Julian Barnes "The Noise of Time"

“What could be put up against the noise of time? Only that music which is inside ourselves – the music of our being – which is transformed by some real music. Which, over the decades, if it is strong and pure enough to drown out the noise of time,is transformed into the whisper of history”(125)

Julian Barnes The Noise of Time captures the war time Soviet Union during the period of political turmoil and its repercussions in the freedom of artistic creation recorded beautifully through the life of the music composer Shostakovich. It is a multi-layered narrative of small incidents and events I the life of the main protagonist. Much of these incidents is indebted to Elizabeth Wilson’s exemplary multifaceted “Shostakovich:A life remembered (1994) and “Testimony:The Memoirs of Shostakovich”.

The title intrigues as well as attracts – the suffocation of music in the cacophony of political and social turmoil corresponded by the soft melody of music across time to immortality. It is this slow erosion of the rocks of time by the soft water of music that clears the passage of time.

The novel records and weaves the life of Dmitri from childhood through adulthood to old age. The story starts with a train journey, two men hearing a familiar song treats a war-returned veteran now beggar to a drink and then one of them remembers. The entire story is a tale of memory and recollection of the communist regime in Russia through Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev. The book is divided into three segments – On the landing(youth), On the plane(middle age) and In the car(old age) .On the landing documents, through different incidents, the composers early life , his footing in the professional platform and then the call from the Big House – the first conversation with Power, the sliding social image . On the plan, receives recognition from Stalin and state –delegate for foreign performance and yet no freedom as an artist. The voice of the composer in him is stifled. In the car, recollects his achievement of his long time dream to obtain a foreign car and emotional upheavals as he gets hastily married to Irene and then to a young woman almost his daughters age but one who fulfils her domestic duties and keeps him happy after the death of his first wife Nita.

The narrative is long, prolonged, slow, sinking-in style. In the first few pages the author’s intention is not clear. For one unfamiliar with the soviet times, it can be a topical assessment or a character study. We don’t know where we are heading to but at the end, one has a feeling of déjà vu, of knowing what it is all about from the beginning.

‘Muddle instead of music” is recurrent but whether the muddle is in the music or music is in the muddle is clear. It becomes an archetypal image for all times. Music is dissolved, disbursed, diluted but continues to exist in its truest form. This music, or any form of art is eternal in any state and true music continues to exist even against the ebb of time. “Music escapes from words: that is its purpose, and its majesty” (58)

Barnes jugglery of words is commendable.

The novel can also be read as a treatise on art discourse and the Russian musicians of the time.

The novel ends at the beginning, the epical train journey of a similar but different survivor and victim.