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The Sonification of Modernist Fiction:
A Criticai Review
Niklas Salmose
Contents
This chapter is dedicated to my late PhD supervisor,
colleague, and .friend Laura Marcus, who opened my eyes to
the interdisciplinary and intermediai potentials of modernism
and English studies. I would also like to thank Thomas Leitch
and Kyle Meikle for sharing their extensive bibliography on
film and adaptation.
31
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 770
Multimodal Modemism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 775
Sonic Modemism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 777
Audio Techniques, Sound, Noise, and Soundscapes ........................................ 778
Musicalization of Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 781
Musicology and Literary Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 782
Music's Influence on Modernist Style ....................................................... 784
Handbooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 785
Work on Individual Authors or Specific Fictional Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 786
Popular Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 787
Sonic Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 788
Virgínia Woolf.............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 789
James Joyce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 791
Thomas Mann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 794
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 795
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 797
Abstract
This chapter contextualizes the historical and aesthetic era of high modemist
fiction (1918-1939) by focusing specifically on its multimodal and sonorous
qualities. lt briefly discusses some major conceptualizations and taxonomies
N. Sahnose (l81)
Linnaeus University, Vãxjõ, Sweden
e-mail: niklas.salmose@lnu.se
© The Author(s ), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 769
J. Bruhn et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Intermediality,
https://doi.org/10.1007 /978-3-031-28322-2 _36
770 N. Salmose
created in the intermedial field of musico-literary theory. This is followed by a
summary and discussion of a selection of general musico-literary criticism that
focuses on literary texts from the modemist era. This section transitions into a
summary ofthe musico-literary analytical landscape surrounding three modemist
authors: Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Thomas Mann. Toe overall aim ofthe
chapter is to identify the different perspectives, methodologies, and concems that
can be found in the vast body of musico-modemist-literary criticism and locate
some of the major tendencies in these intermedial ventures.
Keywords
lntermediality • Musico-literary • Literary modemism • Music • Modemity •
Sound • Noise • Senses
lntroduction
ln the "Present Day" section ofVirginia Woolf's The Years (1937), Peggy, one ofthe
novel's characters, contemplates the modem experience, that is, what it is like to
participate in how everything that is "solid melts into air," in Karl Marx's words
(Marx and Engels 2012, 37):
When the dance music pauses, Peggy listens to the sounds outside. Far away she heard the
sounds ofthe London night; a hom hooted; a siren wailed on the river. The far-away sounds,
the suggestion they brought in of other worlds, indifferent to this world, of people toiling,
grinding, in the heart of darkness, in the depths of night, made her say over Eleanor's words,
Happy in this world, happy with living people. But how can one be "happy," she asked
herself, in a world bursting with misery? On every placard at every street comer was Death;
or worse - tyranny; brutality; torture; the fall of civilisation; the end of freedom. We here, she
thought, are only sheltering under a leaf, which will be destroyed. (Woolf 1965, 388)
The fictional present day of the novel, the mid 1930s, and the publication date of
193 7 echo the fear of fascist tyranny, economic depression, and a looming war, but
the overall time span of the novel, 1880 to the mid 1930s, yields a largely modem
anxiety about the idea ofprogress and an unprecedented artistic and creative scrutiny
of the decline of Westem civilization. Similarly, in a poem composed in 1919,
William Butler Yeats prominently writes that "things fall apart; the centre cannot
hold." With these words, he mouros the perceived collapse of the order that had
previously provided structure and meaning to human life. The embattled center in
this verse is not doomed for complete dissolution, however, since the poem, entitled
"The Second Coming" and written in the wake of the First World War's destruc
tiveness, anticipates the arrival of a new messianic force that has the ability to restore
humankind to a state of spiritual and ontological harmony. The high literary mod
emism that Woolf and Yeats represent and that existed between the two world wars
intemalized these anxieties and understood modem time as a rupture, which Andreas
Huyssen has framed as "the great divide" (Huyssen 1986).
31 The Sonification of Modernist Fiction: A Criticai Review 771
ln addition to framing a modemist political, social, psychological, and historical
concem, the above quotation from The Years also signifies modemist literary aes
thetics and the project of enhancing literary mimesis by employing a preponderant
emphasis on the entire sensorial apparatus. As Rishona Zimring posits in relation to
The Years, "sound fragments bring to mind disintegration, barriers toppling, and the
juxtaposition of worlds crowding up against one another: not only the 'rupture' and
'fragmentation' with which many literary critics characterize modemism itself'
(Zimring 2002, 128). Hence, as Zimring argues, the sonorous aspect of Woolf's
prose is not merely an addition to the dominant visualities in literature; sound is
carefully intertwined in the overall project of modemist fiction. "Woolf's insistent use
of sounds to emphasize the porosity of boundaries (between here and far away, this
world and others)," she writes, "hints at both the Utopian and dystopian possibilities
latent in a modemist sensibility of change and disintegration" (Zimring 2002, 128).
But the common insertion of auditive elements in modemist texts is an innate
consequence of "the inner tum," a focus on interior consciousness and subjectivity
and a distrust of non-phenomenologicalmedium (literature), where the
nondominant medium is an example of a covert intermediality in a dominant medium
that does not have aural affordances (Clements 2005, 166--167). Clements compares
the similar ways in which late Beethoven interrogates the limits of musical form and
Woolf pushes the limits of literary form to new dimensions, and her reading of how
Woolf transforms musical form to literary tropes (such as water) and characterization
(such as the six interludes) is truly compelling from an intermedial perspective. Similar
to Clements' chapter, Sarah Fekadu's chapter on Woolf in Musik in Literatur und
Poetik des Modernismus (2013) indicates that Woolfwriting in music in her narratives
signifies a radical break from earlier musical references to formal imitations.
Emma Sutton's 2013 monograph Virgínia Wo o lf and Classical Music: Po litics,
Aesthetics, Form traces mostly art musical influences in Woolf's writings chrono
logically. She discusses the role of Wagner in her "subjective tum" in The Voyage
Out and the musical and aural discourses of the Great War as they infiltrate the
increasingly interiorized narratives of Jaco b 's Room (1922) and Mrs Dalloway
(1925). She also examines the use of the "leitmotif' in The Waves, but what she
leaves out, "folk music, jazz, recorded sound and ancient Greek music [ . . . ] rhythm
[ . . . ] and popular music" - in her own words - would perhaps have been more
invigorating and novel areas to research (Sutton 2013, 20).
A more ambitious attempt to frame Woolf's writing from an intermedial musico
literary perspective can be found in Virgínia Woo lf and Music (2014), edited by
31 The Sonification of Modernist Fiction: A Criticai Review 791
Adriana Varga. Toe essays included in the volume both contextualize and politicize
the role of music in the Bloomsbury culture that surrounded several of the London
modemists during the 1920s, and music as a source of inspiration to Woolf. 14 Early
chapters in particular consider Woolfian texts not often discussed from the perspective
ofmusic in literature, such as The Voyage Out (1915) and Night and Day (1919). Jim
Stewart's "Toe Birth of Rachel Vinrace from the Spirit of Music," for example,
investigates the role of intermedial references to songs from Sophocles' Antigane and
Milton's Comus in The Voyage Out, and Vanessa Mahire argues in ""Toe Worst of
Music": Listening and Narrative in Night and Day and "Toe String Quartet"" that
Woolf developed her use of music in order to question traditional ways of representation
in her quest to embrace subjective consciousness. Trina Thompson, in a similar fashion
to Vargas in an earlier chapter, attempts in "Sounding the Past: Toe Music in Between
the Acts" to frame Woolfs writing in what Wolf would call "implicit references"
(evocation, formal imitation, (partial) reproduction). Woolf, according to Thompson,
blends media types in an attempt to reach the quality of a Gesamtkunstwerk, to "posit a
supersaturated wholeness of experience" (Thompson 2014, 206). Thompson claims
that Woolf makes explicit use of music to create fragmentation and motivic repetition in
her final novel to erase the borders of media, art, and consciousness (Thompson
2014, 213). Music (and sound) as an ordering function ofthe chaos ofthe totality of
life experience is also discussed by Sanja Bahun in "Broken Music, Broken History:
Sounds and Silence in Virgínia Woolfs Between the Acts."
Wolf's intricate analysis of Woolf's short story "Toe String Quartet" is a prime
example of an integration of specific modemist narrative techniques (intemal focal
ization, free indirect discourse, stream of consciousness, sound symbolism,
fragmented temporalities) and musicalization of fiction, or, as Wolf demonstrates
in the first part ofhis analysis, a full example ofverbal music or simulation ofmusic
(Wolf 1999, 148-154). Most importantly, however, and something that is often
incomplete in many music-literary analyses, is the section that discusses the func
tions of musicalization in "The String Quartet." One fascinating observation made
by Wolf is that the musico-literary analysis ofthe short story also "throws important
light on the meaning and functions of' it, thus shifting the position from only looking
at the integration ofmusic to also using this as a further enhancement ofthe story's
construction and meaning overall (Wolf 1999, 154).
