01/05/2024
We saw a concert featuring “Diary of One Who Disappeared” last night in a heavily Czech context, reminding me of these program notes I wrote for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood festival. Being mixed and sitting next to my mom, a real-life “Zefka,” was…also part of the context. (Though I somehow missed until Michael Beckerman said it that Janacek’s muse was Jewish!)
Diaries of Ones Who Disappeared
Roma, invariably presented as “Gypsies” in one language or another, have been a distinct
trope in European art, folk, and popular music for centuries. Since the late 1900s, there has been no shortage of academic work exploring the symbolism of “Gypsy” characters and stereotypes, but rarely is the referent of such tropes treated in any depth. Roma, a loosely defined ethnic group comprised of individuals from every social stratum, tend to disappear – as actual people – from both musical and written literature.
Few people realize that whereas art seemingly has no use for “the Gypsy” outside the
context of s*x, caravans, lawlessness, and/or forest habitats, the majority of Roma are actively either Christian or Muslim, have lived in settled communities for hundreds of years, and adhere to strict (if now decidedly fading) rules regarding ritual purity and interaction between genders.
These fundamental misunderstandings lead to absurd disconnects when Roma interact with
majority societies. Dark-skinned Roma (as most are) in America are denied minority status in college admissions and scholarships, light-skinned children have been removed from Romani parents because authorities actually believed the child-stealing myth promoted by works such as Verdi’s Il trovatore, and Roma everywhere have difficulty convincing potential employers of
their ability to follow rules.
So who were the Czech and Slovak Roma of Janáček’s time? They (my family among
them) were a mix of settled, itinerant, and partly traveling craftsmen, traders, entertainers, seasonal workers, and folk healers. Nearly all Slovak Roma had been settled for decades or centuries, and many worked for White farmers in exchange for food. As the text of The Diary of
One Who Disappeared reflects, Roma are by and large darker-skinned than other Europeans, so much so that the descriptor “black” is used in both Romani (a Sanskrit-based Indic language, or rather group of languages) and Slavic languages. Whereas the South Asian origins of Roma and related subgroups are an objective fact, the word “black” connotes a deep stigma both in
Czech/Slovak society and in the deployment of colorism among Roma themselves.
Thus, when The Diary’s protagonist Janíček wonders why “that black Gypsy woman” is
hanging around, her skin color is used as an insult to buttress the part of Janíček that wants Zefka gone, even as his infatuation grows. Zefka later asks him, “Does my color frighten you?,” before baring part of her breast to show that some pieces of her skin are not so off-putting after all.
Janíček’s internal battle between lust and disgust perfectly encapsulates how real-life Romani women are often treated to the present day. He goes on to contrast Zefka’s dark, “bewitching” eyes implicitly with his resolve to resist her, supported by thoughts of his mother (the moral opposite of Romani parents – hence Janíček’s exclaiming that he would rather cut off his pinky than have Gypsies as in-laws) and God. The religious practices of Roma are generally perceived to be a mystery, not least because Roma are pigeonholed as heathen fortunetellers or law-breakers, and indirectly discouraged from attending Mass by the actions of the non-Romani faithful. The real and imagined transgressions of the minority group would therefore resonate among Janáček’s
audiences as a seductive foil to their own religious and filial piety. Zefka’s diegetic song, “Oh distant, immortal God, why did you give life to the Gypsy?” may serve to humanize Roma briefly as children of God, even as the following line, “only for [the Gypsy] to wander aimlessly through the world,” reinforces the popular notion of Roma as work-shy.
Imagery throughout the The Diary joins countless other texts in portraying Roma as both thieving and primitive, if imbued with an irresistible power that is symbolically designed to channel the forbidden passions of non-Roma. Independently of the song cycle’s textual origins, Janáček projected the symbolism of “Gypsy passion” onto the object of his own transgressive longing, a young Czech woman with dark features who was, in most practical respects, out of his
reach. Chances are slim that the composer had any substantive knowledge of actual Roma, or meaningful contact with them. How, then, should we interpret the culturally situated significance
of The Diary?
Should one mention the Central European laws designed to repress and control Roma,
eventually culminating in hundreds of thousands of Roma murdered during the Holocaust? Only some ten percent of Czech Roma and Sinti survived; some died in Czech-run camps or at the hands of Slovak fascist collaborators. Would Janáček have supported the opposition politicians who disagreed with the 1927 state decree enabling the ongoing surveillance of all Romani families? Did depictions of Gypsy deviance such as The Diary contribute to an atmosphere in
which genocide was normalized? Is Janíček’s youthful love in fact a critique of strict racial
divisions?
Janáček’s music is powerful and worth hearing, and there may be limited utility in
judging historical creators through the lens of present-day moral standards. However, it is worth thinking about the ways this music – and specific performances of it – may affect lives today. An opus such as The Diary is highly context-specific in its social impact, which depends not only on the given time period but even more on geography. Czech audiences are suffused with the same
ethnotheories as teachers or social workers in the region are, often believing that Roma are
fundamentally – genetically – different from White ethnicities. Whereas an educated American listener may hear the text as quaint or subversive, European reception will more frequently take it at face value. “You blacks don’t belong on our playground,” a fellow parent once shouted at my toddlers after threatening to hit one of them. In that part of the world, the sentiment is quite
normal. In North America, blatantly denigrating a person for their dark complexion is less socially acceptable; residents strive for racial equality through lip service as well as policy. On both sides of the Atlantic, The Diary of One Who Disappeared can serve as a window into a racialized popular discourse that affects an imagined Gypsy and a real Romani individual alike.
