Modest Mussorgsky and Ernest Gaines

Short Plantation Sketches "Two Women"

Gaines is fond of quoting Friedrich Nietzsche on music. Nietzsche wrote, "Without music, life would be a mistake." To Gaines, and myself, this quote rings true. Last Wednesday, the UL Symphony performed selections from Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and this led me to reflect on the inspiration Gaines received from that piece of music. "Visual Art and the Art of Writing Fiction" is one of the earlier blog posts on this site. In it, I discuss how Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters and Bedroom of Arles inspired Gaines and his writing. Here, I would like to explore how a piece of classical music, Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition served as an inspiration for one of Gaines' most accomplished works, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.  Gaines says that Mussorgsky's suite served as part of the original inspiration for the novel; however, once he realized that Miss Jane would begin to tell her own story, other influences arose.

Pictures at an Exhibition, essentially, is a tribute to one of Mussorgsky's friends, Russian artist and architect Viktor Hartmann. In fact, the translation of the piece from Russian is Pictures at an Exhibition-Memories of Viktor Hartmann. Mussorgsky and Hartmann both saw themselves as working to create distinctly Russian art, thus drawing them towards one another. Gaines can be seen as doing the same thing, creating literature that intrinsically shows the land and people that he writes about, thus forming art that represents a distinct area and carries that area's feeling. After Hartmann died suddenly in 1873, Vladimir Stasov organized an exhibition of over 400 of Hartmann's works, and Mussorgsky donated some pieces from his personal collection for the exhibition. After viewing the paintings, Mussorgsky became inspired and began to compose Pictures at an Exhibition.

The suite takes the listener through a gallery of Hartmann's works. Beginning with the recognizable Promenade that replicates the listener moving around the gallery and stopping before paintings, the ten pieces in the suite move the participant through eleven different Hartmann watercolors. There are six surviving works by Hartmann that scholars have identified as pieces that Mussorgsky used for his suite. The painting that accompanies "The Great Gate of Kiev" is below. Listening to the pieces, one moves through various emotions such as joy, fear, despair, etc. Reading Gaines' work produces the same types of emotions. For example, one cannot help but laugh when Tee Bob causes Jane's horse to run across the fields while she holds on for dear life. Likewise, one cannot help but feel sadness when Jane and the others receive news of Jimmy Aaron's death.

Hartmann's Plan for a City Gate in Kiev

Speaking with Darrell Bourque and Marcia Gaudet in 2002, Gaines talks about the inspiration he received from Mussorgsky's work. Originally having Miss Jane's story told from multiple points of view, then moving on to a concept he titles Sketches of a Plantation, Gaines ultimately settled on having Miss Jane tell her own story. In the early stages, Gaines mentions the suite as carrying a theme throughout it (the Promenade), and that is what he wanted with Sketches of a Plantation, a common theme. Mentioning this, Gaines says, after stating that the novel has four sections, "And if you listen to Pictures at an Exhibition, all of these characters are going through this piece of music. And at the very end, it's loud, loud Russian crazy music. "At Hell's Gate," ["The Great Gate at Kiev"] I think it's called" (Mozart 145). Music taught Gaines structure and how to use repetition, in much the same way that Hemingway did with the written word. There is more that can be said about this topic, and hopefully in the coming posts I will delve into Mussorgsky and Gaines even more. Until then, what music inspires you?

Bourque, Darrell, Ernest J. Gaines, and Marcia Gaudet. "A Literary Salon: Oyster/Shrimp Po'Boys, Chardonnay, and Conversation with Ernest J. Gaines." Mozart and Leadbelly. Eds. Marcia Gaudet and Reggie Young. New York: Vintage Books, 2005. 131-159. Print.