The Noise of Time

Men who sell their souls to the devil often pretend that they had not, for an admission of such a vile deed immediately corrupts and destroys their achievements fully and entirely, so they pretend that they had always been pure so that they can continue to bask in all the glory that falls on them through that sale. But it is conceivable that some might be so wreaked by their conscience that they become permanently miserable till the day they give up their own ghost.What was Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovic? Had he sold himself to Stalin and the Communists Party? Or was he lucky that although branded by the Party to be a reactionary, dabbling in the music of formalism, he, unlike other composers, was protected? The day after Stalin watched his opera, ‘Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District’ the official newspaper Pravda denounced Shostakovich’s opera as ‘Muddle instead of music’. That was 37 January 1936. A year later, he was brought for gentle interrogation under suspicion of conspiring with Marshal Tukhachevsky. Some months later, the Marshal was executed.No one knows what happened in the investigation – except the interviewer Zakrevsky, and Shostakovich. We are told in almost all biographical accounts of Shostakovich’s life, that Zakrevsky himself disappeared the weekend after interviewing Shostakovich. The truth may never be known. From the biographical portraits, some see Shostakovich as a patriot. Some see him as a dissident.Julian Barnes presents a third version of Shostakovich; a humane and sympathetic one. Barnes is fully aware that the truth may never be known, and although he does not rush to judgment, nor does he think Shostakovich was a secretly heroic dissident. Barnes takes us through the major events in the life of Shostakovic and shows us the torment and humiliations Shostakovich had suffered, and challenges us to condemn DD Shostakovich if we believe that he sold out to the communists – if we are able to say that we would have acted differently were we in his shoes.

This is one of the descriptions of art given in this novella about the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, a person about whom the only thing I vaguely remembered was that he wrote "A Soviet artist's creative response to just criticism" following denunciation by the authorities. That appears in this tale, but - in an indication of the Kafkaesque world in which he was forced to live - it turns out that was a journalist's description of his Fifth Symphony with which the composer was obliged to agree.Beset by the oppressive regime, he tries to maintain personal integrity and a distinctive musical voice, but - according to Barnes's representation of Shostakovich's inner voice - is unsuccessful in these strivings. This is reinforced by the three episodes in the composer's life on which the story focusses: firstly, awaiting interrogation following Pravda's description of his opera as "Muddle instead of music"; then being forced into a humiliating denunciation of Stravinsky (a composer he admired) during a Soviet propaganda trip to New York and finally being compelled to join the Party and serve as chairman of the Composers' Union. Even after the terror of Stalin has given way to the slightly less repressive era of Khrushchev, he finds that any attempt at accomodation, or request to be left alone, is doomed, because "however much you gave, they wanted more" [p107].This is a moving, disturbing account of one man's struggle with dictators, his conscience and his art. It's not a pleasant read, but it's certainly a worthwhile one. Recommended.

This engagingly immediate novella by one of our intellectual giants has (of course) writing that pings with bell-like clarity. Barnes justifies fictionalising Shostakovich's life in part because he fictionalised it himself through multi-layered response and non-response to the intrusions of Power. For example, while the soubriquet 'A Soviet artist's creative reply to just criticism' was actually written by a journalist after the Fifth was premiered, Dmitri never challenged assumptions that he had written it onto the manuscript. At a time of unprecedented suspicion of expertise and increasing constraints on the independence of academics and professionals, the book offers considerable food for thought.

It would be too easy to write about the blood shed and the cruelty of life under Stalin. It would also be too easy to write about a genius heroically surviving the regime. As the author rightly hints, the truth is always somewhere in between. The times were hard, people were morally broken, Shostakovich no exception to that. Despite his tremendous talent and publicity, it is still not totally clear what he was like and what he thought as a person. The regime required you to wear many hats to survive. I am forever grateful to Julian Barnes to stepping into his shoes, it felt very real.

Far from describing a cardboard character, Julian Barnes captures the necessary internal emptiness required to survive within a totalitarian regime. I found the novel compelling and deeply saddening as the contrasts of survival for the sake of it or for a purpose, and music for the sake of it or for a purpose. The rationalisation of compliance for survival gives a sense of what it is truly like to live under such circumstances.This book, whether intended or not, has many echoes of similar internal struggles in contemporary times, where creativity and freedom of speech and thought are suppressed through political and social ideology or religion.