‘It’s in the silence you feel you hear’

Abstract

The ekphrasis dates back to Antiquity and is firmly established as a concept in literary criticism. In 1994 W. J. T. Mitchell outlined the modern interpretation of ekphrasis as the ‘verbal representation of visual representation’. This article discusses a similar intermedial occurrence that is largely overlooked in literary theory: melophrasis, which could be defined as the ‘verbal representation of musical representation’. Using the main arguments of ekphrasis theory, the article engages in a critical dialogue with existing word and music research by Werner Wolf in particular. Instead of focusing on the mediality and formality of music in literature, this article is interested in the reading experience: the musicality evoked by melophrases. The purpose is to propose an analytical framework for literary scholars, and the article thus suggests two broad melophrastic categories inspired by film music theory and narratology: diegetic (the level of the plot/characters) and non‐diegetic (the level of the text/reader). This is demonstrated in two canonical works: a diegetic melophrasis that is the Vinteuil Sonata in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927), and the non‐diegetic fugue chapter ‘Sirens’ in James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922). The article argues that melophrases create aesthetic intermedial reading experiences with a significant musical quality: a feeling of hearing.

Literature’s listening spaces

“…See '"It's in the silence you feel you hear": Music, Literature and Melophrasis' (Vilmar, 2020). Melophrasis is a term developed from Rodney S. Edgecombe's 'Melophrasis' (1993) as a literary representation of something musical -a verbal representation of musical representation.…”

“…This is one of my main concerns regarding the fi eld of word and music studies, as scholars tend to understand literary descriptions of music as mere musical metaphors -for instance, Werner Wolf's theoretical landmark The Musicalization of Fiction (1999). See extended argument in Vilmar (2020). Even so, the melophrasis works through metaphors by describing the music through images and comparisons that make it come to life in the fi ctional world and the 'inner ear' of the listener.…”

“…Literary texts throughout history have produced an enormous corpus of music descriptions. The phenomenon that I call diegetic melophrases 2 (Vilmar, 2020) -that is, music taking place in the fi ctional world of the characters -can be valuable empirical data in understanding modern music listening: literary texts represent different listening situations, varied by geography, epochs and genres, and they depict characters with different demographics, lives and musical/cultural backgrounds. This enables scholars to work diachronically and collect nuanced datasets.…”