Alexander Waugh
The Maestro Matures
Diaries 1915–1923: Behind the Mask
By Sergey Prokofiev (Translated and annotated by Anthony Phillips)
Faber & Faber 775pp £30 order from our bookshop
The first volume of Prokofiev’s extraordinary diary, which covered the period 1907–14, was published by Faber two years ago. I reviewed it enthusiastically in these pages, expressing impatience for its sequel.
Two years is a long time to be feeling impatient; so I had already taken the trouble to have short sections of it translated from the three-volume unindexed Russian version, which is currently only available from Paris via the composer’s son’s website. It will no doubt be another two years until we see the final volume (1923–33) translated into English. This second one, which stops just before Prokofiev’s marriage to Lina Codina in September 1923, is unfortunately so interesting and fluently translated that even the slowest reader is unlikely to take more than a week to gobble through its 775 pages.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Sabotage became so prevalent that bankers even created their own terms – ‘asymmetric information’, ‘lack of financial literacy’, ‘the principal-agent dilemma’ – to describe how they might turn a dime from customers’ gullibility or ignorance.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/master-criminals-of-the-universe
'Unlike much that was extracted from India, these paintings were not plunder, and those who created them were properly remunerated and often received due credit.'
@PParkerWriting on 'Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/artists-for-hire
‘"I feel", Lowell told Hardwick ... "as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist, or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision."'
Richard Davenport-Hines on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/yours-unfaithfully-2