Julian Barnes on love, loss and Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich
WARNING: This story contains discussion of suicide
This summer, as Writers & Company wraps up after a remarkable 33 year run, Eleanor Wachtel presents ten of her favourite episodes chosen from the show's archive.
*This episode originally aired June 5, 2016.
Almost 40 years ago, Julian Barnes published a dazzling novel — his third — called Flaubert's Parrot. Ostensibly about the life and art of Gustave Flaubert, it's an entertaining and provocative mix of anecdotes, pensées and aesthetic speculations.
Since then, Barnes has published eleven more novels, three short story collections and a handful of nonfiction works.
He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 for The Sense of an Ending, the 2021 Jerusalem Prize and was appointed to the rank of Officier in the Ordre National de la Légion d'Honneur in 2017.
Eleanor Wachtel has spoken to Julian Barnes many times over the course of his lengthy career.
In 2016, he joined her onstage at the Bluma Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library to talk about his novel, The Noise of Time, which mixes biography and fiction à la Flaubert's Parrot. But this time the setting is the Soviet Union and the subject is 20th-century composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
Drawn to Russian culture and language
"When I was 15, I'd been reading French and German at school, and at A-level they offered Russian. It was the first time they'd offered Russian at school. I thought it sounded sexy as hell, and I thought you had to be incredibly clever to learn it, so I thought, I'll go for that. I learned it for two years at school and two semesters at university.
"I guess at the time that I was learning Russian, it was also the time that I was becoming interested in classical music. I started buying my own records, and this Russian thing led me to Shostakovich. His music has been with me for 50 plus years.
"It wasn't until 1979, when the controversial Testimony memoirs came out, as told to Solomon Volkov, that I realized he [Shostakovich] wasn't just one of the great composers of the 20th century, he was also a case. If you go through the history of Western music, I can't think of a composer who was under more daily, monthly, yearly, lifelong pressure than Shostakovich — to be under the whim of the music loving Stalin.
I started buying my own records, and this Russian thing led me to Shostakovich. His music has been with me for 50 plus years.- Julian Barnes
"All the arts were being subjected to bureaucratic, state and political control. They were interested primarily in writers and journalists, who were the 'engineers of human souls,' in their phrase. But they realized that the other arts also had their engineering skills, which could be put to use by the revolution.
"And for [Shostakovich to] survive out the other end was extraordinary. Though of course, in my view and in my novel, he is, to some extent, broken by it. I think his life was tragic actually."
The real Dmitri Shostakovich
"He was shy and sensitive. He was also a musical prodigy and in that way, he missed a certain kind of growing up, of rubbing along with other children who weren't interested in music. There was something perhaps a little bit held back within him and when he wasn't sensitive, he was kind of blurting. He felt that he was on the wrong metronome setting, emotionally.
He was shy and sensitive. He was also a musical prodigy, and in that way, he missed a certain kind of growing up, of rubbing along with other children who weren't interested in music.- Julian Barnes
"In some ways, the Soviet Union, from its earliest days, was very authoritarian and quite repressive. In other ways, it was very freeing. It was initially very freeing for the arts, of course, and early Shostakovich music was very experimental. Communist Russia believed in sexual freedom, ease of marriage and ease of divorce. He married his wife, divorced her, and then married her again.
"I think he was only confident about the decisions he made when he was composing music, and he knew what he wanted. People would say to him, conductors for example, 'I think it might be better if we just took this bit at this tempo.' And he'd say, 'That's an excellent idea, I'm sure you're right, but let's play it this way for now.' And he'd always get his way because there wouldn't be another time. He was highly intelligent and interested in absolutely everything."
Julian Barnes on keeping his wife's memory alive
"[Levels of Life] is a book about grief, but I wanted to get there by setting it up with metaphors and parallels, which would then come into full play. [The] first section was factual and historical about ballooning, and the second section was going to have real characters, but it was going to be fictional and an explosion of life and love and sex.
"And then the third part was going to be about grief, and that was obviously autobiographical. As a writer, I believe in describing. It's not noble grief. It's ugly. It's unpleasant. Everything is reshaped — your history, biography and even your geography seem to be reshaped. You're like a balloonist, lost in the cloud, not knowing what line to tug on.
"Unsurprisingly, I've had many conversations with people whose partner or wife or husband has died. I've had extraordinary letters and people stopping me in the street.
"I was coming back from the farmers' market in North London and a man stands in front of me, blocking my path, and he looks kind of shabby somehow, but also middle class. I notice the middle button is missing off his overcoat. And he says, 'My wife died two months ago. I wake up each day and I think of a different way of killing myself. And my children don't understand, and I'm going to write out sentences from your book [Levels of Life] and send them to them.'
Unsurprisingly, I've had many conversations with people whose partner or wife or husband has died. I've had extraordinary letters and people stopping me in the street.- Julian Barnes
"And it just goes straight between the ribs when someone says that to you.
"It's been very chastening and kind of heartening at the same time that people do talk or write openly about it. I thought if I couldn't hack it after a certain period of time, I'd consider taking my life.
"But an argument found me, which was that I was the fullest repository of the memory of my wife, and that if I kill myself, that repository would disappear. In a kind of way, she'd be dying again, and I couldn't do that to her. And therefore, it was my duty and responsibility to continue bearing her memory within me."
Julian Barnes' comments have been edited and condensed.