A palavra em ressonância: percepção musical em A prisioneira

Abstract

The present dissertation aims to examine how musical perception operates in The Captive (La Prisonnière), demonstrating, first, how even before listening to Vinteuil’s compositions, the proustian narrator is already in a state of “listening”. It then seeks to show how this particular mode of attention suggests a kind of symphony of Being, insofar as listening, nuanced in relation to the other senses, is designated for metaphorizations that engage with the exploration of subjectivity and refined perceptions. Furthermore, the study aims to demonstrate how this musical apprenticeship, by articulating memory, perception, and imagination, anticipates the discovery of the Narrator’s vocation, emphasizing the singular capacity of music to unveil the ineffable, enabling the Narrator to see in depth, thereby revealing to him the reality that will ultimately unfold in his literary creation. From a broader perspective, the dissertation also seeks to demonstrate how the narrative structure of the Recherche maintains a profound homological relationship with the phenomenological structure of music, allowing the meaning of proustian sentences to unfold as an echo of a sense, that is, through their resonance. This effect is reinforced by the polyphonic aspect of the narrative voices, which, in an overlapping structure, are inscribed through a true fusion of time, always under the register of music as presence. The study thus highlights the singular capacity of music to make the inexpressible perceptible, establishing it as a central element of the literary and aesthetic experience in Proust.