#Ivan Cervantes

[andrea-non-sa-tornare]

“A tutti gli illusi, a quelli che parlano al vento.

Ai pazzi per amore, ai visionari,

a coloro che darebbero la vita per realizzare un sogno.

Ai reietti, ai respinti, agli esclusi. Ai folli veri o presunti.

Agli uomini di cuore,

a coloro che si ostinano a credere nel sentimento puro.

A tutti quelli che ancora si commuovono.

Un omaggio ai grandi slanci, alle idee e ai sogni.

A chi non si arrende mai, a chi viene deriso e giudicato.

Ai poeti del quotidiano.

Ai “vincibili” dunque, e anche

agli sconfitti che sono pronti a risorgere e a combattere di nuovo.

Agli eroi dimenticati e ai vagabondi.

A chi dopo aver combattuto e perso per i propri ideali,

ancora si sente invincibile.

A chi non ha paura di dire quello che pensa.

A chi ha fatto il giro del mondo e a chi un giorno lo farà.

A chi non vuol distinguere tra realtà e finzione.

A tutti i cavalieri erranti.

In qualche modo, forse è giusto e ci sta bene…

a tutti i teatranti.”

(Miguel de Ivan Cervantes, “Don Chisciotte”)

[spookyblazecoffee]

Adam Milligan has auditory processing disorder because I have auditory processing disorder and I said so.

Just saying this because my online classes and the videos for said classes don’t have subtitles and I’m pissed off.

I don’t make the rules, I’m just a messenger of the truth.

[escapedaudios]

Ok I want to hear who your favorite supporting couples are (non Listener-involved couples). I'm going to include the exes of certain characters too. Note, favorite doesn't have to mean the healthiest or most romantic. Just the most entertaining. I'm only including any couple or ex-couple who's relationship depicted on screen at all, so no Ivan x Michelle, Crow x Acid Rain, or Jäger x Molly.

Including Thad x Duke even though their relationship hasn't been on screen (they'll be depicted as a couple in flashbacks eventually) but like they definitely still flirt on screen.

[olympeline]

Nations having human names is kinda odd when you think about it. You’d expect their people to just call them by their official names or else “motherland” or “fatherland.” So, here’s me coming in with a headcanon about where these human names come from (´∀｀)

A nation’s legal name, the one used on treaties and trade deals, can change over time. Or be different depending on who’s speaking. Germany is Deutschland to some his friends, Japan is Nihon at home, exonyms vs. endonyms, kingdoms become republics, yadda, yadda. But a nation’s human name - their gifted name - is forever. I call it “gifted” because it’s given to them not by the politics of the world, but by one of their citizens. One of their best and brightest. A son or daughter any of them could be proud of. Any human can try giving a nation a name, but if it isn’t the right one it won’t stick.

The first nation to get a human name was China when he met Confucius. They encountered each other on the road one evening waaay back around 467BC when the philosopher was on his way home. They talked, shared tea, and Confucius called China “Yao Wang” for the first time. China couldn’t explain it, but he just knew this was his name. Knew deep in his soul

Greece was second. He marched with Alexander the Great and finished the campaign as Heracles Karpusi. When the other ancient nations heard the news they were all very excited. Except Yao, who was put out that he wasn’t unique anymore lol. Then gifted names were officially “a thing” that nation people eagerly waited for. I imagine their naming days are very fondly remembered along with the human who was there for them. A few examples throughout history:

Russia knelt before Catherine the Great and rose up again as Ivan Braginsky.

Spain was invited to read a first draft of Cervantes’s and left as Antonio Carriedo.

Japan walked with Nobunaga the day before Anegawa and went to bed that night as Kiku Honda.

One of the sole exceptions to the usual way is America, who was named “Alfred” by another nation rather than a human. Arthur named Alfred after one of his favourite kings: Alfred the Great. Alfred chose the “F. Jones” part himself when he became independent. Before that he was Alfred Kirkland. This was a weird blip in nation people history, but they chalk it up to Arthur’s magic. As for Arthur himself, he was named by Merlin. Yes, that Merlin

I haven’t thought of specifics for every nation. A few ideas are Otto von Bismarck for Ludwig, Napoleon for Francis, and maybe one of the Popes for the Italy bros. What do you guys think? What historical figure might have named your nation?

