{"id":62310,"date":"2019-02-02T21:35:30","date_gmt":"2019-02-02T21:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=62310"},"modified":"2019-02-03T08:38:19","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T08:38:19","slug":"we-should-start-with-lenin-musing-on-beethoven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=62310","title":{"rendered":"We should start with Lenin musing on Beethoven"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron<\/strong> &#8212; music, mildness and massacres &#8212; do we have a scalpel that can peel the mildness back to explain where the massacres come from? ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lenin listens, muses:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>From the Russian film, <em>Appassionate<\/em>, Here&#8217;s <strong>Lenin <\/strong>listening and, towards the end, musing, to the music:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zE80aVH1YXw\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Vladimir Lenin asks Rudolf Kehrer to play Beethoven&#8217;s Appassionata, Piano Sonata no. 23, op. 57, and at the end says, &#8216;Nothing I know is better than the Appassionata&#8217;. &#8230; The footage comes from this rare film entitled Appassionata: <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here&#8217;s the full Lenin quote:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I know of nothing better than the Appassionata and could listen to it every day. What astonishing, superhuman music! It always makes me proud, perhaps with a childish naivet\u00e9, to think that people can work such miracles! \u2026 But I can\u2019t listen to music very often, it affects my nerves. I want to say sweet, silly things, and pat the little heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty. These days, one can\u2019t pat anyone on the head nowadays, they might bite your hand off. Hence, you have to beat people&#8217;s little heads, beat mercilessly, although ideally we are against doing any violence to people. Hm \u2014 what a devilishly difficult job!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Some people already know this quote, some don&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p><strong>Here, Lang Lang plays Beethoven&#8217;s Appassionata in its colossal entirety:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eoIkpHCDlkg\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mildness and massacres.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Hitler<\/strong>, who began as an art student, liked <strong>Wagner<\/strong>; <strong>Lenin <\/strong>liked <strong>Beethoven<\/strong>. Shall we blame classical music for the Shoah and Gulags?<\/p>\n<p>Somehow, if we could peel back the mildness, we might find the massacres. Does anyone have a <strong>suitable psychiatric or spiritual scalpel<\/strong>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; music, mildness and massacres &#8212; do we have a scalpel that can peel the mildness back to explain where the massacres come from? ] . Lenin listens, muses: From the Russian film, Appassionate, Here&#8217;s Lenin listening and, towards the end, musing, to the music: Vladimir Lenin asks Rudolf Kehrer to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1646,575,526,296,123,1782,1783,480,757,295,840,1784,436,1,1785],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beethoven","category-character","category-charles-cameron","category-hitler","category-lang","category-lenin","category-marx","category-music","category-musings","category-nazis","category-paradox","category-psychiatry","category-psychology","category-uncategorized","category-wagner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62310"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62347,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62310\/revisions\/62347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}