Thomas Kastura
Military hospital in St. Petersburg, 1881
Mussorgsky is dying.
Mussorgsky aroused
Viktor? Is that you, Viktor?
Doctor
Calm down, Modest Petrowitsch, easy now.
Mussorgsky
Who is speaking? Where am I?
Doctor
You are in the Nikolay military hospital and I am your doctor. You are in a safe place and nobody coerces you into leaving from here.
Mussorgsky delirious
But I have to revise my opera. No, I have to go on duty and afterwards I have to revise my opera. Or no, I will revise my opera at first and then I will go on duty. And I have to meet my friend Viktor. Meeting Viktor at first, then the opera, then the duty. Where is my coat?
Doctor
You aren’t in the civil service anymore long since. And Viktor Hartmann has been dead for eight years. You have to go nowhere. Nurse!
First Nurse
They have kicked him out,
Second Nurse
Because he has drunk like a fish!
First Nurse
They have barracked his opera,
Second Nurse
Because it has arisen from a bizarre mind.
First Nurse
”Mussorgsky is almost an idiot”,
Second Nurse
said Stassow and Balakirew.
Doctor
Stop mocking the sick. quietly While he hasn’t much time left to live.
Mussorgsky
Oh Viktor! Let’s walk down to the Newa together and feed the swans. You take your sketch book along and I my sheet music. Then we go watching the people and the animals and render them just as they are: elegant and ugly, funny and grumpy, happy and disheartened. Then our eyes follow the ships putting out to sea and we lose the measure of time, dozing in the unmeasured.
Doctor
I am leaving you now, Modest Petrowitsch. to the nurses And you take care, that he doesn’t run away again hanging around in the streets like a beggar. This man used to be a talented musician, and a patriot!
Mussorgsky
And when we have seen enough among all the turkeys doing cartwheels, who are asking their wifes out in their Sunday best, we head for the ”Little Yaroslavl” and party until witching hour! Then shall flow champaign until the crack of dawn, mon ami! Then you have to tell me about your travels! France, Italy, Poland! I would die for seeing the Tuileries gardens one day. I myself got just as far as Moscow in my younger days. What a city was that compared to our St. Petersburg! It took me to another world – the world of the past, which is indeed full of abominations, but, I don’t know why, is highly appealing to me. You know what? So far I have been a cosmopolitan, but now I am going through some metamorphosis: all Russian appears close and familiar to me. I think, I am seriously starting to love Russia.
First Nurse
He skipped the army,
Second Nurse
our mister patriot.
First Nurse
He wanted to become a ”musician”
Second Nurse
and was barely able to read music.
First Nurse
Dandified tinkling,
Second Nurse
to impress the ladies.
Mussorgsky
The fair sex is at our feet, dear friend! We can reach everything, really everything! Let our fellow campaigners resign themselves to their bourgeois existences: Cui, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakow. A ”Mighty Handful” I have called them, but how cowardly are they turning to their cheap marriages and life annuities! Without banner, without desires; without looking into the distance and without even trying, they are diligently tinkering with things, that have been done long ago, that nobody is asking for. If I had just as much leisure for my opera! If one agreed to a vacation only – my pen would break into a gallop across the music paper immediately. It’s about time. In my head I have composed almost everything. It just needs to get written down and written down. But the service doesn’t allow this. After all, the creative spirit is so difficult to capture! More whimsical than the most capricious grand coquette! You have to catch it by complying with its unpredictable instructions altogether. A ballet of unhatched chicks in their shells, that is the inspiration!
First Nurse
Quite pompous and self-righteous
Second Nurse
appears this vain gnome,
First Nurse
When he gets into his stride once more.
Second Nurse
He considers himself to be the greatest
First Nurse
and in case of doubt
Second Nurse
he will always tuck his tail between the legs.
