Heidegger and Language

THIRTEEN Dark Celebration: Heidegger’s Silent Music

240 thirteen Dark Celebration: Heidegger’s Silent Music Peter Hanly You mustn’t cry Says the music. Otherwise No-one Says Anything. —Ingeborg Bachmann We shall begin with a letter. It dates from the winter months of 1950 and is addressed from Heidegger to Hannah Arendt.1 The letter reflects, as such a letter might, on the passage of time, on renewed affections, on political circumstances. But at the top of the letter, before it is even begun, before its addressee’s name is inscribed, are the following words: Beethoven, op. 111,Adagio, Conclusion. Just that, no more: then, the letter itself. It is almost as if the music, summoned by its inscription, were hovering over the discourse of the letter. As if the music might enclose the words that are to be thought. Beyond and before those words, the music might be both their source and their destination—a presence both silent and resounding, enfolding everything that is spoken. From out of this possibility, a question looms up: a question about music itself, about the kinds of connections it might maintain with language. More specifically still, we might find a way to pose a question regarding the status of music in Heidegger’s discourse, of its presence or absence, its elision or its inclusion.2 Immediately, the evidence marshals itself against such an undertaking . If we wanted to summarize the objections, we might listen to Philippe dark celebration · 241 Lacoue-Labarthe, who tells us that “Heidegger’s attention to music is, we know, practically nil,” and continues: “allusions and references to music areextremelyrare,andmostlyconventional.”3 Now,theassertionconcerning the absence of extended discussion of music in Heidegger’s work is undeniably correct: after all, even his most massive contribution to the understanding of the artwork makes only the most meager and fleeting direct references to music. Further, and more compelling still, the longest and most specific of these apparently rare and slight engagements would seem to speak with unequivocal negativity of a dominance of music within the field of art. In the Nietszche lectures, and in sympathy with Nietszche’s rejectionofWagner,Heideggerwriteswitha kindoffuryof“thedomination ofartasmusic,andtherebythedominationofthepurestateoffeeling—the tumult and delirium of the senses . . . the plunge into frenzy and disintegration into sheer feeling as redemptive.”4 If one were to conclude, as Lacoue-Labarthe does, that, insofar as it represents Heidegger’s lengthiest explicit address to musical experience as such, this passage is clear evidenceofHeidegger ’snegativeattitudetomusicingeneral,thennoamount of anecdotal support, it would seem, can resist the conclusion that music simply does not play a significant role in Heidegger’s thinking. Certainly, our endeavor must recognize this silence. From the outset , the absence of explicit engagement must be acknowledged. Music is not “addressed” by Heidegger as a topic, as a realm of human experience: it never becomes the subject of a discourse. Lacoue-Labarthe suggests that for the history of philosophy music has played the role of “rebel object par excellence . . . continuously and silently indicating a limit to philosophy, a secret menace to its full deployment.”5 In that sense, to refuse to engage music would be simply to play out again structures laid out by ancient ambivalence. The question, then, becomes the following: is Heidegger’s lack of engagement simply another manifestation of that kind of suspicion, a holding-at-arms-length, a necessary blind spot? Theforceofthe“no”withwhichweintendtoanswerthatquestioncan be supplied by a moment from one of Heidegger’s own texts: a passage crucially overlooked by Lacoue-Labarthe.6 Toward the end of the lecturecourseDer Satz vomGrund,Heideggeraddressesdirectlyanew“tonality” (Tonart) with which he invites us to listen to the words “nichts ist ohne Grund” such that a different inflection might occasion a “leap” (Sprung) intoa differentkindofhearing,onethatmightallowtheistandtheGrund 242 · peter hanly to play in resonance with one another. It is only, says Heidegger, if we are abletopushthroughthepolyvalenceofthewordSatz, suchthatitincludes its musical sense (Satz as musical “movement”), that we might “achieve for the first time a full relation to the Satz vom Grund.”7 A kind of thinking is to be made possible in this hearing, then, a thinking that is possible only inandthrougha kindofmusic.Thereisanintimacyofthoughtandmusic, here, that steps beyond “influence” or “inspiration.” It is not that, under the influence of music, one might be provoked to think different kinds of thought, which could be then detached from their musical inspiration. Rather, an utterly new possibility of thinking is engendered here, one that cannot be detached from the resounding together (Einklang) of...