Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[ColonelCassad] During the Great Patriotic War, Goethe was not withdrawn from any Soviet library. No orchestra has excluded Wagner from the repertoire.
| Not true, actually. The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra refused to perform Wagner from Kristallnacht in 1938 until 2012. |
And today Russia also does not refuse either Taras Shevchenko or Lesya Ukrainka.
Nobody cancels Twain and Dreiser. No one thinks of throwing O'Henry out of the libraries. No one will ever cancel William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, despite the fact that both are English, and one of them is completely homosexual.
We loved, we love and we will love. We value them not because of their nationality, sexual orientation or attitude towards slavery. But because they are more than the British or Americans, more than adherents of any political views.
They are the property of the world. And ours too. By accepting samples of world culture, we do not impoverish our own, but enrich it.
By canceling Dostoevsky or Tchaikovsky, the West does not take anything from Russia - only from itself.
Because we are talking about a world heritage to which the Americans, the British, the Russians, and representatives of many other countries have contributed. Tolstoy and Bulgakov do not care how they are treated in the West. They cannot be belittled or humiliated.
Because immortals don't care about political squabbles. You are not canceling them, you are canceling a part of the great culture in yourself. And Russia will never give up either Shelley or Villon or Salinger. We are not idiots.
(c) Yunna Moritz |