SHOSTACOVICH-FATHER AND SON

From The Times


Maxim Shostakovich — “I feel my father looking over my shoulder”
The conductor son of the great Russian composer explains why he has devoted his life to his father’s musical legacyRichard Morrison


Maxim Shostakovich, the conductor son of the great Dmitri Shostakovich, stares incredulously at me. At first I think he is outraged by my questions. He isn’t, he’s just distracted by something more interesting. Namely, my face.

“Excuse me, but you look just like him!” he exclaims.

“Who?” I ask.

“My father’s grandfather. Really! I have a photograph.”

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Well, I stutter, my own grandfather was born in Latvia. But I wasn’t aware of Russian blood in the family.

“But my father’s grandfather came from that region: the border of Poland and Lithuania,” Maxim continues. “And you have exactly the same face!”

If further evidence were needed that the name Shostakovich has dominated the 71 years of Maxim’s life, it is surely this. Even when meeting a complete stranger he sees a vision of his father’s ancestors — rather like the tormented protagonist of some gloomy Russian opera, for ever haunted by dead souls.

It must be difficult, I say, being the son of a famous composer. “Why difficult?” Maxim bristles. “I am happy that I have spent a big part of my life serving the music of this great man, my father.”

But the comparisons? “What comparison? My father once tried conducting and then said ‘never again’.”

Likewise, Maxim has never composed a note — though his own 48-year-old son (also, confusingly, called Dmitri Shostakovich) has become a pop composer. And Maxim seems proud enough that his daughter (one of two teenage offspring of his second marriage) has carried on the family tradition. Not only has she become a pianist; at the age of 9 she also performed in public the slow movement of the very work — the Second Piano Concerto — that Shostakovich wrote for Maxim to premiere on his 19th birthday.

Fittingly, that work features in the British concerts that Maxim is conducting this week with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, along with Shostakovich’s most famous symphony, the Fifth. That’s especially apt. Conceived in the same year as Maxim (1937), the Fifth leads us straight to the heart of the tragedy surrounding Shostakovich.

The composer declared this ambiguous masterpiece to be “a Soviet artist’s creative response to just criticism” — the “just criticism” being a stinging attack on his 1934 opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. Published in Pravda under the headline “Muddle instead of music”, that article was widely believed to reflect the view of Stalin himself, and came at the height of the “Great Terror”, when hundreds of intellectuals were murdered or incarcerated in the gulags. It’s said that throughout those appalling purges a nearly suicidal Shostakovich kept a packed suitcase by the door, ready for his deportation to Siberia.

Maxim wasn’t born then. But he was, in his own words, a “witness to all the disasters” of the next great attack against his father. That came in 1948, when Andrei Zhdanov, then Stalin’s cultural henchman, clamped down on “formalism” in the arts.

“My father wasn’t alone in being attacked,” Maxim recalls. “The poet Anna Akhmatova, the composer Prokofiev and many others were rebuked. But the criticism of my father was terrible. In the newspapers they said he was an enemy of the people. All his music was banned. He lost his teaching jobs. I was 9 at the time, and I can recall people outside our house screaming: ‘Formalist! Show your face!’ ”

Maxim was even forced to denounce his father’s music at school. “Some good friends, courageous people, stuck with my father through the worst times — Akhmatova, Rostropovich, Isaak Glickman,” he recalls. “But others were afraid to shake his hand. They crossed the street when they saw us.”

How did such a state of affairs come about? “Fear,” Maxim says. “After the revolution there were famines. Many people were shot. People grew afraid to say anything. It easily happens. Look at Nazi Germany, Kampuchea or the Cultural Revolution in China.”

After Stalin’s death in 1953 did matters improve? After all, Khrushchev is credited with creating a more tolerant atmosphere, at least in the arts. “Yes, things did get better for a while,” Maxim concedes. “They stopped killing people after 1956. But later it went back to the bad old days. For me personally, the hardest years were the Brezhnev era, when I had to conduct what I was told.”

Maxim says that he saw his father cry only twice during those terrible years: once when Nina, his first wife (and Maxim’s mother), died, and once in 1960 when, perhaps under duress, he became a member of the Communist Party. But why, on one of his trips to the West, did Shostakovich not defect — as Maxim himself was to do in 1981?

“I can’t say that he didn’t think about it,” he replies. “But how could he have done it? His family were in the Soviet Union. We were like hostages. So were all his friends and pupils. He was an important person in Russia. If he had annoyed the authorities, the effects would have been felt by many people.”

Today there’s no consensus about how much of a rebel Shostakovich was.

When he died in 1975 the general view in the West was that he was (as The Times obituary put it) “a committed believer in Communism”. After all, he had written obsequious cantatas in praise of Stalin, had won the Order of Lenin, and enjoyed many privileges. Moreover, he had signed letters supporting the most hardline party policies.

