Speech from 1928. Translated
by Felix Giovanelli, Surrealist R&D Monograph Series, #6, Published
by Radical America under the direction of the Chicago Surrealist Group,
1972.
Music is
Dangerous (excerpts)
Perhaps
we do not usually go so far as that, limited as we are by our available
resources of ardor and courage. It is true nonetheless that we behave,
within the limits of our personal possibilities, exactly as do certain
people, by whose examples we are amazed or shocked, inattentive as
we are to what goes on inside us.
The difference is merely a matter of finish, speed, intensity, that
is, a question of shade. But however that may be, it seems a certainty
to me that, up to a point, we cannot keep from imitating, from mimicking
in depth what arrests us, touches, moves us.
When you come right down to it, what, really, does leave us unmoved?
Once again, we are dealing with a difference of shading and degree,
of ways and means. It is our inattention alone that makes us believe
our indifference.
We cannot suppose, in fact, that so general a propensity must necessarily
be limited in its manifestations to so restricted a range of events
and objects, such as those having to do with the theater, the novel,
news bulletins, the gestures and passions of beings, who, whether real
or imaginary, are always close to us, as man is to man….
When we confess to being affected by the fascination of the earth's
curvature, by the quality of pure thrust in a column, by the elegance
of a fountain jet, by the fearful, majestic mass of a moving cataract,
it is rare that the feeling experienced does not suffice unto itself
and that it will admit of some recoil upon oneself, of certain propositions.
Yet, we should have every reason to imagine that under favor of the
slope of that hill, the bearing of this column, we invent the movement
that would be capable of engendering them; therefore, it is not unreasonable
that language should catch the soar of a portico, a mast, or a lighthouse.
We do not imagine this movement as something external to us, as a projection
outward by our contemplation, but as something effected within us. We
rise with the column, we undulate with the landscape. It is in this
way that we may experience feelings of light-hearted ease, of pure audacity,
that we may speak of dash or grace - words that at the felt moment are
as applicable to us as the things to which we refer them.
People readily speak of music in terms that would seem more suitable
to the world of visible and palpable forms.
What is to be deduced from this?
That in the conscious, music comes to translate itself into images,
which would differ from the images called visual only in a certain lack
of precision and definition, by a varying degree of vigor or complexity?
This would be in contradiction to our most elementary experience. Metaphor,
here, far from being an auxiliary to discovery, would disguise a similarity
that was far more profound.
What must be admitted is that music exercises an influence of the same
order as that exercised on us by forms - and the movements that engender
and modify them.
Or, again, that music lends itself to a use similar to that which we
make of forms and movements.
Let us not forget that music exists first as physical object, in the
manner of tree, machine, or animal.
Thus, just as we experience, as we mimic, as we substitute ourselves
for the movements invented according to the play of forms and colors,
so we mimic, we make our own the movements that music proposes.
Having reached this point, it becomes possible to imagine a number of
reasons for the mysterious empire this self-same music enjoys over us.
The figures and movements that it holds out to us, and that resemble
in more than one particular the figures and movements of the world of
vision, are distinguishable, however, in rather a curious manner, one
that obviously is related to the most deeply-rooted habits of our spirit.
I am referring to their resistance to undertakings that are properly
intellective, which so easily and spontaneously convert every image,
every movement of visual order into the sign of a nation, an idea, a
concept, to which those visual images must instantaneously give way.
For instance, a certain space divided regularly into white and black
squares immediately becomes a checkerboard or tile floor - is perceived
by us, to momentarily become a checkerboard or tile floor.
It is consequently not surprising that certain painters, to judge by
certain pictorial characteristics of their painting, see it upside down,
inside out….
It now becomes easy to imagine that these figures and movements engendered
by music, irreducible as they are to intelligence, excite with all their
power certain affective states; that they are procreative analogously
to those wroth gestures that actually stir to wrath, to those amorous
motions that lead to love, and, following Pascal's cue, to that external
show of piety that leads to true piety.
Moreover, since there is nothing in spirit that does not tend toward
action, that does not lead us thither, or that is not a germ or adumbration
thereof, it is unreasonable to suppose that the feelings provoked by
music are self-sufficient.
In their turn, feelings engender, according to the all-diversity of
particular circumstances, and in all the orders of thought and action,
the most surprising effects - sometimes utterly unexpected by those
responsible for them.
***
But as
a matter of fact, the musical operation here proposed is the exact inverse
of that suggested by music as expression or mode of thought.
This operation is based upon an infinitely more delicate approach, one
infinitely more risky than the enterprise which consists in testing
the interaction of various sonorous elements brought together and discarded
by turns - an enterprise which answers very exactly to that discipline
known as pure music.
