NOW
LET’S MAKE IT A MOVIE
It
is easy to understand how this novel stayed on the best seller list for weeks
and weeks in New Zealand. The story is compelling, and Sarah Quigley knows how
to tell it. Against the background of the siege of Leningrad during the Second
World War Dmitry Shostakovich is writing his Seventh Symphony, struggling to
finish it while German bombs are falling all around him. Meanwhile, the main
character, Karl Il’ich Eliasberg (1907-1978), the second-rate conductor of a
second-rate orchestra, goes about his life of quiet desperation, unaware that
circumstances are coming together so as to place him at the center of history.
The
name of Eliasberg is barely remembered any more. Sarah Quigley has brought him
back to life as a fictional character, a modest man who, for one brief moment
in history, becomes a hero. Imagine going about your usual diurnal and
pedestrian life, only to wake up one morning and find that you are in a
nightmare. That is what happened to Eliasberg and the people of Leningrad. Plenty
of blockade survivors are still alive today, although what they went through is
difficult for the rest of us to conceive of.
This book gives us a good feel for the air raids, the lack of food, the
stress of starving and freezing people, packed together in communal apartments,
who press on with their lives while living this terrible nightmare. There are
only a few main characters, but they are well portrayed, rounded—Eliasberg,
Shostakovich and his family, the violinist Nikolai and his beloved daughter
Sonya. At least the basics of the plot are related in a style reminiscent of
nineteenth century Russian realism. Notwithstanding this, the novel has
elements of the postmodernist style, although they are most likely
unintentional (see below).
Of
course, the plot revolves around the Seventh (Leningrad) Symphony, its
composition and its early performances. Apparently some publishers include a CD
of the symphony with the sale of the book (mine did not), and that is a
wonderful idea. You should be listening to the music through earphones as you
read the book, because the book is, primarily, about music. The big question is
how do you write a book about music? Another, more problematic question: is it
even possible to discuss music, its essence, in words?
It
certainly helps if the person writing the book is her/himself a musician. Anthony Burgess was, and one of the best novels
of the twentieth century about music is his Napoleon Symphony. I know
nothing about Sarah Quigley’s background, but I would bet that she is a musician.
Some of the best passages describe how music is written, how it is played, how
a conductor conducts. Here is Eliasberg, escaping from the onerous task of
caring for his mother by conjuring up Mahler’s Fifth Symphony:
“Instantly,
there it was, catching him, stopping his fall. The low repeated notes of the
trumpet—full of hope, or foretelling tragedy? The possibility of both was there
in that urgent, repeated brass voice. Then the lift to the minor third and the
rise to the octave—and then the descending notes, the repeated fall, the rising
up again. And the crash! That beautiful, all-encompassing, full and worldly sound, shutting out critical faces and
marching feet, ominous news, guilt and fear (26-27).”
The
book is teeming with such references to composers and music. Here are a few
more examples:
(1) Eliasberg’s
Leningrad Radio Orchestra is at rehearsal, with (before the conductor begins)
“messy riffs of violins, and flutes emitting single repeated notes,” against a
background of gossip in the ranks. Then (when the rehearsal has begun) the
conductor swallows and tastes the fried egg he had eaten for breakfast, “mixed
with the sour bile of insecurity,” and nothing seems to go right. “The strings
turned the melodies to mush, the brass was coarse, the woodwind as shrill as a
wife long out of love with her husband.” To top it all off a stray dog out on
the street begins barking against the beat, and bursts of laughter frolic about
in the orchestra (66-67).
(2) The violinist Nikolai faces a tense family
dispute, involving “his scolding sister-in-law and his small angry daughter.”
He defuses the situation by sitting down at the piano: “He picked his way
through a Boccherini minuet. Each note, even those imperfectly executed, fell
like a small pickaxe, chipping away at the frosty atmosphere, easing the
pressure” (82).
(3) Shostakovich, even at
age eleven, is supremely confident of his musical acumen. He debunks his overly
conservative teacher by presenting a parody of him for his sister: “He marched
over to the piano in the corner of the room. ‘I was playing the opening to my
Chopin Prelude like this—‘ With sticky wax fingertips, he began picking out the
B Flat Minor Prelude. ‘And he said if I continued that way I would fail my
exam. Then he told me to play it like this!’
Sitting up straight on the stool, he shut his eyes so as to better remember
Gliasser’s pious expression, and felt his body transform into his teacher’s.
His arms became stiff, his fingers turned to wood and, on the pedals, his feet
shriveled to those of a seventy-year-old. Because this was a special knack of
his, the keys also changed under his touch, as if responding to a different
person” (92).