That view was challenged in 1979 by the appearance of Testimony, Shostakovich’s alleged memoirs, “as told to” a Russian journalist and defector called Solomon Volkov. It portrayed the composer as a secret dissident who weaved into his music — especially his symphonies — coded attacks on Stalin and the state. Thus the Fifth Symphony was not a celebration of Soviet life, as Shostakovich’s own public description had implied, but a picture of a nation in agony. Similarly, the Leningrad Symphony — ostensibly a defiant portrait of Hitler’s attack on Shostakovich’s own city — was covertly a denunciation of Stalin’s crimes against his own people.

Maxim’s opinion of Testimony has changed. Early on, he called it a fraud. Then he softened his stance, conceding that Volkov had captured his father’s tone of voice and, essentially, his private views about Stalin. But, crucially, what he refuses to acknowledge — having conducted and recorded all 15 of his father’s symphonies (and been entrusted with the premiere of No 15) — is that Volkov’s crude anti-Soviet interpretation of the music is accurate.

“Take the Leningrad Symphony,” he says. “Though it was written during that terrible siege, I don’t think it is about either Hitler or Stalin. It looks at the bigger philosophical picture. Like most of my father’s 15 symphonies, it is about the endless battle between good and evil.”

Similarly, Maxim believes that the Eighth Symphony, portrayed by Volkov as a vicious portrait of Stalin and a lamentation for all the people he killed, had a much more personal meaning. “When my mother died, I remember my father playing a recording of the Eighth Symphony over and over,” Maxim says. “People think his music is all about politics. It isn’t. It’s more about human life in all its shadows, all its problems. War and peace, love and hate. He looked as a human being at the world around him.”

And found only bleakness? “I wouldn’t say that,” Maxim says. “He certainly became sadder as he got older and saw what the world, and his country, had become. But I think his music shows that, ultimately, happiness comes. You know, although he didn’t go to church, he believed in God.”

Maxim’s own story has not been unalloyed happiness. After defecting he settled in the US and took American citizenship, but found himself conducting an orchestra, the New Orleans Symphony, that hovered on the verge of bankruptcy for season after season. Eventually he resigned after not being paid for a year. After life in the higher artistic echelons of the Soviet Union, it was a harsh lesson in capitalism.

Now he has returned to live in St Petersburg, where his two youngest children are being educated and a fine statue of their grandfather has just been unveiled by Maxim — plonked, with an unconscious irony that Shostakovich would doubtless have enjoyed, next to a huge new Western-style shopping mall. “I spent a lot of time in America, and I like it there,” Maxim says. “But ultimately I will always be Russian. You can’t erase that from your soul.”

And his relationship now with his father’s music? “When I conduct it, even today, I feel him looking over my shoulder. He is there in the hall. You see, the very phrases of the music remind me of how he used to talk. I recognise his voice in the notes. And behind the voice, the man himself.”

Maxim Shostakovich conducts the RPO in London (Cadogan Hall, Fri); Northampton (Sun); Reading (Apr 15); and Sheffield (Apr 16). Details: www.rpo.co.uk

IN SEARCH OF THE LOST LANGUAGE

FROM NY TIMES

Indian Tribes Go in Search of Their Lost Languages

By PATRICIA COHEN
As far as the records show, no one has spoken Shinnecock or Unkechaug, languages of Long Island’s Indian tribes, for nearly 200 years. Now Stony Brook University and two of the Indian nations are initiating a joint project to revive these extinct tongues, using old documents like a vocabulary list that Thomas Jefferson wrote during a visit in 1791.

The goal is language resuscitation and enlisting tribal members from this generation and the next to speak them, said representatives from the tribes and Stony Brook’s Southampton campus.

Chief Harry Wallace, the elected leader of the Unkechaug Nation, said that for tribal members, knowing the language is an integral part of understanding their own culture, past and present.

“When our children study their own language and culture, they perform better academically,” he said. “They have a core foundation to rely on.”

The Long Island effort is part of a wave of language reclamation projects undertaken by American Indians in recent years. For many tribes language is a cultural glue that holds a community together, linking generations and preserving a heritage and values. Bruce Cole, the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which sponsors language preservation programs, has called language “the DNA of a culture.”

The odds against success can be overwhelming, given the relatively small number of potential speakers and the difficulty in persuading a new generation to participate. There has been progress, though, said Leanne Hinton, professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, who created the Breath of Life program in California in 1992 to revive dormant languages in the state.

Representatives from at least 25 languages with no native speakers have participated in the group’s workshops so far, she said. Last month Ms. Hinton and a colleague at Yale received a federal grant to create a similar program based in Washington, D.C.

Of the more than 300 indigenous languages spoken in the United States, only 175 remain, according to the Indigenous Language Institute. This nonprofit group estimates that without restoration efforts, no more than 20 will still be spoken in 2050.

Some reclamation efforts have shown success. Daryl Baldwin started working to revive the dormant language of the Miami Nation in the Midwest (part of the Algonquian language family), and taught his own children to speak it fluently. He now directs the Myaamia Project at Miami University in Ohio, a joint effort between academics and the Miami tribe.

