MUSICAL SONORITY AS A PERFORMATIVE QUALITY OF A LITERARY TEXT

Abstract

The ways of recreating musical sonority in the text are studied within the theory of literary intermediality. The subject of research is the structural performability of text which helps to stage the performance of musical pieces within it. Specifi c textual strategies are discussed, which promote the perception of music in a literary text through the features of a sounding but not musical text, i.e. semantization of a musical piece. In this connection, the notion of performative writing is outlined, which can represent its mediality by showing what it talks about and, by doing so, its going beyond propositional senses. The study relies on the ideas of German mediality expert Sybille Krämer and literary mediality theorist Uwe Wirth. A short story by contemporary German writer Friedrich Christian Delius “The Future of Beauty” (2018) is analyzed. The ways in which the writer creates a free jazz concert with optimal musical sonority are studied. The famous 1966 concert of jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler is presented as an immediate musical event, with the actualization of sensory perception and interpretation of the sounding in a social and historical context. The performative dimension of the text, which highlights musical sonority, is achieved on the border of sound realization through the use of musical instruments, bodiliness of musicians, gestures, development of musical theme and assigning meaning to specifi c sound images, metaphorization of the sound, and creating images in one’s perception. The writer works within the modes of intertextuality and intermediality. He singles out solos, emphasizes the importance of communication between musical instruments and perceives the dynamics of a concert as a single event. Musical sounding is determined by the social and historical time; it is designed for an emotionally active and thoughtful recipient; its echo is vibrant for a long time and causes understanding of some regularities of human development. The study of musical sonority in literary texts highlights the process of sense creation and points to the productivity of borderline creative phenomena that a text-concert undoubtedly belongs to. Key words: intermediality, performability of text, musical sonority, free jazz, Friedrich Christian Delius.