Mark Twain once wryly observed that “history doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes.” This must have been what he had in mind:

Moscow, 1986: In the twilight of his life, pianist Vladimir Horowitz returned to his native Russia after a sixty-year self-imposed exile. Horowitz was a performer so gifted it was said he played in colors.

On that morning in April, 1986, CBS Sunday Morning was on hand to broadcast his Moscow concert. But as it began, the camera focused not on some suave virtuoso, but on an arthritic little old man who shuffled slowly to the piano, sat down stiffly and hunched in pain over the keyboard of a concert grand that dwarfed him.

Yet somehow the man, the moment and the music came together, and his vitality and virtuosity was magically restored. His playing was wondrously alive – electric … evocative … ethereal … eternal … (view excerpt)

The applause was thunderous and sustained after his concert program, and he returned for a brief, moving encore. As the strains of Traumerei, Schumann’s wistful reverie from Kinderscenen, floated over the concert hall, the camera happened on an older man who was most likely a hardened Communist Party apparatchik. He tried to steel himself against the emotions welling-up inside, but he failed, and the camera caught tears rolling slowly down his face.

What was going through his mind at that moment? Of course, this poignant piece of music was enough by itself to make anyone with half-a-heart weep. But no, this was more than that. Was he recalling his own childhood, his own youth, his own hopes and dreams for a revolution that had promised equality and freedom, but too often delivered tyranny and sorrow and drove the best and the brightest of his people from Mother Russia, people like Vladimir Horowitz whose enormous gifts had benefited other countries instead?

He wept for joy at having witnessed an event he never thought he’d live to see, but he wept as well for all that was lost in the long and bitter struggle.

Chicago, 2008: In the twilight of his life, political activist and preacher Jesse Jackson attended a rally in Grant Park, a place he remembered all too well from 1968 when it was the scene of what some called a police riot against anti-war protestors. Earlier in 1968, he had watched in horror as his mentor and idol Martin Luther King was gunned down on the balcony of a Memphis motel.

It was not a good time to speak out, especially for a black man. But Jackson did speak out, then and for the next forty years, working tirelessly to bring about a non-violent revolution and twice running for President himself.

Now here he was in Grant Park again, watching as a younger black man graciously and eloquently thanked the people for electing him President of the United States. Jackson tried to steel himself against the emotions welling-up inside, but he failed, and the camera caught tears rolling slowly down his face.

What was going through his mind at that moment? Of course, this poignant piece of history was enough by itself to make anyone with half-a-heart weep. But no, this was more than that. Was he recalling his own childhood, his own youth, his own hopes and dreams for a revolution that had promised equality and freedom, but too often delivered tyranny and sorrow and drove the best and the brightest of his people to drugs and crime, people like Malcolm X whose enormous gifts were wasted for so many years instead?

He wept for joy at having witnessed an event he never thought he’d live to see, but he wept as well for all that was lost in the long and bitter struggle.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell tears of joy from tears of sorrow because sometimes they are both.

©2008 Tom Cordle