Music and Musical Semiology in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu

Vertrau den Büchern nicht zu sehr;
sie sind Gewesenes und Kommendes.

—Rilke

. . . and what if music were not resounding throughout Marcel’s¹ quest? Unthinkable! literary critics have unanimously concluded ever since his quest began.² But how is music indispensible for Marcel’s development? Which kind of “profundity” might be grasped “with a Vinteuil”? And how does Marcel’s book reckon with the dependence on this particular medium? Does his literary composition implement musical structures?

Considering these questions, the route of the following investigation is clear. First, the discursive architecture of Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu must be analyzed. The musical aspect of the narrative discourse that I recognize in the Recherche and will foreground involves the adaptation of a leitmotiv technique—a term that, while grounded in a rudimentary familiarity with Wagner’s music drama, shall acquire an intrinsic and specifically literary meaning in the course of the following investigation.³ This semiological part of my analysis will be complemented by investigating the impact of music as a theme or topic on the genesis of the story, which reaches back directly to Vinteuil’s sonate en fa dièse, as I will seek to demonstrate. Finally, the significance of music must be listened to, its catalytic function for desire and passion as well as its seminal role within the aesthetic cosmos of the Recherche.

I

“Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure” (Swann 3; I: 1).⁴ This is the placid phrase with which the overture of Marcel’s long-time research sets out to establish the narrator’s hovering place between the times and situations, the multitude of egos he will negotiate, especially in the first chapter, “Combray.” While the appreciation of the phrase’s rhythmic and melodic euphony remains subject to a subjective aesthetic judgment (though it is a known fact that Proust was highly concerned with the sound material of his prose),⁵ there is objective reason to situate this first sentence within a musicological framework, since it presents a motif that will function as leitmotiv.

What does the phrase specifically introduce? At first, it exposes the recurring sound “longtemps.” It privileges this sound in a remarkable way: as the very first resonance of the chapter “Combray,” hence as the opening sound of the entire Recherche. The unconventional grammatical construction of the sentence as an “iterative passé composé” (Genette 132) foregrounds the temporal adverb, the principal sound, even more. Accordingly, the sound “longtemps” rings out as a distinct motif. In a second step, as the scene unfolds, this motif is complemented and enriched with scenic context. As we read on, it becomes clear that this sound or image acoustique, as one might call it to underscore its semiotic nature, alludes to an intermediate state of self-awareness, a transitory sphere between full and no consciousness of the temporal and spatial situation.⁶ This state designates the main theme of the motif, namely, the hovering place between being wide-awake and fully asleep. Waking on the threshold between no and full spatiotemporal awareness, the narrator “Marcel” feels free “to apply” his ego to a place different from the dawning Here and Now:

[J]e n’avais pas cessé en dormant de faire des réflexions sur ce que je venais de lire, mais ces réflexions avaient pris un tour un peu particulier; il me semblait que j’étais moi-même ce dont parlait l’ouvrage : une église, un quatuor, la rivalité de François I^er et de Charles Quint. Cette croyance survivait pendant quelques secondes à mon réveil; elle ne choquait pas ma raison, mais pesait comme des écailles sur mes yeux et les empêchait de se rendre compte que le bougeoir n’était plus allumé. Puis elle commençait à me devenir inintelligible, comme après la métempsycose les pensées d’une existence antérieure; le sujet du livre se détachait de moi, j’étais libre de m’y appliquer ou non [ . . . ].

(Swann 3)

I had gone on thinking, while I was...