Musical Poliphony of Modernist Writing: British / Ukrainian Women’s Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31861/pytlit2024.109.140Keywords:
musicalization of prose, modernism, female personality, V. Woolf, K. Mansfield, D. Vikonska, I. VildeAbstract
The subject of scientific research is a comparative analysis of the British and Ukrainian women writers short stories from the perspective of the interaction of literature and music in the period of modernism. This approach involves considering music as an expression of the specific modernist worldview of writers, passed through the prism of the inner “Self” of the female personality. It is based on the literary analysis of the works of V. Woolf “String Quartet”, K. Mansfield “The Singing Lesson”, “Weak Heart” and “Spring Pictures”, D. Vikonska “Polonaise D-moll Chopin (op. 71, No. 1)”, “Prelude of fis-dur No. 2, Vasil Barvinsky”, “Music” and I. Vilde “Pianist”, “Oriental Melody” and “Bizarre Heart”. The study of the phenomenon of musicalization of prose, based on the concept of the famous intermedialist W. Wolf, allows us to identify various forms of its presentation. In the content aspect, we can talk about the presence of two varieties of thematization of music in mentioned literary texts: intra- and paratextual thematization. In the structural aspect, all three forms of imitation are represented: verbal music; imaginary content analogy, expressed mainly in the associative imagery of water (love); a formal and structural analogy, presented as an imitation of musical macroforms (quartet and fuget) and microforms (compositional technique of polyphony). A notable feature of this study is the discovery of original creative parallels in the poetics of modernist women writers – simultaneously at the intersection and within the national literatures. Imaginary content analogies are related to the writing style of Ukrainian and British women writers – D. Vikonska and V. Woolf, as well as I. Vilde and K. Mansfield; the imitation form of musical microforms reveals the internal stylistic similarity of both British and Ukrainian literatures: amplification constructions in V. Woolf and K. Mansfield writings, on the one side and syntactic modifications of key reference lexemes in D. Vikonska and I. Vilde, on the other side.
References
Vikonska, D. (2014). Polonez D-moll Shopena (op. 71. № 1). Muzyka. Preliudiia fis-dur № 2 Vasylia Barvins’koho [Polonaise D-moll Chopin (op. 71. No. 1). Music. Prelude of fis-dur No. 2, Vasyl Barvinsky]. In: Rais’ka Iablinka. Antolohiia ukraïns’koï maloï “zhinochoï” prozy Halychyny mizhvoiennoho periodu. Lviv : LA “Piramida”, pp. 218–223. (in Ukrainian).
Vilde, I. (2014). Pianist. Skhidna melodiia. Khymerne serce [Pianist. Oriental Melody. Bizzare Heart]. In: Rais’ka Iablinka. Antolohiia ukrains’koï maloï “zhinochoï” prozy Halychyny mizhvoiennoho periodu. Lviv : LA “Piramida”, pp. 57–63. (in Ukrainian).
Heneraliuk, L. (2020). Shliakhy formuvannia intermedialnykh doslidzhen’ [Ways of cross-media research formation]. Slovo i Chas, no. 3, pp. 3–27. (in Ukrainian). https://doi.org/10.33608/0236-1477.2020.03.3-27
Karach, N. (2021). Zhanrovo-styl’ova svoieridnist’ prozy Iryny Vilde v konteksti ukrains’koï literatury 30–60-kh rokiv XX stolittia [Genre-style originality of Iryna Wilde’s prose in the context of Ukrainian literature of the 30–60s of the XX century]. Candidate’s thesis. Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University, 217 p. (in Ukrainian).
Kovalska-Frait, O. (2016). Muzychnyi dyskurs v tvorchosti pys’mennytsi ta naukovtsia Dariï Vikons’koï [Musical Discourse in the Art of a Writer and a Scholar Dariya Vikonska]. Ukraïns’ka muzyka, no. 4 (22), pp. 36–48. (in Ukrainian).
