i. Chapter One: The Pictorial Musical Metaphors: Notes and Colors
In the first chapter, I will delve into the aesthetic analogy between music and painting in Proust’s narrative. In the first section, I elaborate on the mapping field of Impressionism between painting, music, and literature in Proust’s contemporary. I argue that Proust’s pictorial musical metaphor draws upon the distinction of an Impressionist painting. I will elaborate on the Impressionist music and that
Impressionist musician Debussy is inspired by Romantic and Neo-Romantic music. In the second section, I will explain how notes and colors express the other and reveal the half-sheathed essence in the other. I will examine the passages about the
aesthetic analogy between notes and colors through Deleuze’s notions of art signs. In the third section, I will examine Swann’s encounter with Vinteuil’s sonata. I argue that Proust portrays the structure of the music through the imagine scene on a canvas and that Swann accesses to the space-time of a sonorous present in the canvas. In the fourth section, I point out that the prototype of Vinteuil’s sonata is actually a mixture of a group of Romantic music. I conclude that Proust’s pictorial musical metaphor is inspired and corresponds to the Impressionism and Romantic music in a vogue sense rather than points to the prototypes of musicians directly.
ii. Chapter Two: The Musical Metaphors of Fantasy and Abstraction In this chapter, I will examine the incongruous musical metaphors of the unknown woman, the unicorn, and the accent of the same language from the tradition of Romantic musical metaphors. In the first section, I will elaborate the tradition of musical metaphors from 16th to 19th century. In the second Section, I will discuss the musical metaphor as the accent of the same language. Proust narrates that Wagner is the grandfather of Vinteuil and that Wagner and Vinteuil speak the same language of music yet different accent. In the third section, I will discuss the musical metaphor of the unknown woman in Proust’s narrative. The personification of music is a distinction of the Romantic musical metaphors. In the fourth section, I will discuss the musical metaphor of the unicorn from the allegorical tradition of Romantic musical metaphors. I will also elaborate the parables of the unicorn and the listening experience of Swann. I argue that Proust’s musical metaphors of the unknown woman, the unicorn, and the accent of the same language correspond to the tradition of musical metaphors as Spitzer suggests, however, by means of Proust’s audacious musical metaphor of the unicorn, Proust hopes to imagine music
that goes beyond its original prototypes.
iii. Chapter Three: Absolute Music and the Multiple Views of Art
In this chapter, I study on Proust’s perspective of music. I argue that Proust pursues the idea of absolute music and that the encounters with music reflect the multiple views of art. In the first section, I will elaborate on the concept of absolute music. I argue that Proust pursues the idea of absolute music by means of the fictive music of Vinteuil and that Proust’s allegiance to absolute music reflects in the
incongruous musical metaphors. In the second section, I will denote Proust’s taste of music by examining Proust’s musical descriptions of Wagner, Liszt, and Chopin. The audience’s reactions in the charity concert present how the upper class comments the music in Proust’s contemporary. In the third section, I will elucidate Proust’s perspective of an artist’s life by examining Vinteuil’s septet, which is the last work of Vinteuil before his death. In the fourth section, I argue that the encounters of Swann, Marcel, and Vinteuil reflect Proust’s multiple perspectives of art. I will examine their encounters with music by the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
Chapter One: Pictorial Musical Metaphors: Notes and Colors
I. The Mapping Field of Impressionism: Music, Painting, and Literature Proust creates three fictive artists: the musician Vinteuil, the painter Elister, and the writer Bergotte. Proust reveals his perspective of art through the fictive artists.
For Proust, it seems that all the forms of arts are in equal power to each other. In one paragraph, Proust aligns music and painting. Swann hears Vinteuil’s sonata in the social clan. Proust depicts the audience’s perceptions about Vinteuil’s sonata, as Proust narrates,
It appeared to them, when the pianist played his sonata, as though he were striking at random from the piano a medley of notes which bore no relation to the musical forms to which themselves were accustomed, and that the painter simply flung the colors at random on his canvases. (SW307) In the paragraph, the musical form is compared to the visual form. The action of the musician “striking randomly” at the piano is compared to that of the painter “flinging the colors at random.” What I want to argue here is that Proust’s aesthetic analogy between the musician and the painter corresponds to the Impressionist painting and Romantic music of his contemporary. To explain my argument, I shall elaborate on the artistic movement in Proust’s contemporary.