Of course, the main
musical focus is the Seventh (Leningrad) Symphony, and the author is especially
convincing (and daring) in the way she goes
into Shostakovich’s mind and makes up scenes, describing important moments in
the process of composition:
(1) The
composer finds the march music of his First Movement in the nattering of a
repulsive acquaintance. “But as Boris’s voice hammered on, a tinny
tune emerged from the insults. . . . a
mindlessly repetitive tune. . . .
“Pizzicato,
that was it! A pizzicato refrain rising from a melancholic E flat melody like a
puppet rising from a heap of toys. Unseen hands pulled on the strings (slowly,
relentlessly) until the puppet was marching. The wooden tune spread from the
strings to the woodwind, and battled repetitively against the snare drums.
‘Idiotic,’ said Boris’s voice from amid the growing din. ‘Arrogant. Imitative.’
‘Exactly!’
The words burst out of Shostakovich. ‘You’re right! The themes of fascism. It
will be a fascist march’”(128).
(2) The
air-raid sirens wail, and the German planes roar overhead. Shostakovich sends
his wife and children down to the cellar, puts
cotton wool in his ears and goes on composing. That’s when things begin coming together.
“Then, at last, he found a path into the scherzo. The lilting melody of the
strings was like stepping out into a fresh country morning. This was
underpinned by some stealthy, stagy, staccato cello notes—a little like the
footsteps of an aunt not wanting to intrude. Next, the oboe. Lilting and
soaring, it was Tatyana’s voice as it used to be, before she became quarrelsome
and possessive. . . .
“The
storm? This would be easier. The first movement had pointed the way, with its
uneasy C sharp minor key and its repetitive chaos. He would use brass and
woodwind for the buffeting wind, crashing against barns and flattening
hedgerows. And a hammering xylophone would return, slowly and inevitably, to
the original key of B minor. . . . Then, for a single brief moment, he could
see clear to the symphony’s end” (200-201).
(3) In
playing part of the work on piano for Eliasberg, Shostakovich struggles with
his doubts.
Eliasberg: “A war symphony. For Leningrad. . . . It will be your Eroica. . . . Like Beethoven, you’ve
captured the very essence of war.” Shostakovich: But then, as Beethoven proved,
“a naturalistic portrayal of battle may. . . . turn out to be an aesthetic
embarrassment.” And maybe it is too reminiscent of the first movement of
Ravel’s Bolero, “they’ll say I’ve
copied Ravel. Well, let them say it. This is how I hear war.” Then again
(Eliasberg), there’s something here reminiscent of the second movement of
Sibelius’ Fifth, and, of course, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 comes to mind, and then
again (Shostakovich), they’ll say “I’m becoming derivative of my own work,”
for, after all, “A seventh symphony necessarily carries the other six on its back”
(181-182). For a similar scene, see p. 218-219.
One
who listens to Shostakovich’s music could argue, of course, with Quigley’s
interpretation of the Seventh Symphony, but she forestalls such protestations
in her introductory note: “I have chosen to depict the work as a direct
response to the invasion of Leningrad for purely novelistic reasons.” Okay, but
I still feel a little bit like arguing. Did Shostakovich ever really say, “This
is how I see war”? Is the symphony that directly programmatic? Is the Bolero
march in the first movement to be seen as a depiction of the fascists on their
way to Leningrad (and never quite getting there)? Maybe. But then again, maybe
not.
To me the so-called
“invasion theme,” with its circumspect snare drums and its slow dimwit march
with repetitive dimwit refrains, reminds me more of a bunch of Young Pioneers
(Soviet girl and boy scouts), on their way to a picnic in May, marching along
and singing mindless patriotic ditties. Then come the intrusions of dissonance,
the wails of horror, and it all builds to a hideous climax, but a climax of
what? Of triteness?
Among modern
interpreters of the Seventh, many have taken the position that the dimwitted
evil in the mindless march encompasses not only Nazi Germany, but the Stalinist
Soviet Union as well. I can buy that, and I can’t prove it, but there’s a good
chance that Shostakovich himself could buy it. There are even some who say that
the glorious ending of the symphony, the spectacular and triumphant finale of
the fourth movement (once subtitled “Victory” by Shostakovich) is, perhaps, too
glorious by half: not a triumph, but a parody of triumph. Anyway. Just had to
get that off my chest.
