Understanding ‘understanding music’ in Proust

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sonic events of various kinds (musical and otherwise) are often complex semiotic occasions in Proust’s Recherche. One of the ways we attest to the meaningfulness of sounds we hear, to our understanding of them, is by applying language to them. When we talk or write about sounds or react to them, we also produce social effects. This – by inducing us to react to them and then produce language about them – is one of the ways sounds make social meanings happen in Proust (and in general). By examining language produced about sounds from a couple different volumes of the Recherche, I investigate what Bourdieu calls the differential social effect of works of art. I consider how scenes of language production around sound and music in the novel are constructed to reveal the social effects of apprehending sound and reacting to it. Finally, I speculate on how all of this work the novel does is part of a larger project of understanding: understanding what it means to understand musical sounds.