Ode to a dictator

How very lovely that Mark Swed so enjoyed the pretty and soothing songs based on the works of the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, winner of the 1953 Stalin Prize [“Love and Hate, Juxtaposed,” May 23]. But, oh, how very unpleasant for Swed that the love poems had to end, whereupon he was forced to endure Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony, which he describes as a “gargantuan hate poem to [Shostakovich’s] political nemesis,” the late Joseph Stalin. The music “is angry, bitter, tragic.”

Gee, Mark, why do you think Dmitri was so bummed out? Why wasn’t he feeling the love? After all, he was a Stalin Prize-winner too. Why was that crybaby still holding a grudge? Why couldn’t he have written something a little more, uh, pleasant? Could it have been the fact that he was writing about the worst mass murderer in history?

Neal McCabe

Los Angeles