🎬 Olga Berggolts and the siege of Leningrad.
A city suffers an 872-day Nazi siege. It's the longest in recorded history. Their survival, and ultimate victory is led by a poet, in a testament to the ⚡️ of art.
I’ve been reading Symphony for the City of the Dead.
It’s about Dmitri Shostakovich, and the impact of his 7th Symphony, which he composes and presents in the midst of the most brutal siege in world history1.
Bombs fall, and the people of Soviet St. Petersberg starve for two and a half years. Their tenacity, and ultimate victory against a concerted attempt at total annihilation is one of the most moving things I’ve ever read. Perhaps it’s because the victory ultimately belonged to the artists of the city.
Their determination to create and present music, theatre and poetry throughout the siege, to study at the library every day, under conditions so dire that a lead actor starves to death halfway through a public performance of The Three Musketeers (to give just one example), is inseparable from the political and military actions required to liberate the city.
In fact, the efforts of the artists to maintain the morale and humanity of the citizens are arguably the cornerstone of that vict…