Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the English edition
- Translator's note
- 1 Introduction: Beyond the ‘little phrase’
- 2 Parsifal as redemptive model for the redemptive work
- 3 Music as redemptive model for literature
- 4 From Vinteuil to Schopenhauer
- 5 In conclusion: Quest for the essence and denial of the origin
- Appendix: Passages from A la recherche translated in the text
- Notes
- References
- Index
4 - From Vinteuil to Schopenhauer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the English edition
- Translator's note
- 1 Introduction: Beyond the ‘little phrase’
- 2 Parsifal as redemptive model for the redemptive work
- 3 Music as redemptive model for literature
- 4 From Vinteuil to Schopenhauer
- 5 In conclusion: Quest for the essence and denial of the origin
- Appendix: Passages from A la recherche translated in the text
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
As I indicated in the Introduction, it is to Anne Henry, after Beckett, that we owe the idea of addressing the musical episodes in Proust from the perspective of Schopenhauer: ‘The only score analysed here by Proust is that of Schopenhauer, to which he adds all his personal variations’ (1981: 302–3). Henry demonstrates whxt Proust's conception of music owes to German philosophy, first with resi ect to an article of 1894, ‘Un Dimanche au Conservatoire’ (ibid.:46–55), and then with respect to A la recherche (ibid.: 301–7). Discussing the former, she criticises interpretations of Schopenhauer that she considers too liberal and praises the perceptiveness of Proust; ‘Able to restore to Schopenhauer his true intention, he finds that art is singled out in his work as the supreme activity …’ (ibid.:47). She shows that Proust assigns to music the most elevated place in his hierarchy of the arts, just as is the case in The World as Will and Idea: for Schopenhauer, all the arts except music are bound up with mimesis; also, music can ‘express through its configurations all the essence of the Will – that is, of feeling – [and] provide, without going through the medium of ideas, a dynamic and diversified analogue of that which is itself dynamic and diversified’ (ibid.: 50). Then, moving on to A la recherche, Henry notes that music appears ast, after architecture, sculpture and painting, as in treatises of aesthetics (ibid.: 281); she cites several examples to show how Proust has literally paraphrased Schopenhauer's text, in particular with regard to the capacity of music to reach the innermost essence of things (ibid.: 303).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Proust as Musician , pp. 78 - 87Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989