Dante Alighieri | ca. 1300
As readers of this blog already know, I’ve put together a program bringing together two of the last three works of Shostakovich: the Suite on Verses of Michelangelo Buonarroti for Bass and Piano, Op. 145 (1974); and the Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147 (1975). I am performing it, with brilliant colleagues Simon Barrad, Hsin-Yun Huang, and Timothy Ridout, in the USA and the UK during 2021-22. As the season progresses, I’m sharing snippets of thought and reflection about these masterpieces.
Today a few words about the seventh song of Op. 145, entitled To the Exile. The text Shostakovich sets here is a Russian translation, by the gifted poet Avram Efros, of Michelangelo’s Rime/250. Michelangelo here pays noble tribute to his great countryman and predecessor, Dante, along with a wrathful condemnation of his homeland (Florence), that repaid Dante with black ingratitude. "Just as there was never a viler exile than his / So also did the world never know a greater man.” According to the editors of the new Shostakovich urtext edition, DSCH, Shostakovich’s setting, equal parts accusatory and lyrical, was perceived by many of its early listeners in 1975 as the composer’s response to the unjust arrest and exile of my father, the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Here below is the song in a live performance by Simon Barrad and myself. And further down you will find the Russian text, then Simon’s translation into English, and finally, for good measure, Michelangelo’s original Italian.
7. Изгнаннику
Как будто чтим, а всё же честь мала.
Его величье взор наш ослепило.
Что чернь корить за низкое мерило,
Когда пуста и наша похвала!
Он ради нас сошёл в обитель зла;
Господне царство лик ему явило;
Но дверь, что даже небо не закрыло,
Пред Данте отчизна злобно заперла.
Неблагодарная! Себе на горе
Ты длила муки сына своего;
Так совершенству низость мстит от века.
Один пример из тех, которых море!
Как нет подлей изгнания его,
Так мир не знал и выше человека.
7. To the Exile
We think we honor him, yet honor him too little.
His majesty has blinded our sight.
Why do we chide the mob for its crass yardstick,
When our own praise is empty!
He descended into the domain of evil for our sake;
The Lord’s kingdom showed its face to him;
But the door that even heaven did not close,
The fatherland maliciously locked in front of Dante.
Ungrateful land! To your own harm
You stretched out the suffering of your son;
Thus baseness takes vengeance on perfection from age to age.
One example among those of which there is a sea!
Just as there was never a viler exile than his,
So also did the world never know a greater man.
7. {Rime/250}
Quante dirne si de' non si può dire,
ché troppo agli orbi il suo splendor s'accese;
biasmar si può più 'l popol che l’offese,
c'al suo men pregio ogni maggior salire.
Questo discese a' merti del fallire
per l'util nostro, e poi a Dio ascese;
e le porte, che 'l ciel non gli contese,
la patria chiuse al suo giusto desire.
Ingrata, dico, e della suo fortuna
a suo danno nutrice; ond'è ben segno,
c'a' più perfetti abonda di più guai.
Fra mille altre ragion sol ha quest'una:
se par non ebbe il suo exilio indegno,
simil uom né maggior non nacque mai.