James Joyce
As can be expected regarding an author with an ear that is sensitive to sound and
music, James Joyce's later work has been scrutinized extensively from a sonic
perspective. Hence it is somewhat unexpected that Annika J. Lindskog spends two
14For a thorough examination ofhow classical music functions as inspiration as well as reference in the
works ofWoolf (the Bloomsbmy group ), T. S. Eliot, Huxley, and D. H. Lawrence, see David Deutsch's
monograph British Literature and Classical Music: Cultural Contexts 1870---1945 (2015).
792 N. Salmose
chapters in her dissertation Silent Modernism. Soundscapes and the Unsayable in
Richardson, Joyce and Wo o lf (2014) investigating Joyce's use of silence. Lindskog
traces silence in Joyce as part of his progression toward a more postrnodem,
nonrepresentative type of prose. ln his quest for a total break with realism, silence
found its way into his work in various forms via the playwright and via playfulness
(Lindskog 2014, 131). Lindskog's project, which traces modernist fiction's distrust
of reality and silence as a consequence of this, is original and compelling, and it
rewards the reader with close readings of work by Joyce, Woolf, and Dorothy
Richardson. One might see Lindskog's dissertation as a complement to some of
the impulses in Danius's The Senses of Mo dernism: Techno logy, Perception, and
Aesthetics (2002). Although Danius, in her chapter on Joyce, principally focuses on
the visual, she also asserts that "to apprehend the absence of sound is also to
rediscover sound, in effect to reinvent it - in its pure and abstract form" (Danius
2002, 149). Danius, importantly, acknowledges that one reason for the insertion of
the sound sense in modemist fiction is the emerging phenomenological interest in the
differences between sensation and perception, where sound appears stronger than
other senses in its sensational stage. This is also the reason why Danius is occupied
with the tower scene in Ulysses, since it confirms the autonomy ofthe ear, a "desire
to represent what is heard and, furthermore, to represent it in a register that is
radically separate from what is seen" (Danius 2002, 156).
Zack Bowen's Musical Allusions in the Works of James Joyce: Early Po etry
through Ulysses (1975) provides a rich but traditional reading of how music func
tions as explicit, and at tirnes implicit, references (allusions and references) in a
longish and detailed chapter on Ulysses that reads like an annotation of music.
Bowen's meticulous work is very useful for tracking down these sources but adds
little to the more theoretical, intermedial debate. His work forms part of a larger body
of early work examining the musical form and allusions to music and songs in
Ulysses that does not have any specific theoretical or aesthetic context.1 5
A very productive analysis of music and Joyce can be found in the diverse
collection Bronze by Go ld: The Music of Joyce (1999), edited by Sebastian D. G.
Knowles. Because it includes biographical context about Joyce's musical back
ground and relates Joyce's work in detail to other modemist impulses and contem
poraries and the music ofhis times, the book is a selection oftextual and sonic close
readings of Joyce's main pieces of fiction with a focus on how "[w]ords are
multiplied by music," which is reflected in the title of the collection; there is a
particular focus on rhythm in Joyce's prose (Knowles 1999, xxix-xxx).Knowles
illustrates how rhythrn informs Joyce's writing style by citing and framing the end of
the short story "Toe Dead" in rhythrnical units:
His soul swooned slowly 1
as he heard the snow 1
falling faintly through the universe 1
1 5 See White (1936), Dallapiccola (1951), Ross (1936), Boyle (1965), and Sternfeld (1957).
31 The Sonification of Modernist Fiction: A Criticai Review
and faintly falling, 1
like the descent of their last end, 1
upon all the living and the dead. 1 (Knowles 1999, xxxvi)
793
Knowles addresses how the measured closure of the short story is rendered through
alliteration, phonemes, falling phrases (as the snow in the example above), strong
double beats, and spondees in an interpretation that simultaneously pays attention to
the specific modemist aesthetics of rhythm and the fictional allusive universe Joyce
inhabits. The oppositional relationship between vision and sound and between space
and temporality is further enhanced in Susan Mooney's reading ofthe Sirens section
in Ulysses in "Bronze by Gold by Bloom: Echo, the Invocatory Drive, and the
'Aurteur' in ' Sirens"' (Mooney 1999). Mooney argues against the common inter
pretation of "Sirens" as a fugue-like literary composition and instead reads the
chapter as a fugue-like experience related to the loss of memory in psychoanalysis,
which has a strong bearing on how she identifies music and sound in the chapter.
Andreas Fischer carries the discourse of text and sound further in "Strange Words,
Strange Music: The Verbal Music of ' Sirens'." Fischer claims that there are many
similarities between language and sound, thus acknowledging the acoustic features
oftextual language and verbal music (Fischer 1999, 245). 1 6 Bronze by Go ld offers a
rich and variegated contextualization and reading of Joyce that adheres to the
semiotic tradition in how it predominantly investigates specifically how Joyce's
prose triggers synesthetic auditive impulses in a mostly visual medium, thus con
ceptualizing modem fiction's transmedial qualities.
Bucknell's chapter on "Sirens" in Literary Mo dernism and Musical Aesthetics:
Pater, Pound, Joyce and Stein (2001) continues the debate on how Joyce fuses music
and language but more interestingly how Joyce's "allusions to music, both within
and outside the text, seem designated to call up that art's unmistakable tangibility, the
clear force of its presence" (Bucknell 2001, 121). Bucknell contextualizes the
common correlation between musical fugue and "Sirens" and incorporates David
Herman's claim that it is more astute to consider "Sirens" as a representation of the
difficulties of representation in the wake of Schõnberg's 12-tone music than a fugue
(Herman 1994). Bucknell's rich chapter on "Sirens" also includes a section on the
intertext of songs in Joyce's chapter, building on Bowen's work (Bucknell 2001;
Bowen 1975).
Wolf's reading of "Sirens" in The Musicalization of Fiction: A Study in the
Theo ry and Histo ry of Intermediality (1999) does not differ much from other critical
impulses, but he situates the musico-literary analysis in his own intermedial frame
work, which adds a finer grain to his interpretations. Dividing his text into three
sections, Wolf first problematizes the analogue between fugue and the chapter's
construction and instead thinks ofthis as a translation offeatures that evokes musical
simultaneity by "simultaneously present[ing] characters in the fictional space" (Wolf
1999, 134). Secondly, he considers how the chapter imitates music in the forms of
16For an additional reading ofhow Joyce attempts to fuse music with language, see Bucknell (2001,
132-138).
794 N. Salmose
analogies to musical microstructures and the use ofword music. ln relation to word
music especially, Joyce ticks Wolf's boxes regarding the modemist use of music
discussed earlier in this chapter, that is, acoustic foregrounding, self
referentialization, and a departure from grammatical consistency, but also adds
aesthetic musical modes of high frequency and an unusual sound partem (Wolf
1999, 139). Thirdly, Wolf acknowledges that one reason for Joyce's extensive
references to and translation from music in "Sirens" stems from an overall engage
ment with Ulysses to an almost encyclopedic approach to the entanglements of
world.
Thomas Mann
As in much Germanic musico-literary criticism, literary modemism is repeatedly
connected to the music and aesthetics ofRichard Wagner. Hans RudolfVaget argues
that Wagner, in fact, is the glue that links Joyce and Thomas Mann's modemist
oeuvres (Vaget 1989, 148-149). This is also supported by Susan von Rohr Scaff,
who claims that both authors are writing in the wake of Wagner. "Toe significance of
music in Mann and Joyce," she writes, "goes beyond the authors' personal enjoy
ment, moreover, to become a part oftheir commentary on modem experience" (Scaff
2009, 440). Both Vaget and Scaff position Joyce and especially Mann in the contexts
of Wagnerian and post-Wagnerian music discourse (Adorno, Frankfurt School,
Schõnberg, Berg); they stress that Wagner is not explicitly notable in their respective
work but influences them on more thematic and psycho-character levels.
There is a wide range of Wagnerian- or Frankfurt School-inspired musico-literary
analyses of Mann. Some of the more prominent readings include H. A. Basilius's
"Thomas Mann's Use of Musical Structure and Techniques in Tonio Kroger,"
Gunilla Bergsten's Thomas Manns Dokto r Faustus. Untersuchungen zu den Quellen
und zur Struktur des Romans, Carl Dahlhaus's "Fiktive Zwõlftonmusik: Thomas
Mann und Theodor W. Adorno," Wolf-Dietrich Fõrster's "Leverkühn, Schõnberg
und Thomas Mann. Musikalische Strukturen und Kunstreflexion im Dokto r Fau
stus," James Northcote-Bade's Die Wagner-Mythen im Frühwerk Thomas Manns,
and George W Reinhardt's "Thomas Mann's Docto r Faustus: a Wagnerian Novel."