[aliciavance4228]

One Hundred Books

Decided to make this list in order to include in one post all the books that I found to be worth reading and would recommend to others. They're not in a specific order:

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Dubliners by James Joyce

A Jounal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Art of War by Sun Tzu

The Trial by Kafka

Metamorphosis by Kafka

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Dracula by Bram Stocker

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

1984 by George Orwell

Animal Farm by George Orwell

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Dune by Frank Herbert

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Crime and Punishment by Dostoievski

Notes from the Underground by Dostoievski

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

The Pianist by Władisław Szpilman

Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri

Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann

The Idiot by Dostoievski

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

The Insulted and Humiliated by Dostoievski

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Moby-Dick by Herman Meville

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoievski

The Call of Cthulhu by Lovecraft

Dagon and other Macabre Tells by Lovecraft

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

The Shining by Stephen King

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

The Enlightened Cave by Max Blecher

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

The God Factory by Karel Čapek

The Tongue Set Free by Elias Canetti

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Selected Poems by Jorge Louis Borges

The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Plague by Albert Camus

Carrie by Stephen King

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Notre Dame of Paris by Victor Hugo

Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

The Iliad by Homer

The Odyssey by Homer

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Tell-Tale Heart and other Writings by Edgar Allan Poe

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

The Red and the Black by Stendhal

The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis

It by Stephen King

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy

La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas fils

Pride and Predjudice by Jane Austen

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Return of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

[dedalvs]

I have two questions!

1 - Have you read all ASOIAF books? If yes, which is your favorite?

2 - What are your favorites books and why?

Thanks in advance ☺️❤️

I have! I think the third one was my favorite.

Some of my favorites books are:

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev

Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

True Grit by Charles Portis

The Castle by Franz Kafka

The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass by Fredrick Douglass

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Sundiata by D. T. Niane

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

At this point I'm just copying stuff down from a book review site I used to have. I used to read a whooooooooole lot, but I haven't much recently. :( Maybe I'll get back to it some day. My favorite author is Virginia Woolf. There's nothing more enjoyable than reading something by her—anything. When it comes to a put-together book, though, I think To the Lighthouse is her best. The others I've read are a joy to read, but the end, they don't necessarily come together as well as a book, if that makes sense. Now I haven't read them all. I've read To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, Jacob's Room, and Orlando. If I were to recommend a second one, it would be Orlando, which is a real adventure to read. But her writing is unlike any other. I adore her work.

Lately I've been rereading some of my favorites aloud to my daughter after school. We read The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers, and we've now gone through four books by Tove Jansson: The Moomins and the Great Flood, Comet in Moominland, Finn Family Moomintroll, and Moominpappa's Memoirs. Next up is Moominsummer Madness before things get dark. lol But she's been enjoying them. I love Tove Jansson. She refused to write anything other than what she felt. (One of the reasons Finn Family Moomintroll was so odd. She felt a million eyes on her for perhaps the first time, and she was nervous. She settled back in after that.) There's also random things in there. In Moominpappa's Memoirs there's a drawing she did that's a send-up of Picasso's Guernica when Edward the Booble saves them at the end. I should put a picture of it, because I'm not sure anyone noticed... At least I can't find anything on the internet (probably searching wrong).

Anyway, that's some stuff.

[tizianacerralovetrainer]

“A tutti gli illusi, a quelli che parlano al vento.

Ai pazzi per amore, ai visionari,

a coloro che darebbero la vita per realizzare un sogno.

Ai reietti, ai respinti, agli esclusi. Ai folli veri o presunti.

Agli uomini di cuore,

a coloro che si ostinano a credere nel sentimento puro.

A tutti quelli che ancora si commuovono.

Un omaggio ai grandi slanci, alle idee e ai sogni.

A chi non si arrende mai, a chi viene deriso e giudicato.

Ai poeti del quotidiano.

Ai “vincibili” dunque, e anche

agli sconfitti che sono pronti a risorgere e a combattere di nuovo.

Agli eroi dimenticati e ai vagabondi.

A chi dopo aver combattuto e perso per i propri ideali,

ancora si sente invincibile.

A chi non ha paura di dire quello che pensa.

A chi ha fatto il giro del mondo e a chi un giorno lo farà.

A chi non vuol distinguere tra realtà e finzione.

