On reading Julian Barnes' novel The Noise of Time, aside from the form of this fictional take on the life of Shostakovich, what struck me most was the timely pertinence of one embedded theme.
Can we and should we liberate the art from the artist and allow ourselves to appreciate it in isolation?
Recently, a friend on Facebook shared her moral dilemma and crisis of conscience on discovering that Roald Dahl had voiced some undeniably anti-Semitic views in his later years. She had purchased a number of Roald Dahl's books to read with her son, but upon realisation that the author had held unacceptable opinions and voiced these publicly, should she and could she continue to read his work with her son? A healthy debate ensued in the comments, but there was no clear conclusion.
Shortly after this informal online debate, the Leaving Neverland documentary about Michael Jackson was aired in the UK. This piece of damning evidence against Jackson left many wondering how they could possibly legitimise an admiration for his music.
So once again the question in my mind was: can we and should we still enjoy and promote something exceptional when we know that the creator was morally flawed? And to be clear, we are not talking about morally flawed as we all must admit to being, but about those who are deeply and even criminally in the wrong?
Barnes' novel reminds us of Lenin's assertion that art belongs to the people. This communist ideology seeks to separate the art from the artist. Could thist be a convenient solution for those of us struggling with our consciences over enjoying the work of Wagner, Roald Dahl, T.S. Eliot, Michael Jackson...the list goes on? The piece of art created, whether a song, a symphony, a painting or a play, belongs to the people and not the creator. Does this mean it is ours to enjoy regardless of its provenance? This ideology, if taken to the extreme, would have negative connotations for the artist, who relinquishes ownership. This becomes even more sinister when the state takes control and the Stalinist interpretation morphs this concept into censorship and absolutely holds the creator responsible when the music, art or literature is not in line with the views of the state to whose people the creation belongs.
However, politics aside for a moment, let us return to Barnes' novel, where we find Shostakovich troubled by his moral weakness in failing to resist the regime. He sees himself as a moral and spiritual hunchback, a coward. He cannot deny colluding with the Power. He resists overt endorsement and uses irony to rebel, but the irony can be so subtle as to be undetectable. His, like ours, is a struggle with integrity and as the narrative and his life both draw to a close, his thoughts turn to the question of posterity and legacy. Will the passing of time, the noise of time, separate the wheat from the chaff? Will only the "best" be remembered? Barnes' Shostakovich thinks not. He cannot find any reason to believe that future generations should be any more discerning than a musician's contemporary audience. This is something for future debate, but in the context of this novel, the composer is considering how the value of art (or to be more specific, music) is affected by politics. The political standing of the artist influences the success and outwardly acceptable opinion of his or her art. The value system for art is measured against the political value system or in some cases the personal taste of one dictator. But, in addition to this observation, Shostakovich is judging himself harshly as a collaborator or traitor and therefore raises the question as to whether his musical legacy will be acceptable to future generations or to those who may judge him harshly for not doing more to openly oppose the oppressive regimes under which he has lived his entire working life. He speaks the words that are given to him by the state, he lies low to protect himself. He could be seen as betraying his fellow artists and therefore contemptible and a collaborator. Is his music corrupted by this? Will future generations shun his work due to his failure to stand up to the repressive regime.
I was left pondering the intertwining themes of ownership of art and the role of the artist in society. What a complex triad we are left with: the musician who creates, the audience who listens, and the music in itself. Perhaps I was influenced and made more sensitive to these themes by the backdrop against which I read The Noise of Time. Here are the passages that I found resonating:
p.69
Pushkin had put the words into Mozart's mouth:
Genius and evil
Are two things incompatible. You agree?
For himself, he agreed. Wagner had a mean soul, and it showed. He was evil in his anti-Semitism and his other racial attitudes. Therefore he could not be a genius, for all the burnish and glitter of his music.
p.87
His music should be played on its merit, not because of some posthumous campaign.
p.179
Time would pass [...]. History, as well as biography, would fade [...]. And then, if it still had value - if there were still ears to hear -his music would be...just music.[...] Because music, in the end, belonged to music. that was all you could say, or wish for.
So, if we conclude that music belongs to music or "Art belongs to everybody and nobody" (p.91) then where does that leave us? Can we isolate the musician from the music, the artist from the artwork, the garden from the gardener? Is the truth in the eye of the beholder?
