similarity.
I wasn't trying to indicate that either Mozart,Elgar, or Shostakovich were
Christians. Apparently Mozart was, but the other two are ambiguous.
According to the Elgar society website, E did not (certainly in later life)
believe in an afterlife. Shostakovich was publicly an atheist, but certain
letters and comments by his son, the conductor Maxim Shostakovich, seem to
imply that maybe the situation wasn't as clear cut as that. In a letter to
his life-long friend Isaak Glikman (Glikman published these as a book),
Shostakovich indicates that he is "a great admirer of Jesus Christ", and
held as very important the Christian principle of forgiveness. This of
course doesn't make him a believer in Jesus Christ, but he also told Glikman
that he tried to avoid joining the Communist party "on account of my
religious beliefs". However, elsewhere, he indicates that he does not
believe in God "but I'm very sorry about it".
However, it's very clear that Shostakovich took enormous risks in writing
some of the music he did; much of it again was deliberately ambiguous, and
people took out of it what they wanted. The authorities could see it as
pro-state, but many of the audiences heard protest. A case in point is his
eleventh symphony, subtitled "The Year 1905", ostensibly documenting the
1905 uprising (with movement titles to match). It was written for the 40th
Anniversary of the Revolution in 1957. However, many people who heard it
saw it as a deliberate and principled protest against the Soviet crushing of
the Hungarian uprising that had taken place in 1956. In the brutal second
movement, describing the battle on the ice outside the Tsar's palace, many
people "heard" the sound of Soviet tanks rolling up the streets in Budapest.
In fact the composer's son, who was a boy at the time said "Will they not
hang you for this, papa?".
The point I'm trying to make is perhaps an extrapolation of what D.M. Thomas
said above; that creative geniuses are maybe put there in order to tell the
truth. But part of this creative outpouring involves suffering for what one
has done (e.g. Shostakovich was severely criticized in 1936 and 1948, lost
his post as Professor at the conservatory & from 1948-1953 was not able to
publish anything serious - Elgar's obsessive nature which led to his genius,
also led to intense depression). And this, surely is a reflection (albeit a
dim one) of the supreme sacrifice and suffering of the Creator who died on
the cross in order to redeem His creation.
Iain
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