Is it surprising, in view of this, that the approach we invoke has been
barely hinted at - and only by an occasional rare musician at that?
Just the same, gentlemen, let us not abandon the attempt to give our
idea further definition.
It seems to me that one might, without abusing logic or doing violence
to theory, foresee some of its phases.
First, we must imagine an extremely attentive and prudent observation
bearing upon the effects of sounds and music, such as they are exercised,
in wide variety of circumstances, upon the listener, the public.
It is at this point that the exercise of intuitive perception comes
into its own.
Every ruse, every stratagem, is permissible, of which not the least
is that of knowing how to occupy the common listener's shoes, of trying,
by an empathic effort, to experience what he experiences.
What musician, up to the moment, has really busied himself with a study
of the human consequences of Jazz, the popular song, syncopation, etc.?
But the discovery, the study of such human consequences, would hardly
satisfy us, as exciting as it might turn out.
If, in such and such a circumstance, favored by such and such a manipulation
of sonorous means, it is possible to observe the emergence of certain
effects, it is equally feasible to establish a delicate and complex
causal link connecting these means, these circumstances, these effects
brought to light.
But can we admit that every possible effect is also a desirable effect?
These observed, these evidenced effects it is our business to judge.
Such judgments can be referred only to a scale of values, very difficult
to foresee and to define.
In any case, it can be established only according to the measure of
a certain image of the world, of a certain notion of man - according
to the measure furnished by the feelings, desires, and intentions of
those who depend upon musical means to act upon the world.
A deliberate will to act upon the world.
The prosperity of music and musicians indeed hangs upon that.
Here we rediscover, transfigured, the moving aspiration of magician,
healer, and thaumaturge.
And what form of action, then, should be placed in the service of that
will, if not a new experimentation, one that will admit of no detachment,
one where indifference is no longer in order?
To be sure, the work of construction, which the future holds in store
for us, can recognize for center of attraction only those human consequences
of which the musician will seek to make himself master in order to make
them reverberate over the world….
I cannot say more about this, unless it be to add that certain qualities
now so highly extolled: sincerity, originality, musical purity, take
on - in the light of such an attitude, such will - a pure moral value,
that no longer has anything to do with those formal requirements of
which a Stravinsky, for example, is so curiously respectful.
***
A last
question comes up, too urgent to go unanswered. Has this undertaking,
of which we now have a presentiment, and which we invoke so earnestly,
any chance of success?
Or are we once again the victims of a mirage?
It is in order then, to examine, at this point, several motives for
confidence or scepticism.
We have experienced this sway which music exercised over us, and we
have felt that this power could be made the emanation of a conscious
will, thanks to the clairvoyance of the musician.
But what may we expect from man, over whom this sway is to be exercised?
It does not seem so difficult to find reasons for hope.
First, we come back to that certitude that nothing is really lost in
the human adventure. Once a feeling is experienced, an idea invented,
an action accomplished - however thick the oblivion that immediately
overlays them, whatever cancellations we imagine we have effected in
our lives, no matter what the physical and mental reverses that so often
take on irremediable aspects - that feeling, that idea, that act, have
become forever a part of us, and continue to reverberate through our
whole life, so much so that it becomes impossible for us to reconstruct
what we really were before these things had happened, before we had
manifested them.
That is not all; nothing stops with the individual.
The ego presents that strange property of being at one and the same
time hermetic and porous.
To be sure, we experience a certain modesty in speaking of spirit, now
that everybody is laying claim to it.
And yet, the paramount event under whose sign we are now living seems
to me to be the radical reversal of a certain notion of the human spirit,
which is so engrained within us that it gives the appearance of being
of a piece with ourselves, and substitutes itself insidiously for what
it pretends to represent.
To such a point that, without realizing it, we seek incessantly to imitate
that phantom….
That fallacious unity that it held out to us, that continuity, that
essential permanence subsisting under every surface movement of heart
and thought, and which seemed to us the guarantee - nay, the very definition
- of our authentic ego, all that is doomed to irreparable ruin.
Not only for a few scholarly and philosophic heads. But for any individual
consciousness of our times, whatever may be the lights with which it
is blessed.
The appeal to the dream, to the marvelous, the attraction we cannot
help feeling for everything that touches upon the well-nigh unpredictable
manifestations of our unconscious forces, a particular sensitivity to
presentiments and prophecies - all this implicates, in fact, a whole
humanity.