A tutti i cavalieri erranti.

In qualche modo, forse è giusto e ci sta bene…

a tutti i teatranti.”

(Miguel de Ivan Cervantes, “Don Chisciotte”)

[boldlycrookedsalad]

Literary Canon (from kissgrammar)

The Holy Bible, Authorized King James Version [At a minimum, the books of Genesis, Exodus, Job, Psalms, from the Old Testament; Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Apocalypse from the New.] Whether or not you are Christian is irrelevant. The civilization in which we live is based on and permeated by the ideas and values expressed in this book. Understanding our civilization, the world in which we live, is probably impossible without having read -- and thought about -- at least the most famous books in the Bible. Historically, the King James Version is considered the most artistic, and thus has probably had the most literary influence.

Homer, The Iliad

Homer, The Odyssey

Sophocles, Oedipus the King (Oedipus Rex)

Sophocles, Antigone

Plato, The Republic, especially "The Myth of the Cave"

Ovid, Metamorphoses

Saint Augustine, The Confessions

Dante, The Divine Comedy

Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Giambattista Vico, Principles of a New Science

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales

Romeo and Juliet

King Lear

Hamlet

Othello

Macbeth

John Donne, "Holy Sonnet XIV"

John Donne, "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning"

Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress"

John Milton, Paradise Lost

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels

A Modest Proposal

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Michel de Montaigne, Essays, especially "Of Experience"

Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

Moliere, The Misanthrope

Blaise Pascal, Pensees

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile

Voltaire, Candide

Erasmus, In Praise of Folly

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Parts One & Two

Honore de Balzac, Old Goriot (also translated as Pere Goriot)

Stendhal, The Red and the Black

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Emile Zola, Germinal

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House

William Blake

William Wordsworth

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Lord Byron, Don Juan

John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

Robert Browning, "My Last Duchess"

Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist

A Tale Of Two Cities

Hard Times

A Christmas Carol

Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Francis Thompson, "The Hound of Heaven"

Samuel Butler, Erewhon

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

George Eliot- Silas Marner

Middlemarch

Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil

The Will To Power

The Birth of Tragedy

On the Genealogy of Morals

Alexander Pushkin - Eugene Onegin

The Bronze Horseman

Nikolai Gogol -The Overcoat

Dead Souls

Mikhail Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time

Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

Fyodor Dostoevsky -Notes From the Underground

Crime and Punishment

Leo Tolstoy -The Death of Ivan Ilych

War and Peace

Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

James Fenimore Cooper,��The Deerslayer

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays

Emily Dickinson - "Because I Could Not Stop For Death"

"The Tint I Cannot Take"

"There's a Certain Slant of Light"

Walt Whitman  - "Song of Myself"

"The Sleepers"

"Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"

"As I Ebbed With The Ocean of Life"

"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking"

"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomd"

Nathaniel Hawthorne - Young Goodman Brown

The Scarlet Letter

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

Edgar Allen Poe - "The Raven"

The Cask of Amontillado

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Kate Chopin -The Story of An Hour

The Awakening

Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage

Henry James

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Luigi Pirandello

[sixty-silver-wishes]

Tumblr's Guide to Shostakovich- Asides- Ivan Sollertinsky

So, in addition to my weekly posting for Tumblr's Guide to Shostakovich, I decided I want to do a series of related "asides" posts. These will be posted irregularly (as opposed to weekly) and cover aspects related to Shostakovich that don't fit neatly into one post focusing on one part of the chronological timeline. In this case, I want to talk about Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky, specifically his role in Shostakovich's life and music. Sources I'll be citing include Elizabeth Wilson's Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, Shostakovich's own letters to Sollertinsky and Isaak Glikman, Dmitri and Lyudmila Sollertinsky's Pages from the Life of Dmitri Shostakovich, Pamyati I.I. Sollertinskogo (Memories of I.I. Sollertinsky), and I.I. Sollertinsky: Zhizn' i naslediye (Life and Legacy), the latter two both by Lyudmila Mikheeva. Photo citations include the DSCH Publishers website and the DSCH Journal photo archive.

(Dmitri Shostakovich and Ivan Sollertinsky, Novosibirsk, 1942.)

