Why do we love Shostakovich?

Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich was born on September 25,1906 in St.Petersburg.
The centenary of his birth represents an opportunity to rediscover his complete work, but also an invitation to learn about the extremely difficult conditions under which it has been created. On January 28, 1936, the PRAVDA published a critical comment on the successful composer, then 29 years old, under the title "chaos instead of music". Stalin had decided that Soviet culture had to serve the regime and had to be produced according to the principles of "socialist realism". Thousands of artists where confronted not only with a fundamental critique of their work, but with the concrete risk of physical liquidation. Thousands died in Sibirian labour camps or were executed, on the ground of the suspicion that they were part of a Trotzkyist counterrevolution (e.g. actor/director Vsevolod Meyerhold or film critic Aleksander Arosev, author of "Le Cinéma en URSS" , VOKS 1935)
Foreigners, such as the "brigade May", a group of German and Swiss avantgarde architects that had come to the Soviet Union to help build the "Socialist City", had to leave the country (among them Margarethe Schütte-Lihotsky of Vienna and Hans Schmidt of Basel).
Shostakovich survived by adapting his work to the demands of Stalin, but he had to live, from 1936 on, under the continuous threat to become the target of prosecutionn like so many of his friends.
Now, as the late Swiss composer Jacques Wildberger is cited in an article written by
Marco Frei in todays "Neue Zeitung Zeitung" Nr.221:65 under the title "tragikomische Maskenspiele eines Gottesnarren", Shostakovich changed his composition style into an "absurd too much". Some specialists of Shostakovich describe a hidden (ironizing) message between the lines of Shostakovich compositions befor, during and after World War II.
Paradoxically, it seems that the most appreciated and most frequently interpreted works of Shostakovich to this day are the works created after 1937, according to the
rules imposed by the dictator Stalin.
Why is this so? Are we becoming Stalinists again without knowing it? Are we too naïve to understand the irony in the bombastic sound blasts that end his symphonies?
Or are we sensitive enough to discover the hidden message of a composer whose life was filled with fear...?


http://filelefteros.blogspot.com

Recommended Reading for insights into "pre-hellenistic" (or "pre-European") philosophical traditions:

Indus Churning: Indian and Islamic philosophy

http://filelefteros.blogspot.com

On the Ownership of Reason, Faith - and of God?

During his recent journey to Bavaria, Pope Benedict XVI held a lecture at the University of Regensburg,the text of which is on display at the Vatican's website.
It's content can be summarized as follows:

a. (Christian) theology is a scientific discipline equal in it's quality to the natural sciences
b. (Christian) theological reasoning is anchored in Greek philosophy, and thus a European achievement, whereas modern scientific reasoning, starting with the Reformation, has been "dehellenized", and therefore has lost it's roots
c. (Christian) theology postulates that God acts always according to "logos" (reason, meaning, ger. Vernunft, fr. raison)
d. In contrast to Christian Faith, Islam considers God as being completely transcendental, above and free of the realm of reason
e. The (European) concept of reason as outlined above does not permit conversion to faith by force

These are fascinating thought, and they have been presented in elegant rhetorical
phrasing.

But there remain some burning questions:

The Pope explicitly criticized the right (or the obligation) to convert non-believers to faith by force according to the Q'ran, on the ground of reason.
Now, history teaches us that during the reconquista, the Muslim and Jewish population of Spain has been converted to (catholic) Christianism by crude force and the same occurred to the indigenous populations of South America, by troups of Christian faith, accompanied and tutored by catholic priests. Critical voices within the Church were (e.g. Bartolomeo de las Casas)existed, but it took several hundred years before
the critique of colonial mission was seriously addressed.
The central question remains how reasoning, anchored in an uninterrupted theological tradition for more than two thousand years, explain this attitude? The answer: it is the reason (and the arrogance) of power.
What is the role of the Catholic Church in the balance of power? According to Pope Benedict XVI, the Church is the only legitimate guardian of reason, has the capacity to appopriate itself the idea of God by subjecting it to reason (as defined above) and through this connection, the Church has acquired the exclusive "ownership" of the only possible reasonable concept of God...
To become a shareholder of the reasonable concept of God, you have to behave reasonably within the framework of the Church and to obey to it's teachings.

Pope Benedict XVI once more demonstrates the incredible perfection and the internal logic of his global enterprise called Catholic Church. In the logic of the CEO and Chairman of God's Enterprise, non-Catholic Christian believers, can at best trade derivatives of reason and of faith...


http://filelefteros.blogspot.com

Is English (still) a Foreign Language in Switzerland?
L'Anglais peut-il (encore) être considéré comme une langue étrangère?
Ist Englisch (noch) eine Fremdsprache in der Schweiz?

