I love Prokofiev’s music. As a kid, I was mesmerized when I heard Svatoslav Richter (or was it Emil Gilels?) play the initial exciting chords of his Third Piano Sonata—which I always wanted to master and failed. Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky (1938), with Prokofiev’s splendorous soundtrack, is one of my Top 10 movies: a highlight of perfect collaboration between director and composer.
But Prokofiev’s suite Lieutenant Kijé (or Kizhe, in Russian) also composed for film, is still my favorite. For the past year, I’ve been carrying the Boosey & Hawkes pocket orchestral score in my corduroy jacket. I peruse it during subway rides.
“The suite’s satirical plot, set during the reign of Tsar Paul I,” Kevin Bartig tells us in www.sprktv.net, “concerns a scribe’s slip of the pen.” “The Lieutenants” in Russian is Poruchiki zhe. The scribe miswrote those two words into Poruchik kizhe which translates as “Lieutenant Kizhe,” creating a non-existent extra lieutenant. “None of the tsar’s courtiers had enough courage to reveal this mistake to Paul I, one of the most dictatorial Russian rulers,” continues Bartig, “so they continued the make-believe bureaucratic story inflating it with a banishment to Siberia, a triumphant return and marriage, and a post-mortem recognition of a fictitious member of the Imperial Army. There was even a funeral with an empty coffin!” Sometimes typos are not that evil. (I hope my proofreaders don’t read this!)
—Raúl Rodriguez, Manchester, VT, 12.10.2018