Noteworthy here, from an intermedial perspective, is Barbara BeBlich's study of
intermedial musical references in Der Zauberberg, which has a theoretical focus on
the medialities and mediations involved in these transfers (BeBlich 2009).
A seminal early book on musico-literary theory, Verbal Music in German Liter
ature (1968) by Steven Paul Scher, discusses Mann (in addition to E. T. A Hoffinann
and Heinrich Heine ). Scher too endorses the Mann-Wagner liaison in a close
comparison between Wagner's prelude to act 3 of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
and the verbal score in Chap. 15 ofMann's Dokto r Faustus (1947). As Scher argues,
the comparison yields at least two levels of meaning: (1) it is an "ingenious word
picture" of the prelude; (2) the chapter corresponds to major events in the life of
Leverkühn, the composer protagonist of the novel (Scher 1968, 109). Scher's
"verbal score" concept is most fully realized in the stylistic analysis of Mann's
31 The Sonification of Modernist Fiction: A Criticai Review 795
novel in the section "Aspects of Style," where Scher describes how Mann uses
instrument analogues, musical terminology, polysyndeton, and asyndeton, among
other methods, to create verbal musical movement, orchestration, and dynamics
(Scher 1968, 121-126).
Building on Scher's taxonomy differentiating verbal music, word music, and
musical form and structure parallels, Johannes Odendahl 's Literarisches Musizieren:
Wege des Transfers von Musik in die Literatur bei Thomas Mann (2018) is a
significant contribution to the vast musico-literary work on Mann, which previously
mostly focused on biographical, psychological, philosophical, and political factors.
Like many of his predecessors, his focus is mainly on Dokto r Faustus, but he also
provides musical analyses of Buddenbrooks and Der Zauberberg. Odendahl sug
gests that Mann's descriptions of music are not merely mimetic representations of
music but are fully integratedwith the plot as well as the themes and motifs
(Odendahl 2018, 27). Similar to many interpretations of musicalization in Joyce,
Odendahl moves away from the idea of language paralleling music to the very
semiotic core of musical descriptions that are reached through linguistic practices
such as the use of vowels and consonants, alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhythm, and
dynamics. ln summary, the analysis shows how language mimics music rather than
representing music as such. ln his extensive last chapter, Odendahl studies structural
analogies to music at different levels ofMann's literary texts, including an in-depth
section on the correlation between the musical and literary leitmotif, concluding that
the leitmotif as originated by Wagner is as much music-literature as the one used by
Mann (Odendahl 2018, 198). ln conclusion, Odendahl's study is ambitious in tracing
several facets of musical transfer into literature; and by avoiding the specific use of
intermedial theory, Odendahl constructs his own terminology and categorizations in
order to build up his analytical framework. This is, unfortunately, done ad hoc, and
he thus never manages to formulate a more coherent theoretical apparatus for
contemporary musico-literary analysis. The modernist implications in his analysis
mostly concentrate on the contexts of Wagnerism.
Conclusion
As evidenced in this chapter, there is a tremendously rich and active body of musico
literary criticism on modemist writing, but unfortunately I have been unable to
mention all of the ambitious and important work in this area. The intermedial critical
debates on media affordances, mixed media forms, transmediations, and other
exchanges between the arts in the era of modemity and by the modernists themselves
were already substantial and dynamic, although these debates have not been a focal
point of this survey. Later assessments and analyses of musico-literary modemism
show a stubbom and perhaps even passionate conviction that music's impact and
influence on modemist literature have paved the way for the philosophical, aesthetic,
political, and stylistic resources that modemist fiction thrusts upon us all. ln short,
music has had a tremendous repercussion on the development of the originality and
experimental character of modemist literary style, and these studies have therefore
796 N. Salmose
illuminated and contributed to the history ofmodemism. Further, the diversity ofthis
critical work points to the fact that these influences are not to be considered in
simplistic terms, or simply as one-to-one relationships between music and literature,
but as rather strikingly complex interrelations and entanglements between two
historically different art forms. This chapter has favored, for practical reasons, the
temporal, synchronic movement of music to literature, but the opposite direction is
similarly rich in outcome. I think it is safe to say that there are, paradoxically, both a
tendency in modemist literature that the literary form should be guarded as the art
form and at the sarne time a tendency that we should be curious about and radical
conceming how we think literature can move beyond media borders of a particular
media type. The fascination with music, then, stems from having the utmost respect
for this very art form and how it is apparently immensely different from the novel,
compared to cinema and theatre.
If one were to summarize the various music-literary approaches that are conspic
uous in the limited critical corpus of this chapter, the following categories would be
exposed (building on Wolf's taxonomy): approaches that consider (1) the influence
of music on the authors, for example, biographical studies; (2) the general context of
the different soundscapes of modemity and their effect on modemism overall;
(3) studies of explicit intermedial references to music in literature, for example,
discussions of music by authors or between characters, or the use of musical themes;
(4) probably at least three very different transmedial qualities that occur in both
music and literature, such as leitmotifs, accentuation, and drama; (5) implicit refer
ences to music in literature, for example, (a) evocation or simulation of music by
describing music or music making/performance, (b) formal imitation, for example,
how Wagner's music influences structural analogies in literature, and
(c) reproduction of song texts or notation; and (6) a sensorial focus on how
modemism is attentive to the sense ofhearing, to noise, and to sounds. It is important
to acknowledge that these categories overlap, and several are often targeted within
one piece of analysis. It is also noteworthy that the first two categories do not
explicitly involve theoretical intermedial discussions but create a background for
these more technical and formal examinations.
I will now make a few final observations. First, it is clear that early musico
literary analyses of modemist fiction favored titles that were clearly related to music,
either through their titles or, to a lesser extent, through biographical evidence or
extensive musical discussions within the literary diegesis. Secondly, and related to
the first, the vast majority of the critiques have focused on a limited number of
authors or novels (Proust, Mann, Woolf, and Joyce). Although there has been an
increasing accumulation of the corpora of modemist writers analyzed, there is still
scope to expand beyond certain authors and their nationalities and also to investigate
how sonic approaches in modemist fiction occur in less straightforward manners. It
is obvious that many modemist writers wrote to music (to borrow Woolf's own
wording), even ifit was not specifically signaled. Third, many ofthe musico-literary
readings in this review still do not cross disciplinary borders; most come from the
field ofliterary studies, a few are rooted in musicology, and even fewer operate in a
true interdisciplinary landscape of merging ideas, concepts, and categorizations from
31 The Sonification of Modernist Fiction: A Criticai Review 797
both disciplines. And this, I think, leads to the fourth and final conclusion: there is
not a proper intermedial, multimodal, semiotic, or interart framework to support the
analyses or discussions. It is true that many critics discussed in this chapter adhere to
intermediality and/or reliable musico-literary theories but mostly in a rather super
ficial manner. This is most obvious in the Anglo-American sphere, where a lack of an
intermedial perspective is sometimes remarkable. I do not mean to disrespect in any
way these authors' often splendid and productive findings and discussions, but I still
find them surprisingly lacking in theoretical considerations in general as they are
rigidly situated in a classic hermeneutic literary tradition. Quick searches in Anglo
American musico-literary handbooks or monographs yield almost no references to
intermediality or practicing and formative critics in this field. German-speaking
work is generally more supportive of intermedial and multimodal theory, perhaps
in the vein ofthe determinative theoretical musico-literary work by Austro-German
critics such as Scher and Wolf. An indisputable fact arising from their work is that
the use of intermedial theory in the analytical process enhances and fine-tunes the
understanding ofhow modemist sonic writing operates. lntermediality is therefore a
useful tool for musico-literary analysis, and although several recent and very illu
minating studies have illustrated this, they have focused more on contemporary than
modemist writers.
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Zimring, Rishona. 2002. Suggestions of other worlds: The art of sound in "the years". Woolf Studies
Annual 8: 127-156.realities. "Here and elsewhere in Woolf's
work, flânerie arouses the sense," Zimring notes, illustrating how interiority and a
changed fictional temporality stress a new set of sensations and perceptions (Zimring
2002, 134). Toe allusion to Joseph Conrad through the reference to the "heart of
darkness" in Woolf's passage echoes Conrad's aesthetic suggestion in his highly
influential 1897 preface to The Nigger of the "Narcissus, " in which Conrad advo
cates a multisensory writing style (more on this later in this chapter).
ln addition to the need for other narrative tools to break with Victorian realism,
auditive aesthetics is evidently a reaction to the radically changed soundscape ofthe
late industrial world: new studies in acoustics, the widespread use of radio and
gramophones, new sounds that were emerging during the rapid urbanization and
modernization of the world, and the importance and accessibility of musical expe
riences. Hence, modemist writers were influenced by sound and music to various
degrees and were tempted by the apparent post-Wagnerian idea ofGesamtkunstwerk
and yet were blatantly monomodal in their aloof preconception about the power of
the literary narrative.