There are a few other
things you could argue with. For example, the novel treats as fact
Shostakovich’s work in the fire brigade during the siege. But now it appears
that he was, for the most part, a symbolic firefighter whose firefighting was
used for propaganda value. In her biography of Shostakovich, Laurel Fay writes
that “he never actually had occasion to extinguish an incendiary,” and mentions
“posed photographs of the helmeted composer steadfastly standing guard on the
roof of the Conservatory, shot on July 29 [1941] and disseminated around the
globe” (beginning of Ch. 8, “The War Years”). The cover of Time Magazine, July
20, 1942, portrays the bespectacled and youthful composer in profile, wearing
an ornate fireman’s helmet--a picture that produces something of a comical
effect: nerd as Roman legionnaire.
Now
for a few things about the book’s unintentional postmodernism. How can you make
such a realistic story into something other than realism? Easy. Take a story
about Russians, set it in a Russian city, Leningrad, and then make the Russians
neither act nor speak entirely like Russians. Furthermore, have them inhabit a
city that is Leningrad but frequently seems like somewhere else-- some
fairyland inside-out version of the city.
Take
the problem of the windows in the novel. They open and shut not like any
windows in Leningrad or St. Petersburg. At one point Eliasberg is described as
“raising the sash window, leaning out and feeling the wind on his face” (26). One
thing is right about that: you can lean out Russian windows into the air,
because there are no screens on the windows. At another point doors are
slamming and windows “fall like guillotines” (105). That won’t work. Russian
windows have a handle that you twist and then pull, and the long window half opens
toward you, into the room. At the top right of any Russian window there is also
a little offspring window (fortochka), used for a bit of ventilation.
But sash windows, going up and down? No.
Take
the problem of the Bronze Horseman, the equestrian monument to Peter the Great,
which is certainly the most famous statue in all of Russia. Here is how that
monument is described:
“In
front of them was that familiar bronze statue of Peter the Great. He sat
astride his huge rearing horse, face averted from the city he’d founded, eyes
fixed eternally on a far horizon. His sword had a greenish hue towards the
hilt, but its tip was bright from the touch of many hands and the bent fetlock
of his horse had been stroked to gold.
“’What
are they doing?’ Sonya spoke in a half-whisper” (111).
Indeed,
what are they doing, or, better, what have they done? A lifelong resident of Leningrad,
Sonya appears to sense that strange things have been done to the Bronze
Horseman. Where are we and what is this? It certainly is not the Bronze
Horseman as we know it, although that’s a nice imaginative touch (the thing
about the bright tip of the sword and the bent fetlock stroked to gold). The
fact is that the Bronze Horseman is not holding any sword and never has held a
sword. If you look at the real Bronze Horseman the horse seems to be rearing
up, spooked by the enormous snake beneath his hooves, and the rider appears to
be holding out his right hand to get his balance. Although no one ever seems to
notice, it always has seemed to me that Peter is about to be bucked off the
most famous horse in the country. As for the stroking of the sword and the
horse, even if there were a sword you couldn’t stroke it, and you couldn’t
reach the head of the horse. Why? Because the statue is mounted high on a huge
rock, too high for idle fingers to reach.
So
are we really in Leningrad? At one point Eliasberg reaches “the crowded
marketplace of Gostiny Dvor,” but then, one page later, he is suddenly at a
different outdoor market—the one at the Haymarket (Sennaja ploshchad’—75-76).
So which is it? Where are we? We’re neither here nor there; we’re in some kind
of ontological crisis, and the peril of ontology is often a central theme of twentieth
century post-modernist literature.
Adding
to the confusion is the fact that the Russian characters of the novel are,
simultaneously, not Russians. When irritated, for example, they say, “Shit”
(16, 83). Speakers of English do that, as do speakers of French. While there
are perfectly good Russian words for excrement (gavno, der’mo),
Russians, for some reason, do not normally utter them by way of expressing irritation.
Nor do Russians hold
their thumbs for good luck, as Sonya does for Shostakovich (116-117). I’m not
sure where people hold their thumbs for good luck (Germany, New Zealand?), but
if you walk the streets holding your thumbs in Russia you will create mass
confusion. Something like what once happened to a naïve American friend of
mine, who, upon his first visit to St. Petersburg, walked down the street,
smiling at oncoming pedestrians and saying, in English, “How you doing?” When he
later told me that people were looking at him as if he were crazy I said,
“Jeff. They really did think you were crazy.”
What else? Well,
Russians, who don’t smile and say hello to strangers on the street, may also be
the most superstitious of all nationalities. They deliberately don’t do things
that are thought to bring on bad luck. Whistling is one of them. I have never
seen any Russian walking down the street “whistling cheerfully” (25). If you
want to guarantee that we are not in Leningrad have Eliasberg whistle
cheerfully while raising the sash window.
