The Kreutzer Sonata

What is a marriage? A fusion, or a tether?
Two very different creatures, yoked together?
I was a piano, you a violin:
I, solid, calming, you, discordant, thin,
and laced with bitterness. I was your base,
and you provided brio, flourish, grace.
A lacewing trapped inside a window frame,
yet driven by one blind, unchanging aim,
you struggled up until, played out, defeated,
you fluttered down again, debased, depleted.
A war's a love affair, and love's a war.
We're so inept - or what's a heaven for?
A nest of wasps, my grievances boiled over -
but could there ever be a vita nuova?
We never learned. I hammered pointlessly,
while you abraded. Why could we not see?

And so I played it stately, sad, no frills,
while you kept up your repetitions, trills
and variations. Hovering and wary,
you shunned my structures. Ever more contrary,
you coiled and squirmed in spasms both continuous,
spontaneous, free-wheeling, lithe and sinuous.
It seemed to me the harmony had gone:
we sang on, yes, but each a separate song.
Two butterflies together, intertwined,
we tangled on the same, but different, line.

 

 

 

Author's Note

(1) The Kreutzer Sonata (1): composed by Beethoven in 1807, this piece of music has a strange and troubled history. I have tried to mimic, through poetry, the emotional shape of the work.
(2) The Kreutzer Sonata (2): In 1890, Count Leo Tolstoy wrote a novella of the same name. A stranger on a Russian train tells the narrator of the difficulties in his marriage and how he began to suspect his wife of adultery, and in the end stabbed her to death. Tolstoy originally wanted the piece to be what we might now call multi-media, with an actor friend performing the text as a dramatic monologue, and an artist of his circle painting a canvas to exhibit at the performance.
(3) A fusion, or a tether?: By the time he finalized the text of The Kreutzer Sonata, Tolstoy had come to believe that marriage between a man and a woman was a regrettable state of affairs, certain to bring unhappiness.
(4) I was a piano, you a violin: I have tried to attribute the roles of the two instruments in the Beethoven sonata to the husband and wife of the troubled marriage.
(5) Or what's a heaven for?: The phrase is borrowed from the Robert Browning poem, "Andrea del Sarto".
(6) Art Work: This painting of The Kreutzer Sonata is not the work of Tolstoy's friend, Repin (he never got around to completing the canvas). Instead, this picture is by French artist Rene Francois Xavier Prinet, and dates from 1901.