Farther east is Stephanie Fielding, a member of the Connecticut Mohegans and an adviser on the Stony Brook project. She has devoted her life to bringing her tribe’s language back to life and is compiling a dictionary and grammar book. In her eyes language provides a mental telescope into the world of her ancestors. She notes, for example, that in an English conversation, a statement is typically built with the first person — “I” — coming first. In the same statement in Mohegan, however, “you” always comes first, even when the speaker is the subject.

“This suggests a more communally minded culture,” she said.

Now in her 60s, Ms. Fielding knows firsthand just how tough it is to sustain a language effort over time, however. She said she was still not fluent.

“In order for a language to survive and resurrect,” she said, “it needs people talking it, and for people to talk it, there has to be a society that works on it.”

Chief Wallace of the Unkechaug in Long Island already has a willing student from a younger generation. Howard Treadwell, 24, graduated from Stony Brook in 2009 with a linguistics degree. He will participate in the Long Island effort while doing graduate work at the University of Arizona, where there is a specialized program researching American Indian languages.

Mr. Treadwell is one of 400 registered members of the tribe, which maintains a 52-acre reservation in Mastic, on the South Shore. The Shinnecocks have about 1,300 enrolled members and have a reservation adjacent to Southampton.

Robert D. Hoberman, the chairman of the linguistics department at Stony Book, is overseeing the academic side of the project. He is an expert in the creation of modern Hebrew, the great success story of language revival. Essentially unspoken for 2,000 years, Hebrew survived only in religious uses until early Zionists tried to update it — an undertaking adopted on a grand scale when the State of Israel was established.

For the American Indians on Long Island the task is particularly difficult because there are few records. But Shinnecock and Unkechaug are part of a family of eastern Algonquian languages. Some have both dictionaries and native speakers, Mr. Hoberman said, which the team can mine for missing words and phrases, and for grammatical structure.

The reclamation is a two-step process, the professor explained. “First we have to figure out what the language looked like,” using remembered prayers, greetings, sayings and word lists, like the one Jefferson created, he said. “Then we’ll look at languages that are much better documented, look at short word lists to see what the differences are and see what the equivalencies are, and we’ll use that to reconstruct what the Long Island languages probably were like.” The Massachusett language, for example, is well documented with dictionaries and Bible translations.

Jefferson’s Unkechaug word list was collected on June 13, 1791, when he visited Brookhaven, Long Island, with James Madison, later his successor in the White House. He wrote that even then, only three old women remained who could still speak the language fluently.

Chief Wallace said he had many more records, including religious documents, deeds and legal transactions, and possibly a tape of some tribal members speaking in the 1940s.

“When we have an idea of what the language should sound like, the vocabulary and the structure, we’ll then introduce it to people in the community,” Mr. Hoberman said.

While it may seem impossible to recreate the sound of a lost tongue, Mr. Hoberman said the process was not all that mysterious because the dictionaries were transliterated into English.

“Would someone from 200 years ago think we had a funny accent?” Mr. Hoberman asked. “Yes. Would they understand it? I hope so.”

SHAPING A NATION

FROM NYTIMES

Seeking Identity, Shaping a Nation’s
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

THE BRIDGE
The Life and Rise of Barack Obama
By David Remnick
Illustrated. 656 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $29.95.

“The Bridge,” the title of David Remnick’s incisive new book on Barack Obama, refers to the bridge in Selma, Ala., where civil rights demonstrators were violently attacked by state troopers on March 7, 1965, in a bloody clash that would galvanize the nation and help lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. It refers to the observation made by one of the leaders of that march, John Lewis, that “Barack Obama is what comes at the end of that bridge in Selma” — an observation Congressman Lewis made nearly 44 years later, on the eve of Mr. Obama’s inauguration. And it refers to the hope voiced by many of the president’s supporters that he would be a bridge between the races, between red states and blue states, between conservatives and liberals, between the generations who remember the bitter days of segregation and those who have grown up in a new, increasingly multicultural America.

By now, Mr. Obama’s story has been told many times — by journalists and the authors of several biographies and campaign books, and most memorably by the president himself, who in the days before he became a politician wrote a remarkably eloquent and searching memoir (“Dreams From My Father”) about his youth, his struggle to come to terms with his absent father, and his groping efforts to forge an identity of his own.

But if the outlines of the story told in “The Bridge” are highly familiar, Mr. Remnick — the editor of The New Yorker and the author of a thoughtful 2008 article in that magazine, “The Joshua Generation: Race and the Campaign of Barack Obama,” from which this book apparently springs — has filled in those broad outlines with insight and nuance. He’s used interviews with many of the formative figures in the president’s life to add details to the narrative of his political and sentimental education — in particular, his relationships with his self-destructive father and his romantic, sometimes naïve mother. Writing with emotional precision and a sure knowledge of politics, Mr. Remnick situates Mr. Obama’s career firmly within a historical context. He puts Mr. Obama’s life and political philosophy in perspective with the civil rights movement that shaped his imagination, as well as the power politics of Chicago, and the politics of race as it has been played out, often nastily, on the state and national stages.