For one who never
experienced the Stalinist terror it is hard to imagine how traumatic it
was. When you went to bed you never knew
if tonight would be the night when they came to take you away. For years on end
Dmitry Shostakovich had to live with that terror. In the late thirties some of
his best friends were arrested, tortured, shot. If you are prone to condemn him
for the compromises he made in order to survive, try reading the fine biography
by Laurel Fay. You may find yourself less judgmental after you realize what he
went through.
The Russians in The
Conductor, however, in their attitude to the terror, behave, once again, as
if they were not Russian. At one point
there is a conversation that simply could not have taken place in the real
Leningrad of the early forties. A member of Eliasberg’s orchestra comes to a
rehearsal and blurts out to all and sundry the news that his Jewish neighbors
have been arrested (140). Not possible. In such situations you kept your mouth
shut, or discussed things only in whispers with family members and close
friends. Furthermore, on the next page, Eliasberg admonishes one of the
orchestra by mentioning the forced labor camps: “At least you’d have learned
about hard work, had you been in a labour camp.” Not possible. You assumed that
there were spies and informers everywhere, ready to report any manifestation of
disloyalty; you never spoke publicly about the camps.
Then there is the
problem of the names and the patronymics. Admittedly this is a stumbling point
for the foreign reader of any novel about Russians, and for any non-Russian-speaking
author writing about Russians. Instead of saying “Mr. Volkov,” Russians who
wish to be polite and formal address Volkov by his first name and patronymic
(name formed from that of his father): Boris Vladimirovich (his father’s name
was Vladimir). Yes, that’s a mouthful, but that’s the way it’s done. In her
introduction the author explains that she uses Anglicised versions of Russian
names and that she has “simplified the complicated Russian method of personal address.” Fair enough, if you can make it
work. But then we get things like “Karl Illyyich” (name and patronymic for
Eliasberg), with an extra l and an extra y (p. 9). We get, “Sonya Nikolaevska”
(114 and elsewhere), an impossible name-patronymic combination. Sonya is a
nickname for Sofya (Sophia). Her father’s name is Nikolai; therefore, her
name-patronymic would be Sofya Nikolaevna, although since she is a little girl
no one would address her that way, except in fun. The only correct use of name
and patronymic in the book is that of Shostakovich’s best friend, the polymath
and linguistic genius Sollertinsky (Ivan Ivanovich). Of course Nikolai would
probably call his daughter by any number of affectionate diminutives (Sonechka,
Sonyushechka, etc.), but we need not get into that, and it is fine that Sarah
Quigley sticks most of the time with “Sonya.”
In sum, the characters
of the book live in a somewhat skewed variant of Leningrad; they frequently don’t
act like Russians, they don’t address one another like Russians. And, finally,
they do not appear to speak Russian. You say, okay, of course they don’t speak
Russian, because the book is written in English. True, just as any translation
of Tolstoy into English is written in English. But in a good translation we at
least maintain the illusion that what the Russian characters are speaking is
Russian. Not in The Conductor. Not only do the characters say “Shit”
when hot and bothered. They use word play in English. When Eliasberg tells a
man at the market that he is a conductor that man replies, “Trams? Or buses?”
(80). Nice pun and one more poke at the hapless Eliasberg, but it won’t work in
Russian. An orchestra conductor is dirizhёr, and there’s a different
word for a conductor on a tram: konduktor.
If a translator, let’s
say, were to translate the novel into Russian, that translator would certainly
render the title as Dirizhёr. The only thing that he/she could do with
the pun on p.80 would be to throw it out. Then again, what would the translator
do with the multitude of un-Russian things that appear in the book? Leave them
there with their eerie postmodernist effect, or try to straighten them out and
make the book totally realistic? What, for example, would the translator do
when the Russian characters correct each others’ English? See, e.g., p. 240,
where Eliasberg corrects “I seen them” to “I’ve seen them” and “virgin-eaters”
to “vermin eaters.”
In dwelling upon the
un-Russianness of this book ostensibly set in Russia, am I condemning it out of
hand? Not in the least. I like the book. I like the strong characterizations
and the plot line. I like, especially, the masterly treatment of musical
effects and descriptions of how music is composed and conducted. Strange to
say, I even like, to a certain extent, the way the book is transmogrified,
unbeknown to the author, into something like postmodernism.
Why not have a
Leningrad/Petersburg that is portrayed in somewhat skewed fashion, a place
where the windows open and close in unexpected ways and Peter the Great on his
horse waves a sword? After all, the whole tradition of St. Petersburg in Russian
literature, beginning with Pushkin’s famous narrative poem, “The Bronze
Horseman” (which describes, among other things, how the statue comes to life
and gallops after the crazed hero), is characterized by a similar eeriness. St.
