Carrying The Light In Humanity’s Darkest Hours: Why We Must Re-Think The Value Of Music & The Arts
“Nothing can survive the holocaust but poetry and songs,” wrote legendary Doors frontman Jim Morrison in the initial pages of his poetry book ‘Wilderness’.
Music and the arts have their own beautiful and pervading way of touching people’s lives in a way no other man-made conception can. This is ever more prevalent in times of deep crises. In times of dire despair, in our darkest moments, the presence of art gives us a new breath of life, meaning, solace, strength, hope and that spark to help us carry on.
In his book Man’s Search For Meaning (1946), Viktor E. Frankl, a former holocaust survivor, described the improvised ‘cabaret’ that took place at the concentration camp he found himself in as follows:
A hut was cleared temporarily, a few wooden benches were pushed or nailed together and a programme was drawn up. In the evening those who had fairly good positions in the camp — the Capos and the workers who did not have to leave camp on distant marches — assembled there. They came to have a few laughs or perhaps to cry a little; anyway, to forget. There were songs, poems, jokes, some with underlying satire regarding the camp. All were meant to help us forget, and they did help. The gatherings were so effective that a few ordinary prisoners went to see the cabaret in spite of their fatigue even though they missed their daily portion of food by going.
Frankl also notes that having some semblance of the arts and humour within the ghastly walls of the concentration camp was ‘another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation.
Just Like Frankl, another Jewish survivor of the holocaust, Otto Dov Kulka wrote at length about the ‘skits’ performed at Auschwitz. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1933, Kulka was sent to Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz as a child. In his book Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death (2013), Kulka frequently mentions a fellow inmate named Herbert, who made a lasting impression on him:
It was Herbert who gave me a copy of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Herbert who explained to me who Beethoven was, and Goethe, and Shakespeare, and about the culture they bequeathed us — that is, European humanism.
Kulka also recounts history lessons and artistic performances, including plays, concerts, and a children’s opera organised by a fellow inmate named Freddy Hirsch. Hirsch’s barracks ‘became the centre of the spiritual and cultural life of the place’ writes Kulka and being exposed to these diverse art forms sunk deeply within him as he remembers that they ‘unquestionably form the moral basis for my approach to culture, to life, almost to everything, as it took shape within me during those few months, at the age of 10 and 11’.
Kulka also elaborates in Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death, that such activities of artistic escapism within the walls of Auschwitz were of course invariably limited. He along with his fellow inmates expected never to return from Auschwitz and he recounts that the lessons and performances were all somewhat ‘grotesque’ and took place ‘150 to 200 metres from the selection platform and 300 to 400 metres from the crematoria’.
He also writes about Imre, a fellow inmate, who took up the role of conducting the children’s choir in the camp. Kulka ponders about how to interpret Imre’s choice to teach the children in the camp a song about ‘the brotherhood of man’, which Kulka later discovered was Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’ from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony while pointing out the ‘terrible absurdity’ and ‘terrible wonder’ of playing that particular song ‘opposite the crematoria of Auschwitz’.
Beethoven also features poignantly in Elie Wiesel’s Night (1958). Wiesel was 15 when he was sent from Romania to Auschwitz after being separated from his mother and sisters. Wiesel witnessed the shocking brutality of the Nazis first hand when he saw small children ‘thrown into the flames’ and he recounts how something within him also died that night when he witnessed it. He writes that his soul was ‘invaded — and devoured — by a black flame’.
After being moved from Auschwitz to the Buna labour camp by being forced to run for hours on end in the dark, through thick snow and ice as the SS evacuated and transferred all prisoners from Buna and marched them further from the battlefront, Wiesel recounts how his fellow prisoners who couldn’t keep up, were shot, trampled to death or others who froze to death.
When Wiesel and his fellow prisoners reached the Gleiwitz camp, they were forced to crowd into a solitary barrack where people were piling on top of each other and being trampled on and crushed to death. Wiesel writes about how he recognised a Jewish violinist from Warsaw named Juliek in the barrack and how he was deeply moved by Juliek playing Beethoven’s concerto on his violin. He writes, ‘that night in a dark barrack where the dead were piled on top of the living’, ‘Never before,’ ‘had I heard such a beautiful sound.’
The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek’s soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hope. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again.
Juliek died the same night in that camp in what were his final hours on the violin and his final swan song.
There are also brief yet significant mentions of Beethoven in Sarah Kofman’s Rue Ordener, Rue Labat (1994). Kofman and her mother were made to go into hiding in Paris where they were taken into the home of a French woman named Mémé. Kofman writes about how she and Mémé would ‘listen to “great music” all the time’ and about how Mémé introduced her to ‘Beethoven — her passion’.
Kofman’s father who was a rabbi was taken away from their home by Nazis in 1942 and that was the last time Kofman saw him. She also writes about the books she carried with her while she fled to Paris — Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), a collection of Charles Dickens’s works, and Jean-Paul Sartre’s Roads to Freedom (1945–49).