I have no solution for those of you troubled by this debate. Should we listen to Michael Jackson or buy Roald Dahl's books for our children? These two examples are too recent in our history for the noise of time to have drowned out or confused the actions of the creator. It is still too difficult for us to dislocate the artist from the oeuvre. The memory of the artist behind the work is too strong. Is it too soon for us to feel the stories of Roald Dahl belong to literature and the music of Jackson belongs to music? Furthermore, should we resist the softening effect of time? Is it OK that my mother (the daughter of a Jewish refugee) is able to appreciate Wagner's opera as music separate from the man and his opinions? Should she be raging against his memory or feeling her appreciation is a weak betrayal of the Jewish people? Should we allow her to enjoy the music as music guilt free, whilst mindful of the flawed composer? Thankfully, I am not a personal fan of Wagner's music, so this is one dilemma I can skip.
I anticipate that the music of Michael Jackson will eventually lose its tarnish and future generations will be able to enjoy his songs as "music for music's sake" without too much unease. We could sit and argue about whether anti-Semitic remarks and accusations of child abuse are crimes of a different level and whether we can feel less guilt about enjoying the art of one unpleasant person over another.
Friends have described me as possessing a strong moral compass, but here I find myself with my metaphorical needle spinning wildly, uncertain as to which path to take. What I can say for sure is that we need to talk about these things, in spite of whether we are able to reach a conclusion. My daughter is singing at the Royal Festival Hall with her school next week. One of their pieces was initially billed as a Michael Jackson Medley. The programme has changed. The children are now singing a Pop Medley, which is simply Michael Jackson in disguise. My daughter came home and asked why we thought the title of the piece had changed. We were forced into a conversation about Michael Jackson and the recent documentary. Maybe that was something I would not have broached with a nine year old, but it is exactly the sort of thing that we should be discussing with our children, friends, family and colleagues. I may always feel a lurking discomfort when sucked into the beauty of T.S. Eliot's poetry, but in discussing our dilemma are we able to we partly absolve ourselves of the crime of tacitly condoning the creator's views or actions by appreciating their work? Like Shostakovich, the majority of us may perpetually struggle with our consciences, judging ourselves as cowardly and weak in our failure to eschew the work of morally dubious artists. Perhaps it is too easy to shrug it off by adopting an Eliot-esque philosophy that we are not the same people from one day to the next, life is ephemeral, and time changes both everything and nothing.
I can find no easy solution to this dialectic, so I leave you with these words, which you can rip up and put in the bin if you really object to the poet the man, but which I still find move me despite my knowledge of the opinions of the poet the man:
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
― T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding
We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
Can we and should we liberate the art from the artist and allow ourselves to appreciate it in isolation?
Recently, a friend on Facebook shared her moral dilemma and crisis of conscience on discovering that Roald Dahl had voiced some undeniably anti-Semitic views in his later years. She had purchased a number of Roald Dahl's books to read with her son, but upon realisation that the author had held unacceptable opinions and voiced these publicly, should she and could she continue to read his work with her son? A healthy debate ensued in the comments, but there was no clear conclusion.
Shortly after this informal online debate, the Leaving Neverland documentary about Michael Jackson was aired in the UK. This piece of damning evidence against Jackson left many wondering how they could possibly legitimise an admiration for his music.
So once again the question in my mind was: can we and should we still enjoy and promote something exceptional when we know that the creator was morally flawed? And to be clear, we are not talking about morally flawed as we all must admit to being, but about those who are deeply and even criminally in the wrong?
Barnes' novel reminds us of Lenin's assertion that art belongs to the people. This communist ideology seeks to separate the art from the artist. Could thist be a convenient solution for those of us struggling with our consciences over enjoying the work of Wagner, Roald Dahl, T.S. Eliot, Michael Jackson...the list goes on? The piece of art created, whether a song, a symphony, a painting or a play, belongs to the people and not the creator. Does this mean it is ours to enjoy regardless of its provenance? This ideology, if taken to the extreme, would have negative connotations for the artist, who relinquishes ownership. This becomes even more sinister when the state takes control and the Stalinist interpretation morphs this concept into censorship and absolutely holds the creator responsible when the music, art or literature is not in line with the views of the state to whose people the creation belongs.
