English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
The necessity of posing the question 0:00 Yes, good morning everyone, or rather good evening, we're changing our schedule, but Musicosophie is still here, with Dominique Pagani. Today, the theme would be "What is musical in music?" Yes, that's it. What is the problem to be addressed? Good evening everyone, thank you Aymeric for introducing it so simply, because that's how it should be introduced. And the question is as simple as the answer is difficult. What is musical in music? So, first…
0:33 That's a fine philosophy topic, right there. In fact, to quote Hegel, since you're talking about philosophy, Hegel says—I believe it's at the beginning of the Philosophy of Right, not in the preface, at the start, in the first paragraphs, I think it's in the seventh—"The necessity of a concept is by far the most important thing in philosophy." I'm going to start by showing why it's necessary to ask this question, because one might say, fine, music is music. What is there to ask? What is musical in music? What is colored in color, while we're at it?
1:04 What is music? There, there. So, to raise it, I'm going to go through a series of texts, since the musical illustrations aren't of good quality, on the little gifts we have. We're glad to have them, but still, it's not high fidelity. Especially when you need to lend an ear, there are precise things and sometimes pianissimi and barely audible. So, as I often do, I'm going to go through texts to make clear what I'm going to say about music, but texts that grasp the problem as closely as possible.
Kafka and the castle telephone 1:44 We're going to take a little journey through the texts. So, I'll start with an author who is never cited for musical problems, because rumor has it he didn't like music. There aren't many authors who say "I don't like music." There aren't even many people who say "I don't like music." Everyone tells you "I love music," even those who almost never listen to it. There are plenty of people who say "I love jazz," and they know nothing about it. Sometimes they barely listen to it, but with good intentions.
2:18 Here it's the opposite. I know my friend Negroni, who doesn't like music. And then Kafka—I'm talking about Kafka. That's his one thing in common with Bernard-Henri Lévy. Exactly. He's probably not offended by the comparison. That's his only point in common. Too bad for Bernard-Henri Lévy. I'm talking about Kafka. The texts I'm going to quote will show his refusal of music.
2:50 No doubt the refusal of a danger. He is so sensitized to music that he avoids it like the plague. That's what I mean. It's not indifference. Ah yes, it's true one can tell the difference. So, to illustrate it—no, I don't want to get into Freud, that jouissance is the most terrifying thing. No, no, that's not it. I'll try to be more concrete than that. So I'll begin in medias res with an excerpt from The Castle. Everyone remembers the incredible beginning of The Castle, which is a beginning in medias res.
3:22 A stranger arrives in a village in the dead of winter, in a lost corner, dominated by a little local lord, a castle everyone talks about. But no, everyone is careful not to go and see it. There's the village and the castle. That's the great dichotomy of the text. We realize throughout the novel that the heroes, so to speak, manage to be neither in one nor in the other. In the end he never manages to get into the castle, but his desire to reach it means he can't be integrated into the village either. Which is quite profound, actually, regarding the relation to sociability. And so, here, it's when he's at the peasants' inn, down below, because there are two inns, one below and one above, with a whole symbolic division of spaces.
4:00 And up above, it's the inn for the gentlemen, for those who work at the castle, who come from time to time to drink a beer, in short, and to work on their files in the rooms of the gentlemen's inn. But here, it's the inn where the peasants are. There, they gave him a straw mattress, etc. And they tell him he's being summoned by the castle as a land surveyor. They say, oh, what next? I'm just recalling simple things. And he asks to use the telephone to prove to everyone that he really is a surveyor. So, we're finally going to hear God.
4:31 Because the castle, in this story, is the absolute. It's inaccessible, it's God. And on the telephone, it can only be the auditory. It's not video, back then. There's no Skype. There's no Zoom. So, forgive me. Here's my story then.
5:04 "I'll telephone myself," said K., getting up. Except for the moment of the peasant's intervention, K. had barely been noticed. But his last statement drew everyone's attention. Right away, we're clearly in the Germanic world. Who does he think he is? Him, calling the castle, a foreigner like him. K. had been… Everyone stood up at the same time as him. And despite the efforts of the innkeeper, who tried to hold them back, the peasants gathered in a half-circle around the apparatus. Well, there's suspense.
5:34 Most were of the opinion that nothing should be answered to K. You don't get God to answer you. He had to ask them to remain quiet and tell them he wasn't asking their opinion. It's always a world without love, Kafka. We're getting there. One heard coming out of the receiver—let's listen carefully, it's the case to say so—a crackling. For now, there are no words, no speech. A crackling. But it's still a sound.
6:05 Such as K. had never perceived on the telephone. One would have said—and everything I'm going to read now is the author's effort to characterize what is heard, without words—one would have said the humming of an infinity of childlike voices. But it wasn't a real humming. It was the singing of a distant voice. Of a voice extremely far away. One would have said that these thousands of voices united in an impossible way to form a single high-pitched voice, but strong, and which struck the eardrum as if it demanded to penetrate something deeper than a poor ear.
6:53 Magnificent text. That's what comes out of the telephone. I repeat the last sentence, which is striking nonetheless. A voice, a single high-pitched voice, but strong, which struck the eardrum as if it demanded to penetrate something deeper than a poor ear. "The inflection of dear voices that have fallen silent." But there it is. And dear voices aren't far from childlike voices either. Now, two pages earlier, he had made his first attempt to go see the castle.
The bell, the tower, and Josephine the singer 7:26 The snow, the fatigue, of course, prevent him from getting all the way there. It's always the same, always trial and failure. And so, they're on the way back with a sort of coachman who coughs a bit, tubercular, in the snow. Up there, the castle, already strangely dark, which K. had hoped to reach during the day, began to recede again. But as if to greet K. on the occasion of this temporary farewell, the castle rang out with the sound of a bell. Again, a sound without words.
7:57 A winged sound. As if with wings. A winged sound. A joyful sound that made the soul tremble for an instant. One would have said, for it also had a painful accent, that it threatened you with the fulfillment of the things your heart obscurely desired. Then the great bell soon fell silent, relayed by a small one that rang weakly and monotonously, perhaps up there too, perhaps already in the village.
8:32 I don't know if it's up above or down below. This ding-dong suited better, moreover, the slow journey K. was making in the company of this shabby but relentless coachman. I'll finish my series drawn from The Castle with…
9:02 So, it's not... sorry. It's almost like a church, in any case, with those bells. But there it is. Perhaps the bells of the Grail, I mean. Our Parsifals have heard that. Well, maybe it's not important. The next excerpt—I won't waste time—especially since it's not directly a sound, but rather a character was being described inside the castle.
9:35 So... Yes, yes, still. There. The first time he sees this castle—we talk about it so much—he sees it for the first time fairly close up, but he's still far from reaching it. A fleeting memory struck K.'s mind. He thought of his hometown. It barely gave way to this so-called castle, because seen up close, it's just hovels, the castle all put together.
10:06 From a distance, it looks like a castle, but seen up close, it's a bit of a patchwork. He thought of his hometown. It barely gave way to this so-called castle. If K. had come only to see it, it would have been a wasted trip. And he would have done better to go back to his homeland, where he hadn't returned in so long. He compared in his mind the bell tower of his village with the tower rising up there. That of the bell tower, that is, of his village, sure of itself, rose straight up without hesitation, and grew narrower toward the top, ending in a wide roof covered with red tiles.
