I somewhat randomly bought The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes. Barnes is one of the writers on my ‘read anything they write’ list (another one is Haruki Murakami, yet another Douglas Coupland).

So, I did buy the book for its main topic—a fictionalized biography of Dmitri Shostakovich. Actually, as I had not read any review of the book or its cover, it took me a couple of pages to realize this was about Shostakovich—or, probably more precisely, about his moral struggle with the Soviet government.

The beginning breathes the dark brown stifling atmosphere of Kafka’s The Trial. Desperate, helpless, surrendering to the untouchable power of bureaucratics.

Barnes writes how Shostakovich became famous as a composer but could not enjoy his success. He gets to visit the United States as a puppet of the USSR politics. He holds speeches drenched with political statements but includes nothing of his own vision. The composer seems to half realize what he is doing and seems to justify it for his family. So the story turns to Shostakovich’s courage, or lack thereof, his cowardness, betrayal, and moral shame.

Barnes describes wonderfully how the oppression permeates every hole in Shostakovich’s life. It makes me wonder how he could still write such wonderful music.

Who does art belong to? The people? The state? The ‘big goal’?

Music in the USSR is played ‘as meant by the artist’ or ‘ strategic’—that is, in accordance with the norms of socialist art.

But in music, there is a purity. Something that can not be washed away by norms, politics, ethics, or violence. A purity that stands The Noise of Time. Eternal. Context-free. An undebatable truth.

And this purity in music probably explains how Shostakovich was able to continue to make his wonderful music, while being oppressed by this totalitarian regime.