Like many reporters, Mr. Remnick describes Mr. Obama in these pages as cool, charismatic, slightly detached: an autodidact with a lawyer’s analytical intelligence and a novelist’s empathetic temperament; an idealist who is also a pragmatist; a politician inclined to be methodical and cautious in his decision making. Like Ryan Lizza (in a 2007 article in The New Republic) and Richard Wolffe (in his 2009 book, “Renegade”), Mr. Remnick also places considerable emphasis on the role that community organizing had in shaping Mr. Obama’s approach to politics — experience that ratified the future president’s inclination to listen and engage other people. It’s an inclination that would be reinforced further by his time at Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago, politically diverse, often contentious places, where his impulse was to try to reconcile or synthesize opposing views. Perhaps it’s also an inclination that explains why he made such a concerted effort last year to try to get Republican support on a health care bill.

“Once, at a debate over affirmative action with the staff of the Harvard Law Review,” Mr. Remnick writes, “Obama spoke as if he were threading together the various arguments in the room, weighing their relative strengths, never judging or dismissing a point of view. ‘If anyone had walked by, they would have assumed he was a professor,’ Thomas J. Perrelli, a friend of Obama’s who went on to work in his Justice Department, said. ‘He was leading the discussion, but he wasn’t trying to impose his own perspective on it. He was much more mediating.’ ”

Elsewhere in this volume Mr. Remnick describes Mr. Obama as a son who aspired to be calm, rooted and responsible in all the ways that his volatile and unreliable father was not, and as an avid student who craved mentors he could learn from, like the constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe at Harvard and Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. He notes that Mr. Obama was a quick learner, who was not much of a speaker at first (“he was stentorian, professorial, self-serious — a cake with no leavening”), and who could “change styles without relinquishing his genuineness,” subtly shifting “accent and cadences depending on the audience.”

Explicating the theme of self-creation that runs through “Dreams From My Father,” Mr. Remnick gives an acute, often moving reading of that book. “In high school,” he writes, “Barry eventually stopped writing letters to his father. His effort to understand himself was a lonely one. Touchingly, awkwardly, he was giving himself instruction on how to be black.”

Step by step, as Mr. Obama grew up with his white grandparents in Hawaii, Mr. Remnick goes on, “he began immersing himself in an African-American culture that seemed to live thousands of miles from where he was.” Mr. Remnick adds, “He listened to Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, Grover Washington and Miles Davis; he watched ‘Soul Train’ and Richard Pryor on television. On his own he read Richard Wright’s ‘Native Son,’ the poems of Langston Hughes, ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X,’ ‘The Souls of Black Folk,’ the essays of James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man.’ ”

The observations Mr. Remnick has gathered in these pages from people who knew Mr. Obama in his formative years shed some light on his burgeoning ambition, although they do not really explain how this young, rootless outsider acquired the self-confidence that fueled his ascent in national politics. Abner J. Mikva, a former federal judge who was close to Mr. Obama in Chicago, for instance, is quoted in this book talking about how Mr. Obama in the early 1990s might have been more serene and less needy than Bill Clinton, but was just as immodest in his ambition, confiding his hopes of running for office:

“I thought, this guy has more chutzpah than Dick Tracy,” Mr. Mikva says. “You don’t just show up in Chicago and plant your flag.”

As for the community organizer Jerry Kellman, whom Mr. Remnick says “may well have played the most influential role in Obama’s life outside of his family,” he recalls that the young man, who wanted to take on the Sisyphean task of organizing on the South Side of Chicago, was “very focused and disciplined, monkish not in the sense of being a celibate but of holing up and reading.”

Mr. Kellman recalls that Mr. Obama had been inspired by the civil rights movement, and that since that era was past, community organizing was “as close as he could get.” At the same time, Mr. Kellman suggests, the young Mr. Obama was thinking about becoming a novelist and was looking not only for experience and a sense of community, but also for material.

The later parts of “The Bridge” focus on the story lines involving race in the 2008 presidential campaign (most pointedly on Mr. Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright), and they also serve up historical asides about matters like the role played by slaves in building the White House and Frederick Douglass’s 1863 visit there with Lincoln.

Some readers may object that these chapters have the effect of defining Mr. Obama largely through the prism of race. This is something that the president, at times, and others, like Colin L. Powell, have resisted, arguing, in Mr. Powell’s words, that the junior Senator from Illinois ran for president “as an American who is black, not as a black American.”

Mr. Remnick, however, argues that “race is at the core of Obama’s story,” and Mr. Obama wrote at length in “Dreams” about his search for identity as an African-American and has also spoken of standing on the shoulders of the civil rights giants who made possible his own story.

“For Obama,” Mr. Remnick concludes, “the black freedom struggle defines not just the African-American experience, but the American experience itself” — the story, as Mr. Obama has observed, that “we as African-Americans are American, and that our story is America’s story, and that by perfecting our rights we perfect the Union.”

