Sergei Prokofiev’s Traumatic Realism: Monumentality and the LImits of Representation
In Progress
This article builds upon existing scholarship to argue that the failure of Prokofiev’s Ode to the End of War (1945) resonates more deeply when put in the context of Soviet reconstruction after World War II. Utilizing Alexander Etkind’s concept of “hard” and “soft” memory and Michael Rothberg’s discussion of “traumatic realism,” I argue that the work occupied a precarious position in Soviet post-war memory: it was neither moralizing enough to fulfill the demands of Socialist Realism, nor accessible enough to function as a post-war aesthetic monument. Lacking aesthetic distance, the Ode came too soon in its heavy-handed treatment of a still-fragile theme. Prokofiev’s sonic projection of monumentality was ill-timed in the shadow of the war, when remembering — and re-remembering — were more important to the creation of a new Soviet identity and coping with collective trauma. By mimetically depicting post-war urban reconstruction in the Ode, Prokofiev attempted to memorialize the Great Patriotic War physically without addressing a deeper emotional destruction of the Soviet past.