ㅤ ⤿kitsu

the bust went missing though so he never saw it again and never told shostakovich about it even though he went to moscow and visited dmitry dmitrievich in february 1945 during his transfer to the first belarusian front

“On the eve of the day I was supposed to report to the military registration and enlistment office on the date assigned to me by my summons, I went to the sculpture museum of the Academy of Arts (I was then in my third year) and, choosing a piece of soft stone, carved the head of the young Shostakovich. It was soft, pliable alabaster. I worked in a state of unbridled inspiration. Beyond the walls of the museum, damp even in summer, the vast city, already shaken by war, breathed. I remembered the structure of the composer's face very well, and, already in the twilight, having finished this head protruding from the stone block, I inscribed on it one word: "Fatum." Looking at my creation, at the face of Dmitry Dmitrievich, in those moments I believed that I would emerge alive from the terrible meat grinder of war.

“Returning to Leningrad after the war in 1946, the first thing I did was run to the sculpture museum. Everything there was painfully unchanged: the dusty plaster casts, the vaulted ceiling, the damp smell, the same dim light streaming through the windows (it was also afternoon). From the windows I could see the distant vista of the Neva, the embankment parapets, the yellowing trees on Senate Square. Holding my breath, I approached the wall to the left of the window, where five years earlier I had left the bust with the inscription "Fatum." Everything was in its place: the dried old clay, the scalpel, a few sketches I had sculpted in the last days before the war... But the bust of Shostakovich was gone, yes, it was nowhere to be found. I didn't speculate or look any further. I was terribly disappointed. This bust was something very, very personal for me... Now, sometimes, remembering it, I console myself with the thought that, probably, somewhere, someone has it, it still exists and, maybe, I’ll see it again someday, who knows!