Petersburg, that “most abstract and premeditated city on all the earth”
(Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground), is where a nose escapes from a
man’s face and takes on an existence of its own (Nikolai Gogol, “The Nose”).
St. Petersburg is where the murderer Raskolnikov, in Crime and Punishment--and
scads of other Dostoevskian characters in many other works--wander the grim
streets in a daze, where Andrei Bely lets phantasmagoria run rampant (in his
novel Petersburg). One of the
best stories written about life during the siege of the city, Zamyatin’s “The
Cave,” has the same feel to it: we are in a nightmare.
To sum things up, I
find much to like about The Conductor. In fact, and this may be my
central point, I am exited about the prospect of seeing this novel made into a
film. Why? Because seldom is a good novel successfully translated into a better
film, and this one, like Jerzy Kosinski’s
Being There (filmed with Peter Sellers in the lead role) could certainly
become a great film—a film better than the book.
Why? Because of the
theme of music. Although throughout the novel the author is extremely good at
describing music, music is written to be heard, not described in words.
Those who among the readers of the novel are musicians can probably hear the
music as Sarah Quigley describes it, but the majority of readers (such as me)
are not musicians. Take the following wonderful passage:
“Now the music was
thinning, like ice at the edge of a lake. This was as it should be. The melody
moved downwards, grinding into the uneasy key of C sharp minor. Low woodwind
notes hinted at the watery depths: contrabassoon, bass clarinet pulling on the
deepest of C sharps like an anchor, yet also releasing, rising, moving up
towards the strings. A pizzicato bridge over the water, slipping into E major,
leading to—
“Something was missing. Elias jolted back into the present. . .
.”(266).
What is missing, it
turns out, is the flute solo, but what also is missing for the reader is the
music itself. Make a film and you have the music in the score. You can keep
the passage above if you want—do it as a voiceover. Make a film, shoot it in
St. Petersburg (Leningrad), and in a trice you eliminate the problems with
places and window sashes and merry whistlers on the streets. Make a film and
you can show us that wonderful portrait by Kustodiev of the boy Shostakovich
(see p. 295). Make a film and you can hear as well as see the final dress
rehearsal of the Seventh Symphony (288-91).
What is the climax of
the story and the climax of the central character’s whole life? It comes on the
day when the starving and feeble conductor and musicians of the Leningrad Radio
Orchestra present the inaugural performance of the Leningrad Symphony in the
besieged city of Leningrad. For Aug. 9, 1942, Hitler had planned a lavish
banquet, to be held at the Astoria Hotel, just across the street from mammoth
St. Isaac’s Cathedral. The banquet was to celebrate the fall of the city, the
victory of Fascist Germany. Instead of the banquet the Germans, who never did
take the city, got a performance of the Leningrad Symphony, dedicated to the
heroic defenders of Leningrad and beamed out through loudspeakers over the
front lines. In your face, Der Furher.
The book leaves out
that climactic event. The book ends with Eliasberg holding a telegram from
Shostakovich in his hand, a telegram that regrets the absence of the composer
(long since evacuated East from the city in extremis), a telegram assuring Eliasberg
that the upcoming performance will be MAGNIFICENT.
The film will end with
the performance itself. We can watch the orchestra playing it, listen and watch
the conductor conducting, watch Shostakovich by his radio set, listening from Kujbyshev,
watch the Nazi soldiers, listening in their trenches. We can even watch the
reaction, if we wish, of the Bronze Horseman, up on his horse and trying to get
his balance, listening. I would recommend finding a good Russian director and
let the whole thing be filmed in Russian, with the characters speaking Russian.
You may wish to turn the semi-postmodernism back into realism, but it would be
good to leave at least a few touches of the Petersburg phantasmagoria. Eschew
Hollywood, however, even if Hollywood can come up with the big money. Hollywood
would play too loosely with the truth for dramatic effect. Shostakovich was
evacuated from Leningrad on October 1, 1941, but Hollywood would bring him back
and keep him in the city for the duration of the filming. Furthermore,
Hollywood would put him in his fireman’s helmet, would have him saving a
building from a fiery inferno, handling a fire hose with one hand, while,
simultaneously, conducting to the radio with his other, enjoying the
performance of his Seventh Symphony. Eschew Hollywood, which could ruin the
movie by over-seasoning it with the usual Hollywood excesses of violence,
brutality, blood flowing freely, and, above all, gross sentimentality.
(this review originally posted on Amazon)
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