It is not, as is too often held, a pure effect of snobbery or affectation
that such names as Baudelaire, Poe, Dostoievsky, Lautreamont, Rimbaud,
and Lenin are now to be found on the lips that one would have thought
least likely to pronounce them.
…
At any given moment we may in some manner expect anything from ourselves.
Hence, as far as spirit is concerned, there is no ground for despair.
But what does all this imply?
Is that, you are thinking, the formula of a new quietism?
And at a further stage are we, as some have already proposed, going
to foreswear all conscious action, all exercise of our dubious wills?
And, become utterly passive, shall we bend over ourselves as though
over an immense chasm of shadow, in wait for an efflorescence of miracles,
an ascension of marvels?
I realize that such is the attitude of many among us, some of them the
very best among us.
But for my part, I cannot help discerning there a singular aberration,
a false accommodation, and, under cover of a dubious pathos, a rather
obvious snare held out to us by our irreducible laziness and cowardice.
An important observation is in order here: that new notion of spirit
carries with it ineluctable consequences, and these consequences are
of a moral order.
Yes, we are called upon to come to a decision, no less.
(I am not speaking for those who prefer to close their eyes, and who,
like certain musicians discussed a few moments back, cleave to vain
simulacra. Let these gentlemen make their own way as best they can,
if they can).
As for us, either we deliver ourselves up once and for all to the play
of accident and destiny, whence we may no doubt reasonably expect a
further number of prodigies…or, on the other hands we refuse to
renounce what we hold essential to spirit: a certain power of purposive
action.
Action? But action directed to what? According to what secret perspectives?
Gentlemen, we must make it unmistakably clear that this will to action
does not spring from some wager, from some arbitrary caprice.
Arbitrariness here would be out of place.
It springs from a certitude and a desire whose spirit is communicable,
though eluding formula for the moment and forever.
Our desire is to place ourselves altogether in the service of the possibilities
of spirit.
Let no one think, as some would have us think, that the choice of an
idol is implied.
In fact, choice has really nothing to do with the matter; rather, obedience
to an implacable necessity.
We cannot bring ourselves to suffer a reality that has been painted
and glossed over; option in behalf of spirit becomes for every one of
us a matter of life and death.
…
Just as we showed up that apparent duality of spectator and actor, let
us now expose that distinction in kind and in essence that people have
tended to introduce among what we call - justifiably, it's true, in
the circumstances of everyday life - ideas, volitions, and affective
states.
These are, in fact, but conveniences of language which are to be used
sparingly.
For these ideas, volitions, and affective states are merely modalities
of a unitary thing we call spirit.
No fissure separates them, once a certain depth is passed.
The relationships that they entertain among themselves and by which
we live - those substitutions, transfigurations, antagonisms, servitudes
and revolts - are too complex for an abstract mechanics to shed any
light upon them.
We observe again that, thanks to the views here developed anew, what
are called "emotions" or "affective states" take
on a role of capital importance….
The essential thing to take into account is that spirit, under whatever
modality it solicits our attention, tends invariably to blossom into
acts that justify it.
Action then emerges as its ineluctable condition and reverberatory consequence.
Since it is a need in us to invent images, to proceed analogically,
we could not do better - if spirit is to develop - than to imagine spirit
accompanied by a succession of spells and charms, accepted, rejected,
and broken in turn.
Among all the forces capable of bewitching spirit - forces which it
must both submit to and revolt against - poetry, painting spectacles,
war, misery, debauchery, revolution, life with its inseparable companion,
death - is it possible to refuse music a place among them, perhaps a
very important place?
Whence the specific hopes and fears which it unceasingly calls up in
us.
Spirit proceeds by disruptive inventions.
Let no one think only in terms of strictly intellective inventions.
Other areas are open to us.
It is time we realized that we are capable, also, of inventing feelings
- perhaps fundamental feelings - of a power comparable to those of love
and hatred.
Spirit is nourished by our risks and our defeats, no less than by our
victories.
The very ones - modest or discreet as they may be - which we might be
most tempted to take for granted, are perhaps destined to an infinite
reverberation.
But here all prophecy is in vain, for it is in no wise our business
to solve a problem whose terms seem at every instant to slip through
our fingers.
Nevertheless the certitude persists that spirit lives only through an
illimitable adventure with movements and perspectives that must be unflaggingly
renewed; in which the dangers that we discover and which, at every moment,
threaten to cut short its progress, are also - if we but refuse to bow
before them - the surest guarantee of the only victories that can still
tempt us.
Hence, gentlemen, whether we deal with music or some other human event,
spirit is at our mercy and we are, in reality, accountable for it.
It is of this responsibility, weighing upon each of us, that I hope
to have convinced you today.