BOWLES, THE NEVER ENDING STORY

Los Bowles vuelven a Málaga
Un congreso y la edición de varios libros rinden tributo a la pareja de escritores
JAVIER RODRÍGUEZ MARCOS

"La diferencia entre un viajero y un turista es que el primero no compra billete de vuelta". Antes de vaciar, en 1947 y para casi siempre, sus maletas en un apartamento de Tánger en el que fue rodeándose de cajas de medicinas, ceniza de kif y cartas de correo aéreo, Paul Bowles siguió fielmente la frase que le atribuye la leyenda. A Marruecos llegó con su esposa Jane tras patear media Europa, toda América y una parte de Asia. Antes del viaje africano habían gastado unos meses en una pensión de Brooklyn Heights. Allí se los encontró Truman Capote, que recordaba que entre el resto de inquilinos estaban W. H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Carson McCullers y "un domador de chimpancés".

Cuando el matrimonio llegó a Tánger la escritora era ella, una mujer que se definía a sí misma como "judía, lesbiana y coja" y había publicado cuatro años antes su única novela, Dos damas muy serias, recién rescatada por Anagrama en un volumen que se completa con el libro de relatos Placeres sencillos. Él, además de nómada, era compositor. Hasta 1949 no publicaría El cielo protector, la novela autobiográfica cuya adaptación cinematográfica a cargo de Bernardo Bertolucci cuatro décadas más tarde convertiría el apartamento tangerino de Bowles en lugar de peregrinación, si es que alguna vez dejó de serlo desde que Tánger fuera puerto de tránsito para los miembros de dos generaciones de relumbrón: la perdida y la beat.

El propio Paul Bowles consignó en sus diarios cómo el mismo año en que el cineasta italiano le habló de su proyecto pasaron por allí Patricia Highsmith, Liz Taylor y Mick Jagger. Y cómo un editor francés le propone hacer un libro en colaboración con un pintor mallorquín llamado Miquel Barceló.

La película tiró del resto de su obra -Déjala que caiga, La casa de la araña, La tierra caliente...- y, de paso, de la de Jane. Pero aquella muchacha radicalmente independiente a la que su amigo Capote retrató con cabeza de gardenia, porte de golfillo y la leve cojera que le dejó la caída de un caballo no vivió para ver todo aquello. Nacida en 1917, murió en 1973 en Málaga. Aquí se celebra esta semana el congreso El mundo de los Bowles, que coincide con el centenario de Paul, nacido el 30 de diciembre de 1910 en Nueva York, ciudad a la que fueron llevadas sus cenizas tras fallecer en Tánger en 1999.

El congreso, que saca a los dos escritores del purgatorio en el que parecían instalados tras el subidón cinematográfico, arrancó ayer con una visita a la tumba de Jane y siguió con la presentación de cuatro libros que abren nuevos territorios a la zigzagueante geografía de una pareja símbolo de la independencia vital, la libertad sexual y la gran literatura.

Así, a la recopilación de Anagrama -el editor Jorge Herralde inició con Dos damas muy serias su famosa colección amarilla hace 30 años-, se suman tres títulos. El Ayuntamiento de Málaga ha publicado dos joyas, Una pareja en discordia, reedición de una pieza para marionetas de la narradora, y Jane Bowles. Últimos años, monumental recorrido colectivo -de Rodrigo Rey Rosa a John Giorno- por los días malagueños de la escritora que, según el escritor Alfredo Taján, director del Instituto Municipal del Libro, incluye dos grandes novedades. Por un lado, documenta el lugar real de la muerte de Jane, una clínica de reposo dirigida por un neurólogo y no el hogar de acogida de unas monjas como sostiene la versión mítica. Por otro lado, demuestra que Paul no se desentendió nunca de ella. "Pagaba semanalmente la factura de la clínica y la visitaba con cierta frecuencia", cuenta Taján.

La gran novedad, no obstante, es la primera traducción al castellano de En el cenador (Alfama), la obra de teatro estrenada por Jane Bowles en 1953. Para Miguel Martínez-Lage, uno de los traductores, "no extraña que Jane, que tenía un talento fuera de lo normal para los diálogos, terminara escribiendo teatro". Para el otro responsable de la versión, Carlos Pranger, la obra destila lo mejor de la narrativa de la escritora y demuestra que de los dos Bowles, "el genio era ella".

LES ENREGISTREMENT SECRETS

D'APRES RUE89


Hillary, Monica, Maison Blanche : le confident de Clinton se confie
Par Hubert Artus

Alors que Bill Clinton planche encore sur son prochain livre, l'historien Taylor Branch publie sa version de huit ans d'entretiens avec l'ancien président américain, alors à la Maison Blanche. Interview.
Taylor Branch et Bill Clinton sont deux hommes du Sud des Etats-Unis. Ils ont aussi en commun d'avoir collaboré à la campagne de George McGovern au Texas en 1972 :

•l'un deviendra gouverneur de l'Arkansas et président des Etats-Unis, parcours jalonné d'histoires de femmes, de Gennifer Flowers à Monica Lewinsky.
•l'autre deviendra journaliste, historien, et prix Pulitzer 1988 pour le premier tome d'une trilogie de référence : « Parting the waters : America in the [Martin Luther] King Years », retour sur la période 1954-1968.
Un dictaphone à la Maison Blanche

C'est Bill Clinton qui, dès le début de son mandat, demande à Taylor Branch d'être celui à qui il se confierait. Autour de conversations régulières, et enregistrées.

