1 Schorske, Carl E, Fin-de-siècle Vienna Politics and Culture (Cambridge, 1981), 9Google Scholar

2 Symons, Arthur, ‘The Decadent Movement in Literature’, Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 87, no 522 (November 1893), 858–9; quoted in Shearer West, Fin de siècle Art and Society in an Age of Uncertainty (London, 1993), 29 For discussion of Szymanowski's interest in English culture, see Wightman, Alistair, ‘Karol Szymanowski a kraj i kultura Angielska’, Muzyka, 28, no 2 (1983). 3–26.Google Scholar

3 Palmer, Christopher, Szymanowski (London, 1983), 46.Google Scholar

4 Freud, Sigmund, ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’, The Penguin Freud Library, xi On Metapsychology The Theory of Psychology, ed Angela Richards (Harmondsworth, 1984), 59–97Google Scholar

5 Dahlhaus, Carl, Between Romanticism and Modernism, trans Mary Whittall (Berkeley, 1980), 73Google Scholar

6 Downes, Stephen, Szymanowski as Post-Wagnerian ‘The Love Songs of Hafiz’, Op. 24 (New York, 1994), 273Google Scholar

7 Freud, ‘On Narcissism’, 67Google Scholar

8 The essay was published in Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, vii (Philadelphia, 1928), 347–75 This passage is quoted by Louise Vinge in The Narcissus Theme in Western European Literature up to the Early 19th Century (Lund, 1967), 50.Google Scholar

9 Mann, Thomas, ‘The Sorrows and Grandeur of Richard Wagner’ (1933), Pro and Contra Wagner, trans Allan Blunden (London, 1985), 91–148 (p 98).Google Scholar

10 See Dowries, , Szymanowski as Post-Wagnerian, 179–89Google Scholar

11 Homer, The Odyssey, trans. T. E. Lawrence (Ware, 1992), 70–1.Google Scholar

12 Reproduced from Downes, Szymanowski as Post-Wagnerian, 279.Google Scholar

13 Palmer, Szymanowski, 50.Google Scholar

14 Freud, ‘On Narcissism’, 82–3.Google Scholar

15 Palmer, Szymanowski, 52.Google Scholar

16 Samson, Jim, The Music of Szymanowski (London, 1980), 103Google Scholar

17 Palmer, Szymanowski, 52Google Scholar

18 See Sayers, Janet, Mothering Psychoanalysis Helene Deutsch, Karen Horney, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein (Harmondsworth, 1992), 77Google Scholar

19 Kristeva, Julia, Tales of Love, trans Leon S Roudiez (New York, 1987), 193.Google Scholar

20 Rubinstein, Artur, My Young Years (London, 1973), 378.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 400.Google Scholar

22 Freud, ‘On Narcissism’, 80–1Google Scholar

23 For discussions of narcissism in Wagner's music dramas, see Borchmeyer, Dieter, Richard Wagner: Theory and Theatre, trans Stewart Spencer (Oxford, 1991), 319–21, 329–31; Lawrence Kramer, Music as Cultural Practice, 1800–1900 (Berkeley, 1990), 146, 164–5 On related themes, see Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Wagner Androgyne, trans. Stewart Spencer (Princeton, 1993). Kramer also discusses narcissism in ‘Carnival, Cross-Dressing, and the Woman in the Mirror’, Musicology and Difference. Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, ed. Ruth A. Solie (Berkeley, 1993), 305–25.Google Scholar

24 Wintle, Christopher, ‘Analysis and Psychoanalysis Wagner's Musical Metaphors’, Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought, ii, ed John Paynter et al. (London, 1992), 659–66Google Scholar

25 Bettelheim, Bruno, The Uses of Enchantment The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (Harmondsworth, 1978), 234Google Scholar

26 See Chomiński, Józef, ‘Melodyka Szymanowskiego w świetle przemian tonalnych’ (1938), Studia nad twórczościa Karola Szymanowskiego (Cracow, 1969), 158–64 (p 163), and ‘Problem tonalny w Słopiewniach’ (1937), ibid, 119–57 (pp 123–4) Another version of this song, which also exploits an obsessively repeated ostinato, is held in the Composers' Archive, Warsaw I should like to take this opportunity to thank the curator of the archive, Mrs Elzbieta Jasińska-Jẹdrosz, for her kind assistance during my recent visit.Google Scholar