La Suisse est le pays des contradictions organisées. Une bataille acharnée est actuellement en cours entre les différents cantons de langue allemande pour déterminer quelle doit être la première langue étrangère a être enseignée à l'école primaire.
Pour comprendre ce qui se passe, il faut savoir que l'instruction publique a toujours été et reste à ce jour un domaine de souveraineté des 26 cantons dans ce pays hyperfédéraliste.
Ce qui est particulièrement intéressant, c'est le fossé qui s'est créé le 13 septembre 2006 entre les deux (demi-)cantons de Bâle-Ville et de Bâle-Campagne sur fond de la décision du parlement cantonal (Grand Conseil) de Bâle-Ville (37 kilomètres carrés, 170,000 habitants) d'introduire d'abord le Français, puis l'Anglais, et du gouvernement de Bâle-Campagne (capitale: Liestal, située 25 km à l'Est de la ville de Bâle) d'introduire d'abord l'Anglais, puis le Français.
Si le parlement de Bâle-Campagne suit son gouvernement, un élève e 8 ans dont les parents commettront l'erreur de changer de domicile entre les deux cantons pendanrt la période critique, risque de perdre ou bien une année de Français ou d'Anglais.
Peut importe, ce phénomène correspond parfaitement à l'image caricatural que le grand écrivain suisse Gottfried Keller avait dressé au 19ème siècle de son pays dans ses oeuvres (Seldwyla, Martin Salander).

Mais il y a une question de fond plus importante encore: peut-on considérer la langue anglaise comme langue étrangère dans un monde où elle sert de plus en plus de base élémentaire de communication (science, informatique, technique etc.).
L'Anglais a bien sûr des qualités culturelles indéniables. Mais si on n'est pas aveugle, il faut savoir que nos enfants commencent à parler l'Angalis dès qu'il savent se servir d'un quelconque gadget technique.
Si on veut donc enseigner une langue qui s'insère dans un contexte culturel (et régional) il faut tout d'abord s'occuper des voisins. Et pour les cantons qui forment
la Confédération Helvétique, ces voisins parlent d'abord Allemand, Français,Italien et Romanche. La lingua franca Anglais ne peut plus être considérée comme langue étrangère...

English Abstract:

Switzerland is the land of organized contradictions. The educational system is under the sovereignty of the 26 cantons. Considerable efforts have been undertaken by the cantonal governments to reduce the differences between the 26 school systems without giving up their educational sovereignty. These efforts have only recently produced a program for harmonization of curricula which is called HARMOS and which has been supported by a popular vote for a modification of the federal constitution earlier this year. Now, the cantons are obliged to coordinate their curricula within the borders of the linguistic regions (German, French, Italian and Romanche).
This taks has lead to grotsque disputes these days, since the German-speaking cantons
are not unanimous about the question whether English or French should be taught as the first foreign language. The author of these lines puts the question into a context, where English is considered first as an international technical communication tool, a lingua franca that should be learned as soon as children are able to manage technical gadgets, i.e. at kindergarten age. English may be as important as French or German or Italian etc. as a cultural language, but if cultural traditions and neighbourhood relations are considered important - as is the case in multilingual Switzerland, it might be more important to learn the (foreign) language of the direct neighbours prior to cultural English.
Hopefully, the discussion just opened in Switzerland will give us new insights
on the importance of language skills and the best modaities to teach and to learn them.

http://filelefteros.blogspot.com

What does the loss of children do to their parents?

Swiss Radio may be an old-fashioned medium with little impact, but it offers some great features on fascinating subjects. One such feature has been today's interview by senior literary moderator Hans Ulrich Probst of Italian writer Chiara Palazzolo on her novel published in Italy in 2003 "I bambini sono tornati" (Piemme, ISBN 8838472157), now available in a German translation "Die Kinder sind wieder da" (Bertelsmann, Munich, ISBN 3570009076).

In her novel, Palazzolo describes the torment of a young couple living in Calabria, Italy, after the accidental killing of their two children by a rowdy car driver, and the different modes of coping of the mother and the father. The process of mourning and coping is narrowly linked to and influenced by the local cultural background with it's omertà (the law of silence)...