L'exercice est périlleux : depuis 1973 et les enregistrements secrets (connus de beaucoup, imaginés par Ellroy, mais révélés l'an dernier) qui coûtèrent son poste à Nixon, tout dictaphone est devenu à la Maison Blanche un objet aussi suspect qu'un cutter dans un aéroport. Il arrivait même à Clinton de planquer dans ses chaussettes les cassettes enregistrées avec Branch.

Entre 1993 et 2000, Taylor Branch vient régulièrement à la Maison Blanche. Le plus souvent la nuit, quand Clinton essaie de faire le tri entre préoccupations, dossiers et urgences. Et entre deux micro-sommeils, se confie. Résultat : soixante-dix neuf cassettes. Que l'ancien président conserve toujours.

Pas de bombe, pas de scandale sexuel
Publié à l'automne dernier aux Etats-Unis, dans une version plus longue que la version publiée à l'étranger (qui contient des discussions de pure politique intérieure, moins opportune pour le public non américain), « Bill Clinton, les enregistrements secrets » n'est pas la retranscription de ces bandes, mais de celles que Branch enregistrait, seul dans sa voiture ou chez lui, en débriefing de leurs échanges.

Hillary Clinton étant toujours au pouvoir, Branch n'a pas pu trop en dire. Ni sur le scandale Whitewater, qui colle aux époux Clinton, ni sur le couple présidentiel, ni sur la diplomatie. Mais il a tenu à publier ce qu'il pouvait. Le geste n'a pas entièrement apprécié par l'ancien confident.

Ni bombe ni révélation, mais un témoignage d'Histoire sans piédestal : les récriminations mutuelles entre Gore et Clinton suite à la défaite de 2000. Les larmes sur Yitzhak Rabin, le bourbier bosniaque, les homosexuels dans l'armée.

Et quelques cocasseries fumantes : Boris Eltsine bourré, en caleçon devant la résidence des hôtes officiels, hélant un taxi pour aller… s'acheter une pizza, le tout devant des gardes qui ne le reconnaissent pas.

Interview

Quelle a été la réaction du couple Clinton à la parution du livre ?

Je n'en ai pas parlé à Hillary Clinton, car elle est trop occupée comme secrétaire d'Etat.. Bill, lui, m'a dit que c'était quand même inapproprié de faire parler sa femme comme je la fais parler dans le livre [elle parle parfois avec des gros mots, ndlr]. Il est très protecteur avec sa femme et avec sa fille, donc cela ne lui a pas plu.

Que vous disait-il d'inédit, par rapport à ce qu'il disait dans la presse ?

Quand j'arrivais à la Maison Blanche, je ne savais jamais ce qui allait se passer. Il était souvent 22 ou 23 heures. Je ne savais pas dans quel état d'esprit j'allais trouver le Président. Par exemple, un soir où j'arrivais et où j'avais lu dans la presse que son principal dossier du moment était les impôts, il était en fait surtout préoccupé par Boris Eltsine, par la Bosnie, par le Moyen-Orient.

Les enregistrements duraient souvent deux heures. Durant lesquelles son humeur changeait. Il pouvait s'emporter, se fâcher, sur un dossier, puis sur un autre, laisser son esprit voyager. C'est alors qu'il s'autorisait à lâcher des paroles inédites.

Un soir, il m'a parlé longuement d'un sommet économique où se trouvait tout le G7 ainsi que le président vietnamien. On lui avait conseillé de ne pas parler à ce dernier. Mais pour la photo officielle, ils se sont trouvés côté à côté, car dans l'ordre alphabétique, « USA » et « Vietnam » se succédaient…

Du coup, ils ont eu une grande discussion où ils ont parlé de la responsabilité américaine dans la guerre du Vietnam. Clinton n'avait pas dit à la presse le contenu de la discussion, mais il a tenu à m'en parler pour que cela passe à la postérité.

Un des drames de la présidence Clinton, c'est de ne pas avoir eu sa loi sur la réforme du système de santé. Comment pensez-vous qu'il l'ait vécu ?

Clinton prenait les échecs avec philosophie, même s'il passait son temps à se demander pourquoi il avait échoué. Sur la question de la réforme du système de santé, il disait que tous les présidents américains avaient essayé de faire aboutir cette réforme. Il y a six mois, il m'a dit qu'il pensait qu'Obama, lui, y parviendrait…

Ce livre ne contient pas de bombe sur l'affaire Lewinsky, évoquée en trois chapitres seulement. Ne vous en a-t-il vraiment pas parlé ?

