You know, I would prefer ‘In a Frontline Forest’ over ‘We’ll Meet Again’ if I were a soldier, and this not because of my nationality, but only because the Russian song sounds less manipulative. It doesn’t really say that I (in my capacity of a soldier, that is) would necessarily meet my sweetheart again; instead of it, it very coolly warns me that anything, including my own death, can happen, which is of course less comforting, but more honest. The song doesn’t tell lies, the only comfort that it gives being the idea that everyone can die only once—which is completely true, by the way. So why do we still want to see it as an attempt at manipulation?
Would you also like to regard, say, St Luke’s Gospel, the whole of it, as a single piece of propaganda, just because it appeals to our emotionality rather than to our intelligence? Some of you would probably answer affirmatively which then would allow me to say that the Russian song we are talking about is in a good company.
As for this song being ‘too simplistic,’ in terms of its philosophy, in particular, and ‘soldier’s philosophy’ in general, I would give you a lengthy quotation from A Christmas Sermon by Robert Louis Stevenson, a Scottish novelist and travel writer of the 19th century.
An unconscionable time a-dying—there is the picture (“I am afraid, gentlemen,”) of your life and of mine. The sands run out, and the hours are “numbered and imputed,” and the days go by; and when the last of these finds us, we have been a long time dying, and what else? The very length is something, if we reach that hour of separation undishonoured; and to have lived at all is doubtless (in the soldierly expression) to have served. There is a tale in Tacitus of how the veterans mutinied in the German wilderness; of how they mobbed Germanicus, clamouring to go home; and of how, seizing their general's hand, these old, war-worn exiles passed his finger along their toothless gums. Sunt lacrymae rerum [Latin for ‘There are tears for things’]: this was the most eloquent of the songs of Simeon. And when a man has lived to a fair age, he bears his marks of service. He may have never been remarked upon the breach at the head of the army; at least he shall have lost his teeth on the camp bread.
Our live, when seen from this perspective, is not much more than a long term that we serve in the army, at the end of which term there is time for us to ‘lay in earth’ (and this is precisely what the Russian song promises that we will do). Sunt lacrymae rerum, indeed (the phrase itself derives from Book I, line 462 of the Aeneid by Virgil; I would be happy to hear your own interpretation of it). Even things have their tears, much more us humans; but even so, it still makes sense to live, because—allow me to repeat it—‘[t]he very length is something, if we reach that hour of separation undishonoured.’ (Does it sound as Mandarin Chinese to you, I wonder?)
Let me dwell upon three or maybe four essential details of this song before we finish, the first of them being the musical genre it belongs to. Technically speaking, it is a waltz, and a very quiet one: it calms you down, it gives you a few minutes of deep relaxation that I guess a soldier in the frontline needs so much. Let me please share with you some personal, very personal details: twice in my life, I was very close to ‘deserting the army,’ to use the metaphor by Robert Louis Stevenson. It was some very calm and soothing songs that helped me go through these periods both times, ‘In a Frontline Forest’ being one of them. I do say that the song has an almost psychotherapeutic effect—on me, at least.
Do you know that its melody originates from Songe d’Automne, a waltz written in 1908 by Archibald Joyce, an English light music composer? This is exactly Songe d’Automne that the unnamed accordionist is playing and his comrades are listening to. The waltz in question was very popular in Soviet Russia before WWII, the Great Patriotic War, or simply the War, as Russians often call it. This brings me to my second thought, namely, that of the importance of music that literally builds bridges between cultures. I know that the thought has long become a banality—which fact doesn’t make it less true. The unknown Soviet soldiers were fighting to restore peace on earth that would allow them to go back to their beloved ones whom they first met when they went dancing along Songe d’Automne; it is, therefore, not very wrong to say that the waltz, written by a British composer, was a part of what they were fighting for. Is culture—or art—valuable in itself? What or whom would you rescue from a burning house: a Nazi, a Rembrandt, or a cat? A great question which is falsely attributed to Marseille Proust—in fact, it was Alberto Giacometti who authors it. I will be happy to learn your answers to it in less than twenty minutes.
Whichever way you answer it, the very fact that the unknown Soviet soldiers were eager to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of a waltz—this fact may take your breath away. Things are not that Kafkaesque, of course: this waltz requires a world where waltzes, written by British composers, still can be played, this world being exactly what the soldiers were fighting for. We are completely unable to empathise with their state of mind, to reflect it in our mind as long as we refuse to deal with the concepts of duty and sacrifice. It is precisely the readiness to sacrifice your own life that makes even your death—‘in fire, in smoke’—a relatively simple matter. Can we still deal with this concept, though, ‘over-intelligent’ as we are? Are we up to it? The world we live in has become a very safe place over the last fifty years. In the world of today, it is no longer needed to sacrifice one’s own life, and the idea that each human life is invaluable has long become a commonplace with us. What if it is not? What I mean to say is: aren’t there some things that are still more valuable than the life of an individual?
Duty is another very important word whose meaning we probably are unable to understand as long as we do not reject our individualism, as long as we pretend that it is this very individualism that is ein feste Burg, a mighty fortress of our weltanschauung. Over the last century, the word duty became somewhat pale: we do not use such phrases as ‘your sacred duty is to give up your life for the sake of your own country’ any longer. We instinctively feel that there is too much pathos in them. We are simply not up to this pathos, so we just call such phrases ‘pathetic’—forgive the unintentional pun. We seem to fully misinterpret the very concept of duty which we see as something external, as a task that can be forced upon a person. When a teacher says that an essay is ‘due tomorrow’ he or she means that he or she is able to academically penalise those students who won’t submit their compositions by tomorrow and that he or she most certainly will do so. It works very nicely with things that are less important than your life, but this reading of the concept becomes impossible when it is your life that is asked from you. You absolutely cannot force a person to sacrifice his or her life for whichever sake because you have no means of coercion, the most severe punishment that you can impose on this person being his or her execution—but you have asked for his or her life, anyway. Strange as it seems, duty, in the loftiest sense of this word, is based entirely on our free will to transgress the boundaries of our personality—of our individualistic self, rather. (Please give some examples of people who you think have transgressed the boundaries of their selves.) ‘Jeder stirbt für sich allein’, ‘Every Man Dies Alone,’ or, maybe, ’Dies for His Own Sake,” to remember the title of Hans Fallada’s famous novel. But ‘we do not live alone’ (I am quoting a character from An Inspector Calls, a meaningful play by John Boynton Priestley who was an English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and social commentator), and we cannot possibly live for our own sake only, however much the mainstream mass media would try to convince you in the opposite. Some of us, who fully understand that they do not live alone, are lucky enough to dispose of their own death, making it either a death ‘für sich allein,’ for their own sake, or a meaningful death for the sake of other human beings.