10:42 It was an earthly building, of course. What else could we build? There's a great moment in Kafka all the same. Excuse me. I'll skip a line. There, it was an earthly building, of course. What else could we build? But it aimed much higher than the flat huddle of little houses, and it took on a more luminous expression above the sad days and the daily grind.
11:14 One couldn't better sum up the presence of the sacred in a society. After all, that's what differs a bit from the profane. Take off your sandals on holy ground. The tower here—now he compares it to the one he sees in the castle. The tower here, the only one visible, was the tower of a residential building. One realized it now. Perhaps that of the main building of the castle. It was a round, uniform structure whose ivy gracefully covered part of it.
11:45 It was pierced with small windows that the sun made sparkle. It had something mad about it. It ended in a sort of platform—careful, I'm slowing down—whose battlements, uncertain, irregular and ruined, carved into a blue sky teeth that seemed to have been drawn by the timid or careless hand of a child. And here's the last sentence: One would have said that a sad inhabitant, forced to live shut up in the most remote room of the house, had broken through the roof and stood up to show himself to the world.
12:20 I can't help but relate this to the sound of the bell earlier. Starting from the castle, isn't it, trying to make itself heard by a poor ear. There. I'm not interpreting, I'm not trying to see what all this symbolizes. I'm noting the importance of the sonic element in an author supposedly lacking sensitivity, who is in fact extremely sensitive. You just have to see the detail with which I took these excerpts from The Castle. I could have multiplied all kinds of examples from The Metamorphosis, probably Kafka's most popular text.
12:56 We must not forget that poor Gregor Samsa's sister, who becomes a cockroach—his sister, when he was normal, he made efforts to enroll her at the conservatory because she's passionate about the violin, and he hears her practicing the violin next door. The same sister who, with her parents, says "he's dead, he's finally dead." He hears her play, well, anyway. But above all, I could have cited one of Kafka's last texts, the extraordinary Josephine, the Singer, or the Mouse Folk.
13:30 So, I won't read you the text, but from memory, I'll tell you the beginning, which is quite extraordinary. It starts like this: "Whoever has not heard Josephine does not know the power of song." And as the story progresses, we're in the mouse folk, it's a mouse telling the story, speaking. As it progresses, one realizes that this extraordinary singer, who is a living god in her community, whom everyone admires—he even says they don't know much about music, we have two things to do, we mice, we're always in a hurry to escape some predator, all that.
The watchman of the second Faust, born to see 14:09 But he says, in fact, we don't even know if she's really singing, but sometimes she opens her jaws and makes a little whistle between her teeth, like this. But it's her posture, it's the gesture she makes while singing that subjugates us. I could have taken this extraordinary text, there. So now I'll move on to something quite different, since it's a passage I'm drawing from the last part, the fifth act of the second Faust, where there's a watchman, a lookout in his tower, who works for Faust, who dwells there, in this castle, and looks out at the horizon like this.
15:06 And, sorry, I need to reset, it had already gone by, so there, let me pull it up here. Excuse me. There. So.
15:36 I think this will go faster. Ah, it seems like... He delivers a monologue, he has the landscape, he's all alone, like watchmen, while the world sleeps before him, and he unfolds a text that every German schoolchild knows by heart. You might know the one that begins with "Zum Schauen geboren." Geboren, there we go. "Born to contemplate." There, there. We find all of Goethe, who is not... who is more plastic than musical. We'll come back to that because we're beginning to approach the essence of music, since that's our subject.
16:09 Now, "Ein Sumpf"—ah yes, when he approaches the marsh, this passage is extraordinary. I'll try to... since I see I'm losing time, I'll try to find it in my…
16:45 Ah, there it is. That's good. There. I have it bilingual, so. So: "Born to see. Because Schauen means to look, to see. Sworn to watch, bound to the tower. The world pleases me. I spy afar, I see what is near. I spy afar, I see what is near. The moon and the stars, the forest and the deer."
17:16 Magnificent objectivism from Goethe. There's no thought, no voice-over commenting. I'm not adding anything as I go. Each time, it's raw material, so to speak. "The forest and the deer. I spy afar, I see what is near. The moon and the stars, the forest and the deer. Thus I see everywhere eternal beauty. And as things please me, I am pleased with myself. O my fortunate eyes, whatever you have seen, let come what may." That was quite beautiful. I insist on that.
Wagner reads Goethe: Mignon and the eternal feminine 17:46 Why? Because now I'm going to get a little into the philosophical problem. Two very different discourses, which would never have gotten along at all had they known each other—I'm thinking of Hegel and Wagner. Hegel would have hated the tinny, tri-Germanic side, so to speak, the nostalgia for barbarian gods. He was too European. Even Marx used to mock Bayreuth. Of course, of course. So, Bayreuth, let's not even talk about it, already Wagner, but this is closing in. So, Bayreuth makes one think that Wagner wrote to Nietzsche's sister, saying, tell your brother that since he left me, I am alone.
18:23 Never had he been so socially surrounded, precisely, thanks to Bayreuth. "I am alone." Well, so, now, both of them speak of the respective positions of Goethe and Schiller with regard to music. Hegel, with regard to art in general—we'll see how that relates to music. And Wagner, of course, more concerned with their position with regard to the musical thing. I'll begin first with Wagner.
18:57 In a volume I can only recommend. The cover isn't very nice. I don't know if you can see it well. There. But it's recent, it dates from two years ago, published by Gallimard. They've gathered together the most decisive theoretical texts, in particular Opera and Drama, the famous Beethoven from which I'm going to extract the passage I'll read, but also the incredible A Communication to My Friends, which contains the most beautiful hymn to militant feminism ever written. He's quite a character all the same. In 1848, in fact—I'll read it to you another time.
19:31 We won't dwell on that ground. Although there is a link between what is musical in music and something feminine—that's what we'll try to see according to the authors. And which draw us along, to stay in the flow. There, there. We're right in the middle of it because that's where it's leading. So, here we are... I said two pages, there. "If now we know how to understand the two poetic conceptions"—Goethe's—"which run through the life of the greatest of our poets like great arteries"—thinking of Goethe—"it reveals to us the surest path to resolve the problem that confronted Goethe."
20:15 "This German, free above all others." Curious how here Wagner joins his adversary, Nietzsche. Because Nietzsche says Goethe is so free that he will always stand above the Germans, he will never belong to them. Not bad. In short, Goethe is a good German, that is to say, he doesn't much like Germany. There, there. So, "we know that the conceptions of Faust and of Wilhelm Meister date from exactly the same period and belong to the first flowering of Goethe's poetic genius."
20:55 "The burning depth of the thought that inspired him first led him to write the early scenes of Faust, but as if frightened by the boldness of his own conception, abandoning his grand design, he sought, with Wilhelm Meister"—which is more the prose of the world than the fantastical poetry of Faust, isn't it?—"he sought with Wilhelm Meister to conceive the problem in a more measured form. It was in the fullness of his maturity that he completed this novel, which flows naturally."
