The editors are grateful to Piotr Tarasov for providing the manuscripts of Anna Alekseeva’s poems for publication and for his vigilant concern for the fate of her poetic legacy.

The appearance of a new name in literature is always an event. What makes this event even more significant is when a new name comes to us from an era seemingly long studied and thoroughly trodden, this way and that.

The short life of Anna Nikolaevna Alekseeva was enough to cover two revolutions and two Great Wars, not counting the other wars and other large-scale events that her native country so generously supplied. Starting to write poetry at the age of twelve, Anna captures in it the biography of the country and her beloved city (up to the end of the Blockade of Leningrad) no less than her own. Her poems breathe their time. But besides that, her lyric verse represents a conscientious diary of personal growth and destiny, a chronicle of a soul living in isolation, leading an outwardly quiet, artless existence.

Anna Alekseeva did not become part of the poetic clan of her time, despite her involvement in it: she attended the seminar of Nikolai Gumilyov, knew Kharms and Vvedensky, and the poet Vladimir Alekseev became her husband.

Anna well understood the value of her poetic vocation, which she never betrayed and never thought she was betraying in moving away from a shared poetic stage and taking on the burden of a prosaic fate filled with ordinary worries — although at times she grieved about alienation from her muse.

A huge, overwhelming part of Anna Alekseeva’s poems remained unknown, even to those who were closest to her. The majority of her manuscripts were discovered quite recently. And today we invite our readers to feel themselves among the chosen ones — a resurrected voice’s first witnesses, the addressees and recipients of a soul’s and era’s unique document.

[Poetry translations forthcoming.]

Since the St. Petersburg presentation of the tenth-anniversary edition of 2009′s The Twilight of Saigon, the event’s interconnected themes have stuck with me. What is the basic value of the alternative culture symbolized by the notorious Leningrad cafe nicknamed “Saigon,” many of whose regulars were at the presentation? What is the unexpected link between Saigon and another line of inquiry that has stayed active since then: how to grasp the idea of a wall? And what meaning, for me, do Saigon and walls have for the songs of Mike and Aquarium?

The matter of a wall that “no less connects than it divides” figures in the opening Blues Mondo “When the Wall is Built” in AB‘s prior issue, released in St. Petersburg in parallel with the new Twilight edition. The deliberately provocative little text prompted an unexpected proposal for its author, AB‘s editor-in-chief, to elaborate on it for the Twilight presentation. I also received an invitation to perform classic songs by Mike and Aquarium in my translated versions. Walls, Saigon and the Leningrad rock that I and many others love seemed to cohere in a loose constellation with latent unity. Apparently the presentation organizer also sensed intrinsic connections.

Why, then, do the thoughts in the AB Mondo, grounded in the experience of hand-building a stone wall in the California mountains, resonate with reflections on Leningrad alternative culture and its constituent musical creativity? Perhaps because all these phenomena stem from needing to strengthen material and metaphysical boundaries for further cultivating selves and relationships according to innate tendencies. Such cultivation remains acutely relevant.

Twilight editor Yulia Valieva, an authority on Saigon culture, describes the attitude toward walls, toward the presence of boundaries and restrictions, expressed in “When the Wall is Built” as “exactly what people need now.” A similar conviction made the Mondo’s author write it last autumn, marking the end of many months of work on the AB issue and many years of labor on a stone wall. It might seem surprising to encounter a lively St. Petersburg response to a brief manifesto written in seclusion on the other side of the world. Yet this immediate understanding may come naturally. The assertion that “Without division, freedom is unreachable,” as the Mondo claims, addresses anyone who cares about freedom. Anyone who, striving for freedom, takes its meaning and value seriously.

Walls merit more love now than ever. Popular opinion habitually associates freedom with a yearning for liberation from walls — perceived as infringements, as prohibitions. Yet having reached a historical moment of an apparent lessening of freedoms, many of the original builders of Leningrad alternative culture feel disappointed with the state of life vectors that presupposed greater emancipation. Many of them, of course, have begun to seek freedom foremost in the internet’s social realms. Meanwhile, the achievements of stagnation-era Leningrad’s counterculture, which once had no particular hope of prevailing influence, appear more powerful with each passing year. Seemingly bound for oblivion, that era’s intellectual discoveries are now firmly inscribed in the walls of culture. Such shifts depend on faith in the need to care for truth, in the human ability to cope with any walls, whether friendly or hostile to life.

The same can be said of AB‘s authors, past and present: our authors are those special people who prefer to build and maintain their own walls. The quality of understanding offered by AB comes precisely from the walls represented by contributors. These walls are the key to the longevity of the publication — which turns 25 this year — and the depth of each issue’s contents.

Communication through internal walls is welcome here.

Fortunately, there have always been and remain infinitely many physical and personal walls in the world. Saigon, a hotbed of free communication, existed thanks to reliable material walls — so thick that whole groups of patrons could sit inside its windowsills. The norm in Russia, in the West this is hard to imagine. And communication in Saigon mattered thanks to metaphorical walls which alternative culture’s participants raised individually and together, for the sake of pronounced separation from official surroundings. At the same time, the ability to erect commensurate walls, psychologically and in their daily life, was not limited to Saigon crowds. As Apraksina recently recalled, “I had my own Saigon.” Her own not only territorially, but also a personal version, with its own active catechism of freedom.

The well-known Saigon no longer exists in material form. It is now represented by a plaque in its successor, the Radisson Royal Hotel. But there is a rich chronicle of Saigon, and many think Saigon’s spirit is alive or at least has living potential. A fair number of people complain that the portrait presented in the pages of Twilight is not the Saigon they remember with love or disdain. And they are right. But Twilight holds one of those Saigons whose walls deserve to go down in history, in the walls of culture. The Saigon of Twilight is not a forgery, not a fabrication. This is Saigon in a refined form, like a thick, reliable brick, separated with academic precision from the clay of raw, flat time, as a chance to purge Saigon of muddled definitions, to apprehend and manifest its essence anew.

Mike and Aquarium also belong to the walls of culture. Mike died at thirty-six. Classic Aquarium, capsized in the eighties, also can never return. But their songs are alive and seem ever more special each year. Some observers have probably long foreseen this trajectory. I myself had a sense of it upon first discovering Mike’s and the bygone Aquarium’s music, with ample traces of their presence close by, although neither had been around for quite some while. Preparing for the Twilight presentation renewed my appreciation of their songs’ power.

