JeanPaul_Sartre_JeanPaul_Sartre_Basic_Writing

The work of art297Seventh Symphony itself? Obviously it is a thing, that is something which is beforeme, which endures, which lasts. Naturally there is no need to show that that thing isa synthetic whole, which does not consist of tones but of a thematic configuration.But is that “thing” real or unreal? Let us first bear in mind that I am listening to theSeventh Symphony. For me that “Seventh Symphony” does not exist in time, I do notgrasp it as a dated event, as an artistic manifestation which is unrolling itself in theChâtelet auditorium on the 17th of November, 1938. If tomorrow or eight days laterI hear Furtwaengler conduct another orchestra performing the same symphony, I amin the presence of the same symphony once more. Only it is being played either betteror worse. Let us now see how I hear the symphony: some persons shut their eyes. Inthis case they detach themselves from the visual and dated event of this particularinterpretation: they give themselves up to the pure sounds. Others watch the orchestraor the conductor’s back But they do not see what they are looking at. This is whatRevault d’Allonnes calls reflection with auxiliary fascination. The auditorium, theconductor and even the orchestra have disappeared. I am therefore confronted by theSeventh Symphony, but on the express condition that I understand nothing about it,that I do not think of the event as an actuality and dated, and that I listen to thesuccession of themes as an absolute succession and not as a real succession which isunfolding itself on a particular occasion. In the degree to which I hear the symphonyit is not here, between these walls, at the tip of the violin bows. Nor is it “in the past”as if I thought: this is the work that matured in the mind of Beethoven on such a date.It is completely beyond the real. It has its own time, that is, it possesses an inner timewhich runs from the first tone of the allegro to the last tone of the finale, but this timeis not a succession of a preceding time which it continues and which happened“before” the beginning of the allegro; nor is it followed by a time which will come“after” the finale. The Seventh Symphony is in no way in time. It is therefore in noway real. It occurs by itself, but as absent, as being out of reach. I cannot act upon it,change a single note of it, or slow down its movement. But it depends on the real forits appearance: that the conductor does not faint away, that a fire in the hall does notput an end to the performance. From this we cannot conclude that the SeventhSymphony has come to an end. No, we only think that the performance of thesymphony has ceased. Does this not show clearly that the performance of thesymphony is its analogue? It can manifest itself only through analogues which aredated and which unroll in our time. But to experience it on these analogues theimaginative reduction must be functioning, that is, the real sounds must be apprehendedas analogues. It therefore occurs as a perpetual elsewhere, a perpetual absence. Wemust not picture it (as does Spandrell in Point Counterpoint by Huxley—as so many