Music as Metaphor and Music Metaphors in Belles-Lettres and Scientific Music-Literary Discourse

Abstract

In view of the importance of music as metaphor in the famous works of German literature (Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, Hermann Hesse's The Bead Game) and with reference to numerous statements made by the authors about music as an important element of their creativity, the article offers insight into the advantages of metaphorical approach to the analysis of music in literature as one that is productive and compatible with intermediality. As some Germanic literary studies papers attest, the proponents of metaphorical understanding of the interaction between literature and music (e.g. English modernist literature researcher Sarah Fekadu, Hermann Hesse's scholar Julia Moritz, theoretician of literature and jazz relations Erik Redling) rely on leading concepts about metaphor (those by Wilhelm Köller, Hans Blumenberg, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson) to substantiate the specific idea of musicality behind literary text. In particular, J. Moritz suggests that the musicality of a literary text should be perceived as metaphor which enables different ideas, depending on context or literary phenomena. Music and literature in this case form a completely different link, in which not the forms of art themselves but the perceptions of them are transformed in such a way as to create a new image which reveals a specific quality of literary text. It is emphasized that the metaphorical model helps solve the dilemma of whether “real” music can be found in literature as we no longer speak of such medium as “music” but of musicality as a specific quality of literature. That is why, literature which possesses musicality does not need to give up its essence to imitate music. The interdisciplinary character of the metaphorical understanding of music is also discussed and exemplified by current music studies papers which study literature. Music studies scholars do not deny the interaction between the two sign systems – music and literature. Thus, Christian Thorau claims that metaphorical calling is the calling of “contrastive exemplification”, figurative and sensual calling of common and different qualities. Semiotic prospect maintains sensibility where heterogeneous sign constellations (for instance, painting and music but also music and verbalized text) produce the moment of conflict through different sign forms regardless of the strength of semantic compatibility or difference. Within the semiotic mode this conflict may be studied as cross-modal metaphorism.