However, politics aside for a moment, let us return to Barnes' novel, where we find Shostakovich troubled by his moral weakness in failing to resist the regime. He sees himself as a moral and spiritual hunchback, a coward. He cannot deny colluding with the Power. He resists overt endorsement and uses irony to rebel, but the irony can be so subtle as to be undetectable. His, like ours, is a struggle with integrity and as the narrative and his life both draw to a close, his thoughts turn to the question of posterity and legacy. Will the passing of time, the noise of time, separate the wheat from the chaff? Will only the "best" be remembered? Barnes' Shostakovich thinks not. He cannot find any reason to believe that future generations should be any more discerning than a musician's contemporary audience. This is something for future debate, but in the context of this novel, the composer is considering how the value of art (or to be more specific, music) is affected by politics. The political standing of the artist influences the success and outwardly acceptable opinion of his or her art. The value system for art is measured against the political value system or in some cases the personal taste of one dictator. But, in addition to this observation, Shostakovich is judging himself harshly as a collaborator or traitor and therefore raises the question as to whether his musical legacy will be acceptable to future generations or to those who may judge him harshly for not doing more to openly oppose the oppressive regimes under which he has lived his entire working life. He speaks the words that are given to him by the state, he lies low to protect himself. He could be seen as betraying his fellow artists and therefore contemptible and a collaborator. Is his music corrupted by this? Will future generations shun his work due to his failure to stand up to the repressive regime.
I was left pondering the intertwining themes of ownership of art and the role of the artist in society. What a complex triad we are left with: the musician who creates, the audience who listens, and the music in itself. Perhaps I was influenced and made more sensitive to these themes by the backdrop against which I read The Noise of Time. Here are the passages that I found resonating:
p.69
Pushkin had put the words into Mozart's mouth:
Genius and evil
Are two things incompatible. You agree?
For himself, he agreed. Wagner had a mean soul, and it showed. He was evil in his anti-Semitism and his other racial attitudes. Therefore he could not be a genius, for all the burnish and glitter of his music.
p.87
His music should be played on its merit, not because of some posthumous campaign.
p.179
Time would pass [...]. History, as well as biography, would fade [...]. And then, if it still had value - if there were still ears to hear -his music would be...just music.[...] Because music, in the end, belonged to music. that was all you could say, or wish for.
So, if we conclude that music belongs to music or "Art belongs to everybody and nobody" (p.91) then where does that leave us? Can we isolate the musician from the music, the artist from the artwork, the garden from the gardener? Is the truth in the eye of the beholder?
I have no solution for those of you troubled by this debate. Should we listen to Michael Jackson or buy Roald Dahl's books for our children? These two examples are too recent in our history for the noise of time to have drowned out or confused the actions of the creator. It is still too difficult for us to dislocate the artist from the oeuvre. The memory of the artist behind the work is too strong. Is it too soon for us to feel the stories of Roald Dahl belong to literature and the music of Jackson belongs to music? Furthermore, should we resist the softening effect of time? Is it OK that my mother (the daughter of a Jewish refugee) is able to appreciate Wagner's opera as music separate from the man and his opinions? Should she be raging against his memory or feeling her appreciation is a weak betrayal of the Jewish people? Should we allow her to enjoy the music as music guilt free, whilst mindful of the flawed composer? Thankfully, I am not a personal fan of Wagner's music, so this is one dilemma I can skip.
I anticipate that the music of Michael Jackson will eventually lose its tarnish and future generations will be able to enjoy his songs as "music for music's sake" without too much unease. We could sit and argue about whether anti-Semitic remarks and accusations of child abuse are crimes of a different level and whether we can feel less guilt about enjoying the art of one unpleasant person over another.
Friends have described me as possessing a strong moral compass, but here I find myself with my metaphorical needle spinning wildly, uncertain as to which path to take. What I can say for sure is that we need to talk about these things, in spite of whether we are able to reach a conclusion. My daughter is singing at the Royal Festival Hall with her school next week. One of their pieces was initially billed as a Michael Jackson Medley. The programme has changed. The children are now singing a Pop Medley, which is simply Michael Jackson in disguise. My daughter came home and asked why we thought the title of the piece had changed. We were forced into a conversation about Michael Jackson and the recent documentary. Maybe that was something I would not have broached with a nine year old, but it is exactly the sort of thing that we should be discussing with our children, friends, family and colleagues. I may always feel a lurking discomfort when sucked into the beauty of T.S. Eliot's poetry, but in discussing our dilemma are we able to we partly absolve ourselves of the crime of tacitly condoning the creator's views or actions by appreciating their work? Like Shostakovich, the majority of us may perpetually struggle with our consciences, judging ourselves as cowardly and weak in our failure to eschew the work of morally dubious artists. Perhaps it is too easy to shrug it off by adopting an Eliot-esque philosophy that we are not the same people from one day to the next, life is ephemeral, and time changes both everything and nothing.
I can find no easy solution to this dialectic, so I leave you with these words, which you can rip up and put in the bin if you really object to the poet the man, but which I still find move me despite my knowledge of the opinions of the poet the man:
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
― T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding
We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
― T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
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