Ivan Ivanovich Sollertinsky was born in Vitebsk, present-day Belarus, on December 3, 1902. He was a polymath, excelling in humanities fields, including linguistics, philosophy, musicology, history, and literature- particularly that of Cervantes. He specialized in Romano-Germanic philology, and spoke a wide range of languages; sources I've read vary from claiming he spoke anywhere from 25 to 30. (He specialized in Romance languages, but I can also confirm from sources that he studied Hungarian, Japanese, Greek, Sanskrit, and German. I've heard it said that he kept a diary in ancient Portuguese so nobody could read it, but I haven't seen this verified.) He had a ferocious wit, which he used to uplift friends and skewer enemies (there's a hilarious anecdote where he once saddled a critic opposed to Shostakovich with the nickname "Carbohydrates" for life), and worked as a professor, orator, and artistic director of the Leningrad Philharmonic. And yet, this impossibly bright star would burn out all too soon at the age of 41 due to a terminal heart condition, leaving his closest friend devastated- and inspired.

Dmitri Shostakovich first met Ivan Sollertinsky in 1921, when they were both students at the Petrograd Conservatory. While Shostakovich claimed he was at first too intimidated to talk to Sollertinsky the first time he saw him, when they met again in 1926, Shostakovich was waiting outside a classroom to take an exam on Marxism-Leninism. When Sollertinsky walked out of the classroom, Shostakovich "plucked up courage and asked him":

"Excuse me, was the exam very difficult?"

"No, not at all," [Sollertinsky] replied.

"What did they ask you?"

"Oh, the easiest things: the growth of materialism in Ancient Greece; Sophocles' poetry as an expression of materialist tendencies; English seventeenth-century philosophers and something else besides!"

Shostakovich then goes on to state he was "filled with horror at his reply."

(...Yes, these are real people we are talking about. According to Shostakovich, this actually happened. And I love it.)

Later, in 1927, they met at a gathering hosted by the conductor Nikolai Malko, where they hit it off immediately. Malko recalls that they "became fast friends, and one could not seem to do without the other." He further characterizes their friendship:

When Shostakovich and Sollertinsky were together, they were always fooling. Jokes ran riot and each tried to outdo the other in making witty remarks. It was a veritable competition. Each had a sharply developed sense of humour; both were bright and observant; they knew a great deal; and their tongues were itching to say something funny or sarcastic, no matter whom it might concern. They were each quite indiscriminate when it came to being humorous, and if they were too young to be bitter they could still come mercilessly close to being malicious.

(Shostakovich and Sollertinsky, 1920s.)

Sollertinsky and Shostakovich appeared to be perfect complements of each other- one brash, extroverted, and confident, and the other shy, withdrawn, and insecure, but each sharing a sarcastic sense of humour and love for the arts that would carry throughout their friendship. In Shostakovich's letters to Sollertinsky, we see him confide in him time and again, in everything from drama with women to fears in the midst of the worsening political atmosphere. When worrying about the reception of his ballet "The Limpid Stream," Shostakovich writes in a letter from October 31, 1935:

I strongly believe that in this case, you won't leave me in an extremely difficult moment of my life, and that the only person whose friendship I cherish, the apple of my eye, is you. So, write to me, for god's sake.

And, in a moment of frustration from August 2, 1930 Shostakovich writes:

"You have a rich personal life. And mine, generally, is shit."

(Famous composers, am I right? They're just like us.)

In addition to a friendship that would last until Sollertinsky's untimely death, he and Shostakovich would influence each other greatly in the artistic spheres as well. Sollertinsky dedicated himself primarily to musicology after meeting Shostakovich (his first review of an opera, Krenek's Johnny, appeared in 1928, after they had become friends), and in turn, Sollertinsky introduced Shostakovich to one of his greatest musical inspirations- the works of Gustav Mahler. Much is to be said about Mahler's influence on Shostakovich's music, to the point where it deserves its own post, but it goes without saying that without Sollertinsky, Shostakovich's entire body of work would have turned out much differently. Starting with the Fourth Symphony (1936), Shostakovich's symphonic works began to take on a heavily Mahlerian angle (in addition to many vocal works), becoming a permanent fixture in his distinct musical style.

(Colorized image of Shostakovich, his wife Nina Vasiliyevna, and Sollertinsky, 1932. One of my absolute favourite photographs.)