The impression of the scenery and the psychological plot of the book was enhanced by Hans Ulrich Probst's technique of presenting the text with an acoustic overlay: The simultaneous lecture of the italian original by the Italian author in person and the German translation by actress Susanne Marie Wrage.
For those who would like to listen to the feature,check out the links Radio DRS2

Let's close for once with a recommendation instead of a question:
Chiara Palazzolo should be encouraged to publish her text in as many languages as possible.
The problems it addresses are far from comforting, but they might be helpful in the process of coping for parents who mourn the loss of their children worldwide

Dress Code, Tolerance, Intolerance and Free Thought

Dress Codes have been a great tradition for at least three centuries in Europe, and black has prevailed from the conservative ultra-catholic elite of Spain to the protestant parish priests of Northern Europe. Housewives and nuns had to cover their heads with what we might now describe as chador in rural areas of Europe until lately.
Now, these dress codes did not prevent the development of free thought, free speech,
trade, constitutional law or democracy, and it can be taken for granted that those who helped shape the content of modernity (Hume, Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire etc.) had no problem complying with the dress code of their time.

In recent times, nudity or relative nudity (depending on climatic conditions) have taken the lead in Western dress code. Within less than two generations,traditional dress and behavioural codes have been swept away. Is this proof of decadence and debauchery considered specific for Western societies as many religious authorities
claim?

Looking at what happened about 90 years ago in a tiny village called Ascona on the shores of Lago Maggiore (one of big alpine lakes of Northern Italy, the waters of which are shared by the Swiss Canton of Ticino and the Italian regions of Piemonte and Lombardy),we may reconsider the function of nudity for the development of modern societies.

During the first decade of the 20th century, the devotedly catholic citizens of Ascona saw the arrival of a bunch of young people from wealthy German and Belgian families who settled on a nearby hill called Monte Verità ("Hill of Truth"),
started to walk around stark naked and to talk about "return to nature" (according to what they interpreted as the teachings of Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau).
The Monte Verità colony was in fact a precursor of the Hippie movement in California , nearly sixty years later.

Thanks to the solid commercial talents of the Asconese, the initial clash of the cultures was followed by the development of Ascona into a tourist resort which it has remained since, being transformed slowly into a kind of "Swiss little Florida", with a population made up predominantly by elderly retired people from the German-speaking part of Switzerland and Germany. Nudity is no longer needed to maintain the attraction of the place.

Returning to the question of the importance of a dress code for culture in general, it is interesting to speculate if the strict dress code of the actual Iranian regime imposed predominantly on women - interestingly, men are encouraged to wear open shirts displaying their hairy chests without restriction - will in the long term enhance the development of free thought, free speech, free debate on controversial subjects, including the encouragement of scientific scrutiny of ascred scriptures
without risk of capital punishment, respect for the religious beliefs of others etc.etc.
If this speculation had a minimal chance of turning into reality, should then Western societies reconsider their own dress codes in order to restore the respect of the muslim world for their culture and thereby increase the chances for mutual respect and tolerance? Or should we staunchly refuse to cover the bellies of our female adolescents with a minimum of textile material, as proof of our freedom?
Would a reduction of large scale public nudity restore our self-confidence or would it be a sign of weakness in the intercultural debate on values?
Osservatore Profano has no answer to this question, and this is why it appears on this blog...

Boat people, toxic waste and the neo-colonization of Africa

According to a news bulletin by AFP (september 4, 2006), susbtantiated by Swiss Radio in an interview with a local correspondent, on september 5, several hundreds of inhabitants of the capital of Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Abidjan, have been hospitalized with symptoms of serious intoxication after the deposition of liquid toxic waste in different locations of the city, two weeks ago. According to the correspondent, the material had been unloaded from a ship sailing under a Panamean flag, after several unsuccessful attempts of the ship's captain to get rid of his cargo at various ports on the coast of West Africa. The material in question is believed to contain waste from oil refineries somewhere in Europe. A company based in Lucerne, Switzerland (Trafigura Ltd.)
has been said to be involved in one step of the multi-level commissioning of the transport. Whatever the nature of the waste, and whatever it's origin, it is interesting to observe that economic relations between Europe and Africa tend to concentrate on an exchange of toxic waste against boat people.

China and Russia continue a strategic build-up of their presence in Africa, the Chinese in Eastern and Central Africa, the Russians with concentrating on South Africa, as President Putin's visit to the RSA clearly demonstrates.

Questions:
a) How can Africans be persuaded to stay on their continent instead of fleeing to Europe, as long as there are enterprises in Europe that consider Africa as being the ideal dumping station for their toxic waste?

b) How can Africans get rid of colonialist suppression if they continue to replace European colonists by new ones from China and Russia?

Your Answer?

There are certainly enough blogs around, but maybe it's useful to share some questions that are not asked too frequently with others that ask similar questions, and, why not, find some answers that have never made it to the surface before.

Some of the questions may hurt your feelings as a reader, but this is never intentional, and some of the answers may be painful, too, but this could be helpful in the long range.

Osservatore Profano