Proust was passionate about music and put it into all arts, even literature. As a young man, he often went to concert halls and operas. These were the main places in his time to listen to music because audio recording was in its infancy. The salons hosted by the women of Parisian society provided space for music auditions and allowed the writer to get to know the composers and performers. Proust went to these salons to feed his artistic inspiration, and he especially liked the music of Bach, Beethoven and Wagner. He had been associated with Beethoven’s music throughout his life and compared himself to a deaf composer who composed the softest symphony despite his physical disability. Proust, who has also suffered from asthma and other health problems throughout his life, wrote novels and articles while lying in bed.
For Proust, music is an inexhaustible source of feelings and emotions. Therefore, it is not surprising that he occupies a central place in his work, especially when it comes to delivering the inner life of the characters. In In Search of Lost Time, we find music everywhere: the sound of the wind on Balbec Beach, the laughter of Charlo, or even the sounds of the street. In his literary work, this great novelist has given great importance to oral speech, as his vocal data reflects the characteristics and internal state of the characters. Music also appears in poetic prose, in the long rhythmic sentences that Proust often uses, and in the beautiful metaphors he chose to express a scene or a specific idea.
The most well-known music in In Search of Lost Time is undoubtedly the Vinteuil Sonata, an imaginary melody created by the composer and called the Vinteuil Sonata. This sonnet appears in the first part of the novel called “Near the Swan House”. Through him, Proust tries to convey his artistic philosophy and highlight the influence of music on the emotions and feelings of the narrator and the main characters. Proust devotes an entire portion of the first volume of the novel to Charles Swann’s love story for a woman named Odette de Crissy, who often goes to Parisian salons. Charles Swan was a fine man of the aristocracy, with an extensive knowledge of literature and art, and a fine taste in art. He has a house near Aunt Leonie in Cambry and he occasionally visits the narrator’s family. The swan plays an important role in shaping the narrator’s literary and artistic consciousness, encouraging him or her to read books and attend presentations.
When Charles Swan first saw Odette in the salon of the Verdorians, he was not impressed: Odette was small, pretentious, empty and irrational, often using English words in her speech to emulate others and keep up with the trend. But later, when Swan saw a great resemblance to Siphora by Sandro Botticelli, son of Jethro (1481), he became emotional, as if this artistic resemblance to the famous painting had been recreated and its value increased. in his eyes.
One evening at Madame Verdoran’s, the musician played the piano and violin. Swan listened to it a year ago and he liked it, but at the time he didn’t recognize the title or the author. When he listened to it again with Odette, he felt that the spirit of this music had taken him to another world full of scents and colors and “it bloomed like the scents of roses traveling in the damp air. at night”. From this important moment, Charles Swan linked Fetoy’s music to his romantic relationship with Odette. The phrase became their official love anthem, and Swann often thinks Fentoy did it especially for him and Odette. The irony is that this amazing music was created by unknown piano master Charles Swan, who met his grandmother’s sisters and found him very worthless. Unbeknownst to the protagonist these melodious tunes that always accompany him were created by this artist, who always despised him.
Lebed has lived with Odette in a chaotic relationship in which she has suffered greatly, primarily because of the jealousy that used to bother her when she suspected her actions or when she was dating someone else. She doesn’t realize the truth about her cheating boyfriend until it’s all too late. At the end of this part of the novel, Swan accidentally listens again one night to Madame Ducente Auvers of Fentois, and his feelings for the memory flare up, and he recalls a painful past and his bitter love for Odette. : “Suddenly, he seemed to enter, and this sensation made him feel so much pain that he had to put his hand on his heart. All her memories were awakened again when Odette worshiped her to sing to her her merciless forgotten happiness. My hands tremble violently when I write to you. All these facts brought back by the music saddened her and doubled her sense of isolation, because she understood that she could not claim Odette and that this great love was an illusion. Although his feelings change over time, Swan marries Odette to ensure the future of their son Gilbert, and their marriage is resented in Cambry because they belong to a different type of society. The regret Lebed felt as a result of this relationship was expressed in a famous quote from the novel: “Who would believe that I had wasted so many years of my life and wanted to die, and I felt the greatest love for a woman I do not like, and he is not to my taste? That’s not mine! ”
The influence of music on the emotions and feelings of the narrator and of the main characters is even more noticeable.
This sensory experience of Charles Swan in his Sonnet Fenta is very similar to the experience of the narrator (or Proust) in the famous cake Madeleine. When the young narrator tasted madeleine with tea, he inadvertently recalled his happy childhood in Cambry, when Aunt Leonie treated him to this dessert during the summer vacations he spent at his house. So many years later, “The Taste of Madeleine” tore all childhood memories from a cup of tea and brought back the narrator for many years. Here he remembered Camberry, his houses, gardens, plants, the nights he waited for his mother to kiss him. There is no doubt that the music of Madeleine and Fentois is similar because they act as a sensory stimulator of passive memory, like a small spark that ignites a fire and brings back the past with all its delicious aroma and taste. Although Proust’s novel reflects the life of French society in his time, critics cannot attribute Fentois ’music to a particular author, so it remains a Proustian mystery. It is believed that Proust relied on the tunes of several musicians to invent this fictional music, and he probably drew inspiration from the works of Wagner or Saint-Saens’s Camels.
Inevitably, music played a prominent role in In Search of Lost Time and delivered Proust’s own view of the world, always centered on the sweetness, happiness, and nostalgia of the past versus the unbearable present. This idea Proust tries to mature in the pages of the novel. Music, according to Proust, was a way then to awaken our senses, to find the past and bring back what the memory can give us after we have lost it forever due to the passage of time, which runs as fast as a dream and a waste of its time. moving on to all the beautiful in our lives.
Source: Al-Akhbar