Toe opening passage of Woolf's The Years appears perfectly in tune with this
chapter. It presents how sound creeps into the modemist literary narrative, in terms
ofboth context and aesthetics. Reflecting the novel's time span, in this chapter I will
be concemed with how critics in musicology, intermediality, and the emerging sound
studies have approached literary high modemism in relation to the sonic tum in the
world it represents and experiences in the years falling between the two world wars,
roughly 1918 to 1939. Critical readings of sound and music in Woolf's literary
oeuvre are extensive, and their different focal points (music, sound, speech, acous
tics, sound symbolism, onomatopoeia, phonetics) will also figure in this thorough
but not exhaustive survey of critical analyses of the intermedial relations between
sound, music, and literary text in a symbiosis that can clearly be seen in high
modemist fiction. The interrelations between sound, music, and modemist fiction
are, obviously, more complex than sirnply a question of breaking with previous
772 N. Salmose
traditions, and any study ofthe connections between music and modemist literature,
as Nathan Waddell argues, must delineate "how diversely music feeds into, inspires,
challenges, and sometimes resembles other kinds of medial experiment throughout
the twentieth century" (Waddell 2017, 317). 1
I will not be concemed in this chapter with the crucial developments within
intermedial and multimodal theories of musico-literary interrelations that have taken
place since the late 1960s and that have been strongly supported by advocates such
as Steven Paul Scher, Irina Rajewsky, and Wemer Wolf (covered in ► Chap. 9,
"Linnaeus University Center for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies and the Legacy
of Lars Ellestrõm," by Beate Schirrmacher). Instead, I will illustrate the ways in
which research has specifically inspected high modemist narratives during the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I have not limited myself in this regard to
explicit intermedial readings, since they are rather scarce, but have included a
broader set of analyses of sonic literature. Nevertheless, it is useful to categorize
these interpretations within relevant taxonomies conceming the ways in which music
(and sound) can be incorporated in a literary text. Scher provides an early definition
in his triadie distinction between "literature in music," "music and literature," and
"music in literature" (Scher 1968). "Literature in music" concems, for example,
program music; "music and literature" involves different combinations ofthe media
types music and literature, as in opera, choral music, and lyrical music. "Music in
literature," my concem in this chapter, which Scher also refers to as "word music,"
constitutes diverse ways in which music can be integrated within the media type
literature. Wemer Woolf expands this category by using two distinctive approaches
as "a foregrounding of the acoustic dimension of verbal signifiers reminiscent of
musical sound, but also in 'structural analogies to music', i.e. the creation of pattems
in a verbal text so that they resemble structures in musical compositions" (Wolf
2015, 460).
ln terms of music in literature, Wolf distinguishes between two overall relations
between the two media types: "intracompositional intermediality," which has a
narrow focus on the musicality in literary media from a monomedial point of view,
and "extracompositional intermediality," which considers relations between the
media types in terms of their transmedial quality, for example, content, structure,
themes, narrativity, and history, that are shared and easily transformed between the
different media types (Wolf2015). However, as Wolfhimselfnotes, there is consid
erable overlap between these two types of intermediality, and both can also be
considered in relation to any study of a purely monomedial character (Fig. 1 ).
Wolf's typology is fairly straightforward, and it is useful for framing the different
sonorous analyses of high modemist texts and slightly amends the definitions in
place. Although Wolf's "plurimediality" category offers an understanding of classi
cal multimedial works such as opera and writing song lyrics, literature can also be
1 Nathan Waddell's impressive review of recent monographs on the interconnection between music
( sound) and modemist literature, "Modemism and Music: A Review ofRecent Scholarship" (2017),
provides an excellent survey of the current critical musico-literary landscape in modemist studies.
31 The Sonification of Modernist Fiction: A Criticai Review 773
INTERMEDIALITY
(broad sense)
extratompositional intermediality intratompositional intermediality
(intermediality, narrow sense)
transmediality
(lhe quality of non-m e
d ia specifit phenomena
occurring in more than
one medium)
e.g. the e.g. novel
narrativity of into opera
music and
lit.
intermediai
transposítion
('transfer' ofthe content
or of formal features
from a medium A to a
medium B)
intermediai
referente
(reference to another
medium using the
means of lhe referring
medium only)
plurimediality
(lhe quality of a sem iotic
entity displaying
sign ifiers that lappear
to] belong to more than
one medium)
implicit reference
(individual or system
reference through forms of
heteromedial imitation)
expllcit referente
(individual or system
evocation formal
imitation
e.g. the e.g.
'graphic' structural
description analogies to
of a musical music in a
com position novel, to lit.
in a novel in program
music
reference through
medium-specific significa
tion without heteromedial
imitation: 'thematization')
(partia[)
reproduction
1
e.g. e.g. the e.g. musíc
re-presen- discussion of and lit. text
tinga song music in a in 19th-cent.
through the novel melodrama
quotation of
the song text
(music in literature/literature in music) (music in lit.) (music and
literature)
perceptibility of intermediality
Fig. 1 Wemer Wolf's typology ofintermedial forms illustrated with musico-literary examples
considered a plurimedial medium because the signifiers of verbal text consist of
visual symbols and phonemes. This is why we laugh at Mr. Bloom's cat in James
Joyce's Ulysses when she makes the noise "Mrkgnao," and we interpret it as both
meow and milk now. At first, this has no textual meaning but is purely sensational and
something that has been created by our hearing faculties. The semiotic reflection
comes when we perceive that the sensation is indeed similar to the signified sound of
774 N. Salmose
the cat and something similar to English: milk now! ln the end, all meaningis
semiotic (at least when meaning is identifiable), but the initial phase of sensations
that lead to perception varies. There is quite a difference between writing "Mrkgnao"
and "The cat meowed as if it wanted milk." Hence, the category of plurimediality
seems important in any sonorous analysis of the actual sound systems of verbal
literature.
Even if sound is an inherent part of any verbal text, the complexity of triggering
sensations beyond the affordances of a media type such as literature should be
addressed. It seems, as Lars Ellestrõm confirms, that sensations can be triggered
and reactivated in a complex manner: "This is because our mind, to a certain extent,
has the ability to perceive resemblances not only within the sarne but also across
different sensory areas and different mental realms" (Ellestrõm 2018, 25). Thus, the
visual receptors trigger personal tactile memories that relate to the information that is
provided visually and, to some extent, sonically. Obviously, research has shown that
sense organs do not operate in isolation from each other. Ellestrõm exemplifies this
by explaining how vibrations can be both heard (as sound vibrations) and felt.
Furthermore, Ellestrõm claims that "[t]he perception of one sense faculty may be
different if combined with perception from another," which means that senses can
fortify each other (Ellestrõm 2018, 25). There also appears to be a certain level of
habituation involved. Therefore, even if not every reader experiences similar cross
modal sensations, one can conclude that more often than not, readers might share
such experiences, depending on their biographical similarities and experiences. This
capacity to experience a reactivation of sensations beyond media borders is central to
my construction of"cross-modal stylistics" (Salmose 2020). Building on Ellestrõm's
work, 1 analyze modernist fiction from this perspective and also consider the
complex triggering of sounds and sound memories in a selection of high modernist
texts (Salmose 2020).
ln order to situate the research overview that follows in a proper context, 1 will
contextualize the historical and aesthetic era of high modernist fiction (mainly
written during the 1920s) by focusing on its multimodal and sonorous qualities.
This will be followed by a discussion of more general criticisms of the musico
literary stage ofmodernism; this section then moves on to consider specific authors
predominantly Virgínia Woolf, James Joyce, and Thomas Mann, who dominate the
field of sonic analysis of the period in question. 2 To limit the critical corpus, 1 largely
discuss literary prose. This is not intended to suggest that other literary forms, such
as poetry and drama, are not sonic or have not been analyzed from a sound/music
perspective. The one exception to this limitation is the inclusion of criticism of Amy
Lowell's poetry, which I believe makes an important contribution to the more
general musico-literary deliberations via the way it significantly interacts with
21 have consciously omitted Proust from this list. Although much has been written, especially in
French, on Proust's use ofmusic inÀ la recherche du temps perdu, I find that much ofthe focus has
been on the explicit intermedial reference to specific musical (but some less specific, of course)
pieces.
