First of all, here is a list of the publications in which Prokofiev's autobiographical writings have appeared over the past fifty years, in Russian and English. They have been organised in chronological order and attributed a number for easy reference within this article. Aut1: April 1941 - to celebrate Prokofiev's fiftieth birthday, the music periodical Sovetskaia Muzyka published Iunye Gody (Early years). Aut2: April 1946 - Sovetskaia Muzyka published the second part of the autobiography, Po okonchanii konservatorii (After the Conservatory). Aut3: 1956 - Semyon Shlifstein (1) (ed.), S. S. Prokof'ev: materialy, dokumenty, vospominaniia, (Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe Muzykal'noe Izdatel'stvo, 1956). Part of an invaluable compilation of texts, the autobiography includes Aut1 and Aut2 in a more complete form (Shlifstein restored a few sections of Prokofiev's autograph text that had been cut by Sovetskaia Muzyka); with a third chapter - "Gody prebyvaniia za granitsei i posle vozvrashcheniia na rodinu" (The years spent abroad and after returning to my country). Making up what is now known as the "short" autobiography, these three chapters were written in 1941 (the end of Chapter 2 is dated 14.02.1941 on Prokofiev's autograph). Aut4: 1960 - Semyon Shlifstein (ed.), S. Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences, (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959 or 1960). This is an abridged version in translation of the "short" autobiography in Aut3, translated by Rose Prokofieva (not related to the composer). Aut5: 1961 - Second edition of Aut3. A fourth chapter has been added, in fact the first one Prokofiev wrote after settling back in Russia, and which covers the earliest period in his life - Detstvo (Childhood). Started on 1 June (or July according to different sources) 1937, it was completed on 17 October 1939. Aut6: 1973 - Kozlova, M. G., ed., Sergei Prokof'ev, Avtobiografiia, (Moskva: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1973). This is the first publication of Prokofiev's "long" autobiography; it includes a great deal of new material. Aut7: 1979 - Appel, David, Prokofiev by Prokofiev: a composer's memoir, (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979). An abridged version of Aut6, this includes a useful reference document - a translation of the Soviet Editor, Miralda Kozlova's explanatory notes as to the various sources used in the Autobiography. Translated by Guy Daniels. The same book appeared, also in 1979, in a much abridged British edition. Aut8: 1991 - This is the latest edition of Aut4 in a revised translation by Oleg Prokofiev with the help of David Mather, in Soviet Diary 1927 and Other Writings, trans. and ed. Oleg Prokofiev and Christopher Palmer, (London: Faber and Faber, 1991). |  | Throughout his life Prokofiev was a sharp observer of his surroundings and contemporaries, an onlooker who derived great pleasure from watching and commenting in words as well as music. Aware of his own value, he started recording the most minute details of his life very early on, making notes of his whereabouts and activities, sometimes daily. He collected a variety of documents that were witnesses of his prolific life such as correspondence (he had many of his letters bound), concert programmes, reviews, newspapers, photos - anything that would capture a particular moment in time and an atmosphere.
Over the period 1907-1933 his notes were expanded into a detailed and well written diary, the style of which demonstrates that he intended it to be read by others than himself, in other words, to be published. This happened recently, first in Russian (Prokof'ev, S., Dnevnik 1907-1933, [Paris: sprkfv, 2002]) and then in English (Sergey Prokofiev diaries 1907-1914: prodigious youth, translated and annotated by Anthony Phillips, [London: Faber and Faber, 2006], the first of three volumes). We also know that he started on his autobiography as soon as he was back in Russia when, between June/July 1937 and October 1939, he covered in huge detail the early years of his life from birth to August 1904, the critical moment when his mother took him to the St. Petersburg Conservatory for his entry examination. First published in Aut5 as Detstvo (Childhood), this account of Prokofiev's youth is entertainingly written, with a wealth of details, music examples and lively dialogues. In this chapter, Prokofiev's candid way of recounting everyday events and his own reactions to them is much in the style of his Diary.
By the time composer Dmitri Kabalevsky, then General Editor of Sovestkaia Muzyka, invited him to write a short autobiography on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, Prokofiev had therefore a great deal of prepared material from which he could choose. The short autobiography turned out to be a very different work from his previous writings, Detstvo and the Diary. This is a self-conscious work targeted at a general Soviet audience whom Prokofiev wanted to enlighten as to the bare facts of his exciting life. Although thoroughly documented, and therefore useful to any reader in search of reliable information, it lacks the genuineness and candid charm, as well as the documentary extracts, of Detstvo and the Diary. Both parts, "Early years" and "After the Conservatory" were written in 1941, but only the first appeared in time for Prokofiev's birthday celebrations; the second would have to wait until after the war.
