Love of words does not end by killing the thing it loves, in some cases. Worse still is when indifference sets in. Philologists, bored, forgetful, heedless, decline to notice the beloved’s qualities, were they even seen and heard to begin with. Words’ tempos, temperaments, tempers, their levity and humour, their gait: attractions cease to beckon, attention no longer is bestowed, or the lovers turn away, there being in these fields innumerably more than the proverbial thousand and three.
Words thus neglected may set out on their own, perhaps in search of new suitors, or devoting themselves to other pursuits. Not only people wander. Abandoned by those who professed to love them, words could strike out by themselves, setting off on a stroll through the city of letters, without specific aim or hardly a thought for the routine of dictionaries, grammar, or syntax, much like a free-willed stroller reconnoitring some as yet unknown arrondissement, less than conspicuous yet not patently inconspicuous, in-between, nondescript, and a bit indefinable, while available for events, incidents, encounters accidental, unintended, unforeseen in kind and consequence. Or, for a much-needed change of scene, words might spend an etymological Sunday in the Bois de Boulogne or on the Grande Jatte, walking solitarily for an hour and listening adjectively to the rustling of the leaves, then, pourquoi pas, striking up at leisure a conversation or two with other verbal misfits whose paths they cross, or reclining in the afternoon sunlight on the lawn. – Not adverse to prepositions, but they find none to their liking? Well, come Monday, work will call and there are libraries to retreat into, literary research to be done under the splendid domes of the main hall at the Bibliothèque nationale, or inquiries to be carried out in some other of its several reading rooms. And should the conditions there prove otherwise than optimal, or inhospitable, words might continue their studies in another less frequented library (no lack of libraries in Paris), if need be delving into the heritages of the elder languages in the Bibliothèque du Saulchoir or at the Alliance Israélite Universelle, for purposes of comparison or by the circuitous temptations of sheer curiosity, as different sorts of route towards that which may be the ulterior non-aim of all the better flânerie, to espy and overhear an elusive sort of word by a slow passage around places: their names, past, present, and . . .
Much like the philologists, musicologists too loose sight of (or cease to hear) their starting-point, and hence melodies also might feel scorned. Then one may imagine the peregrinations not so differently than in the case of words. Flâneurs, after all, at times whistle while underway. Melody also will move on and wander about . . .
If, pondering the idea of words or melodies en route and yet without particular aims, one finds it not so far-fetched, then these sonic things manifest a significant independence. To consider them as though they were essentially always parts of some whole, therefore, might be a basic mistake. They are capable of other kinds of relations than those of whole to part (the sort of relation which some higher hermeneutics circle around). The “entire and peculiar confederacy” of qualities in which one delights evinced by a friend whom one loves, is not a whole, nor are they parts (though the term is hard to avoid): there is no “fulcrum” here.* Between them are the amiable affinities which analysis never will capture (thankfully). And as with the friend, so too in words, in melodies, esteemed qualities confederate; they can endure in a unity whose inner relations know neither wholes nor parts.
* Henry Bennet Brewster, The Theories of Anarchy and of Law, pt. ii
Independence, as manifest by a confederacy like this, brings with it a measure of self-confidence. (These are more eminent cases.) A word or melody of this variety, amounts to a power based upon its own strength (potentia sua vi nixa).* Without wanting to justify the earlier abandonment by the philologist or musicologist, would in its absence such an indication of self-reliant capacity ever have been as readily witnessed?
* Goethe, “Einzelnes” (1826), varying Tacitus, Annales, bk. xiii, ch. xix
A word’s embrace of the state of independence, could also express awareness that its own inward structure will vouchsafe to it long viability; as such, amongst all worldly things anyone can ever know, it might prove to be the hardiest and most enduring: attitude like this, edified by itself, is adverse to the common image of existence as ebb and flow.
Because they are compounded of three consonants, in the Semitic languages the roots (though the term is less than apt in this case), it seems plausible to assume, evince by their first formation this attitude to a high degree. Sempiternity is the perfection they seek as far as they can to realise. Over long stretches of historical time it may seem that some of them have gone dormant, but especially in these instances, the inner potency is not lost: for them, if any natural metaphor is fitting, perhaps the best one is the venerable mustard seed. Thousands of years afterwards, such a word persists, pungent as ever. Where would we all be, were it not?