27 Schenker, Heinrich, Harmony, ed Oswald Jonas, trans Elisabeth Mann Borgese (Chicago, 1954), 30Google Scholar

28 Samson, The Music of Szymanowski, 163Google Scholar

29 Borchmeyer, Richard Wagner, 330 Borchmeyer also reminds us that looking at water frequently symbolizes dying, ‘approaching the mother-figure’, ibid., 330–1.Google Scholar

30 Frazer, James G, The Golden Bough A Study in Magic and Religion, pt II. Taboo and the Perils of the Soul (3rd edn, London, 1911), 93–4.Google Scholar

31 Sergent, Bernard, Homosexuality in Greek Myth, trans Arthur Goldhammer (London, 1987), 99Google Scholar

32 Downes, Szymanowski as Post-Wagnerian, 246–60Google Scholar

33 See Samson, , The Music of Szymanowski, 140–50, and Paolo Emilio Carapezza, ‘Król Roger miẹdzy Dionizosem i Apollinem’, Res facta, 9 (1982), 50–61Google Scholar

34 Wightman, Alistair, ‘The Music of Karol Szymanowski’ (D Phil dissertation, University of York, 1972).Google Scholar

35 Carapezza, ‘Król Roger‘Google Scholar

36 Szymanowski ‘Slopiewnie‘–Facsimile, trans. Jerzy Zavadzky (Cracow, 1987), 27.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., 28Google Scholar

38 Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Spotkania z Szymanowskim (Cracow, 1986), quoted in Karol Szymanowski An Anthology, ed Zdzisław Sierpiński, trans Emma Harris (Warsaw, 1986), 91Google Scholar

39 Keller, Hans, ‘Music and Psychopathology’, History of Medicine, 3 (1971), 3–7 (p 7), repr in Hans Keller, Essays on Music, ed Christopher Wintle (Cambridge, 1994), 29–34 (p 34)Google Scholar

40 Samson, The Music of Szymanowski, 208.Google Scholar

41 Chylińska's introduction to the text of ‘Opowieść o włózẹdze-kuglarzu i o siedmiu gwiazdach’, Karol Szymanowski, Pisma, ii Pisma literackie, ed Teresa Chylińska (Cracow, 1989), 310 Szymanowski also wrote a poem, ‘Gazing into the limpid waters’, ibid., 351Google Scholar

42 As Samson notes, Szymanowski ‘seemed to be drawn towards the lullaby’ He cites other examples from the Twelve Songs, op 17, and the Children's Rhymes, op. 49; The Music of Szymanowski, 185Google Scholar

43 Wightman, Alistair, ‘Szymanowski and Joyce’, The Musical Times, 123 (1982), 679–83 (p. 679).Google Scholar

44 Karol Szymanowski, ed Sierpiński, 91Google Scholar

45 Archie K. Loss, Joyce's Visible Art The Work of Joyce and the Visual Arts, 1904–1922 (Ann Arbor, 1984)Google Scholar

46 Joyce, James, Chamber Music, ed. William York Tindall (New York, 1954).Google Scholar

47 Loss, Joyce's Visible Art, 31.Google Scholar

48 For an exhaustive analysis of these songs, see Dabek, Stanisław, ‘Pieśni Karola Szymanowskiego do słów Jamesa Joyce'a’, Muzyka, 24 (1979), 51–85. Dabek's observation of a pervading pentatonicism in these songs is particularly interesting since this is also a characteristic of the lullabies in Narcissus and sections of Calypso, Nausicaa and the Shepherd's aria in King Roger It is tempting to interpret this recourse to a ‘primitive’ mode as a musical symbol of psychological regression, but pentatonicism would seem to be an almost ubiquitous part of Szymanowski's musical language, one without specific metaphorical significanceGoogle Scholar

49 Joyce, Chamber Music, ed. Tindall, 181, 221 Tindall's interpretation of guilt in the phrase ‘Sleep no more’ is based on his observation that this is a phrase from Macbeth, Act 2, scene ii, spoken by Macbeth after the murder of Duncan.Google Scholar