21:25 "His hero, who is the son of a German bourgeois, in search of a pleasant and secure kind of existence"—we can clearly see the composite portrait—"passes through the theater, crosses through noble society, and ends up in a utilitarian cosmopolitanism." Not badly summarized, Wagner, there. "He finds along his path a tutelary genius, but one he understands only superficially." He's saying that Wilhelm's encounter with Mignon is the same misunderstanding that exists between Goethe and music.
22:00 "He finds along his path"—I'm getting ahead of myself here, because it's not obvious, but it will be explained afterward—"along his path, a tutelary genius, but one he understands only superficially. He had roughly the same feeling toward Mignon that Goethe, at that time, had toward music." There, the parallel is made explicit. "The poet clearly makes us share the impression that Mignon was the victim of a revolting crime." You know that—well, actually no, these are things one rarely reads, but you, you know—but there are many who don't know that Mignon falls in love; she's part of a traveling troupe, of nomads, Roma people, as we'd say today.
22:43 We're very, very far from the German bourgeoisie. In fact, quite the opposite. As mobile as the others are settled in their own little Valhallas. So, she falls in love with him, and he soon falls for someone else, and she dies of grief. Schumann composed an admirable requiem for Mignon. So, "the poet clearly makes us share the impression that Mignon was the victim of a revolting crime."
23:13 However, his hero overcomes this impression and Goethe has him evolve in a milieu where, freed from tragic outbursts and impulses, he attains a perfect flowering. It's a kind of… If anyone was never pursued by his superego, it's certainly Goethe. As if through a museum, he has him contemplate the images of life. Mignon dies, and at her death music is played, music that Robert Schumann actually composed later on.
23:44 It seems that Schiller was outraged by the last book of Wilhelm Meister. If Mignon embodies the spirit of music, which has not yet been defined, far from it. He has even opened up the problem of its definition. But if that's the case, it's music that is under attack, which Wilhelm makes suffer. So, it seems that Schiller was outraged by the last book of Wilhelm Meister. He knew, however, that he could not draw his great friend out of his strange wandering. I'm reading this whole passage because it's strange, I don't know, more Neumann than Wagner, actually.
24:16 He is very well informed and he goes all the way with the strangeness. All the more so since he could suppose that Goethe, who had just composed Mignon and who, with this creation, had given life to a new marvelous world, was abandoning himself at the deepest level of his being to a wandering from which a friend had no power to awaken him. Only Goethe himself could awaken himself. And he did not fail to do so, for at a very advanced age he finished his Faust.
24:52 So, back from Wilhelm Meister to Faust. Out of what was then occupying his mind, he creates the original type of all beauty, namely Helen herself, the Helen of Troy whom Mephistopheles, with a wave of his magic wand, brings back to life for his own use. In short, she is the most classical, Greek, plastic, Homeric of women. This is not Mignon. This is Helen herself, the antique ideal in its perfection, in its fullness. He conjures her up from the realm of shadows and makes her Faust's wife.
25:22 However, the shadow will not be held back. It vanishes into a beautiful cloud whose distant flight Faust follows with his eyes, in a melancholy reverie yet free of pain. Well! That is to say, redemption can only come from Margaret alone. The woman he wronged when younger. From the realm of the blessed, she who was once sacrificed but who nonetheless continues to live at the deepest core of our hero's being, comes to hold out her hands to him — and in the same way it has been given to us, in the course of our study, to draw comparisons between philosophy and physiology.
26:00 If we now want to give the most profound poetic work an interpretation we can make use of, we shall say that the verses — these are the last four verses, after 40 years of work on Faust after all — 'All that is transient is but a symbol.' I'll give the two lines that follow, which are the last ones: 'The Eternal Feminine draws us on.'
26:31 Wagner comments as follows. We shall say that the line 'all that is transient is but a symbol' represents the spirit of the plastic arts that Goethe pursued for so long with such perfection. But by 'the Eternal Feminine draws us on,' we understand the spirit of music. So we find again the dichotomy of space and time which, taking flight from the deepest reaches of the poet's consciousness, now hovers above him and guides him on the path to liberation.
Hegel's Aesthetics: Kant, Goethe, and Schiller 27:05 He's going to return to his subject, which is Beethoven. It's Beethoven who's going to liberate us. These are quite something, these texts. So, Nietzsche. Is this contemporary with the birth of tragedy? Sorry? When is Wagner's Beethoven dated? Before, before. We mustn't forget that Wagner was a bit older than Nietzsche. But you should really ask yourself about the relationship between Nietzsche and this work. Because Nietzsche always said that Wagner's Beethoven condensed both the worst there was in him and by far the best.
27:42 There you go, I mean, always ambivalent relationships, but that's another subject. Now let me take Hegel in the Aesthetics, in the introduction, where he does like Aristotle in the De Anima or in the… how do you say it? Peri Psychēs? I never know if it's psuchē. Psuchēs. Psuchēs, that's it. I never remember the right ending. There's really no ablative that applies here. Oh yes, yes, right, right. Yes, that's what makes me… You'll search desperately, but there isn't one. You're reading my mind — I was thinking about it myself too, but indeed I'm 'ablativizing,' if I may allow myself that barbarism.
28:18 There, you're Latinizing me, that's normal. Yes, right. So, he does like Aristotle, that is, he makes a little compilation of the positions of his predecessors on the question he's going to deal with. Let's say on aesthetics. He goes through, very quickly, Plato, Winckelmann, Kant — the first time, philosophical relevance, a great tribute — but still, let me go back a bit before saying what he says about Goethe and Schiller, as far as Kant is concerned, because it foreshadows things.
28:49 Here's how he concludes, right, his exploration. darn, there, sorry, phew, here's how he concludes his exploration of Kant. 'Such would be the principal results of Kantian critique.' Wait, we're in Hegel's Aesthetics. Introduction. Ah, okay. Right? So not the editor's or translator's introduction, Hegel's own. So the introduction to his longest work, in fact, in number of pages.
29:20 'Such would be the principal results of Kantian critique.' He has just been commenting on the Critique of Judgment, of course, insofar as it may here hold interest for us. It constitutes the starting point for the true understanding of artistic beauty, but it is only through the sublation of Kant's insufficiencies — otherwise we'd stop right there — that this understanding was able to establish itself as the higher grasp of the true unity between, mind you, necessity and freedom, the particular and the universal, the sensible and the rational.
29:57 So, well, in the stakes of aesthetics, Kant leaves it unresolved, but still, it's the role of art precisely to occupy the moment where there can be a synthesis between the irreconcilables — which are still irreconcilables for contemporary thought in the connection between fields, look at determinism and freedom today, cognitive science or things like that, or the neo-Spinozists who say that all freedom is really an illusion, you know, in short, and who mock by saying 'so much for Engels' pen'
30:30 one of the most beautiful lines in Marxography — Marxology, sorry — that is, that one must pass from the realm of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. The choice of words is precise. So, I repeat: Kantian critique constitutes the starting point for the true understanding of artistic beauty, but it is only through the sublation of Kant's insufficiencies that this understanding was able to establish itself as the higher grasp of the true unity between necessity and freedom, the particular and the universal, the private and the public, the sensible and the rational.