This ideal energises that great love of language their best readers cherish in the texts of Walter Benjamin and Paul Celan. From both of them it calls forth a devoted, indeed an obsessive interest (interesul obsesional) in the word (cuvîntului) thought of implicitly as compounded or convened, hence, by this inner structure, as a matrix of existence (matrice a existenţei) and repository of collective memory (depozitar al memoriei colective).* Sempiternal, however, is a quality which can flit by nearly unnoticed, amidst the flux and instability of modern, especially urban conditions. There, whenever a word (or a melody) imbued with it appears or is heard from, by a strange reversal it may be as the most transient of all. Thoughts provoked by this odd occurrence and others comparable, were no strangers to these writers throughout their lives.
* Petre Solomon, Paul Celan, “Prietenii şi prietenele poetului”
The word (like the melody) is no less sempiternal than it ever was – at least one hopes so – but the existence and the collective memory of which it remains the matrix and repository, respectively: these have indeed been truncated, compared to their earlier condition. More and more, this development arouses fear, even amongst those who appear to rejoice in it, when their pretences are disregarded.
Today, insights – from outside – into the travails of the sempiternal, found to be unpalatable, pronouncedly contrary, often are hidden away (secretirt) within an indestructible silence (ein unverbrüchliches Schweigen), virtually as if under the censorship of an Inquisition (Inquisitionscensur).* To be sure, current nomenclature for these tacit procedures is quite another, wrapping them up in shows of virtuous good feeling and self-applause, or, when critical, putting forth a tell-tale aloof irony, perhaps wisely recognising how under the circumstances some things unwittingly do raise against themselves the best of the satires that are still possible.
* Goethe, “Tag- und Jahres-Hefte als Ergänzung meiner sonstigen Bekenntnisse” (1821)
If animus against the drive towards sempiternity is pronounced, musicologists and philologists may find it hard to uncover ever new perfections in the objects they love (la découverte que l’objet aimé a de nouvelles perfections) when the latter, as does seem inevitable, are considered under precisely this aspect. The sempiternal drive itself, which amidst other more fortuitous circumstances might indeed continue to sustain the interest of their lovers, over against the perception that these beloveds manifest only invariance and hence become boring in the way all that is uniform, even perfect happiness (tout ce qui est uniforme, même du bonheur parfait) will tend to be, instead begins to furnish some cause for complaint. Increasingly, then, a philologist or musicologist starts to doubt the amorous delight he had entered into (l’amant arrive à douter du bonheur qu’il se promettait) with words or melodies or even with the word and the melody altogether. Subsequently he may take quite far the destruction of the crystallised substance of this ideal love-affair (il faut détruire tout un pan de cristallisation).* And by the impulse to undo what its practitioners themselves had done, the integrity of philology or musicology might greatly suffer.
* Stendhal, De l’Amour, vol. i, bk. i, ch. ii
When the philologist vacates the field, other interested parties turn their attentions to these objects, readying themselves to court the word. Of this group each, because he speaks, believes himself capable of speaking about language in general (ein Jeder, weil er spricht, glaubt auch über die Sprache sprechen zu können), as though some degree of talent were not needed or even desirable, precisely here! These boastful talkers are frequently invidious when they refute one another (sind meist gehässig, wenn sie widerlegen), for each detests any other as being nearly his mortal enemy (Todtfeind).* All their tongues hatred of the rivals (Had til Rivaler) has sharpened.** – Comparable situations, mutatis mutandis, perhaps ensue when the musicologist turns away from melodies which he loved.