31 The Sonification of Modernist Fiction: A Criticai Review 775
explicit intermedial terminology. The omission of discussions about Marcel Proust,
and French criticism in general, might seem controversial but is largely also due to
the need to tighten the corpora used and, unfortunately, to my limited competence in
the French language. For the latter reason, I have included only criticism written in
one of the Scandinavian languages or English or German. It has been my sincere
ambition to include as many trends and theoretical and methodological approaches
and subject areas as possible; nevertheless, there is more sonic criticism that relates
to work within the discipline ofliterary scholarship and less that relates to musicol
ogy. Admittedly, I have not had space to engage in important debates within
emergent fields such as aurality and practices of listening.
Toe section "Sonic Modemism" begins with a review of criticism of high
modemism that focuses on sound, noise, the alteration of soundscapes in the
modemist period, and the advent of new sonic technologies. It then moves on to
sonic analyses, considering phonetic, onomatopoetic, and symbolic qualities of
sound, much in the tradition of earlier debates on sound and poetry, before
discussing musico-literary work more specifically. Since Wolf's concept of the
musicalization of fiction appears central to many researchers in the field, this part
of the section initially surveys discussions intimately related to Wolf's work. It also
considers samples of studies that have predominantly emerged out of the field of
musicology rather than literary studies. Next, there are discussions about texts that
frame how music contributed to the advent of the high modemist prose style, not
only classical music but also contemporary blues and jazz, and Black music. A set of
handbooks is then briefly discussed in terms ofthe areas the handbooks focus on and
the intermedial interests that are relevant. Art music is usually at the center of
research that delineates origins and inspirations, and is often directly referred to,
and the section considers some of the work that explicitly links the literature with
specific composers or classical musical works. This discussion is developed via
references to the use of popular and folk music in high modemist narratives. Since all
ofthese critical texts that the review deals with are by Anglo-American or German
speaking authors, the final section discusses sonic criticism in a Swedish context.
Multimodal Modernism
During late modemity, society has been pushed toward the aim of a universally
shared world and constant improvement by social affairs and lifestyles being
improved; significant technological developments; urbanization; modemized admin
istrations and bureaucracies; new means of transport, communications, and media;
the explosive growth of newspapers; and world exhibitions. Some authors tried to
discuss the scientific and philosophical advancements and to capture the "new spirit"
and the transcendent homelessness that Westem humanity experienced as a conse
quence of these rapid improvements and changes: Freud, Nietzsche, Bergson, and
Einstein, to mention a few. ln 1895 a new medium,jilm, was bom, and from the early
1930s to 1945, the world witnessed more than ever before how propagandistic art
and politics internet. During this intense period, modemist art comingled with,
776 N. Salmose
in:fluenced, and was determined by all these changes, as well as by an increased
desire to become more multimodal and multimedial, or, as Richard Begam and
Matthew Wilson Smith argue, po lyartistic (Begam and Wilson 2016).
Modemist fiction, specifically, involves all our senses as part of its reaction to the
project of modemity and progress, as well as to Victorian realism; it is not just a
response to a heightened sensibility toward new soundscapes, new perceptions of
motion, and new olfactory experiences in the aftermath of industrialization and
modemization. This "rebellion" involved shifting the focus from being on an
outer, rational, and objective reality to being on an inner, irrational, and subjective
consciousness, which drove the emphasis on emotional and sensational experience.
Further, the birth of a new art form, cinema, in the latter decades of the nineteenth
century fundamentally created an intimate intermedial relationship between litera
ture and cinema that involved significant developments in literary style, form, and
narration. 3
Toe modemist movement, in generalterms, therefore adheres to Ezra Pound's
modemist slogan "Make It New" in that it is self-reflective, experimental, and
formalistic and, most importantly for this chapter, occurs in all media. This last
element coincides with what Regina Schober articulates as "the questioning and
expansion of established media boundaries" (Schober 201 O, 164 ). ln a similar vein,
Wolf considers that intermediality in modemism is no coincidence, because medial
crossing is an integrated part ofthe experimentation ofmodemism (Wolf 2002, 21).
However, there is a paradox here too ifwe think about modemist fiction specifically,
which occupies an ambiguous space between a desire to be considered monomedial
and a desire to be considered multimedial. Modemist authors' search for a pure,
absolute literary form has been well documented since Clive Bell's Art (1914). As
Sara Danius states, there has been a desire among modemist writers "to project
themselves as literary equivalents of Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, as synesthetic
works of art seeking to transcend genre" (Danius 2002, 3). The difference between
opera and literature, though, is that a Wagnerian opera is composed ofwords, music,
acting, and staging and can therefore definitely be considered truly multimedial,
whereas a modemist literary work consists of words and sounds only and hence is
multimodal.
Within the affordances of literature, modemist writing appeals to ali the senses
and to all the art forms. This in itself signals a departure from more realistic
aesthetics to more phenomenological ones that are part of the development of style
in modemist writing, and this is demonstrated, as mentioned earlier, in Conrad's
famous preface to The Nigger of the "Narcissus ": "My task which I am trying to
achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel"
(Conrad 1914, xiv). This seminal line suggests a change in attitude toward the
function of prose. Conrad's "magic suggestiveness" inspires a reaction, perhaps to
3 Essential contributions to this field that do not involve music per se are those of Lewis (2020),
McCabe (2005), Spiegel (1976), Trotter (2007), Seed (2009), Marcus (2008 , 2014a), Donald et ai.
(1998), Danius (2002), Jacobs (2001), Garrington (2013 ), North (2005), and Cohen (1979).
31 The Sonification of Modernist Fiction: A Criticai Review 777
viewing realism as a literary movement rather than as a concept. His emphasis on
sensations signals a transition in literary focus from outer to inner reality, from
perception to sensation, and an indication that the multisensory aspect is needed to
grasp the emotional, subjective experience, a process that had already been initiated
by the French symbolists. For Baudelaire, there had to be a mingling between the
interior and exterior worlds in poetic language. His heightened sensibility, his
ecstasy, impelled future poets to use excessive emotional and sensational poetic
language as a means to understand the relationship between interior and exterior
worlds.
This change of perspective, which Marcus Bullock suggests also includes a
destabilization of normative distanced objectivity, is why Walter Benjamin considers
Baudelaire to be an aesthete that marks "the essential break of modemism with the
previous tradition of literary aesthetics" (62). Baudelaire and Rimbaud created a
poetic language that lent itself very well to the explorations of inner consciousness
that became a trademark ofhigh modemism not only in the obvious examples ofthe
work of Gertrude Stein and James Joyce but also in prose that has less evidently
engaged in cross-modal triggering of sensations.
ln her essay "Modem Fiction," Virgínia Woolf claims that "[l]ife is not a series of
gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent
envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end" (Woolf
1986, 160). This truly Bergsonian concept of duration and flux is a harsh critique of
the realist tradition, ideas about progress and clock time, and the focus on conscious
ness also suggests a focus on the sensorium of a consciousness. This is an attitude
that Merleau-Ponty would later describe as being in the wo rld - the "primacy of
perception": we first perceive the world; then we make sense of it (Merleau-Ponty
1962, 221).
As Danius and others have argued so succinctly, the unique style of modemist
fiction and its contents grew out of a complex weave of social, historical, scientific,
intellectual, and technical contexts that occurred in the Westem world from approx
imately the 1880s until the Second World War. Warren Susman states that, "we are
all aware that media somehow affect the general culture while at the sarne time the
general culture shapes the media" (Susman 1984, xxvi). The immense advances in
sound reproductive technologies in the postindustrial world would also have a long
lasting effect on the literary sonic style ofhigh modemism. This is certainly the case
with sonic modemism, which will be developed in the next section.
Sonic Modernism
Literary modemism drew much inspiration from contemporary cinema and the
visual and performative arts (and vice versa), but perhaps the most proximate
relationship existed between modem fiction and music; this is echoed in Walter
Pater's now famous observation that "all arts constantly aspire to the condition of
music" (Pater 1919, 111 ). The literary focus on and fascination with sonorous art
stem partly from, as Jacob Harris contends in the case of Woolf, music's "ability to
778 N. Salmose
evade the grasp oflanguage" (Harris 2017, 58). There is obviously a long tradition of
connections between music and literature, especially regarding rhyme and meter in
poetry; similarly, modemist fiction reiterates the poetic entanglements with music
through its use of prose poetry. As hinted at in Harris 's statement, modernist authors'
appreciation of music has philosophical overtones; music and literature, as Woolf
argued, both have the capacity to reveal "the truth about this vast mass that we call
the world [ . . . ] we are the words; we are the music" (Woolf 1985, 72). Wemer Wolf
frames this discussion in a rethinking of music as fiction's Other. Basing his
argument on persistent historical ideas about music, music as a privileged medium
for expressing emotions, the idea of music as a correlative of harmony and cosmic
order, music as closer to human imagination and the unconscious, and the idea that
music is the original art form, Wolf shows how modemist writers found it very
appealing to incorporate this fictional Other in their texts (Wolf 2002, 20-21 ).
