Delvig, Delvig!

Now here's something Good Friday-ish, from Dmitri Shostakovich's bleakest Symphony - No 14 - it really is a song cycle on a series of poems around the theme of death, comes this setting of a poem by Küchelbecker.

Küchelbecker was a Russian poet who saw exile under one corrupt Russian regime, Shostakovich experienced constant harrassment from another corrupt - now Soviet regime. I'm sure there was some empathetic feeling in these words:

O Delvig, Delvig! What is the reward
for lofty deeds and poetry?
For talent what comfort is there
among villains and fools?

A cynical, old composer, but he, in the end draws something of a consolation in this setting.