In its own way, the living AB — alive in both spirit and substance — while building culture, is also incorporated into a new culture. Including in the most literal, material sense. That is, as real, solid walls. After all, long before AB‘s first pages appeared, on Apraksin Lane there were a home’s walls, which eventually became the walls of the historical office and which harbored both Mike and Aquarium, among other guests. Communication through internal walls is welcome here. Which connect no less than they divide. Musically — often also in the most literal sense — creating and attaining resonance.

* * *

Supporters of AB have noted that encountering the publication often becomes a meeting with destiny. My own such encounter, which took place in 1997 and blossomed into long-term camaraderie with AB, was certainly fateful. The turn from the Fontanka embankment onto Apraksin Lane proved to be in many respects the main turn of my life. Intuitions of this took root in me, as for many, thanks to an opportunity to meet with the editor-in-chief namely within the walls on the Lane, walls crammed with stacks of newspapers and paintings. The paintings, the walls, the conversation emanated a careful, healing musicality. Musical fields may inspire ardent movements toward essence. Indeed, AB itself interweaves interactions with the musical structure of being.

My life with AB has had a direct tie to music from the very beginning. My current role is as a translation editor, but at first, starting in 1997, I served as the publication’s rock correspondent. My first article ruminated on the appearance of the mainstream hard rock group Whitesnake in St. Petersburg on tour. A little later it was very nice to learn that Dyusha Romanov, Aquarium’s flutist, had jotted down some of my ramblings on musical aesthetics for his own reference. I then represented AB at a number of events in the city. The quality of the events themselves varied, but everything gave important perspectives. Club Alcatraz, decorated like a huge jail, with waitresses clad in prison garb, offered no less to ponder than did the days of Aquarium cellist Vsevolod Gakkel’s eclectic “Another Music” festival. The revelations were different but complementary. Beyond rock music, AB‘s own multidisciplinary “March Solo,” whose 1998 edition was hosted by the philosophy department at St. Petersburg State University, provided a capstone for such eclectic impressions, underscored by the performance of Gakkel’s own “Vermicelli Orchestra” post-rock, post-Aquarium crossover project at the AB festival that year.

In all cases, I was concerned with the question of going beyond stifling, false commercialism and genre constraints, with the difference between attaining a true or false musical and cultural paradise, with how much any person can embody an ideal. Even then, I myself might have argued with what Dyusha liked in my article: “Rock music, as a general rule, makes no pretensions to eternity. Relinquishing the sweaty hall, aiming for the cosmos, means courting earthly failure. The key to immortality in rock music lies precisely in not aspiring to permanence.” Perhaps Dyusha himself could have expressed a counterargument in favor of choosing the cosmos. Then again, music accommodates contrasts and contradictions.

Apparently I had to start with early Aquarium, and with Aquarium paired with Mike.

In another article, I wrote: “Studying a language, mimicking those around you, is not enough to overcome cultural dependence on one’s country of origin — you have to breathe the nation’s smoke, not trying to protect yourself.” However, it is worth noting that I also wrote this while in the refined atmosphere of the AB editorial office on Apraksin Lane. The publication became and remains my filter, my axis for dependence and independence in seeking musical and other landmarks in the life of the city.

The musical paintings in AB‘s editorial office intersect with the spirit of particular musicians, composers and concert halls. And here, along with classical music, I heard the early albums of Mike and Aquarium — extensions, as I would learn, of the vibrations of music made in that very place, in a different everlasting layer of time. All this was tremendously stimulating. I had already written songs of my own, including in St. Petersburg. After hearing Mike and Aquarium and grasping their connection to my current location and companions, I began to write and play even more. In one song, I sang of willingness to “give up my life for a way out of the world.” It was a kind of prayer — for myself and for all of us. In a sense, I think the prayer was answered. Fortunately, even exits to the general world, as the “Wall” Mondo notes, become an “entrance to freedom,” given a “return to oneself.”

After reading about Aquarium in a Solomon Volkov book on St. Petersburg, a while before I first wound up on the Lane, I had tracked down a cassette with one of the group’s albums from the nineties. That album somehow didn’t connect with me then. Apparently I had to start with early Aquarium, and with Aquarium paired with Mike, and at first with no particular effort to fathom all the ins and outs of this music. I simply overheard it along with the clatter of the editor-in-chief’s typewriter and felt this music, along with the paintings and the whole setting, becoming a part of me, of my yearnings and views of reality. I began to perceive the uniqueness and soulful freshness of the songs’ authors, as poets and performers. Waves of happiness and age-old melancholy seethed around me. The songs concerned readily familiar joys and difficulties of loneliness, friendship and love, acquiring experience and knowledge of earthly life, with hints of the transcendental and even direct forays into astral territory. Much as in the paintings on the editorial office wall. Much as in AB overall.

I also sensed the songs, paintings and AB as mutually organic to St. Petersburg. Before leaving Russia for the first time after arriving there (not counting brief interludes in Estonia and Finland), I set myself the goal of learning to sing and play at least one of Mike’s songs in order to better feel its proportionality to the city. For this I chose the quirky song “Goodbye, Baby” — a chamber-music miniature compared to the day-in-the-life saga of “Sweet N.” Having already learned more details about the author’s fate and volatile connection with Apraksin Lane, I carried this news in myself like a burn mark or a candle in the night. A majestic and deeply personal Petersburg claimed a place in me.

Such impressions were sharpened by serving as a rock correspondent. As a special assignment, I accepted a proposal to interview AB‘s editor-in-chief about Mike — not for a specific use, but to help her prepare for an interview which other journalists planned to take. To formulate my questions, I studied all of Mike’s and Zoopark’s albums. Focusing on Mike and conversing about him expanded my understanding of the unpredictable range of interests that characterized him and his environment (from T. Rex, Lou Reed and Dylan to Hemingway and Remarque), as well the fateful emotions that inspired him. In many ways, AB‘s editor-in-chief, Mike’s muse, has long kept fuller contours of this theme behind a wall of dedication to her own muse. With respect to some authorities on Mike, she herself has long existed beyond a wall of hastily established genre and biographical conventions. But under the right conditions, with the right communication, all this could change, opening a wellspring of insights.

