"The Whisper of History" vs "The Noise of Time": historical understanding in the work of Julian Barnes

Soloveva Diana Senior Lecturer at the Department of Foreign Journalism and Literature, Lomonosov Moscow State University 119234, Russia, Moscow, Leninskie Gory str., 1 di.solov@mail.ru

Problem statement

The problem of historical myth-making in the works of Julian Barnes is traditionally considered in the context of narrativistic concepts of historiography. The "linguistic turn" in the philosophy of history is associated with the names of Hayden White, Franklin Rudolph Ankersmith and Dominique LaCapra, as well as representatives of the school of new historicism (Louis Montrose, Stephen Greenblatt). His reflection in Barnes's work is considered in the works of E. V. Kolodinskaya E.V. ^[8], M. A. Bakhtina M.A. ^[4].

It unites Barnes with the narrativistic historiography:

1) textuality of historical reality;

2) interpretation (often arbitrary) of the material and building a new "narrative" on its basis ("Take a few authentic facts and build a new plot on them" ^{[1, p. 169]});

3) secondary interpretation (Barnes relies on historical sources in which the facts have already been interpreted. For example, in the afterword to the novel "The Noise of Time" (2016), Barnes openly names the sources with whom he worked when creating the novel: Elizabeth Wilson's monograph "Shostkovich: A Life Remembered", Solomon Volkov's memoirs "Testimony: The Memories of Shostakovich as Related to Solomon Volkov", "The Story of a Friendship" by Isaac Glickman, a friend of Shostakovich and his long-term addressee, as well as a collection of interviews with the composer's children "Remembering Shostakovich".

4) the variability of the past;

5) the addition of historical reality with fiction.

Despite the similarity of Barnes' methods with narrativistic historiography and the frank game of postmodern relativism, the writer, in our opinion, is distinguished by a more complex and contradictory attitude to the problem of the historical past. Barnes refers to various historical materials in his texts, but the inner task remains to create a special model of perception of the past. In each new novel, the writer clarifies and develops his own understanding of the historical: narrativistic concepts and cognitive pessimism are only a frame, but the main task is to find at least elements of the authentic in the uncertain field of history. Playing at ignorance, Barnes is indeed extremely knowledgeable. Including the postmodern game in his texts, he nevertheless remains a researcher and historical reenactor. Let's try to show this by the example of one of Barnes' latest novels, The Noise of Time, in which he once again creates and complements his model of perception of the past.

Historical relativism

The general conclusion of the narrativistic approach is the inevitable relativism of historical knowledge. Epistemological pessimism, or recognition of the fundamental unknowability and variability of history, ultimately leads to the rejection of the search for truth. Barnes often illustrates how historical research can lead us into a dead end when faced with different versions of events. For example, the "Noise of Time" describes Shostakovich's "historical meeting" with Akhmatova. According to one version, they were silent for twenty minutes, after which Akhmatova left and subsequently said: "It was wonderful." According to another, Akhmatova said: "We talked for twenty minutes. It was wonderful." The passage ends with an indication of the variability of the past: "... with "historical meetings" there is always such a thing. What will the descendants believe? Sometimes it seems to him that any event has a different version" ^{[3, p. 175]}.

Such a multivariance sometimes leads Barnes to pessimistic conclusions: is it worth trying to look for the truth in the past at all if it turns out that there are several truths? In Flaubert's Parrot (1984), Barnes reflects with melancholic despair: "How can we keep the past? <...> We read, study, ask questions, memorize, show humility, and then one random detail turns everything around. <...> We can study archives for decades, but from time to time we want to put our hands up and admit that history is just another literary genre: the past is nothing more than an artistic autobiography that pretends to be a parliamentary report" ^{[2, p. 127]}.