To begin with, in nineteenth-century France, Impressionism began to influence not only painting but music and literature. The definition of Impressionism varies in the field of painting, music, and literature. The meaning of Impressionism is basically the same in the field of painting and music, yet is considered differently in the field of literature. According to Meyer Schapiro,
The name “Impressionist” was probably coined in 1874 by Louis Leroy, an artist, art critics, and playwright who, in reviewing the first joint exhibition
of new painters, was struck by the title of one of Monet’s pictures:
Impression, Sunrise. (21)
The name of Impressionist was considered a derogatory term at that time. Monet’s painting challenged the painting of Renaissance and Baroque. Following Monet’s steps, other Impressionist painters sprang up in the nineteenth century. The
representative painters include Renoir, Pissarro, and Cezanne, just to name a few. For the impressionists, impression means closely to sensations. As Schapiro points out,
For the Impressionist painters, seeing a landscape meant intently scanning its light and colors as well as the reactions of these on each other. It meant discovering with elation a multiplicity of tones and pairing of tones that great painters in the past had ignored. (14)
The precision of the shape of objects on the canvas was less important after Monet’s innovations. Impressionists focus not only on the immediate grasp of the optical sensation but the spiritual aesthetic epiphanies of scenes. The brushstroke in the Impressionist painting is regarded as a painter’s idiosyncratic expression. Each Impressionist painter has their own senses of brushstroke. As Schapiro points out, the stroke in Impressionist painting fabricates a surface web—a film or a crust of pigment that exists in distinct texture (51). The layer of the paint is thick, and composed of small doses of color (Schapiro 51). Water, sky, and buildings on the canvas have a hazy and filmy appearance (51). They are modified by atmosphere—
the light and dark color on the canvas.
Proust’s aesthetic analogy between music and painting draws upon the distinctions of an Impressionist painting. At the beginning of this chapter, I have presented that Proust compares the pianist to the painter. In Swann’s Way, Proust continues to narrate his analogy between the pianist and the painter. As Proust adds more details of the pictorial musical metaphor,
When, in one of these, they were able to distinguish a human form, they always found it coarsened and vulgarized (that is to say lacking in the elegance of the school of painting through whose spectacles they were in the habit of seeing even the real, living people who passed the in the street) and devoid of truth, as though M. Biche had not known how the human shoulder was constructed, or that a woman’s hair was not ordinarily purple.
(SW301)
In the passage, Proust has indicated the brushstroke of the figure as “coarsened”,
“vulgarized,” and “lacking elegance” of old school painting. Impressionist painting challenges the way of seeing in the nineteenth century. Impressionist painter focuses on the immediate grasp of the aesthetic feeling rather than the optical appearance in the material world, and thus Impressionist painter creates the unruly brushstroke and the blurred lines of shapes. The themes in Impressionist paintings became more vulgarized and close to the life of the bourgeoisie. Impressionist painter’s eyes gaze at the crowd, the stroller, the performer, portraying the themes that as usual would not be presented on the canvas. Therefore, I suggest that Proust’s depictions of
“coarsened,” “vulgarized,” and “lack of elegance” correspond to the distinctions of Impressionist painting.
The depiction “flinging colors randomly at the canvas” indicates possibly the Impressionist brushstroke. I suggest that Proust aligns the musical line (the melody) with the line of brushstrokes in paintings. As Jane Pasler points out, “[i]n music the association between Impressionism and innovation was more short-lived and more narrowly restricted to Debussy and those whose music resembled or was influenced by him” (3). The Impressionist musicians seek to explore the fleeting moment and mystery of life which lead them to capture the musical equivalents for water, fountains, and nights, which are the themes that the Impressionist painters favor
(Pasler 3). As Pasler points out, for Debussy, form is the result of a succession of colors and rhythms (3). As Pasler elaborates, Debussy gives the musical line a decorative function (3). Debussy fragments themes into short motives and uses repetitive figurations resembling those of Liszt (3). Debussy’s music absorbs other Romantic music in his contemporary. Debussy does not consider himself as an Impressionist musician. He thinks that his music is saturated and inspired by Romantic and Neo-Romantic music. As Palser suggests, to convey the sense of the intangible time, the Impressionist musician use extended tremolos, other kinds of ostinatos, and a variety of rhythmic densities (3). On the other hand, Debussy thinks that the charm of his music comes from not so much from the chords or timbres themselves—which were already found in the vocabularies of composers such as Field, Chopin, Liszt, Greig, Franck, Balakirev, Borodin, and Wagner— but from the rigorous choice of what precedes and what follows (Pasler 3). Debussy’s
impressionistic music is deeply inspired by other Romantic music. With the example of Debussy, here I suggest that Proust’s analogy between music and painting
corresponds to the innovations in Impressionist painting and Romantic music of his contemporary.