* * *

Along with images of the St. Petersburg editorial office, the music of Mike and Aquarium accompanied me in the years when, again living in America, I participated in creating a base for AB there. It was in America that I began to translate Mike’s and Aquarium’s songs, suddenly compulsively imagining them in English and wanting to answer that hemisphere’s need for their particular soulfulness. As the Mondo says, “A wall forces into overcoming that wall.” As a result, many of those who already knew these songs in the original expressed an opinion, upon hearing English-language versions at the AB Campus in the California mountains, that through this the songs’ power, the real basis of their soul, opened up for them in a new way, from the inside out, precisely in these distant regions. Where a stone wall was being built to echo the Lane’s walls. As their new layer, their amplifier, much as Apraksina’s California Psalms were written and translated to amplify the Petersburg ethos in the West. Against the backdrop of the mountains, crafting AB, helping to fetch stones for the wall, heading out to chop wood and continuing to write songs, I simultaneously began to take an interest in Gregorian chants and psalmody. This was a good setting for approaching Mike and Aquarium from new angles. Not just from the West, but from outside the world. I think they fit in there. It’s their homeland, too. There they can have another creative underground that reaches the highest heights. There they can pass through purgatory. So could I. There, that Mike who waited for “when the paintings on your wall shed all their paint…maybe then, on that day, you’ll come back to me,” can learn better esteem for the heart of painting. And that Aquarium which stigmatically riffed on a woman whose “city center apartment has great views of the park” (supposedly!) can try, as they sing in another song, to “retrace her journey and put into words what it is we owe to her…”

America’s not paradise. Don’t joke like that.

What counts in the work of Mike and Aquarium, I think, is what spiritually unites them with AB and likely led their paths to pass along the Lane: an orientation toward a truth outside the world and a willingness to follow walls that hold the light of life. Without this, what many appreciate in their work — verbal games, satire, witty approaches to translation, intersection with Western influences — would never have converged into larger-scale alchemy.

By the time I sang Mike’s “Seventh Heaven” at the presentation at the Akhmatova Museum, this song had already undergone many metamorphoses in me — not only due to my translating it into English. When I sing “You say that this is paradise — don’t joke like that!” I imagine the genial shabbiness of Leningrad-Petersburg apartments. But sometimes, concurrently, I also imagine America, which I have mentally applied this line to many times. America’s not paradise. Don’t joke like that. “Here there are too many doors, but I can’t find an exit.” That line, from the same song, fits America, too. Nowhere is paradise until you can translate, transform, overcome yourself and your entire reality. For the sake of that, the songs of Aquarium and Mike lived on in me, helping to turn California highways into an edifying “Highway 21,” helping to discern prophetic “ten sharp arrows carried on ten winds,” helping to believe that really and truly, “if you want it, I’ll give some love to you,” and a plan of life would issue from love above all. I would like to return the songs of Aquarium and Mike to St. Petersburg, to the AB office, to a resuscitated spirit of Saigon, but as songs already transmuted, not only due to their manifestation in another tongue. As songs with traces of the cosmos of contemplating change and constancy. And of giving fully of oneself in order to find oneself again. As the best songs, poems and paintings always aim for. As does all real art.

Intriguingly, the presentation in St. Petersburg coincided with America’s Thanksgiving Day — a commemoration of European pilgrims’ first harvest in the New World. Adding to the intrigue, the current Thanksgiving fell on the birthday of Alexander Blok, also a kind of pilgrim, questing after his dream of an Unknown Woman. That passion has long suggested certain parallels between Blok and Mike. Seeking the unknown leads to even more new searches.

“Transformation-transmutation-transubstantiation are the means that form a transition, that open a path to freedom, that are themselves this path and this freedom,” says the Mondo. “And to have somewhere to transition from and to, everything must remain true to its definition and its walls.” This is exactly what I feel on any side of the Earth, in working with AB, translations, literature, art, songs. Playing music on the Lane after a forced twenty-year hiatus, again composing songs and trying out my song translations there, and then performing them in the city, I felt a kind of predestination in all that had transpired. Authentic transformation really does require separation. Mike, Aquarium, Saigon patrons and fans were lucky to the extent that their codes of loyalty also contained renunciation — for the sake of an ultimately sharper perception. As we all know, our own vital walls contain much more than the alien walls of standardized culture — whether official or alternative.

I am deeply grateful for the chance to share, through AB‘s prism, an integrity where Saigon, Mike and Aquarium all have their own ways of harmoniously belonging.

KOOSEUL KIM lives in Seoul, South Korea. An acclaimed poet and a Professor Emeritus of English literature, she has received major literary prizes for her work, including for the collection Lost Alleys. In 2020, Mundus Artium Press published the poet’s own English-language rendering of Lost Alleys: Selected Poems.

The poetry of T.S. Eliot represents a special area of Kooseul Kim’s scholarly interests. She is an Advisor for the T.S. Eliot Society of Korea, for which she has also served as President. She is also an Advisor and Vice President for the Society for East-West Comparative Literature. She has produced many books and articles on both English-language and Korean literature, ranging from the classical period to modernity. She has been a Visiting Scholar at UCLA. Kooseul Kim’s poetry has been translated into several Asian and European languages.

Apraksin Blues №30 features Russian translations of four poems from Kooseul Kim’s Lost Alleys — “Lost Alleys,” “A Woman of Chagall,” “From Laforgue” and “In a Labyrinth.”

Additional English translations of the poet’s work are available here from the “Pjetër Bogdani” International Writers Association.

P. Walton

We have all heard of the Louvre, the most famous art museum in the world, hosting millions of visitors each year. What not everyone realizes is that the Louvre was not always an art museum, nor even simply a royal palace. It began life as a fortress to protect the French from attacks by the English, and its ongoing construction over the years closely followed English-French relations and shared concerns.

Photo: Sasan Hezarkhani

French King Philippe Auguste (1165-1223), fearful of English attacks on Paris, first built a great wall around the city. Then, in 1190, about to depart on crusade, he ordered the construction of a defensive fortress. That fortress was the Louvre.
The English were a constant threat at that time. Unlike in later years, the English were not sitting harmlessly on the other side of la Manche, but also on the European continent.
When William the Conqueror took England in 1066, he retained possession of Normandy, which nominally remained the French king’s vassal after becoming a part of England. Then, when the White Ship sank in 1120, killing the sole male heir of William’s grandson Henry I and leaving his daughter Mathilda to inherit the crown, the English barons refused to accept a female ruler, rallying instead around her cousin Stephen of Blois, which resulted in a civil war, at the end of which Mathilda’s son Henry became King Henry II. This meant that, along with the king, England received the French lands of Mathilda’s husband, Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou.

Mathilda, Queen of England

Meanwhile, the always resourceful Eleanor of Aquitaine had persuaded King Louis VII of France that their marriage was not blessed by God, as evidenced by their having only female children. On that basis, she managed to get a divorce — and so was able to marry Henry II, to whom she brought her enormous territory of Aquitaine.

Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II

So by the time of Philippe Auguste, the English had possession of Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine (shown on the map below as “The Plantagenet Dominion”) — that is, about half the territory of today’s France! Philippe Auguste thus had good reason to build a fortress in Paris.

Over the years, the fortress grew into a royal palace, but fighting with the English continued, so the royals moved out of Paris, which was just as well, because the English did finally manage to take the city in 1420.

Not until the reign of François I (1515-1547) did a French king return to the Louvre, whose construction he continued, beginning work on a new wing — called the Lescot Wing after its architect — and modernizing the entire building: the windows and doors were enlarged and the living quarters refurbished, giving the palace the appearance of a chateau worthy of the Italian Renaissance. He tore down the original Great Tower, perhaps a sign that the French were no longer worried about English invasion by then, having fought the English off most territories on the continent.

The illustration below shows work done on the Louvre since that time.

After the years of harassment by the English, François also sent a little payback in the form of a young Englishwoman, Anne Boleyn, educated in his brilliant court. Anne returned to England to enchant the English King Henry VIII (1509-1547). Henry’s Spanish wife, Catherine of Aragon, had failed to deliver him a male heir. We’ve already seen the importance of such small details. Henry became desperate to divorce Catherine and marry Anne. While a previous Pope had granted Louis and Eleanor a divorce, the current Pope would not do the same for Henry. So even though Henry had been a big defender of the Catholic Church when Martin Luther had nailed his 95 theses to the church in Wittenburg, Henry broke all ties with the church to marry Anne, making England Protestant. All this resulted in rather a lot of turmoil for England, including the eventual execution of poor Anne when she, too, failed to provide a male heir.

Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

François’ son Henry II, despite a premature death as a result of a jousting tournament, managed to complete a new wing of the Louvre. He also sent a parting shot at the English, in 1558, by finally kicking them out of Calais — the last small English foothold on the continent.

Henry’s son François II did not add to the Louvre, being sickly and dying after only a little more than a year. After his death, though, the French sent a little more trouble to the English in the person of his widow, Mary Queen of Scots, who challenged the throne of Elizabeth I — England’s second queen (1558-1603), with no male heirs available, she became possibly its most beloved ruler ever. Mary threatened to stir up England’s Catholics against the country’s new Protestant faith. All this ended, though, as it had with Anne, by Mary getting her head chopped off.

François II of France and Mary Stuart

François was succeeded by his brother, Charles IX, in 1560, but since Charles was only 10, their mother, Catherine de Medici, became regent. She undertook great works on the Louvre. She built the Tuileries Palace and gardens that still bear that name today. Meanwhile, though, France was by now having its own troubles with religion, and Catherine is thought to have been behind the plot, under the pretext of her daughter’s wedding with the Protestant Henri of Navarre, to lure Protestant nobles to Paris only to have most of them killed during the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572.

Fortunately for the Louvre, the newlywed Henri himself was not killed. Following the reign of Catherine’s last son, Henri III (1574-1589), Henri of Navarre became Henri IV (1589-1610) and went on to further Catherine’s construction work, beginning a 400-meter-long Grande Galerie leading from the Louvre to the Tuileries Palace. He also brought a temporary end to the religious wars in France by 1) converting to Catholicism, 2) famously saying “Paris is worth a mass,” and 3) signing the Edict of Nantes in 1598, granting Protestants in the country a degree of religious freedom. Unfortunately, his demonstrative conversion left some unconvinced, and in 1610 he was assassinated by a Catholic.

Catherine de Medici

Henri’s son Louis XIII (1610-1643) added the Clock Pavillon to the wing built by François I, and built the Sully wing. He also, with the aid of the “Red Eminence,” Cardinal Richelieu, began a new attack on the power of the Protestant — Huguenot — nobles, though he left intact the freedom of conscience granted them in the Edict of Nantes.

His son, Louis XIV, whose 72-year rule began in 1643, was another matter. The work of his father and Richelieu had laid the groundwork for destroying feudalism, weakening the nobles and centralizing power. He made the Huguenots’ lives miserable, forbidding everything that was not specifically allowed by the Edict of Nantes. This included closing churches and schools and taking children away from their parents. Finally, he annulled the Edict of Nantes by issuing the 1685 Edict of Fontainebleu. The powerful Louis may have been manipulated into this by underlings. Some have also argued that he was pushed into issuing the Edict by his very religious mistress-to-become wife (who finally became queen through the help of intrigues), Madame de Maintenon. Others say she was opposed.

Расин читает "Афалию" перед Людовиком XIV и мадам де Ментенон

Julie Philipault. Racine Reading Athalie Before Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon

Louis XIV continued his father’s work on the Louvre. He ordered the completion of the buildings surrounding the Cour Carrée. In 1661, when a fire damaged the Small Gallery, he renovated the space as a Gallery of Apollo, to honor himself, the Sun King. He then ordered a competition of architects to design the famous Louvre Colonnade, a major example of French classicism.

But Louis moved his court to the more spacious quarters of the new palace he built at Versailles. The Louvre was occupied by the foreign ministry, academies, archives, artists, artisans and courtesans. The Salon of painting and sculpture was held there every two years.

Over the years, there began to be discussions that the Louvre should be a museum. When the Revolution happened, it became clear that the Louvre should be a place for the people. In 1793, the Louvre became “The Central Museum of Arts.” Napoleon Bonaparte had another wing built — on the north side, along the Rue de Rivoli. The Arc du Carrousel was erected in 1806 to the glory of the Grand Army. Then Napoleon III (1852-1870), having torn down much of what was between the museum and the Tuileries Palace, built two more big wings: the Richelieu and the Denon.

In 1871, during the Paris Commune, insurgents burned down the Tuileries Palace.

And then it took another François — François Mitterand — to begin, in 1981, a huge phase of new construction on the Louvre, called the “Grand Louvre” project. The project involved the construction of architect Ming Pei’s pyramid and a 17,000-meter hall underneath it. Mitterand also issued a formal apology for France’s treatment of the Huguenots.

In 2012, in the Cour Visconti, a new space was unveiled, with the formerly open courtyard covered by an undulating glass roof. This space was intended for Islamic art.

Such more modern additions to the Louvre have at times provoked mixed feelings, but eventually have been largely accepted as part of the evolution of the Louvre: from a fortress to keep the English at a distance from a country fraught with religious factionalism, to a home for art — from all religions and the entire world — bidding the whole world welcome.

