Mozart is heard playing, fingers gliding over the keys. A line of matches travels from one side of the piano to the other, the near side crowded with small fires, while the distant side widens like an uncharted horizon.
It seems Mozart was never short on instruction. He learned not on a piano, since the instrument did not exist in his time, and certainly without any match to guide him. The scene isn’t about a single tool but a world of sound and discovery.
From a young age, Mozart studied the harpsichord. When the term “reviewed” might feel excessive, it is safe to say that at four, and again at four, the bright boy pressed the keys with intent, absorbing every texture, every nuance, and grasping the music beyond his years. Sulfur matches would have been a futile symbol for the kind of precision he sought—something subtler, more refined than flame or smoke.
Historical accounts suggest Mozart’s father would cover the harpsichord keys with a cloth and encourage his son to play blindfolded. He imagined concerts filling grand halls. Other sources note that the father sometimes urged a rest, only to find the lullabies and the music in A major too irresistible to hold back.
By the age of six, young Mozart had also taken up the violin with independent ambition, mastering it through curiosity and practice.
And yet, a striking fear emerges in the child’s later years: the trumpet, whose bold, unrestrained voice seems to pierce the air without apology. By ten, the sound feels too harsh to endure, especially without the shelter of an orchestra. The trumpet, in this telling, sounds like destiny knocking at the door.
Ah, the paradox of fate—sometimes a feast, sometimes a bullet. The gaze shifts, the palm rests on the forehead, and the weight of it all presses close. The poet Okudzhava’s wish cannot ease the tension; the master’s attention lingers on that lonely trumpet still.
On December 17, 1974, Nika Turbina was born. Though today some readers may not recall the name, when her poems appeared in a major daily in March 1981, the public discussion surged around this astonishing young voice.
Her lines began as sketches and grew into constellations of thoughts, each letter a star born from a distant, pre-numbered map. The early days carried both ordinary pain and a prelude to something larger than life itself, like a plan that carries luck and misfortune with equal weight, leaving behind a trace of something raw and undeniable.
What has resonance here is not necessarily every line, but the early spark in those first three lines, a spark that hints at something larger, something waiting to unfold, though later verse may struggle to sustain that momentum. The trumpet’s shout is bold, almost abrasive in its insistence, and the poem’s path seems pulled toward that blunt, memorable image, even as it tries to stretch toward gentler, subtler horizons.
(The trumpet rings aloud and then falls silent, leaving breath scarce and minds racing.)
There is talk that the mother wrote poems for Nika. She is described as a gifted artist who could render a child’s life into a pure, white page. Critics labeled those poems as the work of a capable and adult poet, a not-quite-taintless voice that sometimes drew sharp commentary.
Would such a judgment hold up? It is a question the piece invites. When a journalist asks how the poems sound when they are composed, the response is to imagine a fairy tale, a compact creature like a little mouse, delicate yet determined.
The camera lingers, and a side glance reveals a mother nearby, her presence felt even if only as a suggestion of what it means to perform and to be observed. The world of television is a stage where roles are played with the care of a craftsman, where a child’s voice sits alongside adult voices and banners, and where fashion and influence mingle with the act of creation.
In those moments, the child is drawn toward the camera but remains true to the instinct that drives poets: to observe, to listen, to question, and to express with a stubborn honesty that refuses to be easily categorized. The reading style, the cadence, the almost tremulous delivery—these become a signature, a way of inhabiting language that resonates with audiences across generations.
For reasons that elude simple explanation, Nika appears in the crosscurrents of literary figures, sometimes touching on Brodsky in conversation, sometimes interrupted by the quiet gravity of a grandmother’s memory or by stories that drift and reshuffle themselves with each retelling. If one tale says Brodsky spoke with a nervous humor, another version emphasizes silence and the unspoken tension of meeting a young poet whose future would be measured by more than words alone.
When a young poet names his favorites—Pushkin, Lermontov, Mayakovsky, Whitman—the moment suggests a dialogue across time, a readiness to engage with the greats and to own a personal lineage in poetry. Nika’s own responses, quick and confident, sometimes unsettled more seasoned observers, who expected a different, slower apprenticeship from a child prodigy.
Life is drawn as a sketch, while destiny is bridged by letters that resemble stars scattered across a cosmic map. Mozart’s music, here imagined, accompanies this drift, a rag of notes thrown over a canopy that decorates a night sky. Yet the question remains: where do the melancholic keys of the Black Moon lie, and where does the sun’s light circle return to illuminate them?
Not every key aligns perfectly, and not every line lands as intended. Still, there is no demand that a young artist deliver flawless, mature texts. The game is not hide and seek but growth—an ongoing apprenticeship with words, rhythm, and voice.
At ten, the journey takes Nika to Venice, where the Golden Lion awaits at a celebrated poetry festival. The dream is bright, even when the prize proves to be a hollow plaster sculpture rather than the real thing. A weight remains: the burden of living up to what words imply and the price of carrying others who rely on them for meaning and solace.
Poetry is experience, not a set of tricks or a formula. It demands living through moments, gathering impressions, and letting them mature in time. The craft is not a matter of machinery but of growing into language itself. The surname shifts, a playful reminder of identity’s fragility and the way names can be rearranged or reinterpreted, a hint that beginnings and endings are less fixed than they seem.
In the end, a girl sits on a windowsill, legs dangling into space, a vision that feels both daring and ordinary. There is meaning in the pose, a challenge that demands courage, even when gravity threatens to pull in a harsh, almost playful, fall. The image is not a grand symbol but a moment: a tiny, stubborn act of existence, a counterweight to the noise of the world.
The statue of the Venetian lion is finally reduced to plaster, and the moment becomes another small, imperfect truth about art, fame, and the fragile line between imagination and the world that feeds it.