ABSTRACT
In 1902, Andrei Biely composed Dramatic Symphony, a work in four movements with a structural dependence on repeated leitmotifs or, in his own terms, “musical phrases.” 1 This work, written as a novel, attempted to present music through the medium of language. The Russian writer’s quest was to become a seminal impetus for many writers in the twentieth century: the modernist pursuit of a “musical” literature. In the nineteenth century, the English writer and critic Walter Pater suggested that all arts constantly aspire to the condition of music. 2 Andrei Biely outlined his own Paterian construct for a new century in his manifesto, “The Forms of Art”: “Will not all forms of art seek more and more to occupy the position of overtones in relation to the basic tone, i.e. to music?” (182). Biely’s argument may place literature in a position of deference to music, but it is distinguished by its eschewal of the argument concerning whether literature may or may not “become” music, a pitting of the forms against each other that is all too common in discussions on the role of music in literature. Samuel Beckett, in relation to his radio play Words and Music, would pass a formidable judgment on this combative scenario: “Music always wins.” 3 What Pater had identified as the condition to which all arts aspire was the unification of subject and form, an aesthetic harmony apparently only possible in music. The challenge taken up by many writers in the twentieth century was not necessarily to turn their writing into music, but to draw on music so as to interrogate the relationship and, in some cases, narrow the gap between subject and form in literature.