Mussorgsky
I don’t go to Liszt. The great Liszt! Invite me to Weimar! But I won’t go there. Stassow would pay for the travel, but I won’t go there. My duties make it impossible for me. I cannot leave my superiors in the lurch. And my opera needs to be finished as well. And in addition: What’s the point of staying with the Germans? There you find the best example of musical servitude: adoration of conservatory wisdom and routine, beer and evil-smelling cigars, music and beer, evil-smelling cigars and music ”into the green”. Liszt indeed, Liszt has composed collosal works only, with few exceptions. But what does he know about the Russian? No, no, I don’t go there. You would set out without hesitation, dear Viktor, I am sure. I am staying here. Composing isn’t a halfhearted business, or loose pastime, is it? Surrender to mankind completely – that is what art is asking for! It leaves me sleepless. Just like the silence. When you hear the whispering leaves at dusk sounding like a harp glissando, how could you sleep then? In addition the invisible moon, that is creeping through the foliage directly to the head end. So gently and silently.
First Nurse
Look, the drunkard is receiving a visit
Second Nurse
by a “singer”!
First Nurse
Looks pretty wrecked
Second Nurse
Darya Leonowa, an ”alto singer”
First Nurse
And with her he is said to have been on tour?
Second Nurse
In Odessa. Well, the ”mature ladies”…
Mussorgsky
Mummy? Do you read again something from Baba Yaga? About the witch with fowl’s legs? With coal eyes? And her wild ride throught night and wind? Like in the old days, when you gave me piano lessons. Rescue your poor son, Mummy! Let a tear drop fall on his sick head!
Leonowa
It’s me, Musinka.
Mussorgsky
A breath of love and warmth comes from this word. Nobody else than you, Dear Ms Leonowa, I want to allow to call me like that. But who can I allow it? Almost all of them are dead. The women died on me one after the other.
First Nurse
”A dark-storm cloud
Second Nurse
Has hidden the little star,
First Nurse
The cold earth
Second Nurse
Has taken the lass.”
Mussorgsky coming to himself, cheerful
That comes from me. I have written that, for my cousin. Back then I was … eighteen, when she died. It was my first song.
Leonowa
Oh Musinka, you are fully conscious! You aren’t delirious anymore. aside Doctor, please come, he has a lucid moment!
Doctor comes running
Can you hear me, Modest Petrowitsch?
Mussorgsky pause, delirious again
Guilt, Viktor, I have incurred guilt.
Doctor
It’s meaningless, he is delirious again.
Leonowa sad
Somewhere else again.
Mussorgsky
When you suffered a stroke, Viktor, I was so helpless. You collapsed, and what did I do? I stood aside and countered with hackneyed commonplaces, with outrageous callousness and all the evil mud of social conventions! This is the whole misfortune, that we don’t recognize the danger for someone else before he is already drowning or else laying down to die. Man is a blockhead. And even if he has a seven spans high forehead, he will remain a hopeless blockhead! In such cases we blockheads usually get comforted by the tunes: ”He” isn’t anymore, but what he has created lives and will live, and few people may be fortunate enough not to be forgotten. This is such a nonsense again! One shall and may not calm down! There shall and may be no comfort – this is a rotten morality! very upset I’m responsible for your death, dear friend, me only, and only I have to grieve for you. The pictures, that you painted, soon will be turned to dust. I give you my pictures, as if they were yours, with notes I’m painting castles, build a golden gate for you, that you can stride through after dark night in the realm of catacombs. With the dead in the language of the dead, one last word, one last embrace – that is, what …dies
Modest Petrowitsch Mussorgsky, born in 1839, died on 28 March 1881 in loneliness and misery. Since the age of nineteen he suffered continuously from ”nervous fever” and succumbed to alcoholism. His music was made a mockery of and praised equally.
Amongst others he left the piano suite ”Pictures at an Exhibition” (1874), translating ten pictures by the painter Viktor Hartmann into sounds. He sought to tie his art to life as closely as possible. It was only after his death that his importance was recognized.
© Thomas Kastura, translation by Thomas Michel

Mussorgsky’s death room. View over the Newa.