Music

Turning to his hostess, E. P. Peshkovaia, he declared his love for the "Appassionata" Sonata in the words cited above. However, though Soviet sources remained forever silent on the point, this is not all that he had to say. Gorky quotes Lenin further:

"But I cannot listen to music too often, it affects one's nerves, makes one want to say kind, stupid things and stroke the heads of those who, living in such a foul hell, can create such beauty. Nowadays if one strokes someone's head, he'll get his hand bitten off! Better to beat the person unmercifully over the head, although ideally we oppose the use of force in human relations. Hm, hm, our task is infernally hard!"

-from Lenin and Beethoven: Beyond the "Appassionata" Affair
By Frederick W. Skinner, 2003, The Beethoven Journal


Lenin was obviously nuts.  If you weren't anti-communist before reading that, you should be now.

Beautiful music should fuel this revolution, not derail it.  Sometimes I go too far, in my thoughts.  It is times like that when I listen to the theme from "To Kill a Mockingbird," and it calms me down very much.