* Goethe, “Einzelnes” (1824)
** Georg Brandes, “Aristokratisk Radikalisme,” vi
Scenes like these may engender mirth at first, but soon pall and inflict weariness (ein Abmüden) on the more aware participants as on the observers.* Meanwhile, not unconnected, in print one finds spirals of thoughtlessness, thought-selections, thought-tinder, thought-splinters, thought-shavings (Gedankenlese, Gedankenzunder, Gedankensplitter, Gedankenspäne), but lacking thoughts per se, albeit displaying as though in compensation a profusion of thoughts about thoughts (Gedanken über Gedanken), that is to say, those about no thoughts (über keine Gedanken), or rather, no thoughts about no thoughts, or nothing about nothing, nothingness as a nested set of thoughts (keine Gedanken über keine Gedanken, oder nichts über nichts, ein ineinandergeschachteltes Gedanken-Nichts).** So there flare up, in conversation, disputes marred by bitter if not brittle wit, while in written discourse, rickety, hollow constructs of ideas are pieced together. How then can words bare their sempiternal faces at all, in these environs descending further and further under the low sway of envy? Real greatness is now suspect, and those of them which hold their own permanence in esteem are made miserable. – Regulating its breath, to hum or whistle its perennial self audibly within such locales, a good melody will likewise hesitate to do.
* Goethe, “Einzelnes” (1826)
** Moritz Gottlieb Saphir, “Gedanken über Gedanken”
This impasse of the better words and melodies, may in turn call forth some bemusement, from an observer if not also from the participants themselves, in their more reflective moods: the difficulty too has a comical aspect. Not only with persons, also with situations the spirit of humour likes to play. At times not an idea that comes in a flash (es fiel ein) by inspiration, but rather a remark or even a noise that passes inadvertently (herausgefallen) into expression, arouses laughter; and a definite situation as well as a particular person may emit it. Whenever this occurs, mortifying as it might be, that mischievous fellow the spirit of humour has made someone or some entity the occasion for a joke (der Genius des Humors hat sich mit diesem Individuum einen Witz gemacht).* Thus, even melodies or words can be thrown into embarrassment, brought down by a trick he played on them.
* Alexander Moszkowski, Der jüdische Witz und seine Philosophie,
“Die Philosophie des jüdischen Witzes”
Yet, most often, the impasse poses a challenge to them, fostering their ingenuity. Perhaps, if a melody or a word is to move about within those surroundings, it will need to don a mask, either of the ancient theatrical kind, a πρόσωπον or persona, or one adopted as a disguise, in order to guard the sempiternity of its features against envious eyes and ears, while even in the face of their hostility permitting something rather than nothing at all to be sung or spoken.
With all this, a word might be forgiven, should it begin to recall wistfully the time when the philologist bestowed so careful a love on it. And the melody, yearning for its musicologist.
Even so, the travails which beset words and melodies, after their lovers quit them, must be faced squarely. (If only because they cannot always seek out solace afoot, as flâneurs through the streets of letters and music, or sedentarily, as researchers amongst the shelves.) Poorly positioned to do so, they are not: if it is the case that society revels more openly in ugliness the further it expunges sempiternity and its traces, these aural loners, virtually ex officio, have organs by which to mark the reality of the erasure – their keen ears. How so? Someone need only close his eyes for half an hour (der muß sich auf eine halbe Stunde die Augen zudrücken), and the sound of everything taking place in his vicinity will inform him of what the society truly is (das Wahre der Gesellschaft), its pretensions surmounted and, well, heard through by this procedure.* So, if our contemporary society especially strays more and more from the True (das Wahre), which itself might be but another of sempiternity’s several names, it will be the ears of words at their sharpest which can estimate the increasing distance between them. (Yet what would happen to society if, all at once, great numbers of those who participate in it were to close their eyes, simply in order to discern its true sound? Would it not at the very least come abruptly to a standstill?)
* Saphir, “Papillotten”
To put the main point differently, it is the subtle dissonance between the venerable meaning of some words and the hollower sense or nonsense they accrue amidst our present-day absurdities, which may furnish guideposts for the writing of an incisive “history of the error.” (A counterpart of this sensitivity might assist in the composition of a poignant “Irrnisfuge.”) Antithetical to their sempiternity as are the “errancies” of words, nonetheless the relation is not an antithesis and nothing more. No! Rather, their own sempiternity is or seems to be augmented by content unexpected, even somehow prolonged, as thus far in history words have travelled life’s labyrinthine errant course (des Lebens labyrinthisch irren Lauf).* (And so too the longevity of melodies has been assured, when upon their themes variations as yet unheard happen to be spun.) Here any number of tempting paths open up for those aware of the irony in language to wander.