31:09 At the time of the Revolution — and it's not Sophie Wahnich's sympathies for certain Trotskyist themes that will stop us from paying tribute to her on this point, she gave a very fine talk — and to be right on the mark about sensible reason, this great demand there was, and the Festival of the Supreme Being under Robespierre is a very fine illustration of it, to give reason sensible form. Well, so an after-Kant is needed, a post-, not a neo-Kantianism, a post-Kantianism.
31:41 A neo-Kantianism — you're soon going to publish one, that's something else — but no, I'm talking about a post-Kantianism. So, we tell ourselves, here it is, we've reached him, Hegel. Ta-da. The results. Between Kant and him, the list goes on, but it's no longer philosophers, it's Goethe and Schiller. So you'll tell me that's why I prefer the expression 'German idealism' in the historical sense, not the metaphysical sense, rather than 'German romanticism,' because there are philosophers, there are writers, there's everything you like — the philosophers write real prose poems at times, you just have to look at the young girl with the fruit in Hegel — and conversely, some poets, take Hölderlin, go to the very foundation of philosophy — not, well, there you go.
32:25 But still, it's curious that the missing links between Kant and him turn out to be Goethe and Schiller. So, let me read, and we must keep in mind what Wagner said — that Goethe is the plastic world, whereas Schiller has a better feel for the musical thing. In fact it's Schiller's hymns that inspired what became, what was meant to become, in Beethoven — it's not the 'Hymn to Freedom.' At the same time, Goethe too drew from poetry its true sphere, that same scientific impulse.
33:06 So both of them did 'science' in the Hegelian sense, theoretical work. In other words, both devoted themselves to theory outside their work as poets. But whereas Schiller immersed himself in the examination of the inner depths of the spirit — in italics, 'of the spirit' — Goethe directed his own genius toward the natural side — also in italics — of art, that is, toward the exterior of art, toward external nature, plant and animal organisms, crystals, the formation of clouds, and colors.
33:39 For this scientific research, Goethe brought to bear the full height of his vision, and in these domains this definitively threw overboard the mere standpoint of the understanding and its error, just as on the other side Schiller managed to assert himself against the way the understanding — in both cases one is criticizing what 'understanding' is in Kant, if you look closely — the understanding considers the will of thought, the idea of free totality, of beauty.
34:12 A whole series of Schiller's works is devoted to this perceptive understanding of nature, of art, and particularly one work — the title is well known but no one reads it, yet it's admirable — Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. There. So I'll skip a whole passage, but staying on the same theme, Hegel says, at the end, in general terms, one can already discern this conception of the union of the sensible and the rational, of the particular and the universal, and of necessity and freedom — one can already discern this synthetic conception of Schiller's in Grace and Dignity, a short work by Schiller, Anmut und Würde, as well as in his poems, for there he praises women. It's curious, we stopped at the Eternal Feminine with Goethe.
35:03 It's curious, this exchange — his object of choice having precisely recognized and highlighted in their character, in women, the spontaneous union — spontaneously given, sorry — of the spiritual and the sensible. There. I leave the responsibility for all these generalities to them, but one cannot say these are indifferent problems. So, that's where I had gotten to.
Mignon, a pre-social character 35:38 And now I'm quoting — I'm losing track of my sources, there it is — I got interested in the works surrounding the character of Mignon in Wilhelm Meister, first of all Wilhelm Meister itself, which is a rather enigmatic work despite its apparent triviality. A young bourgeois — it's a bit like Flaubert's Sentimental Education — Wilhelm Meister is about how the prose of the world brings the dreamer back down to earth, a dreamer who started out full of Novalis-like leanings and all that, and who ends up a businessman.
36:16 after having driven a few women to suicide, but no matter. 'It was the best time of our lives,' as it says in Sentimental Education. As who said? At the very end of Sentimental Education. Ah yes, yes! It's terrible. It's funny because we're not far from Kafka — but you'll know this — Kafka writes to Max Brod, he says, 'I've just discovered Sentimental Education, I couldn't put the book down,' and he says, 'Well, I won't write anything more.'
36:47 'What do you want us to write after that?' Yes, that's even more Kafkaesque. For him, it's perfection. There you have it, that's what a writer is. Terrible, isn't it? Well, so where did my… There. I'm getting to it, I need to find my… There. So, S in… Sorry. We'll get there after this.
37:17 No, it's here then. That's not it either. Well then, well then. Excuse me, I can't find it. A study called 'On a European Myth.' Colon. 'Note on Goethe, Italy, Paradise.' The myth of Italy as paradise, a European myth. There. So I'll skip over the issue concerning Italy.
37:48 We know that Europeans, for several centuries now, have traveled through Italy with passion before returning to their own country and cultivating nostalgia there. But we forget that their dreams too have traveled, and that Italy was one of the favored dwelling places of characters born of their imagination. From the late 18th century — here we come to Goethe — up to the mid-20th century, novel heroes have acted there, loved there, discovered happiness, beauty, disappointment, and death in Venice. Well, I'll skip that. Those are very interesting problems, but not at the center of our inquiry.
38:25 In Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, by Goethe, an enigmatic character appears who will haunt musicians and poets for decades. Try searching, whether on Google or on YouTube, for the number of musical compositions taking as their subject the character of Mignon from Wilhelm Meister. It ranges from Schubert's Lied to Schumann's Requiem für Mignon, which I mentioned earlier, by way of countless ballads, orchestral works, choral pieces.
38:59 Massenet too, if I'm not mistaken. Of course, in his very beautiful melodies. In Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship there appears an enigmatic character who haunted musicians and poets for decades. Mignon. Goethe long hesitated before giving her a sex. Decidedly, there are the plastic arts, there is music, there is man and woman. But now we're even uncertain about her sex. We're trying to grasp the meaning of music, and it's almost as elusive.
39:33 Goethe long hesitated before giving her a sex, then decided that this sexless being who dresses as a boy — it's a late-18th-century novel — would be a girl. It's not simple, I repeat. Goethe long hesitated before giving her a sex, then decided that this sexless being who dresses as a boy would be a girl. She speaks, or rather twitters. You see, I've found my crackling phone sound again.
40:05 She speaks, or rather twitters, a vague sort of German. She knows nothing of the world, struggles to read and write, is incapable of learning social life the way Wilhelm Meister precisely is in the process of doing. Mignon is a pre-social character, in whom socialization proves impossible. So, a pathology for Goethe. For she belongs entirely to the raw world of primitive emotions. And yes, twitters.
40:35 Do you remember the Rhinemaidens? Nothing but alliterations, it's childish babble. Mignon is a pre-social character, and one in whom, sorry, for she belongs entirely to the raw world of primitive emotions. Like a small animal, she is afraid and protects herself from those who mistreat her. She loves Wilhelm Meister, who saves her, and attaches herself to him the way a dog would, absolutely and unreasoningly, with a connection to music.
