As we have seen, the Polish writer and artist Witkacy had suggested in his book on narcotics that only writers and artists who were certain that they could write nothing of value without alcohol should be allowed it to excess in order to fuel their talent until they were burnt out, their brilliant legacy already secured.
Other excuses rooted in the country’s autocratic political system were found to justify excessive drinking by Russia’s creative classes. It was said that the disappointment over the reforms of Alexander II in the 1860s fomented an upsurge of vodka drinking by:
…the more sensitive, more responsive writers in society [who] saw that the freedom they had imagined was not at all what they got in reality, that individuality was still enslaved …in Mother Russia along with the most shameless, most vile brute force. And these wise men, the salt of the Russian earth, all of them young and life-loving, were driven to drink from the goblet of green wine.
Although this seems like a flimsy rationale to excuse excessive vodka drinking by “the sensitive”, the limitations of the reforms had in fact encouraged writers and composers to drink vast amounts of vodka. It was the only protest of extreme behaviour against the establishment that would not attract the attention of the secret police constantly on the lookout for subversion. “An intense worship of Bacchus was considered to be almost obligatory for a writer of that period,” a contemporary reflected, and another remarked that, “Talented people in Russia who love the simple folk cannot but drink.”
There seems to be some truth in the notion that vodka was indeed a creative catalyst, probably because the purity of the spirit meant that any creative boost was not proceeded by a hangover that would debilitate the drinker. The Leningrad-born poet Lev Loseff, who emigrated to America and became Joseph Brodsky’s biographer, stated he owed:
…everything good in my life to vodka. Vodka was the catalyst of spiritual emancipation, opening doors into interesting cellars of the subconscious and at the same time teaching me not to be afraid of people or the authorities.
From the testimonies of some Russian composers, vodka appears to have been a positive force in their lives and essential to their music, although the word “vodka” was often used by critics as a term of abuse to describe composers’ work. When Rachmaninoff’s Fourth Piano Concerto was first performed, an American critic wrote that, “Mme. Cécile Chaminade might safely have perpetrated it on her third glass of vodka.”
The Witkacy theory applied to Modest Mussorgsky who died at the age of 42 in 1881, although it was a fatal brandy that actually killed him rather than vodka, which he drank to excess all his life. He and other creative rebels frequented low taverns in St. Petersburg as a gesture of solidarity towards the peasants and to distance themselves from the more reputable artistic circles of the city.
Mussorgsky composed in the Maly Yaroslavets, a respectable restaurant where he had a private room with a ready vodka supply to hand. (The place would later attract Chekhov and other writers partly because of its reputation for being the watering hole of choice for bohemian drinkers.) Mussorgsky had extraordinarily original musical gifts, but while his fondness for vodka prevented his completing some works, it did not mar the quality of what he actually wrote. His doctor, who had tried to help the composer to moderate his vodka intake, left details of a faultless concert performance given by Mussorgsky as a piano accompanist when he was extremely drunk. The doctor observed Mussorgsky in his room at the Maly Yaroslavet:
On the dirty table stood some vodka and some scraps of miserable food. In saying goodbye to me he got up with difficulty, but saw me to the door and bowed me out in a manner which, though not quite worthy of Louis XIV, was quite amazing for someone so completely tight…
Mussorgsky arrived on time at the venue where his concert was to take place, and while he was waiting he proceeded to polish off all the drinks that he could find. He astonished everyone with his brilliant pianism, playing the music at first sight and in different keys to those in which it was written so as to suit the singer’s voice.
Tchaikovsky, who drank vodka nearly every day, wrote a song about a fool who drinks vodka in the tsar’s tavern It was the only song of the set it appeared in that did not have a dedication. It might well have been dedicated to himself. The normally discreet Rimsky-Korsakov recalled that Tchaikovsky drank copiously, and very few could keep up with him whilst simultaneously retaining their mental and physical powers in the way that he could.
