Happy Shostakovich Day 2K11

Renascence

Alexander Pushkin, trans. Laurence R. Richter

A barbarian artist uses his indolent brush
To blacken out a genius's picture
And his own illicit drawing
He traces senselessly over it.

But the alien colors with the passing years
Fall away like decrepit scales.
The creation of the genius under them
Emerges with all its former beauty.

Thus disappear the delusions
From my tormented soul,
And there arise within it visions
Of my innocent primal days.

That's the first of four Pushkin poems set in Dmitri Shostakovich's opus 46, which also happens to be where my Exhaustive Shostakovich project has been stalled out, by now, for longer than I initially had it going regularly. That blog is overdue for a renascence of its own, as indeed is my contribution to this one.

Nonetheless, I wish you all a happy 105th anniversary of the composer's birth. Here's hoping all our souls are less tormented by censorship and compromise than his.