It would seem that Barnes comes (and leads the reader) to the point of epistemological pessimism. But in other fragments of the novels, the writer takes the opposite position. For example, in the Interlude, Barnes talks about love, but love goes hand in hand with the truth: "Love and truth, this is a vital link – love and truth" ^{[1, p. 364]}. As if quickly listing all the main provisions of narrativistic historiography, which he himself uses in the text ("We all know that objective truth is unattainable, that every event generates a lot of subjective truths..." ^{[1, p. 373]}), the author suddenly switches from the usual ironic to a serious tone and utters words that they are directly opposed to epistemological relativism: "But even understanding this, we still have to believe that objective truth is attainable; or believe that it is attainable by 99 percent; or, at worst, believe that truth, objective by 43 percent, is better than truth, objective by 41 percent. We must believe in this – otherwise we will be lost, we will be swallowed up by deceptive relativity, we will not be able to prefer the words of one liar to the words of another, we will save ourselves from the mystery of everything, we will have to admit that the winner has the right not only to rob, but also to speak the truth. <...> So it is with love. We must believe in her, otherwise we are lost. We may not find it, and if we do, it may make us unhappy; but still we must believe in it. Without this faith, we will become slaves to the history of the world and someone else's truth" ^{[1, pp. 373-374]}. It sounds like a program speech, but how to link these straightforward words with the rest of the material, in which Barnes's story is always told, and therefore interpreted, modified, varied, misleading and misleading?

This conditional "Interlude riddle" illustrates Barnes' difficult position on the issue of historical truth. For example, M.A. Bakhtina formulates the problem as follows: "The artistic task of J. Barnes is defined not as the knowledge of the truth, but as the search for an opportunity to live in the absence of objective truth" ^{[4, pp. 133-134]}. It can be assumed that Barnes' words about objective truth fit into the general "variable" picture of the world and themselves become one of the options.

However, the writer rejects the idea of the existence of historical versions in reality, for him, variability is only a game played by the author: "When a writer provides a novel with two endings (why two? why not a hundred?), does the reader believe that he is given a choice and the work reflects the ambiguity of a possible outcome, "as in life"? Such a choice is always only apparent..." ^{[2, p. 125]}. Barnes offers his readers a set of colorful envelopes at the end of the book with different endings. You can select only one, and destroy the rest.

Life (in the present and future tense) is really variable and resembles a "garden of diverging paths". But not in the past. The variability of the past arises when we translate reality into a textual plane. We treat it not as lived, but as described. Barnes makes it clear: despite the difficulty and complexity of the story, the presence of its different variants – at any given time, it is possible to live only one version of events. It will be the historical truth.

In other words, Barnes hardly tries in every novel to talk about the fundamental unknowability of the past. In our opinion, it would be more productive to look closely at whether the contradiction outlined above (the "mystery of the Interlude") is not a fundamental part of Barnes' understanding of the historical? And isn't he just trying to walk through the garden of the paths already outlined by history in reverse order?

The ultimate goal in this case will not be the recognition of epistemological helplessness, but, on the contrary, an attempt to find at least elements of the authentic in history. And the engine of historical research is the desire to treat the past more attentively, more critically and honestly (including the assumption of "blind spots" in history, which we can only fill with fiction).

The level is ideological

The life of D. D. Shostakovich is in itself a fruitful historical material for Barnes. "... I realized that Shostakovich was not only a great composer, but also a special "case" - a powerful example of what happened when art collides with power. It inspired me,"^[12] says Barnes in an interview. There is already a conflict in the composer's history, and his biography still represents an unsolved scientific problem. The "Testimony" of Solomon Volkov, published in 1979 in the United States, provoked discussions about the relationship between Shostakovich and the Soviet government. At the same time, the authenticity of the "Certificate" is still in question.