Even though only these two brief chapters were published in his lifetime, Soviet Archives reveal that Prokofiev carried on with his autobiographical project practically up to his death. Eight notebooks are kept in the Prokofiev Fonds in RGALI, the State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow. Significantly, Prokofiev returned to his autobiography straight after recovering from the stroke he suffered in January 1945, an experience that must have made him acutely aware of man's transient state. It was time for him to put his papers in order. By then his companion Mira Mendelson had become his amanuensis and it was she who wrote the notebooks from Prokofiev's dictation. In turn Prokofiev entered dates and annotated her text. The first notebook was started on 10 May 1945 and completed on 23 July 1945; the eighth and last, started on 28 August 1950, remained only half full. As Shlifstein notes in Aut5 (p.14), "Prokofiev continued to contemplate writing his autobiography even in his late years. As late as 1949, he asked V. A. Brender, a literary colleague from the Kirov Theatre who had assisted him in finding material relating to the Conservatory in the Saltykov-Shchedrin Library, to obtain additional numbers: 'In the Public Library there are sets of Petersburg bills, arranged per year. I've already used 1906 and 1907 and now I need the following sets for 1908, 1909 and 1910.' Then followed a list of specific requirements (letter of 12 December 1949)."
But in spite of Prokofiev's sustained work, his autobiography would not be published in his lifetime. After Zhdanov's famous denunciation of formalism and subjectivity in 1948, Prokofiev's name disappeared from official statements, and the Soviet public would have to wait till after his death to discover the unusual life of the composer they had lost. Another victim of official censure was Israel Nestiev's famous biography which appeared only in 1957, four years after Prokofiev's (and Stalin's) death. Yet Nestiev, having spent years studying and interviewing Prokofiev in the 1940s, had already written a biography. Much shorter than the authoritative 1957 biography, his Sergei Prokofiev: his musical life appeared in France (1946), translated by Rostislav Hofmann for Editions du Chęne (Paris); and in the United States (also 1946), translated by Rosa Prokofieva for A. Knopf (New York). It was never published in Russia.
What then happened to Prokofiev's autobiographical notebooks? As so often in the history of Soviet scholarship, extracts were published in dribs and drabs in Sovetskaia Muzyka and Muzykal'naia Zhizn, thanks to Miralda Kozlova, who prepared and published most of this material. Prior to her authoritative Aut6 of 1973, which she researched, collated and annotated, Kozlova had been at work with Prokofiev's autobiographical notebooks for a while, and published extracts from them in Sovetskaia Muzyka (1972, No.3), including excerpts from Prokofiev's humorous apologetic preface to his autobiography. Soon after publishing Aut6, and in partnership with Nina Iatsenko, Kozlova prepared the invaluable correspondence between Miaskovsky and Prokofiev (Kabalevskii, D. B. (ed.), S. S. Prokof'ev i N. Ia. Miaskovsky. Perepiska, (Moskva: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1977).
But I should like to refer readers to yet another of her publications, one that is a fascinating complement to the first volume of Prokofiev's Diary. In Sovetskaia Muzyka (1976, No.5), Kozlova published extracts of correspondence between Prokofiev and his Conservatory friends Boris Zakharov, Nikolai Miaskovsky, Maximilian Schmidthof, Vera Alpers (2) and Leonida Glagoleva, all from the summer of 1909. On 23 June 1909, back in Sontsovka, Prokofiev writes in his Diary: "As soon as I settle into rural existence, my diary tends to go into a decline, and if I do write it up it's not more than once a month. After all, this out-of-the-way spot does not give me much to write about." In sleepy Sontsovka, left without the external momentum he constantly needed to leap into action, the young man would live "internally", feeding on his friendships through correspondence. "Correspondence plays a big part in my life when I am in the country. I divide it into three categories: chess, music and purely pleasure. [...] My main musical correspondent is Myaskovsky; and in the pleasure category Alpers, Schmidthof and Glagoleva." (3) Between the Diary, which offers Prokofiev's reaction to his friends' letters, and the original correspondence in Kozlova's article, the reader can obtain a fascinating insight into the young man's analytical and discerning, if acerbic, mind.
