James Findlay Hendry, ‘[Review of] Lady Macbeth of Mzensk’ Left Review 2/6 (March 1936), 272-3.
The opera justifies view of Shostakovich as ‘the greatest exponent of Socialist realism’, but also ‘throws an interesting sidelight on the development of socialist realism. That realism should presumably pin the spectator down and permit of no escape from the social problem awaiting solution in actual fact. In music the content desirable is therefore clear. Whether the divergent interests of the classes be emphasized, the decadence and emptiness of capitalist society or the horror of working-class conditions, the theme is the same: victory, prophesied, realized, or implied, for socialism. But the form? How is music to avoid “escapism” despite the help rendered in the opera by the pictorial art? The composer attempting to incorporate in his work the necessary adjuncts, irony and objectivity, places himself, says Constant Lambert, at a disadvantage compared with the plastic artist. But objectivity and subjectivity are terms that sadly need some definition. Like Classic and Romantic they are outworn tags indefinite in outline and shading off into each other. Objective reality in the Socialist sense is nothing if not the sum total of all subjective reality and experience, coincident and supplementary, but not clashing. To postulate a superhuman objective reality is to postulate a Christian God. But the task of Socialism, despite Leavis’s interpretation of Marx, is one essentially Humanist, and Socialist realism attains objective reality by canalizing and crystallizing the subjective experience of workers in the “struggle of millions”. That Shostakovich has done. It is, too, precisely the preservation of this subjective experience which, in the problem of propaganda, retains the integrity of the artist. Unless an artist really feels the emotions he expresses, his art and therefore his propaganda is bad. That is why it is difficult for the “public school-‘varsity” poet like Auden or Spender, however sincere, to produce propaganda good enough to be good poetry. … [Shostakovich’s] music stands still. It poses for the audience. It stamps up and down, and when it moves about it becomes satire, slinking round one like an omnipresent shadow. Never does it disappear in dreams and carry one with it.’. Revolutionary aspect is the music: ‘objective psychopathy’, unlike Berg or Gogol. ‘Elusive and ubiquitous as a will o’ the wisp, it does not charm or fascinate in an escapist sense. The dramatic intensity, the satire and depth of psychological meaning originate in the theme of a disordered society, and make of the music a polished weapon hard and bright. It does not in fact depict the crime and callousness of capitalist society. It reflects it, and it reflects it, as in a world struggling towards Socialism it should reflect it, right back at the audience.
