Whose Sonata? Music in Proust

In Proust as Musician, French author and musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez argues that the narrative of In Search of Lost Time is structured around a series of attempts to understand different art forms, from literature to visual art and, finally, to music – through which the narrator is able to appreciate literature in a new light. Nattiez ties this to the German composer Wagner (who Proust jokingly called a “close friend" in one of his letters). Wagner viewed his opera as Gesamtkunstwerk, a “total work of art” that incorporated music, design, drama, and poetry. Nattiez argues that Proust is attempting make his own Gesamtkunstwerk, a piece of literature that incorporates all of the arts which, together, build towards the absolute ideal of music.

Nattiez makes further comparisons between Proust and Wagner’s creative processes, specifically in their poeitics, a term which Nattiez defines as the beginning stage of creation before anything is put on paper, like the way a chess player thinks through all the possible moves on a board. As with Proust, it took Wagner upwards of twenty years between his first conception of the Ring of the Nibelungen and its final installment. Also, Wagner did not work chronologically, adding prequels as he wrote in the same way that Proust began with his essay, "Contre de Sainte-Beuve," and later expanded it into In Search of Lost Time. Nattiez calls this the “nebula” method of creation.

Wagner was also a uniquely literary composer; he wrote all his libretti himself. Nattiez also speaks on Wagner’s leitmotif, a musical technique which establishes heavy association between a piece of music and a character, theme, object, or setting. While listening to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, the Narrator has a realization of the significance of the leitmotif:

I began to perceive how much reality there is in the work of Wagner,

when I saw in my mind's eye those insistent, fleeting themes which visit

an act, withdraw only to return, and, sometimes distant, drowsy, almost

detached, are at other moments, while remaining vague, so pressing and

so near, so internal, so organic, so visceral, that one would call them the

resumption not so much of a musical motive as of an attack of neuralgia.

(Proust)

Nattiez compares this recurrence of a theme that can be both “fleeting" and “insistent” at the same time to the recurrence of the elusive “little phrase” in the Vinteuil sonata, a leitmotif whose representation is unclear until The Captive. Its an oft-quoted argument that the Recherche is structured around different appearances of the little phrase of Vinteuil’s, but Nattiez elaborates, claiming that the phrase a framing device for Swann’s attempt and failure at having a genuine connection with a piece of art, in contrast with Proust's later success through the septet, that allows him to access the “absolute” and write his novel.

Nattiez traces his theory of the absolute back to Schopenhauer, one of the first philosophers to elevate music above all other art forms. During his time, it was mostly considered entertainment. But Schopenhauer calls it a “copy of the will itself,” accessing an essence to which other art forms can only point. Of course, Nattiez admits that, by highlighting the influence of Schopenhauer and Wagner on Proust, he goes against what Nattiez perceives as Proust’s “Utopianism,” his desire to create a complete work of art with no need for outside reference. But the central argument for Nattiez’ work seems to be that there is no such thing. He hopes, by placing Proust in artistic and intellectual context, to bring out that which is essential in the novel. To Nattiez, this is the object of Proust's "search," the absolute, accessed through music, tempered with history.