P. Walton

An interview with Richard Whittaker, editor, works & conversations (California)

Richard Whittaker

When a cultural phenomenon transcends the usual categories, its specialness is often traceable to some individual shaping the character of the whole. The unconventional magazine works & conversations, which emerged in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1991 and whose reputation has long extended beyond the United States, stems directly from the sensibilities of founder and editor Richard Whittaker.

The magazine acquaints its readers with “works” — of art and other types of creative expression, often idiosyncratic and not widely known — and also explores its heroes through “conversations“: both internal monologues and unhurried, in-depth interviews with people whose exceptional qualities place them beyond the common measures and standards of the moment.

The leaven for these conversations is the integral part played by Richard Whittaker, who personally conducts most of the interviews and determines their range of subjects. The editor’s thoughtfulness and incisive instincts inform each aspect of the magazine’s discourses, whose subject always turns out to be life as such. But what happens in an interview with Richard himself? We get a special glimpse of a twofold calling to the craft of publishing and the art of communication – two converging paths to a space of mutual trust.

Trust in Richard arises easily, and conversations with him tend to touch on topics otherwise seldom broached. Even while chatting just before our interview kicks off, Richard reacts strongly to our mention of a Greek Orthodox priest — the only one serving in a certain city in California. Father John had upheld a custom of celebrating all church services with traditional chanting, often for many hours straight, and had done so whether or not he had even a single parishioner in the church — the company of an “angel at the altar” was enough.

works & conversations has an editorial board and a devoted circle of admirers. But namely the editor gathers them all at the “altar” where he himself continually presides. Subscriptions to the magazine are paid for — if paid at all — by voluntary donations. According to the publication, “The gift economy…is a whisper in the ear of the collective, a whisper insisting against the odds that there is another way of encountering this world and each other: through generosity.”

The spirit of generosity, as a guiding practical principle, is vitally present in this long interview with Richard Whittaker.

A complementary edit of this interview appears at works & conversations’ conversations.org.

AB — So, works & conversations. There’s something special about this magazine, in an American and really also a world context. Our Apraksin Blues was born in Russia, we’re creating it together with Russian authors and collaborators, and yet we can’t help but sense a consonance between what you’re doing and what we’re doing. It feels like a very personal endeavor on your part — the existence of this magazine and all the people and stories it draws together.

How would you define works & conversation for people who might be encountering it for the first time? What makes the magazine different, special — for you and your readers?

RW — Well, thank you — the way you describe the magazine resonates with me. It is really is personal. The magazine appeared quite without any plan. Spontaneously. When I look back, I see in that moment many strands below the surface converged.

It all began in the context of a little group of artists, of which I was a part. I was 47 and had just completed a Master’s degree in clinical psychology and suddenly found myself asking what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I’d had a relationship with art in different ways since I was a teenager, but I’d never said to myself, “I’m an artist.” My relationship with art was always outside of school. I eventually got a degree in philosophy. Then in 1989 I earned a Master’s degree in clinical psychology. But that education wasn’t in order to become a psychotherapist.

At that point, I looked at my life and saw that I’d never put my creative interests in the center, and I decided to do just that. So my wife, Rue Harrison, and I — she’s an artist and later also became a psychotherapist — pulled together a little group of artist friends. We’d meet once every couple of weeks to look at each other’s work and talk about it. It was very nice. You know, it can help artists keep their spirits up to get together. One day, as I looked around at our group, I realized that none of us had a real chance of being successful in the art world. It’s so difficult to become a successful artist, maybe everywhere, but certainly in this culture. I looked around the little group and said, “Okay. None of us are rich. None of us has powerful mentors. So we have to do something more than just make our artwork. If any one of us is going to get anywhere, we have to do something more — we should start a magazine or something like that.” I hadn’t thought about this; the words just came out of my mouth. And one of the artists, Dickson Schneider, said, “Okay, Richard. Why don’t you start one?” And then the next day, I did. So that’s how much planning there was for it.

I know it must sound sort of ridiculous, but the truth is that all of these strands really were there below the surface. For instance, my wife had been working at the Maritime Museum in San Francisco as the exhibit designer. They had a Hewlett-Packard scanner, and one day she’d showed me how to use it. I had a Mac Plus to get through my master’s program. And then Pagemaker, this early program for desktop publishing, was around, and I suddenly saw that I could scan images and combine text with them. It was amazing. There’s much more to it and I won’t go through it all, but I had a lot of tools already in my hands, so to speak. So that’s how it began. But there wasn’t a real sense of vision per se. That vision developed.

R. Whittaker. Ratna Ling, 2020.

Let’s talk more about the connection between the vision and the materials for realizing it.

In my art past, I’d gotten into ceramics, thrown pots, done some painting, some sculpture, and I’d made some furniture. All that stuff was great, but I hadn’t quite found my medium. I discovered photography by accident, and that was what really cut deep into my experience — and totally unexpectedly. In 1975, I’d picked up a camera, and by 1989, I had 14 years of experience with photography. In that time, I’d encountered incredible experiences of beauty. They were like religious experiences, and I thought that must be what art is really about.

What led me to photography was a feeling, almost of ecstasy, I’d had in the presence of beauty. All of a sudden I’d wondered if I could take a photo of what I was seeing, and then, later on, would I feel the same thing looking at the print as I was feeling right then in front of this beauty. So I got a camera in order to answer that question. And in fact, I sometimes did get an image that still held something of the original magic.

So I began to make prints and take them to galleries. Then I began to discover the realities of the contemporary art world in San Francisco: the conversation that was going on in the art world had nothing to do with beauty. That was a shock. Ultimately, I was so disappointed with this, it’s the key reason I started the magazine. Although I did make some efforts to skew some of my photography toward being fashionable, I soon gave that up. I couldn’t turn my back on my own experience.

My background in philosophy helped me. I wasn’t intimidated by the intellectual climate with its postmodern dismissal of ideas of deeper Truths that crossed all the cultural boundaries. And something in me gave me the temerity to think that I could make an effort to bring something out into the world that reflected what I found to be meaningful, and that maybe it would be useful for others who might feel the same. I must say I felt great apprehension about this: who am I to try to bring something into circulation? There was a lot of anxiety, but there was just enough of something else that tipped the scales in favor of trying. So, in brief, that’s the underpinning of the magazine.

Do you see the arts as a particularly special channel for identifying the sorts of experience that moved you?