Liubarets, N. (2017). Muzykalnist’ u zhanrovii poetytsi khudozhnioï prozy Virdzhyniï Vul’f [Musicality of genre poetics in Virginia Woolf’s fiction]. In: Matsenka, S. (ed.). Muzychna faktura literaturnoho tekstu. Intermedialni studiï. Lviv : Apriori, pp. 117–125. (in Ukrainian).
Maftyn, N. (1998). Mala proza Iryny Vilde: nepovtornist’ indyvidual’noho holosu [Iryna Vilde’s short stories: uniqueness of individual voice]. Ivano-Frankivsk : Plai, 114 p. (in Ukrainian).
Macenka, S. (2009). Khudozhnii tekst iak fonohrafiia: muzykal’ni obrazy u nimets’kii literaturi [Literary text as phonography: musical images in German literature]. Naukovi pratsi. Seriia “Filolohiia. Literaturoznavstvo”, vol. 124, iss. 111, pp. 72–77. (in Ukrainian).
Macenka, S. (2017). Metamystetstvo: slovnyk dosvidu terminotvorennia na mezhi literatury i muzyky [MetaArts: an experience vocabulary of terms forming at the literature and music crossroad]. Lviv : Apriori, 120 p. (in Ukrainian).
Nabytovych, I. (2018). Muzychnyi dyskurs tvorchosty Dariï Vikons’koï [Musiacal discourse of Dariia Vikonska’s creativity]. Literaturnyi protses: metodolohiia, imena, tendentsiï. Filolohichni nauky, no. 12, pp. 54–60. (in Ukrainian). https://doi.org/10.28925/2412-2475.2018.1210
Nazar, L. (2007). Avtentychnyi perven’ tvorchosti Vasylia Barvins’koho [Authentical source of Vasyl Barvinsky’s works]. In: Nazar, L. Styliovi vymiry tvorchosti Vasylia Barvins’koho. Candidate’s thesis. Mykola Lysenko Lviv National Music Academy, pp. 28–60. (in Ukrainian).
Nalyvaiko, D. (2006). Literatura v systemi mystetstv iak haluz’ komparatyvistyky [Literature in the system of arts as a branch of comparative studies]. In: Nalyvaiko, D. Literaturna teoriia i komparatyvistyka. Kyiv : Vydavnychyi dim “Kyievo-Mohylians’ka akademiia”, pp. 9–38. (in Ukrainian).
Polishchuk, N. (2023). Muzychna reprezentatsiia “ia” v modernistychnii prozi pochatku XX stolittia [Musical representation of woman’s self in modernist fiction at the beginning of 20th century]. In: Polishchuk, N. Dyskurs identychnosti kriz’ pryzmu porivnial’nykh studii literatury [Discourse of Identity Through a Prism of Comparative Literary Studies]. Sherman Oaks, California : GS Publishing Services, pp. 143–158. (in Ukrainian). https://doi.org/10.51587/9798-9895-14618-2024-019
Frait, O. (2021). Typy muzychnoho ekfrazysu v malii prozi Dariï Vikons’koï [Forms of musical ekphrasis in Dariia Vikonska’s short stories]. In: Frait, O. Muzychno-verbal’na eminentnist’ v interpretatsiinomu dyskursi mystetstvoznavstva. Doctor’s thesis. National Academy of Culture and Arts Management, pp. 261–271. (in Ukrainian).
Benson, S. (2020). Introduction [Literature and Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries]. In: Correa, D. da Sousa (ed.). Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Music. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, pp. 493–514. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748693139-053
Borkowska, G. (1988). Dialog powieściowy i jego konteksty (na podstawie twórczości Elizy Orzeszkowej). Wrocław : Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 171 s.
Bucknell, B. (2001). Literary Modernism and Musical Aesthetics: Pater, Pound, Joyce and Stein. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2001, 288 p.