Mignon's song, a threat of desire 41:07 Listen carefully. She fascinates Wilhelm, who feels irresistibly drawn by the mystery emanating from her. Her features are striking. Her expression is a mixture of ingenuousness and character. Her dark complexion — she comes from a band of Roma — her dark complexion, how does Baudelaire put it, 'the prophetic tribe with burning eyes.' Burning eyes. Yes, well put. Burning eyes, one can't help thinking of it. Her dark complexion suggests an exotic origin. She is a child without quite being one.
41:39 Something shows through beneath the picturesque, hinting at a secret life. Yet no one knows who she is or where she comes from. 'Come from forever, and going everywhere.' I'm pleased. That was one of René Commer's favorite lines of everything he had read. Oh really? I can't help thinking of him whenever he said that. Every time he saw a pretty girl — and there are about a thousand of them going by his restaurant each summer. They're graceful, all the same.
42:09 'Come from forever, going everywhere,' he repeats. That's quite reasonable. Yes. So, she presents herself as a semi-gypsy, more or less attached to a troupe of acrobats who mistreat her, and from whom Wilhelm buys her. She dances and does tricks like a performing monkey, she also sings. Here we go. She moves Wilhelm — they had her sing a melody. A melody.
42:39 A melody that every German today still knows by heart. 'Kennst du das Land wo die Zitronen…' It's extraordinary that perhaps the most famous poetic text — perhaps — in the German language, along with perhaps Heine's, that the first one, Goethe's, evokes not Germany but Italy as extraordinary. Nothing is more German than that — 'Drang nach Süden.'
43:09 'Drang nach dem Meer.' Well, and the south begins at the Bodensee, and in Heine's case it takes a Jew to come sing the essence of what is most quintessentially German, the Lorelei, the Nix. It's always like that, I was about to say — sorry? Do we define ourselves from the outside or from the inside? Of course, that's clear. That's what's dialectical, which makes me think — I was pointing this out yesterday, I was answering questions people had asked me as part of my weekly seminar, and someone asked me — since I'm doing a whole cycle on the Ring to show that historical sciences can be just as rigorous as natural sciences, but that's another debate — one of my listeners was asking if I could recommend audio recordings that hold up, that are better than others, so I said, right, let me go through them quickly because there are so many, I want to distinguish between the old ones, the heroic recordings, and then the ones that offer great listening comfort, and
44:21 that I ranked there too, as I was pointing out to my listener, between Barenboim — who, among the recent ones, with the Ophonie series, a fine recording, made a Ring that holds up very well — it's two Jews who are the best interpreters of Wagner, Bruno Walter, from two generations back, and Barenboim. The tradition carries on.
45:07 And then even… We're not talking about the cult of the Schoenbergs and such. How did that go, the conductor for Wagner? Sorry? There's also Wagner's conductor. Hermann Levi. There, that's it, yes. Exactly, exactly. To whom he entrusted, no less, the premiere of Parsifal. Which must have seemed sacrilegious to quite a few antisemites in Bayreuth. Perhaps to the antisemite in Wagner himself too, but well. There are ambiguities and ambivalences. So, back to Mignon. So, she also sings. She moves Wilhelm by having him hear a melody that every German today still knows by heart.
45:47 'Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn?' The suggestion is clear. This is from the last chapter, which I've drawn this quotation from. 'It is needless, for Goethe, at the time he is writing, to specify that the country in question is Italy.' Thus, Italy is present from the very origin of the shared adventure of Mignon and Wilhelm. 'It exists through a melody.' Italy exists. The paradisiacal elsewhere exists through a melody which Goethe is quick to specify expresses, I quote, 'an irresistible and nostalgic yearning.'
46:22 That's rather rare in Goethe. 'And that it is spoken by Mignon with an intonation' — I open the quotation marks, these are Goethe's own words — 'now pleading and urgent, now full of longing and promise.' Good grief, but that's exactly what Kafka said. One would have thought she was threatening you with the fulfillment of desires you dared not voice. It really is extraordinary. And there, it is spoken with an intonation now pleading and urgent, now full of longing and promise.
Chateaubriand: the Meschacebé given to be seen 46:57 That's extraordinary. A threat of success. So we're circling around a pot that we feel is worth getting a little closer to all the same, with our concentric circles. So now I'm going to resort to canonical texts, so to speak, since here I take... There we are. Two ways of relating to the world around us, depending on whether one privileges the visual or the auditory, precisely the plastic element or the musical element.
47:34 I say this beforehand so that the trees don't hide the forest. I'll start with Chateaubriand, the enchanter. At the moment when, at the beginning of Atala, he has us contemplate. I imagine the French reader of the time who hasn't traveled much. Somehow, he's going to go along the banks of the Meschacebé, the Mississippi. The effect that must have had. But he says this. Why do I suddenly land on the fifth walk?
48:05 Come now, come now. Let's not go too fast. There we are. The river itself, he says: 'Tributary to the Meschacebé, the Missouri, the Illinois, the Arkansas, the Ohio, the Wabash, the Tennessee fatten it with their silt and fertilize it with their waters.'
48:36 When all these rivers have swollen with the winter floods, when storms have felled whole stretches of forest, the uprooted trees gather at their sources. Soon the mud cements them, the vines chain them together, and plants taking root everywhere finish consolidating this debris. Carried by the foaming waves, they descend toward the Meschacebé. The river seizes them, pushes them to the Gulf of Mexico, strands them on sandbanks, and thus increases the number of its mouths. At intervals it raises its voice. It is the Nile of the deserts, but grace is always joined to magnificence in the scenes of nature.
49:12 While the current in the middle sweeps toward the sea the carcasses of pines and oaks, one sees different things, named in their specificity. On two lateral currents one sees floating islands of pistia and water lilies moving upstream along the banks, their yellow blooms rising like little pavilions. It gives you something to see. Green snakes, blue herons, pink flamingos. You think I'm exaggerating? It's in the text. Green snakes, blue herons.
49:44 It's superb all the same. Well. Pink flamingos, young crocodiles embark as passengers on these vessels of flowers. And the colony, unfurling its golden sails to the wind, goes to land, asleep, in some secluded cove of the river. This is Delacroix for the luxuriance of colors. Fully so. But I'm thinking rather of the Delacroix of The Death of Sardanapalus. It's true. You can see it there. So, on the western bank of the savannas unfolds, as far as the eye can see...
50:17 Their flood of greenery stretching away from these swamps. In these boundless prairies one sees herds of three or four thousand wild buffalo wandering at random. Sometimes a bison heavy with years — you'd say it's a portrait — cleaving the waters swimming, comes to lie down among the tall grass on an island in the Meschacebé. With his brow adorned with two crescents, his ancient, muddy beard, you would take him for the god of the river casting a satisfied eye over the grandeur of his waters and the wild abundance of his banks.
50:49 Such is the scene on the western bank. But it changes on the opposite bank. Well, I'll stop there. There are pages and pages like that. Go back and read the enchanter. It's superb. So frankly, it gives you something to see. That's the least one can say. In shape, in color, in naming, the way one distinguishes genera and species, one distinguishes contours. This isn't at the visual level — excuse me — there is, now I'll take an extract from Rousseau, supposedly the landscape painter, isn't he?
