Booktalk

  
    We struggle within, or soar within, the context of our lives. Sometimes, some people can manage both. No, I retract that.

    If I learned anything from my reading of this book, it is that often many manage both; surviving being a heroic soaring within some of history’s bleak and desperate corners.

    Symphony for the City of the Dead by M.T. Anderson spends considerable effort establishing the context of its alleged focus - Dmitri Shostakovich - and his flight of soaring; composing and sharing with the world his Seventh Symphony created during the Siege of Leningrad. I think, however, that the author uses the Shostakovich story as bait to draw us into a better understanding of the landscape of upheaval that was Russia in the first half of the 20th century. Indeed, for brilliant composers and common serfs alike, it was often a time of helplessness, deprivation, fear, and unremitting suffering - an almost impossible time to soar.

    For me, Anderson was very successful in recreating the oppressive atmosphere of suspicion, brutality, and want that characterized the progression of oppressors; czars, revolutionaries, Communist party officials, and ultimately, Stalin. His detailed rendering of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad by the Germans; its causes, its hardships, and its meaning, are unforgettable; as they should be.   

    That Shostakovich composed a symphony in the midst of this terror, and that the world responded with awakening support for the suffering of those masses is inspirational. Like the novel Doctor Zhivago, however, this work of nonfiction, at its core, dares me to consider whether a person can live a personal life within a cauldron of political and national extremity. A good question, a good question.