Audio Techniques, Sound, Noise, and Soundscapes
Despi te these questions about art and truth and about art and realism, the main reason
why music had such a precarious position for modemist writers was clearly because
the development of modemist prose coincided with an unprecedented technological
evolution of music. Music, though, is as unstable a construct as modemism itself,
and as Waddell suggests, "modernism in general responded to the rhythms, melo
dies, harmonies, and textures ofvery different sorts ofmusic from that ofthe ancient
Greeks onwards, even as it found ways to register how sound seems to split apart
from music in the case of noise, with all its acoustic, value-laden complications"
(Waddell 2017, 317). As evidenced in most of the studies presented in this chapter,
music dominates many of the musico-literary approaches to modernist fiction; with
the emergence of sound studies, however, it is becoming increasingly attractive to
study sound, rhythm, and noise, especially in terms ofthe historical parallelization of
modemist time and sound contexts.
Melba Cuddy-Keane provides a compelling and condensed history ofthe advent
of new sound technologies between 1920 and 1940 in "VirginiaWoolf, Sound
Technologies, and the New Aurality":4
The period 1920-1940 was a revolutionary era for the development of sound technologies; it
was also the informative moment for the broad impact of these new technologies on the
public at large. The nineteenth century had created, through the phonograph, expectations of
a new world of sound reproduction, but the early twentieth century realized new possibilities
for sound generation. The 1920s saw the development of the first electrical instruments, such
4 There are of course multiple studies that pro vide overviews of the development of sound and music
in the modemist era. A few notable examples are those of Kittler (1990, 1999), Stevens (1990),
Schafer (1977), Halliday (2013 ), Steme (2012), Thompson (2002), Trotter (2013 ), and the early
chapters in Fekadu (2013 ). For an excellent review ofrecent books on sound history and modem
ism, see Latham (2017).
3 1 The Sonification of Modernist Fiction: A Critica i Review 779
as the theremin, the ondes martenot, and the first electronic organ. Wireless telephony
opened up vast new possibilities for sound distribution and for mass communication on a
previously inconceivable scale. ln 1 920, the first radio station to transmit regular broadcasts
went on the air in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; on 14 November 1 922, the BBC launched its
first broadcast, establishing itself as the first radio station in Europe. (Cuddy-Keane
2000, 72)
Toe phonograph, mentioned by Cuddy-Keane, was introduced in 1877, and, as
accurately described by Douglas Kahn, it "introduced the fact ofworldly sound into
culture" (Kahn 2004, 43). Many sonic surveys of the social and cultural contexts of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries focus on sound rather than music.
The advent of the gramophone contributed to a relationship with music that went
beyond occasional visits to concert halls or operas, or limited experiences of music
in radio broadcasts. For example, Leonard and Virginia Woolf acquired an
Algraphone in 1925, which provided a repetitive evening listening discourse and
clearly had an effect on Virginia's writing.
Laura Marcus, on the other hand, argues in '"A Hymn to Movement' : The 'City
Symphony' ofthe 1920s and 1930s" (2014b) that one ofthe reasons why sound and
music creep into modemist fiction is the significant urbanization offictional settings
in modemist novels and poetry. Inspired by the so-called city symphony films ( e.g.,
Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City and Dziga Vertov's Man with
the Mo vi e Camera ), modernist novelists lo cate their work in the "' intermediate zone'
ofurban experience," which "chimes with Woolf's complex sense that future cinema
might move to seize the sense-impressions of the city" (Marcus 2014b, 94). The
"urban scene" thus evokes urban sounds, such as the discords of traffi.c, crowds,
machines, and factories, as well as street music. "ln the novel [Mrs Dalloway],"
Marcus writes, "there is a 'pulse' or heartbeat of the city as well as of its inhabitants"
(Marcus 2014b, 94-95). Philipp Schweighauser comes to a similar conclusion in his
analysis of the urban New York soundscape in John Dos Passos's Manhattan
Transfer. Schweighauser calls the strategy Passos uses the no isification of fiction
(building on Wolf's concept ofmusicalization offiction) and argues that one ofDos
Passos's strategies is to inject noise into the narrative to further complicate the
communication process between text and reader as part of the larger modemist
project of communicative detachment (Schweighauser 2017, 501).
Katherine O'Callaghan notes that "[m]odernist writers worked in a noisier world
than any of their predecessors, and this sociohistorical soundscape reverberates in
their work" (O'Callaghan 2018b, 3). Sound, noise, and music are of course not only
components of modem urban life but also the consequences of sensorial experiences
conceming that great rupture of modem civilization, the First World War. This
perspective is evident in Gemma Moss's musico-literary reading of Ford Madox
Ford's Parade 's End.5 As Moss argues, the destructive sounds of war take the
5 Isabelle Brasme approaches Parade 's End from a more traditional musico-literary perspective,
singling out three musicalizations in terms of "symphony, of the structural use of leitmotifs, and of a
shift from a contrapuntal mode to one of atonality" (Brasme 20 1 8, 62).
780 N. Salmose
soundscape of modemity to a different level with its very own monstrosity (Moss
2017, 59). But Moss's focus extends beyond sound; her main focus is on how the
deadly soundscapes challenge the transcendental role of music, as argued in many
other critical analyses ofthe modernist use ofmusic.6 Critical appreciations ofhow
sound is foregrounded in literary aesthetics can therefore take many forms. ln "Toe
Sounds and Smells ofthe South: The Auditory and Olfactory in Fitzgerald's Tarleton
trilogy" (Salmose 2022), I assert how Fitzgerald's sensorial aesthetics use the
soundscapes of the American South as a way to create a sense of not only place
and local color but also of a mediation of an arcadian, bucolic space of nostalgia and
longing as a contrast to the more modemized N orth. ln the sarne spirit, Karl
F. Zender looks at how Southem soundscapes infiltrate Faulkner's The Sound and
the Fury in "Faulkner and the Power of Sound" (1984). He points out that these
sounds seem to produce "a heightened awareness of the destructive power of time.
Implicit in his [Faulkner's] effort at preserving the vanishing world ofhis youth is a
sense of the evanescence of reconciliation" (Zender 1984, 91 ). Zender means that in
Faulkner's prose, these sounds often work like narrative pauses that "intrude" on the
narrator because of their hostility and drive him back "to the world of time and loss"
(Zender 1984, 92). Hence, sounds in this context are related to both new modemist
temporalities and concepts about the discontinuities of narrativity.
An original addition to literary attention being paid to sound because of the
changed soundscapes of the modem world and the technological advancements is
Angela Frattarola's "Developing an Ear for the Modemist Novel: Virgínia Woolf,
Dorothy Richardson and James Joyce" (2009). Frattarola positions modem favorit
ism toward the sense of hearing as a deliberate action against the post
Enlightenment idealization of the visual sense. One "reason why modem novelists
represent sound and auditory experience to such a great extent," she notices, is "to
counteract traditional, Cartesian concepts of subjectivity, and by extension, rational
and linear narrative conventions" (Frattarola 2009, 13 7). Although this is in line with
much of the criticism identifying saturation of sound in modem fiction, Frattarola
frames this "break" with tradition in the history of the sensorium specifically.
A notable and ambitious study that broadly engages with the tight encounters
between music, noise, and the soundscapes of twentieth-century social and cultural
life in European modemism is Joshua Epstein's Sublime Noise: Musical Culture and
the Mo dernist Writer (2014). Epstein's main argument is that there is a dynamic
interrelation between literary modernism and the advent of modemist music and its
atonal, dissonant, and noisy formulations by the likes of Alban Berg and Arnold
Schõnberg. According to Epstein, "[t]he presence of noise in British, Anglo
American, and Anglo-Irish modemism is the sound of the artwork coming to grips
with the failure ofits autonomy from social life" (Epstein 2014, xv-xvi). The book's
chapters engage in parallel readings of music and literary texts: Wagner and T. S.
Eliot's The Waste Land, the musical score of Femand Léger's 1924 film Ballet
6For further discussions on the sounds ofwar and modemist literature, see Connor (1997).