Rousseau: the island of Saint-Pierre without detail 51:31 This is an extract from the fifth walk. I'll begin with the way he situates the Lake of Bienne within the setting in general, before the state of reverie, which is the high point of his text. But he begins by saying — this is the opening — 'Of all the dwellings where I have lived, and I have had some charming ones, none has made me so truly happy nor left me such tender regrets as the Island of Saint-Pierre in the middle of Lake Bienne.'
52:10 This little island, which in Neuchâtel is called the Île de la Motte, is very little known, even in Switzerland. No traveler that I know of mentions it. Yet it is very pleasant and singularly situated for the happiness of a man who loves to confine himself. For although I am perhaps the only person in the world for whom his destiny has made this a law — since he has just fled there hastily, having had a warrant issued for his arrest, he left his affairs in Neuchâtel and took to the island only the manuscript of the Confessions he was continuing to write and the draft constitution for Corsica.
52:50 The two texts he wanted to keep. The shores of Lake Bienne — so we're still in the general setting — are wilder and more romantic, the first occurrence of the term, as far as I know, in the French language. We'll see here that it designates very precisely a wild manner of making gardens, as opposed to the French formal garden. That's much more precise than what it has become now, used for everything. Very interesting. 'They are wilder and more romantic than those of Lake Geneva, because the rocks and woods there border the water more closely, but they are no less smiling.'
53:24 'If there is less cultivation, fewer fields and vineyards, fewer towns and houses, there is also more natural greenery, more meadows, shaded retreats, groves, more frequent contrasts, closer variations.' As you notice, there's no detail at all, these are very general things. 'As there are no wide roads on these happy shores convenient for carriages' — so it's hard to get there, it's isolated in every sense — 'it is little frequented by travelers, but it is of interest to contemplatives who love to intoxicate themselves at leisure with the charms of nature and to gather their thoughts.'
54:13 Gather one's thoughts in what? In beautiful greenery — he begins by saying, in a silence. 'In a silence disturbed by no other noise' — so it's not a silence, it's a silence with no speech, with no other characters. But let's listen carefully — 'than the cry of eagles, the intermittent song of a few birds, and the roar of torrents falling from the mountain.' You close your eyes and you have exactly the same three objects he just spoke of.
54:47 The cry of eagles, the intermittent song of birds, and the roar of torrents falling from the mountain. 'This beautiful basin of an almost round shape encloses in its middle' — here I'll interrupt all the same — whoever has been to Erlach, we went there when we made the DVD on Rousseau. Five minutes from La Neuveville — you can't get more French-speaking than a toponym like that — in five minutes you reach Erlach, the first locality with a German-sounding name.
55:29 Now, one sees very clearly that the island is not at all in the middle, it is very, very close to the shore, in particular to the village of Erlach. So this need to place it in the middle, the way the imagination restructures reality, is extraordinary. And by adding 'this beautiful basin of an almost round shape' — everything hinges on 'almost,' at the very limit, with the metaphor of the basin nonetheless. There we are. So: 'This beautiful basin of an almost round shape encloses in its middle two small islands, one inhabited and cultivated, about half a league around, the other smaller, deserted and wild, and which will eventually be destroyed by the loads of earth constantly taken from it to repair the damage that waves and storms do to the larger one.'
56:18 'Thus the substance of the weak is always used for the profit of the powerful.' Even faced with such a natural spectacle, Rousseau can't help seeing the class struggle. It's superb. Well. So I'll skip over... I come now to the densest passage, where we'll see... well, the most intense from the point of view of what Rousseau feels in that spot. 'When the agitated lake did not allow me to sail...'
Reverie: the subject fixed by the object 56:48 Sorry. 'When evening approached, I would come down from the heights of the island and would willingly go sit by the edge of the lake on the shore in some hidden retreat. There, the sound of the waves' — and here a sonic festival begins again — 'the sound of the waves and the movement of the water, fixing my senses...' So everything is inverted. It's not what usually happens — it's our senses that fix the outside world.
57:19 What Chateaubriand encouraged us to do — look at the blue heron, the green snake — here, no. There's a fixed camera in Chateaubriand that pans from left to right but stays on its tripod and offers us every detail of the landscape. There we are. Exactly. Here, it's quite incredible — it's the subject that is fixed by the object. As if the objects were so many snakes hypnotizing him. But the snake here is not a vision.
57:50 It's a sound. It's the ebb and flow of the lake's waters. So, to show that I'm not interpreting anything, I'm just restoring the text, aren't I? He observes with familiar looks. Sorry? 'He observes with familiar looks.' Exactly. Which shows that it's indeed the symbolic order that is right, with its correspondences. 'There, the sound of the waves and the movement of the water, fixing my senses and driving from my soul every other agitation' — meaning other than that of the senses, which is nonetheless not the most agitated part of the subject, but the most active, in any case.
58:23 Agitated, yes, but active, I'm not so sure. '...plunged my soul into a delicious reverie in which night often surprised me without my having noticed it.' So there's a kind of — it's quite something that the most beautiful setting he can imagine, the place where his reverie reaches its highest intensity, is precisely when — you might say — the circuits go dark, there's nothing left to see, curtain, lights out. And reverie, after all, must be taken literally. It's not quite sleep, not quite waking, it's between the two.
58:54 'Schlummer,' you'd say in German — drowsiness, isn't it, Schlummer. It's Nerval who, with that uncanny precision, without trying to appear as the great stylist but just slipping it in, in Sylvie, when he goes back to bed after the theater, he is plunged into a half-drowsiness. A drowsiness is a half-sleep. So what, is this a quarter-sleep? A half-drowsiness.
59:25 'Plunged into a half-drowsiness, all my youth passed again through my memories.' A quarter-turn. There, there. That's forbidden. That's excluded. So, 'night often surprised me without my having noticed it.' And notice how the detail is dug into as never before — but the detail of what? Always the auditory, the musical, the ebb and flow of that water, 'its continuous sound, but swelling at intervals.'
59:57 What sensitivity to rhythmic precision — 'its continuous sound, but swelling at intervals, striking without pause my ear and my eyes.' Once again, the subject is in a passive position here. It's the subject that is the direct object of the setting. 'Striking without pause my ear and my eyes.' So the subject group, the flow — the flow of this water 'supplied for the internal movement that reverie was extinguishing in me.' So here's the ebb and flow, the rhythm of the lake's waters, coming to substitute for the organic rhythms of breathing or heartbeat.
1:00:32 Isn't it so? 'Supplied for the internal movement that reverie was extinguishing in me, and sufficed to make me feel my existence with pleasure without the trouble of thinking.' From time to time — and it's not over — I'll finish with the ending — 'a few faint and brief reflections would arise on the instability of the things of this world, of which the surface of the water offered me the image' — a rather banal comparison.
1:01:08 'But soon these light impressions faded into the uniformity of the continuous movement that lulled me' — this time the word is said, a lullaby is a musical genre too — 'into the uniformity of the continuous movement that lulled me' — Chopin is a peak of that — 'and which, without any active involvement of my soul, did not fail to attach me to the point that, called by the hour and the agreed signal' — they must have called him to supper with a bell or a horn, I don't know — 'I could not tear myself away without effort.'
