Fiction and History

One of the shorter essays in the new Taruskin collection is "Was Shostakovich a Martyr, or Is That Just Fiction?" which is a review of the novel The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes. Taruskin was a suitable reviewer because the novel is a fictionalization of the life of Dmitri Shostakovich. This has long been highly-contested ground "between those who believe that Shostakovich was a blameless martyr, opposed to and victimized by the Soviet regime, and those of us who believe he made pragmatic compromises to survive and prosper..." [op. cit. p 329] Taruskin labels the novel a "beautifully written botch" and "hagiography."

Taruskin offers the example of Tolstoy in War and Peace who "knew that the difference between real and fictional worlds is that a fictional world is wholly known." But for historians "the whole documentary truth can never be known" as there are always other documents to be discovered, not to mention ones that have been destroyed.

Which brings me to my main point: as industrious activists busily scrub our history of its indiscretions, what is coming into view is not any kind of truth--historical truth will always be messy--but a kind of sanitized lie. As Taruskin mentions later on "No one makes a successful career anywhere without learning and executing a complicated social dance." [op. cit. p. 333] Well, that's a relief as it explains why my career fell short of success! I never really learned the complicated social dance.

History itself will always be complicated, contradictory and only partially known. Only through the adroit application of ideological cleansers can it be made pure. We used to accept that even Homer nods, but now all our cultural icons, from Kanye West to Anna Netrebko, must be ideologically sound, or be banished into the outer darkness.

This is turning history into fiction!

Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8, mentioned in the essay, might be a suitable envoi.