Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts

Tolstoy looks back on the Napoleonic Wars from a distance of fifty years. In his case, the new perception of history not only affects the structure of the novel, which has become more and more capable of capturing (in dialogue, in description) the historical nature of narrated events; but what interests him primarily is man's relation to history (his ability to dominate it or to escape it, to be free or not in regard to it), and he takes up the problem directly, as the very theme of his novel, a theme he explores by every means, including novelistic reflection.

Tolstoy argues against the idea that history is made by the will and reason of great individuals. History makes itself, he says, obeying laws of its own, which remain obscure to man. Great individuals 'all were the involuntary tools of history, carrying on a work that was concealed from them.' Later on: 'Providence compelled all these men, each striving to attain personal aims, to combine in the accomplishment of a single stupendous result not one of them (neither Napoleon nor Alexander and still less anyone who did the actual fighting) in the least expected.' And again: 'Man lives consciously for himself, but is unconsciously a tool in the attainment of the historic, general aims of mankind.' From which comes this tremendous conclusion: 'History, that is, the unconscious, general herd-life of mankind …' (I emphasize the key phrases.)

With this conception of history, Tolstoy lays out the metaphysical space in which his characters move. Knowing neither the meaning nor the future course of history, knowing not even the objective meaning of their own actions (by which they 'involuntarily' participate in events whose meaning is 'concealed from them'), thev proceed through their lives as one proceeds in the fog. I say fog, not darkness. In the darkness, we see nothing, we are blind, we are defenseless, we are not free. In the fog, we are free, but it is the freedom of a person in fog: he sees fifty yards ahead of him, he can clearly make out the features of his interlocutor, can take pleasure in the beauty of the trees that line the path, and can even observe what is happening close bv and react.

Man proceeds in the fog. But when he looks back to judge people of the past, he sees no fog on their path. From his present, which was their faraway future, their path looks perfectly clear to him, good visibility all the way. Looking back, he sees the path, he sees the people proceeding, he sees their mistakes, but not the fog. And yet all of them-Heidegger, Mayakovsky, Aragon, Ezra Pound, Gorky, Gottfried Benn, St.-John Perse, Giono-all were walking in fog, and one might wonder: who is more blind? Mayakovsky, who as he wrote his poem on Lenin did not know where Leninism would lead? Or we, who judge him decades later and do not see the fog that enveloped him?

Mayakovsky's blindness is part of the eternal human condition.

But for us not to see the fog on Mayakovsky's path is to forget what man is, forget what we ourselves are.

PART NINE. You're Not in Your Own House Here, My Dear Fellow

1

Toward the end of his life, Stravinsky decided to bring his whole oeuvre together in a great recorded edition of his own performances, as pianist or conductor, so as to establish an authorized sonic version of all his music. This wish to take on the role of performer himself often provoked an irritated response: how fiercely Ernest Ansermet mocked him in his 1961 book: when Stravinsky conducts an orchestra, he is seized 'by such panic that, for fear of falling, he pushes his music stand up against the podium rail, cannot take his eyes off a score he knows by heart, and counts time!'; he interprets his own music 'literally and slavishly'; 'when he performs all joy deserts him.'

Why such sarcasm?

I open the Stravinsky letters: the correspondence with Ansermet starts in 1914; 146 letters by Stravinsky: My dear Ansermet, My dear fellow, My dear friend, Very dear, My dear Ernest; not a hint of tension; then, like a thunderclap:

'Paris, October 14, 1937:

'In great haste, my dear fellow.

'There is absolutely no reason to make cuts in Jeu de cartes in concert performances… Compositions of this type are dance suites whose form is rigorously symphonic and require no audience explanation, because there are no descriptive elements illustrating theatrical action, which would interfere with the symphonic evolution of the pieces as they are played in sequence.

'If this strange idea occurred to you, of asking me to make cuts, it must be that you personally find the sequence of movements in Jeu de cartes a little boring. I cannot do anything about that. But what amazes me most is that you try to convince me to make cuts in it-me, who just conducted it in Venice and who reported to you the enthusiastic response of the audience. Either you forgot what I told you, or else you do not attach much importance to my observations or to my critical sense. Furthermore, I really do not believe that your audience would be less intelligent than the one in Venice.

'And to think that it is you who proposed to cut my composition, with every likelihood of distorting it, in order that it might be better understood by the public-you, who were not afraid to play a work as risky from the standpoint of success and listener comprehension as the Symphonies of Wind Instruments!

'So I cannot let you make cuts in Jeu de cartes: I think it is better not to play it at all than to do so with reservations.

'I have nothing to add, period.'

On October 15, Ansermet's reply:

'I ask only if you would forgive me the small cut in the March from the second measure after 45 to the second measure after 58.'

Stravinsky reacted on October 19:

'… I am sorry, but I cannot allow you any cuts in Jeu de cartes.

'The absurd one that you propose cripples my little March, which has its form and its structural meaning in the totality of the composition (a structural meaning that you claim to be protecting). You cut my March only because you like the middle section and the development less than the rest. In my view, this is not sufficient reason, and I would like to say: 'But you're not in your own house, my dear fellow'; I never told you: 'Here, take my score and do whatever you please with it.'

'I repeat: either you play Jeu de cartes as it is or you do not play it at all.

'You do not seem to have understood that my letter of October 14 was quite categorical on this point.'

Thereafter they exchanged only a few letters, chilly, laconic. In 1961 Ansermet published in Switzerland a voluminous book of musicology, including a lengthy chapter that is an attack on the insensitivity of Stravinsky's music (and his incompetence as a conductor). Only in 1966 (twenty-nine years after their dispute) was there this brief response from Stravinsky to a conciliatory letter from Ansermet:

'My dear Ansermet,

'Your letter touched me. We are both too old not to think about the end of our days; and I would not want to end these days with the painful burden of an enmity.'

An archetypal phrase for an archetypal situation:

often toward the end of their lives, friends who have failed one another will call off their hostility this way, coldly, without quite becoming friends again.

It's clear what was at stake in the dispute that wrecked the friendship: Stravinsky s authors rights, his moral rights; the anger of an author who will not stand for anyone tampering with his work; and, on the other side, the annoyance of a performer who cannot tolerate the authors proud behavior and tries to limit his power.