Shostakovich's letters to Sollertinsky, from the 20s to early 30s, are characterized by puns and literary references, snide remarks, nervous confessions, and vivid descriptions of the locations he traveled to during his early career. However, as the 1930s progressed and censorship in the arts became more restrictive, signs of worry begin to take shape in the letters. This would all culminate in January 1936, with the denunciation of Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in Pravda. I'll go further into detail about the opera and its denunciation in a later post, but for now, I want to focus on its impact on Shostakovich and Sollertinsky's friendship.

As one of the first world-famous composers whose career began in the then-relatively young Soviet Union, targeting Shostakovich proved to be a calculated move. Due to his prominence and the acclaim he had previously received, both in the USSR and abroad, the portrayal of Shostakovich as a "formalist" meant someone had to take the blame for his supposed "corruption" towards western-inspired music and the avant-garde. The blame fell upon Sollertinsky, who was lambasted in the papers as the "troubadour of formalism." To make matters worse, Sollertinsky had long showed a fascination with western European composers, such as the Second Viennese School, and had previously praised Lady Macbeth in a review as the "future of Soviet art." An article in Pravda from February 14, 1936, about less than a month after the denunciation, stated:

“Shostakovich should in his creation entirely free himself from the disastrous influence of the ideologists of the ‘Leftist Ugliness’ type of Sollertinsky and take the road of truthful Soviet art, to advance in a new direction, leading to the sunny kingdom of Soviet art.”

Critics who had initially praised Lady Macbeth had begun to retract their positive reviews in favour of negative ones, and a vote was cast on a resolution on whether or not to condemn the opera.  According to Isaak Glikman, their mutual friend, Shostakovich spoke with Sollertinsky, who was conflicted on what to do, beforehand. Although Sollertinsky didn’t want to condemn his friend, he supposedly told Glikman that Shostakovich had given him permission to “vote for any resolution whatsoever, in case of dire necessity.” When denouncing the opera (supposedly with Shostakovich's permission), Sollertinsky had commented that in order to develop a “true connection” to the Soviet public, Shostakovich would have to develop a “true heroic pathos, and that Shostakovich would ultimately succeed “in the genre of Soviet musical tragedy and the Soviet heroic symphony.” After Shostakovich’s second denunciation in Pravda of his ballet, “The Limpid Stream,” and the withdrawal of his Fourth Symphony- arguably the most Mahlerian of his middle period works- the Fifth Symphony, easily interpreted to follow these criteria, had indeed restored him to favour. Sollertinsky’s reputation, too, was saved.

(Aleksandr Gauk, Shostakovich, Sollertinsky, Nina Vasiliyevna, and an unidentified person, 1930s.)

In 1938, Sollertinsky contracted diphtheria. Ever tireless, he continued to dictate opera reviews and even learned Hungarian while hospitalized, although he became paralyzed in the limbs and jaw. Shostakovich wrote to him often with touching concern:

Dear friend, It's terribly sad that you are spending your much needed and precious vacation still sick. In any case, when you get better, you need to get plenty of rest.

By the time the letters from this period break off, it's because Shostakovich was able to visit Sollertinsky in the hospital, which he did whenever he was able.

While Sollertinsky was able to recover, their friendship would face yet another test in 1941, due to the German invasion of the Soviet Union during WWII. Sollertinsky evacuated with the Leningrad Philharmonic to Novosibirsk, while Shostakovich chose to stay in Leningrad. However, as the city fell under siege, due to the safety of his family, Shostakovich fled with Nina Vasiliyevna and their two children to Kubiyshev (now Samara) that October, having spent about a month in Leningrad during what would be one of the deadliest sieges of the 20th century. It was in Kubiyshev that Shostakovich would finish his famous Seventh Symphony (which, again, will receive its own post), before eventually moving permanently to Moscow (although he still taught for a time at the Leningrad Conservatory).

During this period of evacuation, Shostakovich's letters to Sollertinsky are heartbreaking. We not only see him pining for his friend, but worrying for his safety and that of his family, including his mother and sister, who were still in Leningrad at the time. Still, he reminisces of their time together before the war, with the hope that he and Sollertinsky would be back home soon. In a letter from 12th February, 1942:

Dear friend, I painfully miss you, and believe that soon, we will be home, and will visit each other and chat about this and that over a bottle of good Kakhetian no. 8 [a Georgian wine]. Take care of yourself and your health. Remember: You have children for which you are responsible, and friends, and among them is D. Shostakovich.

