Letters to the Editor
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‘Brave New World’
In his thoughtful review of my “Artists in Exile: How Refugees from 20th Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts,” Adam Kirsch states that by proposing a division between Germanic and Russian emigres, I seek to explain “why some [immigrant] artists thrived while others withered” [Arts & Letters, “Brave New World,” February 13, 2008].
In fact, I extrapolate this distinction from my survey of immigrants in the performing arts to account for the nature of their accommodation, not the degree.
This observation — not to my knowledge, to be found in any other account of the “intellectual migration” — proposes that the “Russians” were not wholly Russian; they spoke French or German or Yiddish; they knew Berlin and Paris; their own St. Petersburg or Tiflis were remote from Moscow. The “Germans” — whether from Berlin or Vienna or outlying Hapsburg lands — were by comparison wholly German; their high-cultural pedigree, centuries old, was united and fixed. It follows that the Russians assimilated to a greater degree. Germanic musicians were in many cases a colonizing presence. The polar extremes were George Balanchine, who shed Petipa to invent a New World template for ballet, and the conductor George Szell, who treated his Cleveland Orchestra players as Calibans to be taught Mozart.
The Germans came with their cultural bibles, preaching Bach and Goethe. The Russians had no bibles in hand. “My books remain desperately German,” said Thomas Mann, having written “Doctor Faustus” in German in California; meanwhile, Vladimir Nabokov wrote “Lolita” in English. Of the Russians, Serge Koussevitzky promoted Copland, Rouben Mamoulian directed “Oklahoma!” Of the Germans, Rudolf Serkin proselytized for Beethoven; in Hollywood, Erich Korngold embellished Robin Hood’s banquet with a Viennese waltz. I offer many other such examples.
JOSEPH HOROWITZ
New York, N.Y.
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