Ça a eu lieu vers la fin de sa présidence, en 1998, une période politiquement chargée pour lui. Nous ne nous sommes alors pas beaucoup vus. Et lorsque c'est arrivé, il n'avait pas le droit d'en parler, ses avocats le refusaient.

Et moi, ça me gêne de parler de la vie sexuelle : je n'amenais pas le sujet. Clinton, qui a une tendance naturelle à l'auto-apitoiement, disait cependant qu'il avait mérité ça. Et que ça allait ruiner sa présidence.
Que pensez-vous du couple Clinton ?

Tout le monde voit ce couple comme une perpétuelle guerre des ego, où l'un profite de l'autre pour arriver au pouvoir. J'ai connu la période où, humiliée, Hillary faisait dormir Bill sur le canapé. Mais j'ai aussi vu cette tendresse entre eux, cette chaleur. Je ne sais s'il y a passion sexuelle, mais pour moi ils restent un vrai couple.

Le plus étonnant, c'est qu'Hillary était convaincue que le procès en destitution n'avait aucune base. Pour elle, qui avait travaillé sur celui de Nixon en tant qu'avocate, il était anticonstitutionnel. Alors que Bill se disait que si, ça devait arriver… Pour sa femme, c'était une affaire strictement privée, et non un abus de pouvoir. Il devait donc rester président. En cela aussi, leur relation est très complexe, avant tout basée sur la politique, le pouvoir.

CANETTI INEDITO

DA EL PAIS
Primicia mundial de un Canetti inédito
'Babelia' adelanta el 'Libro de muertos. Apuntes 1942-1988' (Galaxia Gutenberg / Círculo de Lectores) un largo proyecto del Nobel
WINSTON MANRIQUE SABOGAL - Madrid


"Apuntes contra la muerte. Aquí doy comienzo por fin al libro que me había propuesto escribir hace años y decenios". Así empieza Elias Canetti su cuaderno de notas, el 1 de noviembre de 1983. Un proyecto literario que se le ocurrió en los en los años treinta, después de Auto de fe (1935), y que no llegó a concluir, pero que a partir de mañana verá la luz en una edición en primicia mundial bajo el título de Libro de los muertos. Apuntes 1942-1988, editado por Galaxia Gutenberg / Círculo de Lectores, que llega a las librerías esta semana. Pero un avance de esos escritos del premio Nobel lo ofrece hoy Babelia, la revista cultural de este diario, en exclusiva en la edición digital de EL PAÍS

Durante cada día de noviembre y diciembre de aquel 1983, el autor de Masa y poder trató de enderezar, como él mismo dice, ese proyecto que lo acompañó casi toda su vida y donde deja clara su posición en contra de la muerte. La de un intelectual de origen búlgaro pero nacionalizado británico y que escribía en alemán. Aforismos, frases, ideas, pensamientos, oraciones en cuyo género y registro halló Canetti un arma eficaz para ahondar en los vericuetos y resortes del comportamiento humano. Apuntes sabios, reflexivos, geniales, inquietantes, tiernos, inequívocos, tristes, irónicos o alegóricos...

Irónicos: "El currículo antes, el currículo después de la muerte".

Inquietantes: "¡Oh, edad, edad!, ¿habrías muerto con más esperanza antes?"

Revolucionarios: "La mariposa como fantasma de la oruga".

Combativos: "El derecho a hacer que regrese un muerto, uno solo".

Angustiosos: "Él pidió una prórroga a Dios. Éste le dio una hora".ó".

Frases e historias mínimas como estas del Libro de los muertos estuvieron a punto de ser publicadas en Alemania hasta que se descubrió un material nuevo. Entonces se optó por aplazar la edición a fin de investigar, descifrar y estudiar más dichos textos. En vista de que es una labor que no se sabe cuando terminará, la editorial española, Galaxia Gutenberg / Círculo de Lectores, ha decidido avanzar para el mundo hispanohablante ese esperado libro póstumo, con la autorización del editor alemán y de los herederos de Elias Canetti (Bulgaria, 1905-Suiza, 1994). Un volumen donde se aprecia el pensamiento de unos de los escritores e intelectuales fundamentales del siglo XX. El libro consta de varios capítulos con aforismos escritos a los largo de media vida, entre los que destaca el relacionado con sus Apuntes contra la muerte de 1983, cargados de múltiples sentidos.

Son anotaciones de un autor al que Babelia dedicará unas páginas especiales el próximo sábado. Además del análisis de este importante legado inédito de Canetti, sobre su obra y trascendencia general escriben los filósofos y escritores Fernando Savater y José Luis Pardo y la poeta, narradora y filósofa hispano-belga Chantal Maillard. Tres artículos que ayudan a comprender mejor a uno de los pensadores que más ha influido en el mundo contemporáneo. Savater recuerda unas palabras clarificadoras del propio Canetti: "El objetivo serio y concreto, la meta declarada y explícita de mi vida es conseguir la inmortalidad para los hombres". Y en este volumen a través de "apuntes", que como escribe Maillard, "es probablemente la forma literaria que mejor le conviene a la posmodernidad", al condensar en muy pocas palabras historias, pensamientos, ideas, sentimientos, sentidos e intenciones diversas.