3 1 The Sonificationof Modernist Fiction: A Critica i Review 781
Mécanique and Esra Pound's and James Joyce's work, and also a comparison
between Joyce's Finnegans Wake and John Cage's Ro arato rio .7
Helen Groth, Julian Murphet, and Penelope Hone present a broad survey of
modernism and sound in their introduction to the edited collection Sounding Mod
ernism: Rhythm and Sonic Mediation in Mo dem Literature and Film (2017), where
the work of Samuel Beckett initially proves useful for explaining how modernist
literature mediates sounds through language's acoustic and phonetic qualities (Groth
et al. 2017, 3). Although the volume does address the more common denominators
of musico-literary analyses of modernist works, Groth, Murphet, and Hone state that
it also considers two additional critical components: a more textually focused
analyses of sonic modernism (perhaps indicated by using "mediation" in the title)
and a rethinking of literary mediations of "rhythms, sonic textures and vocal
derangements" (Groth et al. 2017, 4). Hence, onomatopoeia becomes an important
ingredient in this textual endeavor, as exempli:fied by the "speaking" cat in Joyce's
Ulysses (1922) uttering "Mkgnao" instead of "Meow." This textual focus is also
echoed in the concept oflistening to the sounds ofliterary modernism as a new way
ofreading (this is perhaps most signi:ficant in the case of Joyce's Finnegan s Wake).
The focus on literary mediation is a welcome addition to musico-literary modernism,
but also illustrates a tendency in literary studies to become less intermedially
analytical and more mono-medially analytical, which means neglecting options
involved in rethinking modemist fiction not as a pure media type but as a truly
heteromedial art form that not only mimics or produces acoustics but also fully
integrates music and sounds as media forms.
A somewhat different take on how to interpret sound in literature can be found in
Garrett Stewart's anomalous (in relation to much work in the musico-literary field),
phonemic readings of several modernist canonized works: those by Yeats, Eliot,
Joyce, and Woolf. ln Reading Vo ices: Literature and the Phono text (1990), Stewart
provides a theoretical, semiotic interpretation of how modernist wordplay (and
sound defects8) has a strong acoustic component that sets it apart from other literary
traditions. He frames this in his conceptualization of the phono text, building on
Kristeva's concept of the phenotext but adding material and sensorial qualities to it
that only occur in phonetic readings of texts.
Musicalization of Fiction
Wolf, moving from sound to music, puts modernist musical aesthetics into five
explanatory categories in "Towards a Functional Analysis of Intermediality: The
7 In addition to Epstein's extensive work on modemist poetry, Claus Clüver addresses concrete
sound poetry specifically as an intermediate aesthetic form that sits between music and poetry
(Clüver 2002).
8 Stewart defines a "sound defect" as something vaguely askew, indeed unhinged, in the discrete
vocabulary of a given syntactic format: a sound effect as sound defect.
782 N. Salmose
Case of Twentieth-Century Musicalized Fiction."9 Toe first is a modemist desire to
use intermediality to transgress established aesthetic boundaries. As Wolf argues, the
use of musicalization in fiction is part of a larger trend that deviates from narrative
conventions - this is especially evident in the use ofword music and the influence of
music on narrative structures. As for the latter, one consequence of it, according to
Wolf, is that music inspires a detour from "narrative plausibility and referential or
grammatical consistency and hence from aesthetic illusion, a major effect of tradi
tional, especially realist storytelling" (Wolf 2002, 2 1 ). The second category involves
how suitable music is for both foregrounding the very concept of media and for self
referentiality as a whole. Music therefore reinforces literary meta-aspects because "one
of the essential traits of musical composition is its high degree of auto-referentiality,
which surpasses everything possible in literature" (Wolf 2002, 22). The third category
is less general than the first two, which concems more general notions about music in
modem fiction, and is about the more specific emotional and sensuous potential of
musico-literary intermediality as part ofthe modemist fascination with consciousness
and the unconscious and fantastic (Wolf 2002, 24). This function is part of the
multisensory engagement in modem fiction. Toe fourth category has more philosoph
ical substructures, as music traditionally offers a medial affordance of polyphony,
which translates into modemist literature's preoccupation with the plurality and
fragmentation of both intemal and extemal existence and reality (Wolf 2002,
25-26). Fifth and lastly, Wolf situates musicalization as part of a larger historical
and cultural context in which traditional notions of meaning are either questioned or
disqualified altogether. The loss of belief in master narratives, Wolf argues,
co-develops with the advent of new media forms and rapid advancements in diverse
media technologies. Hence, integrating music in literature suggests a move away from
traditional narrativity and mimetic aestheticization (Wolf 2002, 26--27). lt is indisput
able, as this brief summary illustrates, that these five categories partly overlap . Many
of these categories and concems have, of course, been considered by other critics and
in different circumstances. Brad Bucknell, for example, contends that modemists were
preoccupied with both representing inner consciousness and the general problem of
representation and that music carne in as a "subsidy" to that very project (Bucknell
200 1 ) . Regarding music's emotional character, Wolf's third category, Bucknell makes
a case for rethinking the position of a musical descendent in the hierarchical ranks of
emotional art forms, opting instead for reviewing music as one component offraming
the emotional and sensorial complexities ofthe modem world - the musicalization of
literature is therefore an attempt to tune in to this intricacy (Bucknell 200 1 , 37-222).
Musicology and Literary Studies
Obvious aspects of an interdisciplinary/intermedial field are the technical and tradi
tional complexities involved in working within such separate fields as musicology
9 It is worth noting that Wolf not only considers modemism to be a literary movement that is
transgressive but also includes postmodernism in this genre.
31 The Sonification of Modernist Fiction: A Criticai Review 783
and literary/fictional studies. One successful attempt to breach the media borders can
be found in Erik Alder and Dietmar Hauck's Music and Literature: Music in the
Wo rks of Anthony Burgess and E. M Fo rster (2005). Although the book is not
entirely about modernist texts, it explores both the major novels ofE. M. Forster and
texts by Leo Tolstoy and Aldous Huxley. Toe authors effectively draw careful
parallels between actual notated music and how music affects literary structure,
thematics, and content through allusions to it in the relevant texts. Alder and
Hauck conclude by identifying four main ways in which music and fiction are
correlated, according to their readings: music is linked to the psyche of characters;
music is related to characters' social relations; formal elements of music are
represented in narrative structures in the form of aspects such as leitmotifs; and
finally, there are mutual inspirations between music and literature (Alder and Hauck
2005, 183). Hence, this book is mostly concemed with various intermedial refer
ences and, to a lesser extent, with intermedial transposition.
Eric Prieto 's ambitious study of music in modemist fiction, Listening ln: Music,
Mind, and the Mo dernist Narrative (2002), looks at themusicalization offiction in a
broad modem period, from the symbolists, such as Mallarme, to Marcel Proust,
James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Virgínia Woolf, André Gide, and Samuel Beckett and
right up to the French Nouveau Roman. Prieto structures each chapter around a
specific musical model in which he exemplifies the theoretical discussions in a
literary text. He divides the role of music into the three categories: expression,
signification, and formalism. Expression is not only the obvious emotional aspect
but also cognitive components such as problem-solving. Expression can also be
situated in the composer, in the work, or in the listener. Signification relates to
music's symbolic possibilities, and formalism refers to the fact that music often does
not refer to any kind of extramusical reality - it is just a pure happening (Prieto 2002,
29-31). Much of Prieto's discussions are theoretical in a musical sense, such as
making further qualifications of the differences between exemplification and essen
tialism, and are less explicitly about modem fiction as such. Prieto argues that
modemist writers' attraction to music lay partly in how music lacks denotation
(representational qualities) and works in terms of exemplification (similarities on
nonrepresentational levels) (Prieto 2002, 37--42). One consequence of absence of
representational qualities is that modemism stresses language as a suggestive tool
with hidden semantic potential; this is particularly evident in the work of Samuel
Beckett (Prieto 2002, 49-50). It is impossible in the short space ofthis chapter to do
justice to all ofthe musico-literary complexities considered in Prieto's book, since he
covers topics as wide as the musicalization of fiction, music as a model for associa
tive progression in narratives, the use of musical repetition and variation, music and
mimesis, jazz influences on modem fiction, and music as a moral purpose in
literature. Overall, though, much of the intricate analyses build on the general
argument that music complements modemists' aims ofbreaking rules and traditions,
not focusing on plot-based narration, and abandoning ideas about objective realities.
Prieto argues that music therefore functions as an inspiration and a model for
creating the modemist style. What is engaging in his book is that the discussions
about the intermedial combinations between music and literature add to and
784 N. Salmose
complement a general understanding ofthe development ofa unique modernist style
of writing.