50 Samson, The Music of Szymanowski, 189Google Scholar

51 Ibid.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., 188Google Scholar

53 Kristeva, Tales of Love, 234. Tindall points to Marian imagery in the characterization of the girl in Chamber Music, especially in poem XIV, ‘My dove, my beautiful one‘Google Scholar

54 Freud, ‘Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood’, The Penguin Freud Library, xiv: Art and Literature, ed Albert Dickson (Harmondsworth, 1985), 143–231 (p 191) Freud had referred to the term narcissism a few months before, in the 1910 version of ‘Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality’, but he acknowledged that both Havelock Ellis and Paul Näcke had been using the term since the late 1890s Other early psychoanalytical investigations on the subject were published by Otto Rank in his ‘Ein Beitrag zum Narzissismus’ (1911) and ‘Der Doppelgänger’ (1914)Google Scholar

55 Karol Szymanowski, ed Sierpiński, 92Google Scholar

56 Karol Szymanowski and Jan Smeterlin. Correspondence and Essays, ed Bogusław Maciejewski and Felix Aprahamian (London, 1970), 101 It is interesting that Szymanowski once considered Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, hardly an example of literary self-effacement, as a possible subject for an opera. See the fragments in Szymanowski, Pisma, ii, 83–101, 369–71 and 379–83 He was no doubt also attracted by the homo-erotic content of Cellini's writings in Ephebos he describes Wilde as a ‘priceless, broken jewel … whom God made after the model of the divine Benvenuto’, Pisma, ii, 150. Maynard Solomon's article ‘Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini’, 19th Century Music, 12 (1988–9), 193–206, discussed the importance of Cellini's homosexual imagery for Schubert and provoked a lively response from several scholars, collected in ‘Schubert Music, Sexuality, Culture’, 19th Century Music, 17 (1993–4), 3–101.Google Scholar

57 Karol Szymanowski and Jan Smeterlin, ed. Maciejewski and Aprahamian, 102Google Scholar

58 See Vinge, , The Narcissus Theme, 303–13.Google Scholar

59 Bromke, Adam, The Meaning and Uses of Polish History (New York, 1987), 105.Google Scholar

60 On Malczewski, see Andrzej K. Olszewski, Polish Art and Architecture 1890–1980 (Warsaw, 1989), 16–17, and West, Fin de siècle, 129.Google Scholar

61 Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Nienasycenie, trans. as Insatiability by Louis Iribarne (London, 1985), 49. ‘Don't knock masturbation’, counters Woody Allen in Annie Hall, ‘it's sex with someone I love’, thus amusingly pre-empting those critics who have seen some of his films as particularly narcissisticGoogle Scholar

62 See Szymanowski, , Pisma, i Pisma muzyczne, ed Kornel Michałowski (Cracow, 1984), 67–88 In 1920 he wrote to Zdzisław Jachimecki, ‘in the present historical and cultural epoch, that sort of artistic breed represented by myself is not only superfluous, but almost injurious There remains only one thing to shake off one's personal life ’ Letter of 29 January 1920, see Wightman, Alistair, ‘Szymanowski's Writings on Music A Comparative Study’, Res facta, 9 (1982), 19–49 (P 23)Google Scholar

63 The psychological issues involved in moving from narcissism to integration in a social, collective context are addressed in Drew Westen, Self and Society. Narcissism, Collectivism and the Development of Morals (Cambridge, 1985) Szymanowski's relationship with nationalism is fascinating and complex. I hope to explore this important area of his work fully in a future study The best discussion in English of Szymanowski's views on the artist's role in society remains Wightman, ‘Szymanowski's Writings on Music‘Google Scholar

64 Freud, ‘The Moses of Michelangelo’ (1914), The Penguin Freud Library, xiv, 249–82 (p 253)Google Scholar

65 David M Abrams, ‘Freud and Max Graf On the Psychoanalysis of Music’, Psychoanalytical Explorations in Music, 2nd series, ed. Stuart Feder, Richard L Karmel and George H Pollock (Madison, 1993)7 279–307 (p. 292) In his Psychoanalysis and the Future of Theory (Oxford, 1993) Malcolm Bowie frequently turns to musical examples, including Mozart and Fauré as well as the more commonly ploughed furrows of Mahler and SchoenbergGoogle Scholar

66 Szymanowski, Pisma, ii, 317.Google Scholar