Solomon Volkov > Quotes

“O título [da peça Vladimir Maiakóvski, do autor de mesmo nome] escondia uma revelação brilhantemente simples, a de que o poeta não é o autor, mas o objeto da poesia lírica, dirigindo-se ao mundo na primeira pessoa. O título designava não o autor, mas o conteúdo.
Boris Pasternak”
― Solomon Volkov, St. Petersburg: A Cultural History

“Young Shostakovich-Mitya-was nine, relatively old, when he began
piano lessons. His first instructor was his mother, who, when she saw his rapid progress, took him to a piano teacher. The following conversation was a favorite family story:
"I've brought you a marvelous pupil!"
"All mothers have marvelous children...."
Within two years he played all the preludes and fugues in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. It was clear that he was exceptionally gifted.”
― Solomon Volkov, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich

“It was clear that the composer no longer consoled himself with the thought that music could express everything and did not require verbal commentary.”
― Solomon Volkov, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich

“Akimov had to wage exhausting battles with the censors over each poster. As he later recalled, "No one banned posters in general, but almost each poster specifically was banned. The excuses were quite subtle: 'Does not express the play's idea,' 'insufficiently optimistic,' 'the text is not visible from a distance,' 'the title is too aggressively presented,' and the favorite, which fit any occasion, 'isn't there some formalism here?'" For one play, Akimov drew Moscow at night; the authorities perceived it as an attempt by a Leningrader to undermine Moscow's international reputation as a sunny city and consequently termed it a "crude political error.”
― Solomon Volkov, St. Petersburg: A Cultural History