Y Elias Canetti no olvidó el secreto que compartimos casi todos: "Desaparecer y no ser encontrado. Gran tentación".

LITERATURE FOR HEALING

DA EL PAIS
La literatura, un arma para curar
El médico polaco Andrzej Szczeklik defiende el poder del arte para ayudar a mejorar a los pacientes

CARLES GELI - Barcelona -
Asesorado durante años por el buen centauro Quirón (el primero en cultivar plantas medicinales), Asclepio adquirió tanta destreza en el arte de curar que, convertido ya en dios de la medicina, se atrevió a resucitar a los muertos. Entonces, Zeus lo partió con un rayo: había cruzado los límites de la existencia humana. Como decía Hipócrates, "la labor del médico ha de ser la de restituir la belleza a las formas del cuerpo", pero ese escalón era excesivo. Es un buen contraste en estos tiempos en los que se desmenuza el ADN, con su forma en espiral que recuerda a la serpiente en la que, según la creencia popular, se había escondido Asclepio y que hoy es símbolo de farmacéuticos y médicos.


"Hoy existe una admiración por el racionalismo de la medicina exagerada"
Todo eso lo recuerda y engarza la eminencia médica Andrzej Szczeklik (Cracovia, 1938) en Catarsis (Acantilado), joya exquisita donde se reflexiona y une medicina, naturaleza, literatura y arte. Y hasta pintura, música y magia. "Hay una estrecha relación entre el estado psíquico del paciente y la enfermedad, pero desconocemos cuál. Por eso, del alma humana sabemos más desde la historia de la literatura que desde los estudios médicos", expone.

De voz queda, pelo plateado y piel blanquecina, como buen sabio humanista es afable y defiende -amén de que el ritmo cardiaco (diferente para todo el mundo) se parece al tempo rubato de Chopin- el encuentro médico-paciente, vital en el primer momento: "Un doctor debe sentir curiosidad por la historia que le cuenta el paciente, este ha de notar que alguien muestra interés por su infortunio. Se trata de recuperar la anamnesis de Platón, esa recogida de datos primera vital".

Los tiempos le contradicen: para abaratar costes, se va hacia la reducción de esa dedicación al mínimo. "Eso está en crisis fruto de la masificación por una mayor esperanza de vida y la tecnificación, que lo pretende sustituir por máquinas. No es un consuelo pero también nos afecta: The Lancet recogía ya el fenómeno del síndrome del quemado laboral entre médicos; perdemos sensibilidad ante el enfermo", concluye. ¿Una solución? "Volver a las buenas prácticas de la medicina, no todo han de ser TAC y resonancias. Muchas enfermedades no son nada importante: hablando, escuchando y recetando cosas básicas y sencillas darían el mismo resultado y se rebajarían costes".

Mantiene el iconoclasta Szczeklik (sí, el mismo que ha publicado más de 600 artículos en revistas científicas y que ha sido premiado por The Lancet) que un diagnóstico correcto al 100% es imposible porque la enfermedad en el ser humano escapa siempre de lo racional. "Se da una admiración por el racionalismo médico que es exagerada; la gente viene a verte con una fe infinita, y yo me pasaba noches reflexionando; es importante que sepan que también somos humanos". Por ello reivindica: "La intuición y la imaginación son capitales para el médico". Y cita a Paracelso, el galeno taumaturgo que curó a 18 reyes y príncipes ya desahuciados por colegas suyos, en parte por los conocimientos que le transmitieron barberos, pastores y gitanas. De ahí el reclamo de una formación humanista para el doctor: "Eso nos ayuda a desarrollar la sensibilidad".

Sobre las alarmas mundiales ante las pandemias, intereses multinacionales aparte, incorpora la idea de "memoria genética", que hace que la gente "recuerde la peste negra o la gripe española".

Si Osiris pone el corazón del eminente médico en su famosa balanza para juzgarle cuando fallezca, verá que pesará menos que una pluma. Es limpio. Lo prueba, por ejemplo, su opinión sobre las terapias alternativas: "El deber más importante de un médico hoy es dar esperanza; el sistema nervioso y el inmunológico están conectados, si bien aún no lo sabemos todo; por eso no me importa que mis pacientes se vayan a ver a un curandero si no hay contraindicación. Si la medicina clásica no sabe ayudar al paciente y éste tiene fe en que aquello le puede curar, por mí, adelante; lo que es vital es mantener su fe".

Bajo esa suave voz no rehúye el galeno la polémica, como la decadencia de la vejez. Y ahí cita a su compatriota Juan Pablo II como ejemplo de lo que es mantener el dolor y el sufrimiento hasta el final. "El culto al éxito de la sociedad de hoy obliga a no admitir esos temas; el Papa no se escondió ante ellos. Debemos dar sentido al dolor, sólo así lo superamos".