Correa, D. da Sousa (2011). Performativity in Words: Musical Performance in Katherine Mansfield Stories. In: Correa, D. da Sousa, Kimber, G. and Reid, S. (ed.). Katherine Mansfield and the Arts. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, pp. 21–35. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474465861-003
Crapoule, É. (2008). Beyond the boundaries of language: music in Virginia Woolf’s “The String Quartet”. Journal of the Short Story in English, 50. Special issue: Virginia Woolf. URL: https://journals.openedition.org/jsse/690?lang=en (accessed: 5 February 2024).
Fillerup, J. (2022). Forming Time: Music, Literature, and Modernity. In: Durkin, R. et al. (ed.). The Routledge Companion to Music and Modern Literature. Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 193–207.
Gurke, T. (2022). Coherence and Counterpoint: Music in the Modern Short Story. In: Durkin, R. et al. (ed.). The Routledge Companion to Music and Modern Literature. Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 303–313.
Hejmej, A. (2002). Muzyczność dzieła literackiego. Wrocław : Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 248 s.
Hejmej, A. i Górny, T. (red.) (2016). Transpozycje: muzyka w nowoczesnej literaturze europejskiej. Kraków : Universitas, 382 s.
Hindrichs, Ch. (2010). Reading “Moments of Being” Between the Lines of Bach’s Fugue: Lyric Narrative in Virginia Woolf’s “Slater’s Pins Have No Points”. Studies in Short Fiction: An Independent Scholarly Quarterly, 37 (1), pp. 1–26. URL: https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1204&context=english_facpubs (accessed: 5 February 2024).
Konstantini, N. (2015). Blurring Polyphonic Voices in Katherine Mansfield’s Short Story “The Singing Lesson”. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies, vol. 2, iss. 2, pp. 340–349.
Kuo, Chia-chen (2016). The Affectivity of Music in Virginia Woolf’s “The String Quartet”. Journal of the Short Story in English, 66, pp. 129–148. URL: https://journals.openedition.org/jsse/1697 (accessed: 5 February 2024).
Lippman, E. (1999). The Philosophy and Aesthetics of Music. Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 249 p.
Manhire, V. (2011). Mansfield, Woolf and Music: “The queerest sense of echo”. In: Correa, D. da Sousa, Kimber, G. and Reid, S. (ed.). Katherine Mansfield and the Arts. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, pp. 51–67. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474465861-005
Mansfield, K. (2006a). Spring Pictures. In: The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield. London : Wordsworth Classics, pp. 534–537.
Mansfield, K. (2006b). The Singing Lesson. In: The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield. London : Wordsworth Classics, pp. 279-284.
Mansfield, K. (2006c). Weak Heart. In: The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield. London : Wordsworth Classics, pp. 420–424.
Schirrmacher, B. (2024). Music Transformation in Literature. In: Bruhn, J., Azcárate, A. L.-V. and de Paiva Vieira, M. (ed.). The Palgrave Handbook of Intermediality. Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 834–863. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28322-2_42
Sutton, E. (2006). Within a space of tears: Music, writing, and the modern in Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out. In: McParland, R. (ed.). Music and Literary Modernism: Critical Essays and Comparative Studies. Newcastle : Cambridge Scholars, pp. 50–65.
Sutton, E. (2020). Music in Woolf’s Short Fiction. In: Correa, D. da Sousa (ed.). Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Music. Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, pp. 544–552. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748693139-057
Varga, A. (ed.) (2014). Virginia Woolf and Music. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 329 p.
Varga, Z. (2022). The Acoustic Self in English Modernism and Beyond: Writing Musically. New York : Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 137 p. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003184034
Wolf, W. (1999). The Musicalization of Fiction. A Study in the Theory and History of Intermediality. Rodopi : Amsterdam, 272 p.
Woolf, V. (1921). The String Quartet. In: Woolf, V. Monday or Tuesday. Richmond : Hogarth Press, pp. 59–65.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Nadiya Polishchuk
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