Back in the early ‘60s there was a phrase: “art, philosophy and religion.” It was simply thought that these three categories were avenues to the deep reaches of human experience. In those days, the “grand narratives” hadn’t been overthrown by Derrida, Foucault and others. These were the avenues to mankind’s deepest truths: art, philosophy and religion.

My own deep experiences, I felt — simply intuitively — were real and true. I had no thought that they were somehow exclusive. There was no need for trying to analyze them. They belong in the realm of the mystical, I suppose. Certainly, they could find a home in religion — not in the dogma, but in experience. One can find a place for them in philosophy, too. I haven’t read enough of Bergson, but he might be an example. There are certainly others. I would say that some of the same problems I encountered in art discourse can also be found in the world of religion and philosophy — in areas where the intelligence of the heart has no place. Let’s put it that way.

As human beings, it’s hard to imagine finding meaning without having the participation of our deep feeling in some fundamental way. And that seemed to be missing in a lot of philosophy that I ran into. With religion there can be related issues, very broadly speaking. So I don’t feel what I’ve tried to show in the magazine is exclusively under the word “art.” Certainly I think of art as including all the creative categories — music, dance and so on. That brings us into the question of creativity, which overflows all of these categories into almost any area of life.

Would it be fair to say that the magazine is about the experience of creativity, in that general definition you’ve suggested?

Well, I don’t have the intention of exploring creativity as an idea in itself. I’m interested in instances marked by deep creativity. However, I can’t define any parameters here. So I don’t have an intellectual concept, particularly. I wait for something to start vibrating in me. It’s like hearing the sound of a bell in the distance. Some other part of me is a guide for the magazine. I listen to it. This is an interesting area to ponder, really: how do ideas and experience mesh?

That is, you’re not necessarily offering your own model or theory, but trying to hear, based on intuitive responses, the authenticity that others’ creations might bring to you?

Yes, I’m responding to my intuition. My hope is that what’s coming through me is shared by others. I don’t think that’s my ego; I think it’s something else, something sensitive, and I value that. I’m inspired by feeling and seeing something authentic in someone else, and I’m moved to help share such things with others.

This resonates with the question of how much the magazine is a personal statement. Some might say it’s just conversations with various people. How can it be a personal statement, even given the editorial sensibility? What kind of selectivity is taking place? Yet sometimes it’s as if the people you speak with are articulating ideas that could come from you, as if they’re speaking on your own behalf.

That’s a very astute observation, and I would have to admit it’s true. I often do feel someone is saying things on my own behalf. That may be just the nature of being in an editorial relationship with what gets selected. I look for things in some way connected with what feels most true to my own experience. I feel uncomfortable making pronouncements about maybe serving something larger, but I hope there’s some way in which that’s true. I have to trust this sensibility in myself. I don’t trust my ordinary thinking. That sort of gets disconnected. Another thing I’ve discovered is that when I describe my own experiences to artists, they know what I’m talking about. Artists have a lot in common.

At the same time, when I don’t feel a connection with something, I’m very careful not to get involved. Why would I? Because I want to be fashionable or because I want to sell magazines? That’s not what I’m interested in.

In following this path of discourse with artists, might you help them to have revelations about themselves, in a certain way?

That does happen, I think. It’s not unusual for an artist to say to me, “Nobody talks with me about this stuff. These are the things that are really important for me, but we artists don’t talk among ourselves about these things.” Artists often are isolated, they’re struggling and they easily get confused because of conflicting challenges and wishes. People need recognition, they strive for that, and they may be tempted to turn themselves into pretzels in order to get recognized. That means they sometimes let go of their more authentic connections.

The kind of affirmation I can give by featuring an artist can be very supportive, especially for an artist who isn’t being noticed. I know it helps, because most of us are hungry to be seen. It’s also true that people have different levels of self-confidence. There’s such a spectrum. So yes, I do think that sometimes I help other artists. That’s not an explicit mission per se.

The qualities you recognize may be emblems of a broader human quest.

I certainly hope so. Agnes Martin said all art is about beauty and that beauty isn’t personal. It’s transpersonal — although she didn’t use that word — it’s from something deeper and much broader than anything personal. I believe that’s true of real beauty, real authenticity, real truth. Those things really connect us, because they’re from deeper layers of ourselves.

I’m not a deep student of the postmodern critique. I recognize that the critique offered by Derrida and Foucault and others has a lot of validity. However, I think a lot was overlooked. Some of the deeper things in philosophy that go back, way back, and speak to the human connections across cultures, can be very powerful. The postmodern critique overvalued cultural relativity and missed the point on epistemology, saying it was always corrupted by issues of power, et cetera. Maybe a lot of that is true. But if you can get deep enough — and this is where a spiritual practice comes in — if you can enter into a deep enough state of silence, what one can encounter there is shared by, perhaps, all humans.

R. Whittaker. Trona, 2002.

Would you say that the practice of conversation, in your mind, is part of a spiritual discipline for nourishing authentic art?

That’s a beautiful question. As a matter of fact, I really appreciate your questions. I think that to really listen to another person and have a conversation is a deep thing, and something that’s mostly missing in ordinary discourse among people. Giving someone your focused, non-judgmental attention is special and powerful. Many people, maybe most of us, long for that kind of listener.

How might your work create something valuable from experience? What does human discourse mean for you?

The very exchange we’re having is a demonstration of what can come from a conversation. I couldn’t create this by myself and maybe you couldn’t create it by yourself, either. But between us, SOMETHING is appearing. I’m being given something by what you’re articulating and by the questions you’re asking.

My own experience shows that the unconscious is involved in the creation of every issue of the magazine.

A remarkable artist (Pat Becincasa), whom I recently interviewed, used the phrase “when you come down that cosmic baby chute into existence,” just in the middle of a sentence, and kept on talking. She had another phrase, too, “We all live in shadows and smoke.” That’s poetic and true. Our dialog helped each of us, I think.

R. Whittaker. Lost Mariposa Garden, 2006.

Do you look for a person with certain qualities — as if for your magazine’s archetypal hero? In the most recent issue, for instance. It features Davis (Dimock) and Petra (Wolf) — how very different they are! Davis wants to be with his rocks and doesn’t want to go anywhere, whereas Petra never wants to stop. She wants to go everywhere. But they’re both your heroes.

Yes. They’re each following a deep truth in themselves. Perhaps everyone’s truth is its own particular journey. I love both of those stories. Both Davis and Petra are so true to themselves. It’s a search. It’s very mysterious that we’re in this world.