An example of a contradictory interpretation of Shostakovich's life is the circumstances of his creation of the Eighth Quartet. In the work "Shostakovich. The life and work" of the Russian musicologist researcher S. M. Khentova ^[11] it is said that the quartet was written in 1960 under the influence of what the composer saw in Dresden and is dedicated to the memory of the victims of fascism. A researcher (about whose works Shostakovich's son Maxim said in 1991: "I hate the work of Hentova. They expose him as a genuine son of the Communist Party!" ^{[10, p. 12]}) notes that Shostakovich dedicates the quartet to himself, but does not explain the reason for this dedication, reducing everything to a military memorial interpretation: "Another very small in volume, but important in social meaning, composition related to the war It became Shostakovich's contribution to the genre of memorial music" ^{[11, p. 357]}. The same episode is described in other sources. In July 1960, having received an offer to join the party, Shostakovich wrote to Isaac Glickman, a professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and his friend: "No matter how hard I tried to complete the rough assignments for the film, I have not yet been able to. Instead, he wrote an unnecessary and ideologically vicious quartet. I was thinking that if I ever died, it was unlikely that anyone would write a work dedicated to my memory. So I decided to write one myself. You could write that on the cover: "Dedicated to the memory of the author of this quartet." <...> The quartet uses the themes of my compositions and the revolutionary song "Tortured by hard bondage" ^{[6, p. 159]}. The readable irony (more on this below) indicates that the composer is not just dedicating the quartet to himself: this is an auto–mafia, and the reason for it is quite specific - joining the party. Barnes probably uses this material in the novel as well.: "A prominent Soviet composer inserts a subtle mockery into a symphony or string quartet" ^{[3, p. 221]}.

Shostakovich's biography itself opens up space for ideological polemics: they are trying to "take the artist as an ally." However, Barnes does not try to resolve the scientific dispute about the reliability of sources or place Shostakovich in one or another ideological camp. Rather, the situation of uncertainty becomes for him a starting point in understanding the life of his hero. In the afterword to the novel, Barnes writes: "Generally speaking, it was not easy to find out the truth in the Stalin era, and even more so to defend it. Even the names themselves change from uncertainty: for example, the investigator who interrogated Shostakovich in the Big House is sometimes called Zanchevsky, then Zakrevsky, then Zakovsky. For a documentary biographer it is a plague, for a novelist it is a godsend" ^{[3, p. 231]}. Barnes takes this conflict as a basis and concentrates in historical material on important problems for himself: internal emigration in the conditions of an external dictatorship, the life of a talented and sensitive person in the conditions of ideological struggle and, more broadly, human life in general is hostage to the "noise of time".

External and internal history

The key in the novel turns out to be the opposition of "external" and "internal" history. The "inner" story – the life of composer D. D. Shostakovich – takes place against the background of the "external" history of the Soviet state. The author's irony is based on the discrepancy between the external and the internal, sounding more and more tragic from chapter to chapter.

The novel is written in the form of an internal monologue by the composer. Barnes recreates the inner story (the artist's thoughts and feelings), in which he has the opportunity to express everything that is impossible in the outside. For example, the second part of the novel describes a telephone conversation between Shostakovich and Stalin. The composer is forced to agree to fly to New York for the World Congress of Scientists and Cultural Figures. And then, talking about tyranny, Shostakovich models in his mind a conversation with abstract Power: "Perhaps I am deeply mistaken... but is it really necessary to shoot all these engineers, military leaders, scientists, musicologists? To rot millions in camps, using fellow citizens as slaves and driving them to death, to instill fear in everyone, to beat out false confessions..." ^{[3, p. 113]}. A conversation that couldn't possibly happen in reality.

In the second part of the novel "On the Plane", the gap between external events (the solemn reception of the delegation of Soviet composers in the United States) and the emotions that Shostakovich feels inside (shame and fear) is most clearly visible. The feeling of shame reaches its peak at the moment when Shostakovich publicly, albeit unwillingly, opposes Stravinsky and his music. There is an internal recognition: "Betrayal has happened. He betrayed Stravinsky and thus betrayed his music. He later told Mravinsky that these were the worst moments of his life" ^{[3, p. 147]}. An internal monologue (the highest degree of intimacy) becomes the only way to speak truthfully. Barnes, in fact, gives the composer a voice that he was deprived of.

Of particular importance is the tailcoat, the absence of which Shostakovich refers to in a conversation with Stalin. "... I am sure that the studio of the Central Committee of the Party will provide you with a concert costume, do not worry" ^{[3, p. 109]}, Stalin replies in the novel. Barnes, of course, hints that the composer was provided not only with a tailcoat, but also with the text of the speech he is supposed to deliver. The tailcoat, both literally and metaphorically, becomes an outer shell that does not correspond to the inner content. Shostakovich is forced to put on both a tailcoat and rhetoric that is alien to him. The tailcoat makes a "proper impression" ^{[3, p. 140]}, it fits perfectly to the figure, only under the tailcoat, inside, everything is filled with one feeling – shame.