In 1943, Sollertinsky arrived in Moscow, where Shostakovich was living at the time, to give a speech on the anniversary of Tchaikovsky’s death. At long last, they finally were able to see each other, and anticipated that soon enough, their long period of separation, made bearable only by letters and phone calls, would come to an end: Sollertinsky, living in Novosibirsk, was planning to return to Moscow in February of 1944 to teach a course on music history at the conservatory. When he and Shostakovich said their goodbyes at the train station, neither of them knew it would be the last time they saw one another.

Sollertinsky's heart condition, coupled with his tendency to overwork, poor living conditions, heavy drinking, and added stress, often left him fatigued. On the night of February 10th, 1944, due to a sudden bout of exhaustion, he stayed the night with conductor Andrei Porfiriyevich Novikov, where he died unexpectedly in his sleep. His last public appearance had been the speeches he gave on February 5th and 6th of that year- the opening comments for the Novosibirsk premiere of Shostakovich’s 8th Symphony.  A remarkable amount of telegrams and letters from Shostakovich to Sollertinsky survive and have been published in Russian. Some seem hardly significant; others carry great historical importance. Sollertinsky took many of them with him from Leningrad during evacuation; those letters were considered among his most prized possession. His son, Dmitri Ivanovich Sollertinsky, was named after Shostakovich- breaking a long tradition in his family in which the first son was always named "Ivan."

As for Shostakovich, we have letters to multiple correspondents detailing just how distraught he was for months after receiving news via telegram of Sollertinsky’s death. To Sollertinsky’s widow, Olga Pantaleimonovna Sollertinskaya, he wrote:

“It will be unbelievably hard for me to live without him. [...] In the last few years I rarely saw him or spoke with him. But I was always cheered by the knowledge that Ivan Ivanovich, with his remarkable mind, clear vision, and inexhaustible energy, was alive somewhere. [...] Ivan lvanovich and I talked a great deal about everything. We talked about that inevitable thing waiting for us at the end of our lives- about death. Both of us feared and dreaded it. We loved life, but knew that sooner or later we would have to leave it. Ivan lvanovich has gone from us terribly young. Death has wrenched him from life. He is dead, I am still here. When we spoke of death we always remembered the people near and dear to us. We thought anxiously about our children, wives, and parents, and always solemnly promised each other that in the event of one of us dying, the other would use every possible means to help the bereaved family. ”

Shostakovich stuck to his word, making arrangements for Sollertinsky's surviving family to return to Leningrad after it had been liberated, going through the painstaking process of acquiring the necessary documentation and allowing them to stay at his home in Moscow in the meantime.

 In 1969, he would write to Glikman:

“On 10 February, I remembered Ivan Ivanovich. It is incredible to think that twenty-five years have passed since he died.” 

Furthermore, Shostakovich recalled:

Ivan Ivanovich loved different dates. So he planned to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of our acquaintance in the winter of 1941. This celebration did not take place, since the war had ruined us. When in our last meetings, we planned the 25th anniversary of our friendship for 1947. But in 1947, I will only remember that twenty-five years ago life sent me a wonderful friend, and that in 1944 death took him away from me.

And yet, there was still one more tribute left to make. Shostakovich had already dedicated a movement of a work to Sollertinsky- a setting of Pasternak's translation of Shakespeare Sonnet no. 66 in Six Romances on Verses by English Poets- but after Sollertinsky's death, he completed his Piano Trio no. 2 in August of 1944, a work that had taken months to finish. While he had started the work before Sollertinsky's death and mentions it in a letter to Glikman as early as December 1943, it would since bear a dedication to Sollertinsky's memory.

The second movement of the Trio is a dizzying, electrifying Allegro con Brio- and probably my favourite work of classical music, ever. Sollertinsky's sister, Ekaterina Ivanovna, was said to have considered it a "musical portrait" of her illustrious brother in life, with its fast-paced, jubilant air. The call-and-response between the strings and piano seem, to me, to reflect one of Shostakovich and Sollertinsky's early Leningrad dialogues- the image of two friends out of breath with laughter, each talking over each other as they deliver witty comebacks and jokes that only they understand. For the few minutes that this movement lasts, it is as if Shostakovich and Sollertinsky are revived, if not for just a moment, the unbreakable bond that defied decades of hardship now immortalized in the classical canon, forever carefree and happy in each other's company.