Why was Prokofiev so keen to write his autobiography and would he be satisfied with it as it now stands (let us not forget it is a posthumous publication which he was unable to sanction)? Part of the answers lie in the apologetic introduction he had already prepared for inclusion in his autobiography:
"The inclination to put things into writing has been a trait of mine since early childhood. My parents encouraged it. At the age of six I was already writing music. At seven, after learning how to play chess, I kept a notebook and began to jot down games, The first game, which I titled Pastoral, was a checkmate in four moves.
At nine I was writing histories of the battles fought by my tin soldiers, keeping track of their losses and making diagrams of their movements. At eleven I surreptitiously observed how my music teacher kept his diary. It seemed most remarkable, and I began to keep my own, in great secrecy from everyone, sometimes even recording events while sitting on the toilet.
Later my mother gave me a thick bound notebook, saying, 'Sergushechka, write down everything that passes through your little head. Don't skip anything.'
I kept that first diary for six months and then abandoned it. My enrolment at the Conservatory at the age of thirteen produced so many new impressions and contacts that I resumed my diary. But I soon had to abandon it a second time because it was impossible to keep up with events.
At sixteen I went back to the diary yet once again. By now images of girls from the Conservatory were beginning to skip through my mind. It was frightfully important not to miss anything.
At about this time I began to keep the letters I had received and rough drafts or copies of those I sent. I arranged them in chronological order and bound the letters for each year in separate volumes.
At twenty-one, having read Rimsky-Korsakov's Record and a long biography of Tchaikovsky, and feeling that I was a composer in whom people were beginning to take an interest, I decided that in time I would write my autobiography.
Someone had said in my presence, 'I would compel all remarkable people to write their autobiographies.' I thought, I already have the material. All I have to do now is become famous. And I decided: by forty I'll have composed enough that I'll want to take a rest. At that point I'll be able to take up my autobiography.
But when I reached forty my youthful braggadocio had vanished, and my view of life was more sensible. So the question arose: is it worthwhile to write at such length about oneself? By that time I had lost interest in keeping my diary at all, and the idea of writing an autobiography no longer appealed to me.
But what to do with the papers? Abandon them? Throw them away? Perhaps Gogol's greatness lay in the fact that he was bold enough to burn his own manuscripts.
Is not that person capable of creating a masterpiece who is ready, without blinking an eye, to destroy his work if its right to exist is not clear to him? I vacillated." (4)
Prokofiev's papers were tremendously important to him, perhaps consistently more so than his own writings, and in the early 1950s he listed and deposited them all in RGALI, thus preserving them for ever.
And so after his death, the "long" autobiography finally appeared, as well as Nestiev's biography and a large number of publications on his music - Prokofiev was rehabilitated. Yet scholars were not satisfied with the autobiography (in particular westerners), complaining that it was not entirely reliable since Prokofiev's autograph text had been considerably cut - although to my knowledge no one has established how extensive these cuts are. It seems that this situation may have been corrected as a new, uncut edition has just been published by  Klassika-XXI in Moscow . There is scant information on the book beyond the number of pages (524), the price (730 roubles), and the claim that this is the first edition without cuts. Not having seen it yet, I am unable to confirm if the Editor (whose name is not provided) has identified the restored cuts, nor can I confirm if there are any annotations and to what extent they provide new and accurate information.
Other than the first two chapters of the "short" autobiography, all of Prokofiev's autobiographical writings were published posthumously at significantly different times in the history of the Soviet Union, and were therefore subject to varying degrees of editing that reflect changing ideologies. But isn't this what Prokofiev himself did to his own musical works? Revised and re-used sometimes in a different musical context, many of his works reflect the way in which his own perception of life and ideas continually evolved. There is no static Prokofiev. He was a man constantly on the move, both physically and mentally, as captured so convincingly in his many autobiographical writings and documents. No other Russian artist has left such a candid and broad testimony of his times, a fact he expressed in his typically understated way: "First, I have managed some achievements in my lifetime, so my autobiography might be useful to someone. Second, I have met many interesting people, and accounts of them might be interesting." (5) BACK
BACK TO SUMMARY 14 JUNE 2007 | 
| (2) Prokofiev's letters to Vera Alpers (but not from) were first published in I. Nest'ev i G. Edel'man (eds.), Sergei Prokof'ev, 1953-1963, Stat'i i materialy, (Moskva: Sovetskii Kompozitor, 1962). Harlow Robinson published them in translation in Selected letters of Sergei Prokofiev (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998). (3) Both extracts are from Sergey Prokofiev diaries 1907-1914: prodigious youth, translated and annotated by Anthony Phillips, (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), 103-04. (4) Appel, David, Prokofiev by Prokofiev: a composer's memoir, (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1979), xi-xii. (5) Ibid.: xii. |
