Sensation

Summary

Dominique Pagani thinks of sensation in contrast to sentiment. For him, sensation involves the body and not only the heart: a smell is not a sentiment1. He identifies a historical moment when sensation and physical impression take over from Romantic sentiment, in the so-called Symbolist poets2. In Rimbaud, bodily sensations replace Romantic sentiments, something Rousseau had already anticipated. He reads Baudelaire the same way: in his work it is the body that speaks, and not only the heart3. He extends this observation to music. Beethoven speaks of expressing sensation, not sentiment or painting, which in Pagani's view anticipates Impressionism4. For Dominique Pagani, this Impressionist current is marked by the omnipresence of sensation, through all the senses, because sensation is closer to the body than sentiment is5.

1. 1#9 Romantic irony and the Vinteuil sonata15 Jan 2021 · 54:47
2. 2#9 Romantic irony and the Vinteuil sonata15 Jan 2021 · 14:58
3. 3Flagrante Delights27 May 2025 · 43:15
4. 4#16 Programme music, pure music10 Mar 2021 · 35:01
5. 5Flagrante Delights27 May 2025 · 53:47

Summary produced automatically from 6 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.