And then comes the pause.

It is this silence between the Allegro con Brio and Adagio that is the loudest, most powerful moment of this piece as eight solemn chords snap us into reality, like the sudden revelation of Sollertinsky's death- as Shostakovich said, "he is dead; I am still here." These eight chords form the base of a passacaglia, the piano cycling through them and nearly devoid of dynamics as the cello and violin sing a lugubrious dirge. The piano- Shostakovich's instrument- seems to mirror the stasis of grief, the inability to move on when paralyzed by loss.

The final movement of the Trio, the Allegretto, seems to speak to a wider form of grief. By 1943, the Soviet Union was receiving news of the Holocaust, and the Allegretto of Shostakovich's Trio no. 2 is among the first instances of Klezmer-inspired themes in Shostakovich's work (not counting the opera Rothschild's Violin, a work by his student Veniamin Fleischman that he finished after Fleischman's death in the war). The idea that the fourth movement is a commentary on the Holocaust is the most popular interpretation for Shostakovich's use of themes inspired by Jewish folk music, but other interpretations include a tribute to Fleischman (who was Jewish), or a nod to Sollertinsky's birthplace of Vitebsk, which had a substantial Jewish population until the Vitebsk Ghetto Massacre in 1941 by the Nazis. (While I haven't read anything confirming that Sollertinsky was ethnically Jewish, the painter Marc Chagall and pianist Maria Yudina, both carrying associations with Vitebsk, were.) Whether the grief expressed here was personal or referencing the larger global situation, the quotation of the fourth movement's ostinato followed by the final E major chords suggest a peaceful resolution after a long movement of aggressive tumult and grotesque rage.

Shostakovich would continue to grieve and remember Sollertinsky, but the ending of this piece- composed over the course of about nine months- perhaps implied closure and healing. In the following years, the war would end, Shostakovich would form new connections (such as a lasting friendship with the composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg), and, as he had done through tragedy before, would continue to write music. Sollertinsky was gone, but left a mark on Shostakovich's life and work, his memory carried in every musical joke and Mahlerian quotation that found its way onto the page.

(Shostakovich at Sollertinsky's grave, 1961, Novosibirsk.)

(By the way, check the tags. ;) )

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 1.16 (before 1910)

1458 BC – Hatshepsut dies at the age of 50 and is buried in the Valley of the Kings. 27 BC – Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus is granted the title Augustus by the Roman Senate, marking the beginning of the Roman Empire. 378 – General Siyaj K'ak' conquers Tikal, enlarging the domain of King Spearthrower Owl of Teotihuacán. 550 – Gothic War: The Ostrogoths, under King Totila, conquer Rome after a long siege, by bribing the Isaurian garrison. 929 – Emir Abd-ar-Rahman III establishes the Caliphate of Córdoba. 1120 – Crusades: The Council of Nablus is held, establishing the earliest surviving written laws of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. 1275 – Edward I permits his mother Eleanor of Provence to expel the Jews from the towns Worcester, Marlborough, Cambridge and Gloucester. 1362 – Saint Marcellus's flood kills at least 25,000 people on the shores of the North Sea. 1537 – Bigod's Rebellion, an armed insurrection attempting to resist the English Reformation, begins. 1547 – Grand Duke Ivan IV of Muscovy becomes the first Tsar of Russia, replacing the 264-year-old Grand Duchy of Moscow with the Tsardom of Russia. 1556 – Philip II becomes King of Spain. 1572 – Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk is tried and found guilty of treason for his part in the Ridolfi plot to restore Catholicism in England. 1605 – The first edition of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (Book One of Don Quixote) by Miguel de Cervantes is published in Madrid, Spain. 1707 – The Scottish Parliament ratifies the Act of Union, paving the way for the creation of Great Britain. 1716 – King Philip V of Spain promulgates the Nueva Planta decree of the Principality of Catalonia, abolishing the Catalan institutions and its legal system, being replaced by those of the Castile, thus putting an end to Catalonia as separate state and becoming a province of the new French-style Kingdom of Spain. 1757 – Forces of the Maratha Empire defeat a 5,000-strong army of the Durrani Empire in the Battle of Narela. 1780 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Cape St. Vincent. 1786 – Virginia enacts the Statute for Religious Freedom authored by Thomas Jefferson. 1809 – Peninsular War: The British defeat the French at the Battle of La Coruña. 1847 – Westward expansion of the United States: John C. Frémont is appointed Governor of the new California Territory. 1862 – Hartley Colliery disaster: Two hundred and four men and boys killed in a mining disaster, prompting a change in UK law which henceforth required all collieries to have at least two independent means of escape. 1878 – Russo-Turkish War (1877–78): Battle of Philippopolis: Captain Aleksandr Burago with a squadron of Russian Imperial army dragoons liberates Plovdiv from Ottoman rule. 1883 – The Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, establishing the United States Civil Service, is enacted by Congress. 1900 – The United States Senate accepts the Anglo-German treaty of 1899 in which the United Kingdom renounces its claims to the Samoan islands. 1909 – Ernest Shackleton's expedition finds the magnetic South Pole.

