Valery Afanassiev ICH BIN MOZART

Today we are too fond of clear-cut solutions and exhaustive explanations. Writers and film directors are supposed to shed light even on those nooks and crannies which should remain dark for the sake of perspective. And readers as well as cinema goers should remain in the dark about this and that for the sake of the same perspective, the same space, the same labyrinth. Alas, there are no more dark ladies either in sonnets or in novels. We have forgotten the aroma of unanswerable questions. And yet every masterpiece is an unanswerable question. And so is every artist of genius. In Pushkin's short tragedy Mozart and Salieri there are many unanswerable questions. Actually it ends with such a question: 'Is an evil deed compatible with genius?' (Gesualdo, who was unquestionably a composer of genius, killed his wife. But does this murder answer the question?) In the opening monologue Salieri ruminates over his music-oriented life and asks a crucial question: 'Why would God choose an obscene child to be his instrument?' That is how Peter Shäffer formulates the same question in Amadeus. Was Mozart an obscene child? Why should God have chosen Salieri in preference to Mozart? Salieri was an honest, hardworking musician: neither Pushkin nor Shäffer deny him that. What is more, his musical erudition did not prevent him from relishing Mozart's masterpieces with every fibre of his being (with every fibre of his soul, as the Russians would say)—a rare, priceless gift. At the end of Pushkin's tragedy Mozart says that if everyone could feel harmony as Salieri does, the world might come to an end, no one caring about the base needs of life, everyone luxuriating in art. What a pity the world will never come to an end through art. As a matter of fact, to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, such an end might turn out to be a magnificent beginning. (From the essay “WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART” in the booklet)