Sergey Prokofiev: Diaries 1907-1914. Prodigious Youth. Ed. by Anthony Phillips.

Abstract

Diary-keeping, like letter-writing, is increasingly a lost art in the twenty-first century. But at the time Prokofiev was writing his diary, it was a normal part of Russian middle-class life; several of his contemporaries who feature in his early diary kept diaries themselves, notably Nikolay Myaskovsky (who later disposed of much of it, retaining only selected portions). Indeed, despite the obvious dangers of keeping any written record of one's personal feelings and experiences in the Soviet Union, many diaries were nevertheless kept and even later published, while letters were lovingly treasured. Prokofiev—in his 20s when the Bolshevik Revolution took place—began to keep a diary in safer times. He was particularly fortunate in having a mother who was both astutely aware of his talent and understanding of her son's precocious tendency to note things down. When he was 12, she presented him with his first diary, with the instruction to ‘write down in this everything that comes into your head’ . Prokofiev fortunately did not take this advice literally, but the diary did function as an important outlet for the relentlessly analytical side of his character. Struggling to establish easy, uncomplicated relationships with his Conservatoire peers, the young Prokofiev works through his own difficulties and personal flaws in his diary with a frankness that he concealed from most of the people around him. At times displeased with his behaviour, at others confessing that he hardly knew what motivated it, at times gleefully noting points scored off his rivals and friends alike, Prokofiev's diary charts the rise and fall of numerous friendships and romantic liaisons alongside his professional successes and discouragements. At the time of writing it, he could not have known that it would come to represent far more than his own life and thoughts. His was the last generation of Russian youth to enjoy the freedoms and comfort of middle-class city life. How it felt to be a student in the St Petersburg Conservatoire where Rimsky-Korsakov was still director; how it was possible to travel around Russia in the comfort of a first-class compartment on a steam train and take country walks just a short tram ride outside the city; how the youth of Prokofiev's time enjoyed each others’ company in salons, at balls, and in their parents’ country dachas: it is impossible to read these pages without feeling regret, not only for the way in which Soviet power dismantled so much of the simple pleasures that Prokofiev's generation was the last to enjoy, but for the passing of a way of life that is gone for ever.