Shostakovich: String Quartet No.8 in C Minor Op.110 [July 1960]

DAYLIGHT. PALE AND STARK.

The composer is seated at the table with an empty bottle in front of him.

He communicates in deadpan, tightly, stressed to the bursting point:

My name is Dmitri Shostakovich

I am a citizen of the Union of

Soviet Socialist Republics. I have

Been asked to write something for

The victims of fascism and war

I am also writing for myself, as

This could be my last will and

Testament if I do myself in

Which is precisely what I intend

To do at this point. Yes I saw

The ruins of Dresden but I

Saw Petrograd become Leningrad

And the siege where people ate

Their dogs and cats; I saw the

World through eyes of typhoid,

Eyes of typhus staring out

He is fighting back tears

And now at long last coerced

To join the Communist Party here in Russia

Party of Stalin to this very day

Nothing like what it should be

Nothing like what they struggle

To create in Chile, in Guatemala

Tangled up in Cuba’s militarism

None of this succeeding the way

We thought it could so long ago

Instead of Democratic Socialism

We had Bolshevism, Party of

Shoot Them in the Stem of

The Brain, Party of Torture

My friend the brilliant outspoken director

Vsevolod Meyerhold

Tortured for six months, then shot

And his beautiful wife Zina

After his arrest they broke into the apartment

And stabbed her seventeen times

They put out her eyes

He hurls the bottle across the room.

This is still the party of Stalin

I am alone I have been vomiting

My head is spinning

I am utterly despondent

I cannot separate any of it,

Cannot sort it out

There is nothing dividing what has happened

From what is happening now

Right at this moment

There’s nothing

No division

LIGHTS BECOME GRADUALLY MORE BLUE

Quietly but on the verge of tears:

It is only a continuum

A series of variations

On the same theme as slew

All the Mensheviks

And Narodniks

And old Bolsheviks

And so many of my good friends

I feel it in my heart and lungs

It’s the mass mind and heart brought in to me and sent back out in this way

This is the real essence of a largo

Right here in my suicide

The suicide I so badly want from myself

LIGHTS ARE NOW ADDING PURPLE TO THE BLUE

Punching my fist into my palm

Crying

Good to cry

Hardly ever cry

It’s good to cry

Hardly ever let myself

Cry it’s good to

Cry this way

Can you hear

It yet, can you?

He is exasperated:

Do I have to

Write it on

The moon

For you to see?

He is utterly exhausted.

If I put myself

Out of this body

This shall be

My last word

How much

Can a person…?

He can barely speak

How much…

Do you expect me to?

GRADUAL FADE TO BLACK

I lay myself

Down by the

River I lay

Myself down

By the river

I lay myself

Down until

The breath

Is gone

And no one

Will know

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