[PDF] Ted Harrison Collected by From Douglas McIntyre in Arts-Photography

Description

In this dazzling exploration of one of the most contradictory periods of literary and artistic achievement in modern history; journalist Andy McSmith evokes the lives of more than a dozen of the most brilliant artists and writers of the twentieth century. Taking us deep into Stalinrsquo;s Russia; Fear and the Muse Kept Watch asks the question: can great art be produced in a police state? For although Josif Stalin ran one of the most oppressive regimes in world history; under him Russia also produced an outpouring of artistic works of immense and lasting power—from the poems of Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam to the opera Peter and the Wolf; the film Alexander Nevsky; and the novels The Master and Margarita and Doctor Zhivago.For those artists visible enough for Stalin to take an interest in them; it was Stalin himself who decided whether they lived in luxury or were sent to the Lubyanka; the headquarters of the secret police; to be tortured and sometimes even executed. McSmith brings together the stories of these artists—including Isaac Babel; Boris Pasternak; Dmitri Shostakovich; and many others—revealing how they pursued their art under Stalinrsquo;s regime and often at great personal risk. It was a world in which the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky; whose bright yellow tunic was considered a threat to public order under the tsars; struggled to make the communist authorities see the value of avant garde art; Babel publicly thanked the regime for allowing him the privilege of not writing; and Shostakovichrsquo;s career veered wildly between public disgrace and wealth and acclaim.In the tradition of Eileen Simpsonrsquo;s Poets in Their Youth and Phyllis Rosersquo;s Parallel Lives; Fear and the Muse Kept Watch is an extraordinary work of historical recovery. It is also a bold exploration of the triumph of art during terrible times and a book that will stay with its readers for a long; long while.