A remarkable woman I talked with not long ago, Doctor Rachel Naomi Remen, speaking about contemporary Western culture, said we’ve traded mystery for mastery. She said that’s not a good trade.

Doesn’t everybody hunger for a deep sense of meaning? And where does meaning come from? That’s a difficult question and hard to speak of adequately.

There’s also the question of discipline, having made a certain choice.

That’s very good, because this is like a spiritual path, where discipline is required. Many people don’t have a spiritual discipline, and they may long for something like that. Spiritual paths all have practices that require discipline. Like in a Zen monastery. And your story of the Greek Orthodox priest praying every service, even with an empty church — that’s a powerful example of an inner discipline. I must say, I’ve never heard such a story. It really touches me. But discrimination is needed. Some people have great discipline for very bad purposes.

Might you say, with the magazine, as much as you’re drawn to things you do understand and feel an affinity for, that you’re also drawn to things you feel challenged by and don’t understand — at least not immediately? Do you ever feel a desire to go beyond a certain opacity in your cognition of the moment?

Before answering, let me ask, is that question formed from something in your own life?

R. Whittaker. Untitled, 2005.

I think so. It also comes from reflecting on what it means to be a citizen of this country or a citizen of the world. Much of what has drawn me to linguistics, for example, and to various more complex cultural practices, is just a need for awareness of higher standards to feel reverence toward. Are you aiming for intellectual, cultural challenges, or to acknowledge their existence, within our American context? And does that indeed form a context for the magazine’s existence?

I don’t frame it in those terms explicitly. But I relate to your question on a personal level. Perhaps there’s something I want to do; I feel called, but I’m scared about it. I try to practice not letting my fears stop me. But that’s on a more personal level. I haven’t been attracted to political-cultural issues. That just hasn’t been my path. But the question of how one lives involves the question of to what extent does one obey one’s fears, and to what extent does one decide to proceed in spite of them. I think that’s an essential question, and it certainly is a living one for me. Sometimes when I interview someone, I have anxieties about it, especially if it’s a public event. It takes a kind of courage not to let my anxieties stop me. That’s sort of how I’m responding to your question.

So is there a societal source of fear that we need to perhaps overcome?

I don’t doubt that.

In our conversation, we’ve alluded to the pressure to achieve success in terms of commercial prestige. With your magazine, are you trying to create a non-commercial space for discourse and understanding?

No. I haven’t made any special effort to create a non-commercial space. It is a non-commercial space — very uncommercial. I’ve never made a dollar. I mean, if I looked at the money I put into it and what’s come my way, I’m still in the red. I didn’t intend to be non-commercial, but it turned out I didn’t have much interest in playing that game. I didn’t have much skill for it, either. So it’s an accident that the magazine is not commercial, but it’s an accident that’s slowly leading me toward a revelation of a certain kind of value that is not much recognized in this culture.

Our whole culture is about getting, about achieving. Of course, I’m enculturated with these values. So, in part, the magazine is a slow journey toward another value that’s not about getting, but about serving, about giving, about not being grasping. I have a long way to go, but the non-commercial fact of the magazine is actually giving me some unexpected gifts. I’m slowly discovering the joy of giving. Yes.

Those aspects of society are familiar enough to anyone. Another aspect of your work might be a willingness to go beyond the current moment. You referred to disenchantment with the postmodern, for example. Commercialism also demands being fashionable and very much of the moment. Do you seek out older or timeless reference points?

It’s not that I explicitly seek out something like that; I don’t worry about it. If I find something that touches a sort of feeling, I go with it and this takes care of itself.

You’re saying that you make no special effort to discover more fundamental, sturdy, ancient traditions, but in the magazine that comes out on its own. I’m often just pleasantly surprised when reading the magazine. Nearly everyone you feature turns out to be thinking very much about the past. They might appear to be in the present moment, living in the present, as we’re told to do for our greater happiness, but there’s a constant reference to things that have been, to ancient civilizations and scriptures. Does it also give you joy to have a sense of moving outside linear time?

Well, it’s just a reflection of my life. I’ve had an interest in wisdom traditions, let’s put it that way. I’ve done a lot of reading. I’ve been involved in my own spiritual work, you might say, and I do believe that a great deal of wisdom has been part of past cultures, largely now lost.

In Christianity, for instance, I’m struck by the desert fathers, the contemplatives out in the deserts of Egypt in the fourth century. The lives of those anchorite monks seem quite wonderful to me. And you see similar things in Buddhism. The Judaic tradition also has things where one can feel great wisdom.

Now we’re in such a mind-boggling time. One’s hard-pressed to know what to make of it. Where we are today and where to turn are such huge questions.

Many people are reflecting on that now, including our readers — they have their own conceptions of what is important in life and what to think of us: in the United States, in California, on the West Coast… You’re also the West Coast editor for the New York-based magazine Parabola. These names and places symbolize a progressive, perhaps more technologically oriented, society — despite a certain aspect of spirituality that the West Coast and California also symbolize. How do you perceive the tension between those forms of progressive drive?

Manuel Klarmann, he’s from Switzerland, was out here in Silicon Valley for a couple of years, forming his own company. He had an intense desire to be of service to the world in this difficult, dangerous time. He was collecting data on energy use, on carbon footprint in the food sector, the carbon cost for creating specific meals. He was making a careful, thorough energy audit, very time-consuming, and was putting together ways of producing meals with smaller carbon footprints. He figured he had the best database in the world on these things. His company was called Eaternity. I met him in this circle of people with ServiceSpace, a group I’ve been involved with for the last 13 or 14 years.

He said he’d decided to give his data away if someone asked for it, in spite of how that might hurt his own company. The greater good was more important to him. I asked if he’d be willing to be interviewed. During the interview, I said, “Manuel, you’ve been here in Silicon Valley in the heart of the digital revolution, deeply connecting with the tech companies here. (He had a presentation at Google and at Apple, for instance.) Do you feel there’s any hope for the world that’s going to come out of Silicon Valley? Do you feel there’s any hope for us that will be strictly from technology?”

His response was, “I don’t really know. I suspect what comes out of Silicon Valley will either save us or destroy us.”

It’s an open question, and what is my attitude? I don’t know. Some of it scares the hell out of me. Ideas like “the singularity,” about silicon life and all that stuff. It’s so, in my opinion, such a strange fantasy world.

Which very much excites some people.

Many people are very pumped up about it.

Does this make you wish to support a different anthropological truth than Silicon Valley represents?