Barnes presents the "external" history as "the world on the contrary" ("... the world has turned upside down again" ^{[3, p. 105]}, - Shostakovich notes). This is expressed, for example, in the formula "better times will come", which means exactly the opposite (ironically, this motif is played out in Shostakovich's toast, which he pronounces every New Year: "Let's drink to something that is just not better!" ^{[3, p. 114]}. In opposition to the "better times" are the refrain-sounding first lines of each chapter of the novel: "He knew one thing for sure: now the worst times have come" ^{[3, p. 19]}. Moreover, with each chapter, the times, in the perception of the hero, become even worse. The official facade of life seems to be improving, and the person (locked in this facade, as in a prison) feels worse and worse.

The function and limits of irony in the novel

The above-mentioned ironic voice of Shostakovich performs an important function in the novel. Barnes explores the nature of irony as a defense mechanism and tries to define the limits of its possibilities.

Shostakovich's correspondence with I. D. Glikman makes it clear that the composer deliberately used "fake cliches" and deliberately official Soviet phraseology, realizing that his epistolary interlocutor considers irony and "turns over" these lines. For example, in a letter to Glickman in 1943, Shostakovich wrote: "Freedom-loving peoples will finally throw off the yoke of Hitlerism, and peace will reign throughout the world, and again we will live a peaceful life, under the sun of the Stalinist constitution. I am convinced of this and therefore I feel the greatest joy..." ^{[6, p. 62]}. Probably, "I feel the greatest joy" in this case indirectly refers to Stalin's famous "life has become more fun." Glickman notes that Shostakovich's words in this case are "endowed with bitter and mournful irony" ^{[6, p. 63]}.

In contrast to the official Soviet rhetoric, which is emphatically not ironic, loud and straightforward, irony becomes a "whisper" of history. This is how the composer argues with Barnes: "When it became impossible to tell the truth (because it was punishable by death), it had to be masked. In the Jewish folk tradition, dance serves as a mask of despair. And here, irony has become the mask of truth. Because the tyrant's hearing is usually not tuned to it" ^{[3, p. 115]}. To hear a whisper, you need to strain your ears. And this applies not only to the official authorities, but also to a historian or writer who is trying to restore the voice of a person from the past, with whom he talked to himself and his closest ones.

However, Barnes shows that irony as a variant of resistance has its limits and is also vulnerable to the "noise of time": "Irony has its limits. For example, the torturer, as well as his victim, cannot be ironic. In the same way, it is impossible to join the party ironically" ^{[3, p. 221]}. As I. A. Brodsky accurately noted on this occasion: "Irony does not allow you to get away from the problem or rise above it. She continues to keep us within the same framework <...> Life is a tragic thing, so irony is not enough here" ^{[5, p. 22]}. Irony cannot shut out everything. The true foundations of the human personality (the real values on which we rely in life) should be able to be articulated directly, without ironic inversion.

"Let's say I won't die as a poet, but as a person I die" ^{[7, p. 321]}

In the novel, Shostakovich evaluates his own life as a loss: not only of official, "external" history, but also in a broad sense of time. In the last chapter, the composer recalls the events of the first chapter, the beginning of his life. The conclusions are disappointing: his own world turned upside down and became "the world in reverse."

In the finale, Shostakovich bitterly regrets his human fate, but still retains himself as an artist. Only music allows you to speak honestly and becomes the only way to resist the tyranny of history and the "noise of time". (In fact, Barnes also, years later, in literature, allows the composer to speak). The metaphor of the "whisper of history" arises again. "Art is the whisper of history, discernible above the noise of time" ^{[3, p. 123]}. Or: "What can be contrasted with the noise of time? Only the music that we have inside, the music of our being, which some people transform into real music. Which, provided that it is strong, authentic and pure, will be transformed decades later into a whisper of history" ^{[3, p. 163]}. Art strives beyond a specific historical time – into eternity. This is what Shostakovich hopes for Barnes: "He hoped that death would free his music: it would free him from life" ^{[3, p. 227]}.

