著者

梅津 紀雄 Norio UMETSU 東京大学

出版者

日本ロシア文学会

雑誌

ロシア語ロシア文学研究 = Росия-го Росия-бунгаку кэнкю (ISSN:03873277)

巻号頁・発行日

no.34, pp.23-31, 2002-01-01

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This paper treats the book called Testimony : The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich and analyses the dispute about the authenticity of this book. Testimony was published in English in 1979, four years after composer's death, in the United States, as a memoir of the composer, by Solomon Volkov. Relatives and close friends of Shostakovich readily charged Volkov that his book was a fake, and that he was not a close friend of the composer. From their point of view, Volkov's act was an arrogation of their right to speak his private life, their right to interprete his works. In 1994 Issak Glikman, a close friend of Shostakovich, published letters of Shostakovich addressed to him with detailed annotations. An american musicologist Richard Turuskin criticized Glikman. He wrote that Glikman's annotations are so detailed that they do not allow readers to have their own interpretation. Glikman went so far as to say, "the memory of Shostakovich is sacred to me". Glinkman's annotations attempted to return posesssion of the composer's memories to their rightful owners and to recover the rights to interpret the lire and works of Shostakovich from less intimate acquaintances. But Volkov and his followers try to emphasize the connections between Volkov and Shostakovich. In Testimony, and in Volkov's followers' Shostakovch Reconsidered, there are many photographs of Volkov with Shostakovich, and Volkov with friends of Shostakovich. Thus they use the same logic as Glikman to prove the authentieity of his "testimony". Today, regardless of its doubtful authenticity, the impression of Testimony constitutes a part of our collective memory about Shostakovich's life and times. The myth of "the sacrificied composer" has a deep relationship with this collective memory. But now we must ourselves dispel the myth of Testimony.