Abstract
This article analyzes thematic unit associated with Dmitri Shostakovich’s life and work which has recently taken shape in Anglophone fiction. A number of early 21st-century novelists have mentioned Shostakovich, and some have made him a protagonist. Whether it is a question of the fictionalizations of Shostakovich or transpositions of his music into words, writers rely heavily on Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, as related to and edited by Solomon Volkov (1979). No matter how apocryphal that book is, it has formed the current image of Shostakovich in English. Like Testimony itself, the novelized reincarnations of the composer always have a secondhand nature. The “original” has been mediated repeatedly, and each new derivation is neither first nor last. Nevertheless, Shostakovich and his music are always recognizable, as the motif of Shostakovich as a thematic unit of narrative from the beginning has been formed “from hearsay.”
Translated title of the contribution | Shostakovich in Anglophone Novels: Motifs from Hearsay |
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Original language | Russian |
Pages (from-to) | 224–240. |
Journal | Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie |
Volume | 174 |
Issue number | 2 |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Keywords
- Shostakovich
- music and literature
- fictionality
- William T. Vollmann
- Solomon Volkov