[himena-ayo]

F

David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

Dom Quixote - Cervantes

Hamlet - William Shakespeare

Guerra e Paz - Liev Tolstói

Os Irmãos Karamazov - Fiódor Dostoievski

Top 1 de alguém

Grandes Esperanças - Charles Dickes

A Metamorfose - Franz Kafka

Orgulho e Preconceito - Jane Austen

Crime e Casstigo - Fiódor Dostoievski

Anna Karenina - Liev Tolstói

A Tragédia de Macbeth - William Shakespeare.

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

Dom Casmurro - Machado de Assis.

Memoravel

O Homem que foi Quinta-feira - Chesterton.

Admirável Mundo Novo - Aldous Huxley

O Morro dos Ventos Uivantes - Emily Brontë

O Médico e o Mostro

O Grande Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Pais e Filhos - Ivan Turguêniev

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

A Felicidade Conjugal - Liev Tolstói

Cem anos de solidão - Gabriel Garcia

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë

As Aventuras de Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

Alice no País das Maravilhas - Lewis Carroll

Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas - Machado de Assis

O Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien

Histórias Extraordinárias - Edgar Allan Poe

Memórias do Subsolo

Os trabalhadores do Mar

Drácula - Bram Stoker

O Estrangeiro - Albert Camus

O Retrato de Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Sherlock Homes - Sir Arthu Conan Doyle

A Insustentável Leveza do Ser - Milan Kundera

Persuasão - Jane Austen

Bão

Os Três Mosqueteiros - Alexandre Dumas

Olhai os Lírios do Campo - Érico Veríssimo

Dispensável

Paris é uma festa - Ernest Hemingway

As Meninas - Lygia Fagundes Telles

[bocekcicek]

[crosscountryrally]

Rui Goncalves fue el más veloz en el prólogo de la Baja Aragón

El piloto portugués Rui Goncalves marcó el mejor registro en la etapa prólogo de la Baja Aragón 2022 con la cual se dio inicio oficial al evento. El piloto de Sherco marcó un tiempo de 8 minutos y 59 segundos en los 7,5 kilómetros de tramo cronometrado para vencer por 3,6 segundos al crédito local Tosha Schareina. Tercero terminó Lorenzo Santolino, con otra Sherco oficial, a 5,2 segundos. Goncalves y Santolino son los principales favoritos a ganar este rally.

Destacó el debut de las motos Trail y Maxi Trail compartiendo el evento con las de 450 cc. Iván Cervantes lideró la clasificación de las Trail con una Triumph Tiger 900 Rally Pro con el 11° mejor tiempo del día a 39 segundos de Goncalves. Joan Pedrero marcó el 25° mejor registro a 1 minuto y 21 segundos con la mejor Maxi Trail, una Harley Davidson Pan America 1250.

Clasificación Prólogo

R. Goncalves 8:59

T. Schareina +0:03

L. Santolino +0:05

N. Teeric +0:14

H. Asensio +0:22

J. Connart +0:27

S. Sangrá +0:29

A. Martin +0:30

[artistmitchy]

You know, they're much less intimidating when they're this size.

[desorden-en-letras]

"Más vale la pena en el rostro que la mancha en el corazón."

-Miguel de Cervantes