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Updated: June 16, 2025
Moreover, folly though it was, he had already, some time ago, begun to desire a petty triumph: a piece of retribution for the man who had more than once brought him dire suffering. He wanted unstinted praise for a new work from his old master, the implacable Zaremba. Since the success of "The Boyar" he could certainly not be put off with a hasty reading and a damning criticism of the new score.
Victory was finally acknowledged when, upon a November day of his year of disgrace, 1862, Ivan, braving scorn, rejection, even deliberate non-recognition, entered the doors of the Conservatoire over the dead body of his false pride, and asked to see the director, Monsieur Zaremba. He emerged from that building, a little later, with a radiant face, and a heart throbbing with gratitude.
"Precisely as you can," returned the other, roughly. Ivan's face quivered and softened. "No. I will tell thee, my friend! Ten days ago I finished a symphonic poem: a thing I've been working on for months. I didn't dare play it to you. I wanted an opinion absolutely unbiassed; so I sent the manuscript to to Zaremba and your brother. Well, they gave me what I asked for.
Next morning, still acting secretly, dreading, in his peculiar modesty, possible over-praise from those who might be prejudiced in his favor, he despatched his precious bundle to Petersburg, addressed to his old critics and masters, Zaremba and Anton Rubinstein. With it went a brief note requesting, humbly, that they examine it and send him their opinion of its worth.
His peculiar style, many a time torn and ridiculed by Zaremba and the great virtuoso, had now been applauded by the entire Russian musical world: was beginning to be recognized beyond the frontier. Certainly it was no longer within range of one man's malice.
The manuscript had been returned to him with a communication which had caused stout Nicholas a penance for profanity; though even he failed to surmise the part that two men had played in this insult to a piece of work which, if crude in spots, was still far too magnificently broad, too thoroughly original, to deserve half the criticism incited by Ivan's former masters, Zaremba and Anton Rubinstein; to whom the manuscript had been sent.
Two years ago, when I was sixteen, they discovered that I had a voice. My father, delighted, first gave me lessons himself; and then took me to the Conservatoire, to Zaremba, I hoped there to get a scholarship. But somehow my voice didn't develop as they hoped; and, at the competition, I failed. I was in despair. We already owed money for my lessons; and there was no hope of my earning anything.
And after a moment, she summoned them to her, with a slight gesture. Then, breaking off her argument with Ivan's future biographer, she held out a hand for de Windt to salute. "Vladimir Vassilyitch, I expected you. Have you enrolled yourself under Zaremba yet, for proper instruction?" De Windt laughed. "Your Highness should get his Majesty and my Colonel to claim less time of me!"
For there, in a pile, lay the manuscript pages of his opera; to recover which, indeed, Balakirev had, during the five-day battle with death, journeyed to Petersburg and told his tale to the frightened Zaremba.
"This boy trusts you so, Anton, believes so utterly in your good faith, the impartial judgment of you and your worm, Zaremba, that even you, whose very blood is green, would be moved if you could hear him. However where's the manuscript of the boy's tone-poem?" "'Tone-poem! Eureka! Do you imagine that it actually is music? as he believes it, no doubt, to be?
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