I don’t think I have the wisdom or the knowledge to go that far. Silicon Valley is a manifestation of life. I’m heartened by some of the people I know and by many of their responses. They’re trying to use technology as a way for people to come closer to their own humanity and have greater relationships based on service and help. Do you have particular ideas about this yourself?

Recalling the story of Manuel and his collecting of data, then giving it away, the gift aspect seems somehow redemptive, turning the exercise in metrics into something more balanced. I’m concerned about our capacity for say, unmotivated action, or irrationally motivated action, in pursuit of excellence, of joy — for their own sake. So in the example of the Orthodox priest, it seems better not to know how many hours he spends alone versus how many with the congregation, and what is the exact productivity rate of that. It seems better not to think in anything remotely like those terms.

It’s better to think in purely musical terms — although it seems we’re forced into taking a scientific approach to how we feel, to how we learn, in a way that almost negates the experience of learning and feeling unless we take serious mitigating actions to the contrary.

What keeps getting left out in all this “progress” is the intelligence of the heart. I’m so deeply touched by the story of this Greek Orthodox priest! I’m happy to have heard this story. It shows something so needed and so valuable, beyond quantification, much deeper. I’m reminded of something Gandhi said, that “there’s enough for everybody’s need, but not enough for everybody’s greed.” All the religious traditions warn us against that sort of thing.

Maybe this brings us back to “trading mystery for mastery.”

One last question: what can we look forward to in your next issue?

Well, you’ll see an interview with the artist Pat Benincasa, for one thing, and an interview with Rosalyn White, who does all of the Nyingma Institute’s thanka paintings and illustrations for their publishing. And there will be a poem from Robert Lax. Lax was important in Thomas Merton’s life. He was a beautiful, beautiful example of a person not motivated by getting something. That what I know about the issue right now. It’s always a mystery to me what the next issue will be.

Alone, one with a way, route grounding roots —
You turn into your one and only road of travel —
To change in immobility, a rod, a way’s event —
A blossoming within a way above your very doorsill…

Beyond a plotted line, the road is mobile…

Within a Way. T. Apraksina

“A blossoming within a way”

— p. 4 [page numbers from Russian-language edition]

To See from the Intelligence of the Heart. R. Whittaker

“People need recognition, they strive for that, and they may be tempted to turn themselves into pretzels in order to get recognized”

— p. 6

Caprices of the Evolution of the Louvre. P. Walton

“The English were a constant threat at that time”

— p. 14

Just an Alley. Kooseul Kim (contemporary Korean poetry)

“The history of alleys says The narrower they are The more inevitable the fate they carry”

— p. 18

Listening to Walls (Blues Report). J. Manteith

“How do ‘Saigon’ and a wall connect with songs by Mike and Aquarium?”

— p. 20

On the lips, an incandescent word. A. Alekseeva (1899-1945)

“You will never say ‘No,’ And won’t betray, until death”

— p. 25

The Emperor Suite: Weatherburg. A. Zhilyakov

“A provocative phrase could fit well here: ‘In the beginning was the blues, and everything was blues”

— p. 30

Remembering Armenia. I. Tregub

“Flagstones scuffed by time”

— p. 36

A Time of Sacrifice. Sergei Muravyov-Apostol. O. Shilova

“Saying goodbye for the last time, they all shook hands.”

— p. 37

Mario Luzi: Voyaging in Heaven and on Earth. Y. Sventsitskaya

“The dominant associations here are so individual, the words lose their generally accepted meanings”

— p. 44

Federico Tiezzi on Mario Luzi (interview). Y. Sventsitskaya

“His idea of purgatory as a beehive, which makes spiritual honey, was a guiding thread for the dramaturgy”

— p. 45

Saving Russia from Russia. T. Partanenko

“This is not about a scholarly discussion, but about a conflict between two cosmoses”

— p. 47

Gina in Scenes and Behind Them. M. Rasina, Y. Sventsitskaya

“Gina Lollobrigida is not only a great actress but a great personality”

— p. 58

From “The Essence of the Ocean of True Meaning” (translation by V. Ragimov)

“Can one really, having become human, live a human life fruitlessly?”

— p. 64

Irina Mashinski’s Cardinal Points and Craft (interview)

“A real poet is always an eccentric”

— p. 68

Polemics Session: Rosemary’s Retort (V. Verov)

“The chemistry of poetry translation remains unchanged”

— p. 75

The whole life of Daniil Borisovich Shafran, the great cellist, a true knight of the cello, was connected with our city, St. Petersburg. He was practically the only representative of the Leningrad school to receive wide international fame.

Here, on the Neva’s banks, he was born on January 13, 1923. His first teacher was his father, cellist Boris Semenovich Shafran. Daniil Borisovich graduated from the Leningrad Conservatory with a cello class from Professor A.Ya. Shtrimer.

The talent of Daniel Shafran won recognition early. Already in 1937, he won first place at the All-Union Competition for Violinists and Cellists in Moscow. Then followed first prizes at competitions in Budapest and Prague.

His communication with our city did not end even after he moved to Moscow. He regularly appeared on the concert stages of the Great and Small Philharmonic Halls, and often performed with philharmonic orchestras. Here he presented all his new programs. Each encounter with his cello proved unforgettable.

My colleagues, cellists and music lovers, remember well the special atmosphere prevailing at these concerts. The amazing, inherent only to Shafran’s sound, romantic elation, spirituality, originality and unexpectedness of interpretations — this is far from a complete list of distinguishing features of his art. It is also essential to note his phenomenal devotion to the instrument – despite already possessing filigree technique, he never stopped improving his skill, giving all his time to his cello.

An inimitable master of miniatures, in this he knew no equal, which did not stop him from paying great attention to large forms as well. Many authors dedicated their works to him. For example, D. Kabalevsky dedicated his second cello concerto to Shafran.

D.B. Shafran toured extensively around the world. He repeatedly served as a jury representative at the International Tchaikovsky Competition.

An extensive musical archive — recordings either released on albums or maintained by the All-Union Radio foundation — gives us an opportunity not to part with his work.

A fantastic devotion to the cello, a daily, relentless search — this was Shafran’s entire life, which is an example worthy of respect and imitation.

Daniel Shafran died in his seventy-fifth year of life. For the art of the cello, this is a great bereavement. Time moves relentlessly, years pass, generations change. The memory of the great master should live, and his work should remain a spring from which young generations of musicians can draw wisdom and inspiration.

Даниил Шафран. Фото из журнала "Музыка в СССР".

Daniil Shafran. Photo from the magazine Music in the USSR.