For Tchaikovsky, hardly a day passed without vodka, and when he tried to give it up, his resolve broke after a short period of abstinence. The composer made frequent references to the spirit in letters and in his diary, noting in the latter that he could hardly hold a pen because he was as drunk as a sailor.
Tchaikovsky’s longest commentary on vodka came in a furious response to what he considered a sanctimonious anti-vodka account by a Russian anthropologist. Apart from throwing light on the normally intensely secretive composer, what he called “the first stage of drunkennness” may also help to explain the contribution made by vodka to creativity that others also experienced:
It is said that to abuse oneself with alcoholic drink is harmful. I readily agree with that. But nevertheless, I, that is, a sick person, full of “neuroses”, absolutely cannot do without the alcoholic “poison” against which Mr Miklukho-Maklai protests. A person with such a strange name is extremely happy that he does not know the delights of vodka and other alcoholic drinks. But how unjust it is to judge others by yourself and to prohibit to others that which you yourself do not like. Now I, for example, am drunk every night, and cannot do without it… In the first stage of drunkenness, I feel complete happiness and understand, in such a condition, infinitely more than I do when I am without the Miklukho-Maklai poison!!!
When Tchaikovsky’s drinking was controlled and did not go beyond the “first stage of drunkenness”, he seemed to enter a state of mind, which it can be assumed was conducive to his composing. In the 20th century, nearly all of the noted Russian composers drank vodka including those who ended up living in different countries because of the 1917 revolution. Prokofiev, who was unusual for being allowed to leave Russia with the blessing of the Soviet Union, is one of the few Russian composers who drank very little, and although he had no need to be cautious, he preferred jokes and good humour to the vodka-inspired soul-searching of Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich.
Stravinsky, who was exiled after the events of 1917, settled in America and drank vodka in copious amounts. Born in St. Petersburg where he studied music, Stravinsky often enjoyed vodka and zakuski with his teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, whose name, an American critic of his Scheherazade declared, suggested “fierce whiskers stained with vodka”. The friendship with Stravinsky was not shared by the older composer’s son, Andrei, who dismissed Stravinsky’s Petrushka as “Russian vodka with French perfumes”.
Supremely careful with his money, Stravinsky bought a vodka distillery in Ukraine when he was living in Paris just before the First World War. It would have been an extremely good investment if history had not decided otherwise. He made vodka memorable in his The Soldier’s Tale, using a modified plot from a Russian folk tale in which in Stravinsky’s words:
The soldier tricks the Devil into drinking too much vodka. He then gives the Devil a handful of shot to eat, assuring him that it’s caviar, and the Devil greedily swallows it and dies.
Stravinsky was frequently drunk on vodka. While directing a recording session of his Ebony Concerto, he told the jazz pianist Jimmy Rowles that he was using the wrong fingering and asked in the same breath if he could have some vodka. One of the trumpeters dashed off across the street, returning “with a great big glass of vodka. And Stravinsky knocked that mother off like a real Russian”.
Living to the age of 88, Stravinsky’s vodka intake caused him no obvious harm, but Shostakovich, who remained in the Soviet Union for all of his life, was in a constant state of nerves like Tchaikovsky. Punctilious about toasting friends with vodka, Shostakovich asked a friend in Tashkent to drink a glass of vodka at the same time as he would in Moscow in memory of a musician who had died. By the time the composer was 65, he was advised to give up on the spirit after a heart attack in 1971. Two years later Shostakovich defied his doctor and had a glass of vodka when visited by a friend. To the composer’s amazement, the vodka somehow banished a “writer’s block” of two years standing during which he had been unable to write down a single musical note. The following day Shostakovich began work on his Fourteenth Quartet, which he completed in a month, leaving him in no doubt that the vodka was responsible for the renewal of his creative powers.
Although it cannot be stated with certainty that vodka contains a mysterious ingredient that contributes to creativity, it is certain that without the spirit – whether it was drunk in Imperial or Soviet Russia or beyond – the music of the great Russian composers would have been very different.