Telegrams from the Nose
The French composer François Sarhan has written the piece «Telegrams from the nose», inspired by Gogol, Shostakovich, Kharms and a man that was killed by Stalin. By Thomas Berg
There exists a drawing of the Russian author Daniil Kharms stealing the nose of his older colleague, Nikolaj Gogol. The most downright interpretation is that Kharms was inspired by Gogol’s short story «The nose» – a story of the absurd kind, as curious and improbable as much as any of Kharms’ stories.
Another to be inspired by Gogol, was the composer Dmitrij Shostakovich, contemporary of Kharms, and just as much a part of the Russian futurists. In the period 1926–1927 he wrote the opera «The Nose», based on the short story.
Fjodor
The French composer François Sarhan has likewise been inspired by Gogol, Kharms and Shostakovich. «Telegrams from the nose» is a piece lasting 35 minutes, in which Sarhan reads text by, amongst others, Kharms in 12 different music pieces. Thus the name telegrams.
– Telegrams are to be short and concise, and so is my music, Sarhan says.
But even though Sarhan lends especially from three artists, the performance is really based on the life of a man named Fjodor Bukharin.
– He was working with Stalin until he himself was shot by orders of Stalin in 1938. Most remaining texts that are read are memorandums from the Stalinist court processes against him.
35 minutes
The piece is a mixture of music, video and installation. Working with him, Sarhan has had the South African artist William Kentridge. The visual elements consists in Kentridge’s scene sketches for the opera «The Nose» which he is to set up at the Metropolitan in New York in 2010. The stage background will be formed covered with a large canvas resembling a collage of newspaper cuttings, all celebrating the scientific progress. On this canvas, the film «Telegrams from the nose» will be played, which is a combination of human shadows, small, black silhouettes cut out from paper, geometric figures inspired by the Russian Futurism, and moving letters and text.
In the bottom part of the canvas, some space has been allocated for Sarhan, who will commence by performing a pantomime against the shadows on the canvas, and a violin player playing at the end of the show. Sarhan and four musicians are set beneath the stage. It all lasts 35 minutes.
– I met Kentridge through the Belgian ensemble, Ictus, who will perform the musical part, in Brussels, Sarhan says.
– Ictus and myself have worked together twice before. They met with Kentridge while he was doing some samples of Shostakovich. During the co-operation we found that it would be better to compose our own music rather than using Shostakovich. The biggest challenge was to write something that could fit into Russian Futurism but without sounding like Shostakovich.
The Futurism
The Russian Futurist Movement of art and literature began just before the Revolution. Many who experienced the Communists gaining control in Russia and the foundation of the Soviet Union, were positive towards the new society and welcomed the Revolution.
Towards the end of the twenties, the movement prospered greatly, but simultaneously their view upon art fell in disfavour by the Communists, who preferred a more simple and accessible art. «Find some anti-futurists we can trust,» was the message from Stalin, after which artists started disappearing, whilst others received threats and regular suppression.
Kharms was arrested together with some other authors in 1931, and was forced to live in exile in Kursk for one year. He was arrested on the grounds of being a member of «a group of Anti-Soviet children’s authors,» and some of his work were used as evidence. It was condemned as Anti-Soviet on the grounds of their absurd logic, and their reluctance to celebrate material and social Soviet values.
Back from exile, Kharms merely managed to publish anything at all. Most went straight into the desktop drawer, and what little income he made, came from writing children’s literature. Thus he lived in poverty for many years until he was arrested anew in 1941, suspect of treason. He was placed in the psychiatric ward in a prison in Leningrad and died there in February 42. His posthumous works were looked after by friends, and from the sixties of, his name gained more and more recognition, and his works were printed and distributed illegally.
Gogol’s nose
Nikolaj Gogol wrote his short story «The Nose» in 1836. It is about a man named Kovaljov, who one day wakes to find his nose missing.
«He wanted to take a look at a pimple on the nose that burst the evening before, but to his enormous astonishment, there was only a flat surface where it used to be a nose.» Embarrassed, he covers his face and walks out into the streets of St. Petersburg, where he finally spots his nose, on Nevskij Prospekt, dressed in a stately dress. He catches up and starts to converse with the nose, only to discover that the nose has become a cabinet minister, and on no terms would acknowledge its previous owner.
Christian Kjelstrup is both a linguist in Russian language and Gogol reader, and he is the author of the world’s only nose atlas. Not surprisingly, he is very fond of this short story.
– Kovaljov’s nose has been interpreted in many ways, Kjelstrup explains.
– Freudian readings are perhaps most common, and one of the cues is the «castration complex». The main protagonist deposits a lot of his life and social dignity in the nose, and the nose, gaining more rank than himself, might symbolize the isolated transcendental I, a social threat or alienation in the bureaucracy of the Czar-Russia. As Kovaljov looses his nose, he practically looses face.
The story ends well, though. He is informed that the nose has been seized on the road to Riga, and one fine day he wakes only to find it back on its regular place.
Lost and Found
Sarhan interprets the missing nose as a symbol of Soviet after the highlight of the Futurists.
– What is most interesting to me is the connection between the Soviet of Stalin and the disappearance of the nose. It seems to mirror what happened at that time.
Nor did Shostakovich escape Stalin’s disapproval, Kjelstrup further elaborates.
– The opera was condemned as «formalism» by the Stalinist leaders and was banned in 1936. Not surprisingly so, as the opera includes snoring and a main voice to be sung by a nasal tenor. A curious detail is that the scores for the opera disappeared as well, but suddenly turned up, just as the nose, in 1974 to be more precise, one year before the composer died. It was found by the director Rozjdestvenskij in a bomb shelter at the Bolshoi theatre.