* Goethe, Faust, Zueignung
Words have the best ears, and the minute variations they register, to the record of it one should try to attend. – If by recourse to the vicissitudes of their meanings, one can measure how far away we’ve moved from an ideal of sempiternity, does not this also suggest a close linkage between the ears and the perception of space? The ear is the organ by which space is sensed (das Ohr is das raumempfindende Organ), indeed the only one to merit this distinction (das einzige, dem diese Qualität zukommt). Not outside of experience, but rather in the domain of the senses is space perceived (nicht außerhalb der Erfahrung, sondern im Sinnenbereich wird der Raum wahrgenommen), perception effected, however odd this may sound, by the labyrinth within the ear (vom Labyrinth im Ohr).* This interior feature is similar to the labyrinths of history and life, constituting a small-scale analogue by virtue of which audition can be the sense that will best guide someone through them. – Perhaps the inner structure of the word, that is, the arrangements of its phonetic and semantic elements, and also the arrays of its several meanings, can in their turn be described as labyrinth-like. If so, this would suggest how the rapport with spatiality characteristic of the ears might to some degree typify words as well. The question is then: in what ways are they guides to the spaces around the individual.
* Moszkowski, “Musik als Raumkunst”
How even to begin answering this question? – Some help might be given by reflecting on one particular kind of speech, slander. Words of this variety, if they achieve their aim, in preoccupying his ear (προκαταλαμβάνων αὐτοῦ τὰ ὦτα) bring about an entire appropriation of the hearer (ὅλον τὸν ἀκροατὴν σφετεριζόμενος) by the slanderer.* Whenever this goal is met, in effect barricades go up on avenues that would otherwise reach the captive ear, fending off any words that might draw forth contrary ideas and thus counter-act the slander. Does such a success imply that the space around the captive, as he or rather his ears perceive it, changes its configuration and is flattened out correlatively? – Already this is a more definite proposition, whose veridicality one might devise some thought-experiments to test.
* Lucian, Calumniæ non temere credendum, 8
Configured anew spatial perception might be not only by words, but also by music. That this can result not by an individual’s own choice, suggests the performances could exhibit a certain lack of urbanity (ein gewisser Mangel an Urbanität), when the volume impinges upon persons in the vicinity (die Nachbarschaft) and detracts from the non-attendees’ freedom (der Freyheit anderer, außer der musikalischen Gesellschaft, Abbruch thut), an offence unperpetrated by arts that speak to the eyes (die Künste, die zu den Augen reden), for someone can opt simply to turn his eyes away if he does not want to let their impressions in (indem man seine Augen nur wegwenden darf, wenn man ihren Eindruck nicht einlassen will). Sounds, in this respect, resemble smells: they overstep the boundaries of the individual’s sphere, and even when they bring delight, as with the wafting of perfume around a room, yet the pleasure is interlaced with compulsion one did not choose.* Exposure to sound like this, amounts to an intrusion into a person’s “space”; then the auditory incident functions as a signal, while spatial perception will to a degree tighten or tense up, as though in reaction to some pressure exerted upon it. – Now, whether a sound or sounds would set in motion consequences like these, is similarly a more definite proposition, whose possible application to anyone’s perceptual experience some thought-experiments may also begin to concretise.
* Immanuel Kant, Critik der Urtheilskraft, pt. i, sec. i, bk. ii, § 53
The shape of the spaces one perceives around oneself, and their susceptibility to sonic phenomena, whether music or words, cannot properly be described without noting how open or closed they are to the exterior, how well they are insulated over against all that is outside them. – This proposition also calls for testing.
“Comfort, my dear fellow!” cried Markham, “the Germans don’t even know it by name; there’s no such word in the language! Look at the construction of their houses! A front door and a back door, with a well staircase in the middle, up which a thorough draught is secured by a roof pierced with a score or two of unglazed windows; the attics by this airy contrivance serving to dry the family linen. Make your sitting room, therefore, as warm as you please with that close fuming, unwholesome abomination, a German stove, and the moment you step out of the chamber door, it is like transplanting yourself, in winter, from the hot-house into the open garden. To aggravate these discomforts, you have sashes that won’t fit, doors that don’t shut, hasps that can’t catch, and keys not meant to turn! Then, again, the same openings that let in the cold, admit the noise; and for a musical people, they are the most noisy I ever met with. Next to chorus singing, their greatest delight seems to be in the everlasting sawing and chopping up of fire-wood at their doors; they even contrive to combine music and noise together, and the carters drive along the streets smacking a tune with their whips!”