In terms of Proust’s literary technique, some of Proust’s pictorial musical
metaphors present the quality of a “feelings-toned” vision on the canvas. As Schapiro suggests, for the Impressionists, impression means “a feeling-toned experience of the quality of an object or scene” (23). In a quasi-physiological level, impression is conveyed by sensation (Schapiro 23), which is a term interchangeable with the impression. On the contrary, as Jesse Matz points out, the visual impressionism and the literary impressionism are antonyms (49). As Matz points out,
Painters rendering impression defined them as visual sensations. Seeking impressions meant bracketing everything except immediate visual
perception. The impression therefore moved aesthetic experience toward
“sensation” […]. For writers, by contrast, the impression moves experience in the opposite direction. These writers use the impression, that is, to move aesthetic experience from the realm of sensuous perception back toward the combination of sense and thought always at work in the
“aesthetic.” (49-50)
Matz mentions the writers Pater, James, and Woolf as instances. Proust is the same as the above writer. Swann and Marcel seek meaning from the impressions of memories. They recall impressions of memories to associate with Vinteuil’s sonata, trying to capture meaning from the fleeting notes. Proust’s circular narrative leads back to the memories of the Madeleine cake with the dip of tea in his childhood—
the impression of the tea is interwoven in the first and the fifth volume of In Search of Lost Time in order to present the meaning of Vinteuil’s music and that of an artist’s life. The sensuous perceptions lead to other sensuous perceptions in the past so as to require the unification of senses and thoughts. As Proust narrates, “Like that cup of tea, all those sensations of light, the bright clamour, the boisterous colors that Vinteuil sent to us from the world which he composed, paraded before my
imagination […]” (CP 505). The memories flood back to Marcel’s mind as he tastes the tea. Marcel gradually delves into the quest for the truth of art, pondering about Vinteuil’s creative process. As Proust continues to search the meaning of the notes,
[T]hanks to a pinpointing of circumstances which explain why a certain taste has been able to recall to us luminous sensations, the vogue sensations given by Vinteuil coming not from a memory but from an impression, one would have had to find, for the geranium scent of his music, not a material explanation, but the profound equivalent, the
unknown, colorful festival, the mode by which he “heard” the universe and
projected it far beyond himself. (CP505)
For Proust, the artist’s job is to find the profound equivalents, the proper signs, by means of different forms—painting, music, or literature—to project the artist’s inner universe. Proust reveals that an artist, like Vinteuil, should hear the universe and project beyond himself. I suggest that Proust thinks the artist’s creative process and creation should not be restricted by one’s finite experience. I contend that Proust seeks pure imagination by his fictive artists; and at the same time, Proust expects to project an artistic perspective not being restricted by his lifetime.
II. Art Signs and Essence: Notes and Colors
Proust’s pictorial musical metaphor reveals essence in an artist’s eyes. Deleuze considers that art signs as the revealing media of essence. As Deleuze suggests,
“[t]he world enveloped by essence is always a beginning of the World in general, a beginning of the universe, an absolute, radical beginning” (29). The following depictions are about Vinteuil’s last composition—the septet. When the violinist Morel is playing the music, the artistic epiphany happens in Marcel’s mind. As Proust narrates,
When his vision of the universe is modified, purified, become more adapt to his memory of his inner homeland, it is only natural that this should be expressed by a musician in a general alteration of sonorities, as of colors by a painter. (CP342)
For Proust, an artist’s job is to find the profound equivalents to reflect his or her universe. In Deleuzian notions, these profound equivalents are signs of art. They are the revealing media of essence. Proust analogizes the sonorities of notes with colors on a spectrum. Notes and colors are the revealing signs of essence to project the
artist’s inner universe; and the two different forms of arts reveal the other
reciprocally. In Proust’s eyes, the art of Vinteuil is like the art of Elister— they both express what is hard to be expressed through words. Painting and Music are sisterly arts and a pair of wings. As Proust narrates,
A pair of wings, a different respiratory system, which enabled us to travel through space, would in no way help us, for if we visited Mars or Venus while keeping the same senses, they would clothe everything we could see in the same aspect as the things of Earth. The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universe that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we can do with an Elister, with a Vinteuil;
with men like these we do really fly from star to star. (CP343) Painting and music are like a pair of wings which help people to visit the different universe of the artist’s creation. As Deleuze point outs, “as the quality of a world, essence is never to be confused with an object but on the contrary brings together two quite different objects […]” (31). Painting and Music are the revealing media of the other. Every artist reveals a different universe, since the artist
“individualizes essence” (Deleuze 32). The “absolute difference of being” is revealed through art (Deleuze 27). As Deleuze points out, “Difference is what constitutes being, what makes us conceives being. This is why art, in so far as it manifests essences, is alone capable of giving us what we sought in vain from life” (27). Art enables the mortal to travel between the different universes of the artists. Art gives the reunification of the material world and the spiritual meaning. And art is the only way to redeem time; as Proust narrates, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth – is to possess other eyes – and to see the different universes in the artists’ eyes. As
Deleuze argues, “the signs of art define time regained: an absolute primordial time, a veritable eternity that unite signs and meaning” (56). Thus, I suggest that Proust’s pictorial musical metaphors are the ways to reach the artist’s inner universe and to reveal the essence of the material world.