| dc.description |
Well, no. We are led by destiny, really. When I was very young, I was held to be a literary phenomenon. It was thought I was going to be an important writer. Even when I was very small, the teachers said ‘This child is already writing books’. I had an imagination, 1 knew my spelling and things like that almost from birth. And then when I was 14 years of age – in fact, on 11 November 1918, the day of the armistice of the First World War – my father died. My mother was ill, I had a younger sister – I became the head of the family. What could I do? I didn't have a trade, of course, but like every child I had learned the violin a little. Luckily at that time there were lots of cafés which had musicians who played waltzes. And it was the time of the silent cinema: there were little orchestras in the cinema. So I began to make my living like that, in Paris, and it was going alright. And one day I said to myself, it was fortunate that I had that; you should always do things seriously when you see that they stand up OK. It fed me and my family, so it was worth my while going on with it. So I continued to study the violin and I entered the Conservatoire. |
