The Sound of the Soul Mediated through Voice and Music in an Early Proustian Manuscript (“Après la 8e symphonie de Beethoven” [“After Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony”])

Abstract

In The Mysterious Correspondent: New Stories, two manuscript fragments, under the title “After Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony,” highlight Marcel Proust’s exploration of the possibility of deep spiritual communication between individuals. In each fragment, the qualities of the human voice and symphonic music are compared, underscoring the extent to which the emotional and aesthetic effects of sound depend on milieu and medium. The limitations of conversation as a means of achieving spiritual intimacy contrast dramatically with the potential of music to engender more profound human connections. This juxtaposition of voice and music gives readers a glimpse of Proust’s early efforts to transpose into words the seemingly ineffable qualities of music.

Keywords:

• Proust
• Beethoven
• voice
• music
• manuscript
• spirituality

Notes

1 Unless otherwise noted, the English versions of The Mysterious Correspondent: New Stories are from Charlotte Mandell’s translation.

2 Suzette Lemaire was the daughter of Madeleine Lemaire, an artist in her own right, known for her paintings of flowers, who entertained members of high society as well as artists and intellectuals at her salon on the rue de Monceau in Paris. Marcel Proust and Reynaldo Hahn met at one of Madeleine Lemaire’s soirées in 1894, around the time Proust was writing the manuscripts compiled in Le Mystérieux Correspondent.

3 All unattributed translations are mine.

4 In the Recherche, we see a similar juxtaposition when the banalities of conversation clash with the elation inspired by Vinteuil’s music. At the Verdurin salon between movements of the septet, audience members chat briefly with the Proustian protagonist: “Un duc, pour montrer qu’il s’y connaissait, déclara: ‘C’est très difficile à bien jouer.’ Des personnes plus agréables causèrent un moment avec moi. Mais qu’étaient leurs paroles, qui, comme toute parole humaine extérieure, me laissaient si indifférent, à côté de la céleste phrase musicale avec laquelle je venais de m’entretenir?” (Proust 3: 762) [“A duke, in order to show that he knew what he was talking about, declared: ‘It’s a difficult thing to play well.’ Other more agreeable people chatted for a moment with me. But what were their words, which like every human and external word left me so indifferent, compared with the heavenly phrase of music with which I had just been communing?”] (Moncrieff 5: 344).

5 For example, the Proustian narrator links the shape and color of Bloch’s nose to the nasal quality of his voice: “Son nez restait fort et rouge, mais semblait plutôt tumifié par une sorte de rhume permanent qui pouvait expliquer l’accent nasal dont il débitait paresseusement ses phrases, car il avait trouvé, de même une coiffure appropriée à son teint, une voix à sa prononciation, où le nasonnement d’autrefois prenait un air de dédain d’articuler qui allait avec les ailes enflammées de son nez” (qtd. in Pisano, p. 112).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hollie Harder

Hollie Harder is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. She has published articles on Émile Zola and Michel Houellebecq, in addition to works on Marcel Proust, which include “On the Beach and in the Boudoir: Albertine as a Classical Amazon Figure in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu” in French Forum, “Proust’s Human Comedy” in The Cambridge Companion to Proust, and “Proust’s Novel Confections: Françoise’s Cooking and Marcel’s Book” in Modern Language Studies.