In the Afterword, Barnes returns to the scene at the train station. Three people drink vodka on the platform in the midst of the war. At the moment when the glasses touch, Shostakovich hears a "tonic triad". Here Barnes sums up his thoughts (the narrative returns to the author again): "There is no doubt that the war will end, unless, of course, the war is essentially eternal. Fear will remain, as well as uninvited death, and poverty, and dirt – who knows, maybe there is no end to them either. But the tonic triad, born even where three dirty, differently filled glasses have moved, will drown out the noise of time, promising to outlive everyone and everything" ^{[3, p. 229]}.

Let's also recall the important "love and truth" bundle for Barnes. In The Noise of Time, Barnes returns to the value of love (and individual, personal, intimate, from person to person, or as he ironically puts it in the novel - "bourgeois and voluntarist" ^{[3, p. 117]}). The opposition "tyranny – love" arises. "Since tyranny has succeeded so well in destroying, should it destroy love at the same time, intentionally or casually?" ^{[3, p. 117]}. Moreover, the conflict occurs in the plane of each individual person: tyranny wins when it penetrates into a person and encroaches on the most important thing in him – the ability to love. "And in the current situation, people are constantly in danger of not saving themselves entirely. If they are consistently terrorized, they mutate, shrink, shrink – all these are survival techniques" ^{[3, p. 117]}. Tyranny impoverishes a person, as it acts through fear, and fear narrows the view and limits the personality. (It is enough to recall the beginning of the novel: the composer is standing on the landing with a packed suitcase and is waiting for arrest. As soon as he hears the screech of the elevator, "memory suddenly disappeared, and fear filled its place" ^{[3, p. 21]}). Anxiety fills a person and deprives him of simple (but essential) things: the ability to live in harmony with their values, to create and love.

The metaphor of "the whisper of history" becomes meaningful and meaningful for Barnes. This is also a barely perceptible ironic voice, for which you need to strain your ears. And what the "noise of time" subsequently turns into. But most importantly, Barnes' "whisper of history" is associated with key values: art and love. And love, as Barnes writes in Interlude, "makes us see the truth, obliges us to tell the truth" ^{[1, p. 364]}. It is this truthful and quiet love that Barnes contrasts with the "brazen complacency" of history. The "internal" history is opposed to the "external" history. "The way you embrace in the dark defines your vision of the history of the world. That's all – very simple" ^{[1, p. 365]}.

Conclusion

Julian Barnes undoubtedly relies on the narrativistic concepts of historiography and borrows their main characteristics. However, addressing them is largely declarative. Exposing the techniques of the narrativistic philosophy of history becomes, among other things, a warning to him. (Let us recall how Orwell formulated the Angsoc principle in relation to history in 1984: "... the events of the past do not objectively exist, but are preserved only in written documents and in human memories. The past is what is consistent with records and memories" ^{[9, p. 217]}). When historical knowledge is deprived of its objective status and transferred to the plane of the text, direct opportunities open up for its rewriting and the domination of the "totalizing" (in M. Foucault's terms) historical discourse. In the case of referring to the Stalin era, this sounds especially significant.

Barnes demonstrates the mechanism (in fact, the rewriting of history), but behind this is the desire to convince the reader to be more diligent in the search for truth and not fall into the "traps" that the authors of historical narratives set. "History is good for one thing: it knows how to find the hidden" ^{[1, p. 368]}. Barnes' position also implies that some gaps in history remain and may remain inaccessible to us. The writer fills them with fiction, but does not fundamentally hide the use of fiction.

"... The truth, objective by 43 percent, is better than the truth, objective by 41 percent" ^{[1, p. 373]}. According to Barnes, historical truth may indeed be 100 percent unattainable, but the best way out is to continue to carefully, patiently explore and find at least a grain of truth in history. This is our task and maybe even our duty in the fight against "deceptive relativity."

In the novel "The Noise of Time", Barnes once again implements his creative program, which he formulates in chapter 5 of The History of the World in 10, 5 Chapters. The artist removes the painting from the "anchor of history" and expands it to an existential meaning ("Catastrophe has become art; however, this transformation does not detract. It liberates, expands, explains" ^{[1, p. 210]}). Shostakovich's biography becomes for Barnes a way to contrast the "noise of time" with the "whisper of history", and tyranny and fear with music and love.