She also fondly recounts a teacher from her childhood named Madame Fagnard whom she studied under before going into hiding
Whenever the siren sounded, we would go down into the cellar of the Lemire bookstore with her. She made us forget about the air raid and our fright by having us sing or play games or by telling us stories like the rather disturbing Pied Piper of Hamelin to distract our attention from the immediate danger. She gave piano lessons in her home. Knowing my family’s poverty, she didn’t make me pay for the lessons. She would come to the house bringing us toys, stories from the Bicot series, and other books.
While in Nelly S. Toll’s Behind the Secret Window: A Memoir of a Hidden Childhood During World War Two (1993), Toll writes about how she and her mother went into hiding in a small room in an apartment, and a neighbour in the block bought her some paints. Painting became Toll’s outlet and solace during those turbulent times of war.
Once I started to paint, a new world opened up for me. It was as if the little box of watercolours made a bright path straight through the apartment walls to the outdoors … In my pictures there was no war, no danger, no police, and no tears.
There’s a common theme in all these accounts of these survivors of the holocaust. The recurring theme is that all of them all turned to some form of art, either music, literature, writing, painting, education, or creativity in their darkest hours.
All these people describe in detail in their accounts of WWII about how art gave them hope, strength and carried the light in the darkest periods of their lives.
In their later years, Frankl became an academic, Kofman a philosopher, Kulka a historian, Toll an artist and academic, and Wiesel a journalist and writer.
As the year 2020 nears its end with the world coming to a previously unimaginable standstill because of the coronavirus pandemic, we are forced to remain within the walls of our homes and we are left with a semblance of how important the arts and humanities are in times of crisis.
It appears to offer us a valuable lesson about the fundamental importance of the arts, humanities, and the space for creativity in our lives. With millions of people if not billions, spending time listening to music or watching films or reading, writing and painting, we’re all reminded of how valuable these art forms are in turbulent times and how they strike the chords of a larger resonance.
However, the arts and humanities are not treated equally or at par as other subjects of study around the world. In colleges, schools, and educational institutions across the globe, they’re treated as expendable, as low down on the list of priorities.
We live in a world where STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine) courses are given the highest priority and crucially, government support, out of all the areas of study, while the arts and humanities pale in comparison and are often overlooked and neglected.
I’ve encountered this first hand back in 2017 when I was admitted to a music school in the UK, but when I approached banks and NBFCs in Mumbai, India for a student loan, I was told that they only disburse loans for STEM or MBA courses.
In some instances, we’re seeing active attempts to divert students and funds away from research and teaching in the arts and humanities in universities and schools. For example, in Australia, the Australian government has announced plans to more than double the fees for humanities degrees.
While in the United Kingdom the government has set up a ‘Higher Education Restructuring Regime in Response to COVID-19’ but it clearly states that: “[they] should ensure courses … focus more heavily upon subjects which deliver strong graduate employment outcomes in areas of economic and societal importance, such as STEM, nursing and teaching. Public funding for courses that do not deliver for students will be reassessed.”
Practitioners, scholars, and institutions within the arts and humanities are well accustomed to this lack of government support and also the lack of appreciation of the value of their work.
It’s highly apparent that governments and the people in charge of formulating national curricula, providing funding, and making policies like these ‘restructuring regimes’ and other policies related to education across the world, don’t understand the value of the arts and humanities. These bodies want ‘job-ready graduates’, who they feel contribute as a ‘vital component’ of the economy, while students in the arts and humanities are often overlooked.
Apart from the educational side of things, during this coronavirus pandemic, the arts & humanities sector has taken a huge hit worldwide with event cancellations, lack of revenue, mass job losses, and venue closures. It’s certainly an uphill struggle for musicians, artists, filmmakers, writers, poets & dancers who are facing a crisis of their own within this larger crisis.
However, as the stories in this post suggest and if history is anything to remind us, music, the arts & humanities foster hope, keep our problems at bay and carry the light even in the most trying and blackest days of our lives. It’s just like Wiesel described hearing Juliek’s violin as the most beautiful sound he ever heard, or as Frankl notes that some people were willing to forego their paltry daily ration of food and forget their weariness and predicament to attend the artistic performances inside the concentration camp.
The arts & humanities carry a special kind of weight in our lives and as one of the grandest forms of human expression, they bring moments to life and add colour to the otherwise mundane and dull situations of everyday life, helping us forget our pain, strife, and struggles. Music & the arts kindle in our hearts the flames of wonder and hope & hold their rightful place as a vital cog in the process of living and which make us live more enriched lives.
This pandemic is yet another reminder that there’s always room for a story, or a song, or any art form to touch our lives and evoke a sense of hope, warmth, love, comfort, and beauty in spite of the grim circumstances we find ourselves in.
The fact of the matter is that, the arts do matter and that they are important. Moreover, this global crisis should force us to rethink our value of the arts & humanities.
Sure, we need technology, science, industry, medicine, and so on to usher progress as we head into the future, but we forget that the arts & humanities help us live, make us feel, bring us hope and help us understand what it is to be human.
This post is based on an essay on AEON.com by Sarah Fine which you can read here.