1:01:50 After Chateaubriand, one might say he applies himself — after setting a scene, the mountains that border and isolate the region well from the rest of the world, there we are. And for the Guide Vert, it's hopeless — there's no scenic route. No, no, yes. It's extraordinary. So there's still this way of... So we're starting to get closer to what is musical in music, or if you prefer, to the essence of music, since we suspect there are musics more essential than others, in the sense that there is more music in this music than in others.
Verlaine's unevenness against symmetry 1:02:37 It's not that they're more beautiful. That's a value judgment that can be arbitrary or relative. No, but that there is more music. And precisely, in that same essay on Beethoven, Wagner alludes to certain basso ostinatos — today it would be in Baroque music that we find that — he says, which take up demands from the plastic arts, like a colonnade, he says quite rightly, equal segments of time, an isometry in technique, equal time-values, which bring to mind rather the plasticity of a colonnade, of a gallery.
1:03:16 Tempo, right? Exactly. Now, this makes me think — I told you we'd take a walk through some texts — I'm thinking of the incredible, famous opening of Verlaine's Art poétique: 'Music before all else.' We may better understand what music is in this, and for that, 'prefer the uneven line.' It's a bit mysterious. We understand that he prefers the odd-numbered verse to the even-numbered verse, after all, but in what way is the odd verse more musical than the even verse?
1:03:46 This ties in with what Wagner was saying about the plastic. I'll show the mediation. When there's a military march, it's always in two-time: one, two, one, two. Some are very beautiful, very lovely, with interesting melodies. Well, the rhythm is bound never to leave the binary of one-two. We don't yet see what the figure is. Now, precisely, Verlaine continues: 'Prefer the uneven line, vaguer and more soluble in the air, with nothing in it that weighs or that poses.'
1:04:22 We no longer have to take into account the axis of symmetry constituted by the verticality of gravity, as in metrical verse. What I'm saying is that in Corneille, the caesura is almost always at the hemistich, because there's a highly symmetrical quality to it, precisely. Symmetrical means there's a balance, you don't fall. Both sides are of the same magnitude, so to speak. I'm splitting hairs, but you'll see, there are real stakes here.
1:04:54 'A thousand have already done it, a thousand could do it. I am young, it is true, but in souls nobly born, worth does not wait for the number of years.' One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, five, six. It's a soft license. Whereas in Racine we find, as we discussed together, you know the passage well, from Andromaque: 'Captive, always sad, burdensome to myself... could you wish Andromaque to love you?' There, it's a kind of round, almost a waltz in three-time.
1:05:24 A thousand-time, one might say. Ah yes, there it's the eternal feminine sweeping us away. There we are. So what does that mean? It doesn't mean Racine is better than Corneille, that Corneille rises to heights that Racine, nor anyone else, ever reaches at his summits. Even if not everything is as accomplished as in Racine, even if there's more unevenness between his plays, when he reaches summits, no one equals him. Corneille — I'm thinking of Horace, of Cinna of course, and of course of Polyeucte, or of the comedies too, which are extraordinary.
1:06:00 Well. The people, commissioned... What's it called now, the Place de... Anyway, the Place Royale, sorry. It's... Sorry, it's Place des Vosges. Which used to be called Place des Vosges — and do you know why, since the Revolution? Because it was the first department to pay its taxes, I believe. It's untraceable — the first time there was public money. It makes sense, they weren't far from the invasion zone. Ah well, yes, that's not right.
Music is not immaterial: becoming 1:06:31 Yes, that's it. So, well, I mean, we find, in Verlaine's 'uneven,' we find what brings us closer to the essence of music. This unevenness recalls the developments we made on the relationship between music and philosophy, which could lend themselves to misunderstandings, because some people will cry out about the immateriality of music. No, it's not immaterial. If it were immaterial, we wouldn't hear any sound at all.
1:07:04 Fortunately the air vibrates, doesn't it, and it's the quite material medium through which sounds pass. And when it's not air, as far as spoken language is concerned, it's an ionized flow in the telephone, isn't it, which is still perfectly material. Information theory — thank you, Mr. Bell, since we're talking about the telephone — has shown very well that it's good that there is a code.
1:07:34 That's cultural. It's good that there's a sender, a receiver, hence an intersubjectivity. But for the moment there's no 'inter,' precisely because the channel is also missing. And the channel must be material. As much as the code is cultural, the channel is material. There's no escaping it. You see, that's why I'd like to do a somewhat closer analysis. Music, within the symbolic order, refers to the least visible matter.
1:08:08 That's what we can say. It symbolizes what an immateriality would be, but without giving it existence. It immediately refers to an elsewhere. I'll repeat what was said, on one hand, what Kafka said in the first text — it sounded like the humming of a childlike voice, but coming from far away, from very far away, I repeat, very far away. Besides, what connection am I making here?
1:08:38 Perhaps we're at the heart of the discussion between materialism and idealism. I talked about it quite a bit with young Victor Sarkis, but on this point, it's no accident that the first development of Hegel's Science of Logic resolves the antinomy of being and non-being in becoming. It's so famously celebrated that we forget what's at stake.
1:09:09 Now, what is becoming? It's a negation, at every instant, of being, even if it's restored the very next instant. Becoming is the permanent succession of disappearing and appearing. A movement of being born and perishing. A movement which itself is never born and never perishes. There we are. So what are we saying here? Immaterial in that sense, yes, meaning a matter that transforms itself, not a matter that endures.
The piece of wax, the mountain, and the Cratylus 1:09:47 We have such trouble getting out of a way of thinking shaped by language that we attribute to the outside world the ontological stability that is only stable in words. Which Descartes shows rather well in the story of the piece of wax, after all — it's easy to say this piece of wax was white, now it's yellow, it had a pleasant smell of honey, now it has a burnt smell — he doesn't put it quite like that.
1:10:21 And however you strike it, it will no longer make any sound. So, the wax was like this, now it is like that. So the predicate changes, but not the subject. We still say "the wax." So what remains, since everything that is sensibly material has changed? And Descartes, who proves here just how great a philosopher he is, poses the question par excellence, the philosophical question par excellence: does the same wax remain after this change?
1:10:54 There, he's an immense philosopher. Not for long! Because he puts a full stop, goes to the next line, and says: certainly it remains, and no one could deny it. Good God! He who had just said in the Discourse on Method that one must carefully avoid prejudice and haste. Here he is, hardly has he opened Pandora's box than he closes it right back up. We're not going to ask a great innovator like Descartes, who opened so many doors, to also arrive at twentieth-century thoughts according to which it is only the word that gives continuity.
1:11:28 Of what we call a piece of wax, I didn't say it's dematerialized, it's real, what remains, a matter that is even burning hot, that is yellow whereas it was white, isn't it? But the unity of the piece of wax has gone. And in the Phenomenology, Hegel says the act of positing into a One falls only to the consciousness that must avoid letting its properties coincide in the thing. In other words, the predicates must be freed from their substantial envelope.
