Review of A Life's Music by Andreï Makine

This Novella is Simply Told but Holds Hypnotic Emotional Depth

May 12, 2009

Makine explores the Soviet soul through the story of one man in this astonishing work of French/Russian fiction.

A Life's Music received tremendous critical praise on its release in 2001, and has proved a hit with readers around the world. It explores the role of creativity and self-expression in maintaining human freedom.

Short Biography of Andreï Makine

Andreï Makine was born and raised in Siberia, but has lived in France since seeking asylum there in 1987 aged thirty. That year he spent a summer sleeping and writing amongst the tombs in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. He now lives simply in a former lunatic asylum in Montmartre and a small farmhouse in the Vendée. Makine writes about his mother country in French and has not returned to Russia.

Makine is widely respected around the world, and he has won two of France’s most prestigious awards: the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Médicis, both for Le Testament Français, his fourth book and first major success. A Life’s Music won the Grand Prix RTL-Lire prize. His work is beautifully translated into English by Geoffrey Strachan.

The term ‘Homo Sovieticus’ was first defined by the philosopher Alexander Zinoviev to illustrate how the communist system created a new species. Makine explores it in great depth throughout this novella. At the beginning we see ordinary Russians huddled together like a single entity, “a beast savouring, with every single cell in its body, its good fortune at being undercover.” (pg 6) The narrator has difficult picking out an individual amongst them.

As the narrator dozes an old man, Alexeï, begins to play the piano, weeping in the darkness. “Suddenly this music!” (pg 9) breaks open the atmosphere and the narrator, in his dreamlike state, is able to connect with a Soviet soul. Through Alexeï we explore a single cell in the Soviet body.

As they take the Trans-Siberian across Russia, Alexeï tells the story of how he survived the brutal Stalin years. A brilliant young pianist with a promising career ahead of him, he had to suppress his artistic gift in order to survive. Creativity, with its focus on individual expression and free thought, is a great threat to any oppressive regime and the Soviet Union was no different. Alexeï’s parents are arrested by the NKVD (pre-KGB) for allegedly being part of the “rotten intelligentsia” on the night of his first public recital.

Instead of performing his wonderful debut, he must make his escape. His uncertainty at hearing a neighbour breathe “don’t go home” hints at how the political system entered the minds of ordinary individuals, breaking down trust between people. Makine reveals the culture of isolation at the heart of the Soviet Russia.

After days hiding in a narrow gap between two walls in his Uncle’s barn in the Ukraine, Alexeï steals the identity of a dead peasant soldier. He literally becomes anonymous, locking away all his musical brilliance to the point where he can “guard against any upsurge of nostalgia” (pg 60) when he hears it. He is literally “drained of himself” (pg 53). However, he is unable to do this forever and “all becomes music” (pg 99) again later in the story.

Makine shows how essential the artistic drive is to humanity. For him creativity is the total unimpeded expression of self through art, and when this is suppressed, a person cannot truly exist. In creating Alexeï he honours not only the struggles of artists in oppressive regimes, but the indestructible spark in us all.

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