— Thomas Hood, Up the Rhine, “To Gerald Brooke, Esq.”
Do the spaces around myself exhibit qualities of the street, or features of a room? Akin to confines, thoroughfares, or carrefours? The answer in any particular case will, it may seem, help to clarify how this space might change its figure or shape in response to some obtrusive sound, musical or verbal or both at once. Perhaps my ears already have gotten inured to much of the noise, or are accustomed to their own peculiar condition, so that the alteration would be minimal to none. Or else the sound could transform – though for how long? – my vicinity into a conduit, space between.
Influxes of articulate sound from all sides, and indeed the loud confusions of music and noise, may provoke counter-movements on the part of thought, if the notion that the latter requires quiet surroundings is meant seriously, and not paraded by way of feint for common consumption. Its manœuvers are worthy of attention.
Where better than amidst an absence of external sound may the different tones of synonyms be assessed? By this too their order of rank might become more patent, at least momentarily. The preoccupation indeed underscores how higher culture is the development towards silence (Kultur ist Entwickelung zum Schweigen). In its arena “silence” (Schweigen) itself is heard to diverge subtly from its fellows, and they likewise, the states of “repose” (Ruhe), “stillness” (Stille), and “soundlessness” (Lautlosigkeit), not to mention the qualities which might attend each or announce their arrivals. And what does this peculiar rule of silence aim at? Quite possibly to shore up one’s vicinity against alterations the words one speaks to oneself could otherwise induce in it, that by a sublime soundlessness (von hehrer Lautlosigkeit) these spaces be impregnated in the best interest of thought.* – How would music and its elements fare, were higher culture to advocate for silence along these lines? One may envision the difficulties, for all too many today have become terribly loud and terribly musical (sind entsetzlich laut und entsetzlich musikalisch geworden), as if to display a coincidentia oppositorum in their own persons, and this mark of distinction they will not abandon. Someone like this appears to be so “nervous” that only very soft or very loud sound is capable of captivating him (so „nervös“ zu sein, dass ihn nur das ganz zarte oder das ganz laute Geräusch zu fesseln vermag).** Hence music, on one side, and along with it words for which a domestication by thought is no agreeable prospect, and this taciturn version of higher culture on the other, seem destined to collide, unless the emergency brake is reached for (der Griff nach der Notbremse).*** Though perhaps for a period of time emigration might avert a pile-up: where is the country large enough to afford each of them a berth?
* Theodor Lessing, Der Lärm, ch. ii, 3 ** ch. iii, 2
*** Walter Benjamin, untitled text, 1939 or 1940
Can the power of humour with its wily ingenuity somehow pull anyone out of the crowds of those unwittingly en marche to destruction? Here too the task would involve a new disposition of space. – Everywhere people have gotten accustomed, even addicted to the several varieties of background noise (bruit de fond): by now the message-sphere of social media, for them who use the systems habitually, always murmurs in the background. Space, perceived in experience, narrows down, thins out, and sound too by its side, while these technological attachments, in the aggregate, become a second nature within a world which seems to have lost its mind (dans un monde devenu insensé), therein fulfilling the subliminal function of providing assurance to individuals (sécuriser les hommes) that in the end they will muddle through. – For how much longer? – Such an implicit pseudo-faith, and the truncations which undergird it, are very disturbing in their own right, and this even more so, if it is the case, as one does tend to suspect, that the sonic dimension always has contained amongst its principles an announcement of the times to come (depuis toujours, elle a contenu dans ses principes l’annonce des temps à venir).* Then one does have good reason for fear: in the current acoustic background, the foregrounds of tomorrow or the next day already are taking shape, monstrously.
* Jacques Attali, Bruits, “Écouter”
Wherever one turns, it seems older problems are arising again. – Even when it is the betweens of history that one plumbs, the effort expresses a manner of ridding oneself of the past (eine Art sich das Vergangene vom Halse zu schaffen).* Would one have judged better simply by letting what has not gone by be? Perhaps; but may one at least not end by choking on it!
* Goethe, “Eignes und Angeeignetes in Sprüchen”