1:11:58 It's not a Hellenist like you that I'm going to teach that there's a link between eidos and ousia. It's just between the essence — essence which answers the question "what is called" — and ousia. What exists that corresponds, in the real, now outside language and my consciousness, and that corresponds to the word. To the word — that something exists is certain, but it's something we cannot name.
1:12:28 I'll take the example of a mountain. We say the mountain is. There's even an anecdote saying that Hegel said of Mont Blanc, es ist so. That at least resembles being. But it only resembles it if I take a temporal fast-forward, that is, if I take the mountain after 50 million years, the mountain has become a plain through erosion. In geography that's actually called a peneplain — a former mountain that has flattened out.
1:12:58 Right. We can't say the mountain is a plain. You see what I mean here, but nowhere have we removed a single atom of matter in all this — on the contrary. So I'll give the floor to the poet to conclude brilliantly, to our national Ronsard: matter remains and form is lost. And that's where we clearly see the link between form and eidos.
1:13:31 I can only characterize, give a unity, an essence, when I name — and God gave Adam the privilege of naming the creatures. There. Isn't that a form of Cratylism? Sorry? Isn't that a form of Cratylism? How is it Cratylism? Cratylus tells him that we imitate the sounds of nature. Yes, that we can't even name them. There. It's... Don't throw us into the Cratylus, we'll never get out of it.
1:14:03 This thing is so difficult. Some have even thought it alludes to sophistic disputations. But I'm not Hellenist enough, alas, to appreciate all the wordplay that seems to swarm in this text. Ah yes, you mean the Cratylus in the sense that Aristotle says Cratylus ended up falling silent. Yes, that's it, so much so in fact — and pointing at things with his finger. Wouldn't that be the passage after?
1:14:37 To all this, to the aspect of the mind, it could say to itself: if you speak the word and all that, I hear you poorly. Isn't that precisely where we reach the limit? Cratylus's attitude has the merit of posing the problem. Because I don't know if one must be... Because "Cratylean" means one would have to be like Cratylus. But in any case, he's one of the few consistent skeptics I know. Me, what I don't understand is that a... Sorry, one of the few consistent empiricists I know.
1:15:08 He thus arrives at skepticism, which is the limit of all empiricism. Whereas in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, people want to found positive knowledge on empiricism. That's what's incoherent. In other words — and Hume is the exception at this level within the English tradition — he says it's illegitimate to claim that, because here and now, in front of my thermometer, this saucepan, this water boils at 100 degrees here and now, it's illegitimate to conclude from that that water boils at 100 degrees.
1:15:38 In general, there is an illegitimate leap that nothing can guarantee. Kant is going to spend his life here, showing that there is nonetheless a necessity, and by what detour, by what ruse. There, big stakes involved. So Cratylus at least has the merit of being a consistent empiricist. An empiricist shouldn't philosophize, nor speak, nor write systems. I say the same of the skeptic. How can you be a skeptic and blacken thousands of pages to say that truth escapes us?
Consenting to melodic flow 1:16:08 If truth escapes us, one shouldn't try to write and transmit it to us. Right. Do you mean that truth is immediately within the subject-relation? But of course. I'm not even talking about the subject-subject relation here. So, there. I've taken all these important detours through this journey through texts because these texts echo one another. I already showed that when Mignon's song is now pleading — let me recite — now pressing, now full of desires and promises, it joins what Kafka said about the bell that seemed to threaten us with desires we didn't dare formulate, threatening to satisfy them.
1:17:01 That's the paradox, to sum up. There. What I mean by that is that if music has something fascinating — and I was on Verlaine — if one must find the odd-numbered line vaguer and more soluble in the air — well, bicarbonate of soda you can make soluble in water, but that's not why it's material. Kant said very well how much smoke weighs. We think smoke is material. Not at all.
1:17:31 In Newton's tube, the smoke falls like a lead ball. It's the art of becoming, but becoming is the primary reality. There, the primary reality is becoming, that is, a matter that is permanently metamorphic, that never ceases to negate the being it had at a given moment in order to pass on, sending it back into a non-being and having a new being arise. There. It's not for nothing that Goethe tries to maintain this plasticity, and it's untenable, as Wagner shows.
1:18:02 Especially since there's a contradiction between Goethe the artist in the most ordinary sense, that is, the sculptor, crystals, contour, etc., in the classical sense — and even conservative. But at the moral level, when there were romantics who came saying "I am desperate," Stirb und werde, they would answer.
1:18:34 He didn't say "you must become what you are," which is an anti-dialectical formula. Repeat, I hear poorly. He didn't say "you must become what you are," and he said rather "you are what you become" in that project. "You must become what you are" is the refusal of desire. Yes, but it's such a fashionable formula that it irritates me. Yes, of course. That's Nietzsche, I mean. That's it. No, but "become what you are." You can clearly see here the sediment of horribile dictu religiosity there is in that sensibility.
1:19:10 There is being which is irreducibly first. Yes, that's it. The soul is immortal, roughly. No need to look far. That's it, yes, exactly. Nothing to see here, move along. Whereas there is perhaps — and this explains the ambivalences of music — many people who, sincerely trying to express their musical emotion, say: it's curious because this music has nothing sad about it, yet it brings tears to my eyes. Perhaps something that is — there is a tragic dimension immanent to all music, even happy music, especially when it is pure melody and flows like a Schubertian song, because, to borrow that beautiful line from Nerval, it delivers the crimson flowers to the current of the streams.
1:19:51 There, I'd like to conclude on that. Delivers the crimson flowers to the current of the streams. There, that's what is musical in music: that one stops holding back and consents to the melodic flow. It's, in Schubert, those finales where he never stops varying an arioso form, an admirable theme, and in Beethoven, it's the great triumphs in the major key. Just look at the song — perhaps I'll end, not with the Ninth, that's too obvious, but with the Sixth, the Pastoral, isn't it?
1:20:24 Or after the storm, isn't it? Which comes to disturb the picnic of the gathered peasants, isn't it, on the riverbank. All of a sudden, after that clearing, that rainbow, there is this melody, isn't there? I'll try to play it, which will also give rise to variations.
1:21:00 Nothing could be simpler — untie, free, deliver the crimson flowers to release the sounds. That makes me think of the bitter lemons where your teeth left their imprint, in relation to Kennst du das Land wo die Zitronen blühn. Yes, but you see, you're talking about... She also consumes in the... It's funny because it makes me think of Rilke. Wait, it has the taste of them and it's already gone, the taste of the orange. It's not the lemon, it's the orange. It's evanescent. So, I'm going to conclude, these will be my last words, with Verlaine.
1:21:32 Because in the end, he insists on this aspect that music is what is at the turn. It's not in the straight line or in the right angle, it's in the turn. And he says this — after having gone through everything poetry must not be, he ends up coming back to music, music again and always. Let your verse be the fleeting thing, that one feels fleeing from a soul gone away toward other skies, toward other loves. Let your verse be good fortune, scattered to the brisk morning wind that goes smelling of mint and thyme, and all the rest is literature.
1:22:14 I think you've answered the question well, what is musical in music. It's a proposition. QED. Thank you in any case. There. Until next time. Thank you, Dominique. With great, great pleasure. Thank you very much, Dominique.
