Julian Barnes's The Noise of Time as a Narrative of Trauma
Abstract
In The Noise of Time (2016), Julian Barnes narrates the biography of the famous Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975). Barnes presents Shostakovich as a trapped and anguished human being who needs to be understood and absolved from the accusations of his time. We can read the novel as the story of a great composer who lived his life as trauma, and carried this burden in a most Sisyphean sense. We watch him as he tries his best to save his personal integrity while undergoing severely distressing events, continuously distracted by the noise of his time as he is perseveringly composing his masterpieces despite it. This paper will illustrate how Barnes evokes sympathy for Shostakovich’s traumatic life and how Shostakovich fought with trauma by the help of his ironic mode of living.
Keywords
References
- Barnes, Julian. (2016). The Noise of Time. London: Jonathan Cape. Caruth, Cathy. (1993). “Violence and Time: Traumatic Survivals”. Assemblage, No: 20, Violence, The MIT Press. (pp: 24-25) http://www.jstor.org/stable/318682 Accessed 24.03.2016 Fairclough, Pauline. (2005). “Facts, Fantasies and Fictions: Recent Shostakovich Studies”. Music and Letters, Vol. 86, No:3. (pp: 452-460) JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3526611. Accessed 20.02.2016 Freidin, Gregory. (1978). “The Whisper of History and the Noise of Time in the Writings of Osip Mandelstam”. The Russian Review, Vol, 37, No: 4. (pp: 421-437) JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/128508. Accessed 17.02.2016 Hartman, Geoffrey H. (1995). “On the Traumatic Knowledge and Literary Studies”. New Literary History, Vol. 26 No: 3, John Hopkins UP. (pp: 537-563) JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20057300. Accessed 27.03.2016 Laplanche, Jean and Jean Bertrand Pontalis. (1973). The Language of Psycho-Analysis. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. London: Karnac Books. Lasdun, James. (2016). “The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes”. The Guardian. (Book review) www.theguardian.com. Accessed 22.01. 2016. Weinstein, Philip. (2005). Unknowing: The Work of Modernist Fiction. UK: Cornell U.P.
Details
Primary Language
English
Subjects
Linguistics
Journal Section
Research Article
Authors
Publication Date
October 25, 2018
Submission Date
January 18, 2018
Acceptance Date
April 9, 2018
Published in Issue
Year 2018 Number: 33