"Ростропович ушёл"

I have an admission to make: until today, I did not really know who Mstislav Rostropovich was. And perhaps that is a tragedy, because he is gone. Of course, having been educated in an environment of intelligence, introspection, and pedantry I knew about his collaborators: about Prokofiev, about Shostakovich. In St. Petersburg my friend Jim and I rode an escalator up from the metro - one of those incredibly long Russian escalators that give you the sense of either descending into or escaping from the bowels of hell - under a poster for a performance of Shostakovich pieces at the Marinskii. In high school, when I asked my friend Jason - a talented violist - for musical recommendations that were fiery, extreme, and schizophrenically beautiful, he pointed me again to Shostakovich.

Admittedly, I have fewer obscurely aesthetic memories of Prokofiev, but I love his music, and I think that makes up for it.

However, I knew nothing about their virtuoso: an outspoken proponent of artistic freedom, a cellist, a conductor, by all accounts a genius. Here is a man who spoke openly against Soviet suppression, indeed against all suppression of creativity by the deadweights of fear, stupidity, and apathy. In 1970, he wrote: “Explain to me, please, why in our literature and art so often people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word. Every man must have the right fearlessly to think independently and express his opinion about what he knows, what he has personally thought about and experienced, and not merely to express with slightly different variations the opinion which has been inculcated in him.” International press published his statement. Pravda did not (ref: NY Times).

Why does it upset me to have missed out on knowing about this man? Of course, he was a great musician, but his work continues to exist in recordings, in memories. In part it makes me feel like a far poorer student of Russian culture: shouldn't I have known? But then, a person can only absorb so much in five years. After all, I know about 2H Company.

In fact, I think I'm just struck by the vital importance of cultural icons. Not to diminish Rostropovich as a man: from all accounts I've seen he was an incredible human being as well as a distinguished artist, playing (for example) an impromptu concert at the fall of the Berlin Wall. But when Kurt Vonnegut died, I realized that people do not just love the art of their idols (a term I'm bandying about here pretty loosely), by proxy they love the human beings as well.

Never have I been so devastated by the death of a stranger as I was by Vonnegut. I wanted to sit still all day with my head on someone's knee, being comforted. It was a reaction I knew to be irrational: even friends who love his writing just as much as I do felt compelled to say things to me like: "Well, he was old, you know..." But I still took the loss very personally, like a sucker punch from a slightly less beautiful world. I had in a sense - and perhaps without knowing it - considered him to be something of an intellectual father figure: aloof, sarcastic, and spot-on.

And so, by feeling these things, by allowing myself to mourn for a man I'd never met, never known, I made a deal with the world. By accepting the anonymous condolences of the world for a mourner, I offered my own sentiments up for those like me who love irrationally: too much and too well.

So I'm sorry for all those who loved Rostropovich, whether he was known through a handshake, a photograph, a record or a kiss good night. The best I can do is listen to his Bach Suites, to say I'm sorry and offer my own faded and quiet farewell.