An even more recent essay collection, Essays on Music and Language in Mod
ernist Literature: Musical Mo dernism (O'Callaghan 2018a), aspires to further
emphasize how music merges with the advancement of a specific modernist prose
style. "The imprint of musical forms such as sonata, theme and variation, or fugue
can certainly be found in modernist literary works," O'Callaghan writes in her
introduction, "but it was primarily the internal structuring principles of music that
provoked and compelled a series of radical literary innovations." Stressing style
before direct influence or explicit referencing appears to be a guiding principle in the
volume; however, although the editor underlines that the volume explores hitherto
unknown authors and perspectives, many essays still consider the usual suspects -
Wagner, Woolf, Joyce, Mann, Proust, and Beckett. This collection does add to
previous research, though, when it considers less familiar ground in chapters such
as Michael Borshuk's '"The Blues Always Been Here' : African American Music
and Black Modemism in August Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bo ttom," Renée
Dickinson's "The (R)evolution of ülive Moore: Fugue as Bridge to a New Feminist
Awakening," and "Rabindranath Tagore and Musical Modernity in Early Twentieth
Century Bengal" by Suddhaseel Sen.
Music's lnfluence on Modernist Style
Martin Huber's Text und Musik: Musikalische Zeichen im narrativen und
ideo logischen Funktionszusammenhang ausgewahlter Erzahltexte des 20.
Jahrhunderts (1992) constitutes an ambitious plan to comprehend the musico
literary entanglements in modernist Austro-German literature. Besides the seem
ingly mandatory readings of work by Mann, Huber interacts with a variety of
modernist authors: Hermann Hesse, Alfred Dõblin, Arthur Schnitzler, and Robert
Musil, among others. This diversity helps significantly in formulating an under
standing of Austro-German modernist fiction in a less monolithic and more holistic
way than is usually adopted by authors. Huber is interested in musical influences and
representation within the contexts of Wagner and Adorno but more engagingly
attempts to trace music's influence on modernist narratives' form and technique.
Huber's positions are clearly set out in his first chapter on the foundation of the
musico-literary aesthetics of the twentieth century; he divides his discussion into
three sections, "Musik und Gefühl" (Music and Feeling), "Musik und Form" (Music
and Form), and "Musik und Ideologie" (Music and Ideology). Regarding music and
feelings, Huber surveys the history of musical subjectivism and its literary conse
quences in the romantic era, defining a Sturm und Drang character to the literary use
of music that peaks in European decadence with an aesthetics of feeling that
embodies musical thematization. ln "Musik und Form," Huber continues the debate
on aesthetics but zooms in on how music affects the very formal and structural
elements of modernist literature, drawing on the aesthetic theories of Friedrich
Schiller, Eduard Hanslick, and Theodor Adorno. The conceptualizations of music
31 The Sonification of Modernist Fiction: A Criticai Review 785
as emotion and form triangulate into ideological frameworks, most notably in
relation to Wagner's politicized music, and it is this latter analytical perspective
that dominates many ofthe musico-literary readings, such as those that ascertain the
representative quality of Wagner's Tristan und /so lde in Alfred Dõblin's No vember
1918 (Huber 1992, 60-63). Huber's best contribution to the field appears in Chaps. 3
and 4, where the focus areas change from being about representation into debates
about structure, musical influence on modemist temporalities, and conceptualiza
tions oftext as notation; in summary, he writes about unleashing music's potential to
co-participate in the development of modemist style.
Handbooks
A couple of recent handbooks on the relationship between music and literature
consider literary modernism and music as well as individual case studies. ln The
Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Music (2020), the section called "Literature
and Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries" has almost 200 pages.
Stephen Benson summarizes the mutual relationships between music and literature
during the relevant period in his "lntroduction," focusing on music history and
musical theory. He identifies two specific uses of music in modemist literature:
Literature's writing of music at this time involves thus both a borrowing of specific forms,
with especial attention to the interplay of voices in counterpoint and polyphony, and more
generally, the practice of leitmotivic composition as allowing a patteming of associations -
experiential; memorial; cultural - felt to be more organic, and paradoxically free-form, than
the thematic structural machinery ofVictorian prose. (Benson 2020, 497)
Benson stresses the importance of musical ekphrasis in the development of literary
modemism before discussing in different subsections some aspects of musico
literary relationships: literature in music, sound, and technology and in the discipline
of music generally. Toe last-mentioned aspect is principally related to theories of
music. Prieto picks up the baton from Benson and ventures into the aesthetics of
medial combinations in his chapter onthe theories of Nelson Goodman, which
formed the basis for Prieto's monograph, mentioned previously. Although both
Benson and Prieto touch on the medial intersections between music and literature,
it is remarkable that a handbook of this stature does not involve intermedial studies
at all.
Toe second handbook, Handbuch Literatur und Musik (2016), carries consider
ably more theoretical, intermedial weight, perhaps as a consequence of situating the
research within the Austro-Germanic intermedial fields, as advocated by Scher and
Wolf. The result is a highly systematic presentation of intermedial relations between
music and literature that is divided into discussions about combinations, integra
tions, transmediations, and the difference between telling and showing in
musicalization of literature. The handbook also updates theoretical discourses
about musico-literature in contemporary, cognitive research fields before providing
786 N. Salmose
a rich enumeration of specific cases and topical studies. Chapters that modemist
scholars will be interested in include one that discusses the historical and contextu
alizing aspects of Gesamtkunstwerk and Wagner's and Nietzsche's musical and
philosophical influences on literature, another that focuses on music and the literary
avant-garde, and a third that considers the expressiveness of modemist musical
forms in literature and how the sounds of modemity creep into modemist fiction. 1 0
ln a similar fashion, Literatur und Musik in der klassischen Moderne: Mediale
Konzeptionen und intermediale Poeto logien (2006) formulates a media-oriented
approach to musico-literary criticism by stressing the role of media communication
and intermedial theory in rethinking the poetics of modem writing. This modus
operandi is evident, for example, in Gabriele Rippl's study of intermedial aesthetics
in Anglo-American modemism as a conscious departure from realist fiction. Rippl
does not simply illustrate a variety of musical transfers and references in work by
Gertrude Stein, H.D., Amy Lowell, and Aldous Huxley but also inspects the medial
limitations in literature as a media type and the consequences of these limitations on
the exchange with music. Most importantly, in the section "lntermedialitãtsforschung"
(Intermedial Research), she contextualizes the musico-literary field of modernist
fiction in contemporary intermedial theoretical frameworks.
Work on Individual Authors or Specific Fictional Works
There are many articles and chapters that specifically consider modemist authors or
single fictional works from a musico-literary perspective, but because of the limita
tion on the length of this chapter, it is impossible to discuss any of these in detail.
However, I will aim to briefly discuss in the following paragraphs texts with an
intermedial framework or authors who have not received attention in monographs or
larger critical works.
Regina Schober works engagingly within Wolf's musico-literary framework
(with flashes of Ellestrõm and Rajewsky) in "Translating Sounds: lntermedial
Exchanges in Amy Lowell's ' Stravinsky's Three Pieces "Grotesques," for String
Quartet,"' applying the concepts of intermedial references to lgor Stravinsky's Three
Pieces for String Quartel in Amy Lowell's poem of the sarne name. Schober's
analysis goes beyond framing music as a reference and also considers the poem a
true work of intermedial translation of Stravinsky's piece in terms of how it contex
tualizes past and current affairs, situating this particular translation in an overall
modemist project of translation, allusion, and intertextuality in the spirit of T. S.
Eliot's concept of the mythological retum (Schober 2010, 165). Schober concludes
that Lowell's ambition is not to recreate music in literary text but merely to translate
10 Although the handbook focuses on German and French romanticism, a complement to the
musico-literary taxonomies in this handbook is Albert Grier's "Musik in der Literatur: Einflüsse
und Analogien" ( 1995) in which Grier conducts parallel readings ofromantic music and romantic
literature within a semiotic framework.
31 The Sonification of Modernist Fiction: A Criticai Review 787
the effect of music to her poem. ln this reading she targets Ellestrõm's notion of
transmediality, acknowledging that media modalities and modes share similar con
tent and affordances with music and literature (Schober 2010, 169). 1 1
ln "Katherine Mansfield and Music: Nineteenth-Century Echoes" (2011), Delia
da Sousa Correa argues that nineteenth-century music, Wagner in particular, played a
formative part in the development of a distinguished and early modemist style in
Katherine Mansfield's works. Correa notes that although there are few explicit
references to music, Mansfield's prose oozes musical inspiration: "Passages invok
ing the movement of sea and waves at dawn, noon and night punctuate the story's
opening, middle, and close, suggesting analogies with musical movements as well as
with the textures and rhythms of music," she writes (Correa 2011, 85). What is
therefore most arresting about Correa's article is that she identifies how Mansfield, as
a consequence of her passionate relation to nineteenth-century music, constructs a
rhythmic and musical prose in which the very modemist language of her writings
alludes to the structures (dramatic timing), rhythms, and sounds of nineteenth
century romanticist music.
Popular Music
It is noteworthy that although a massive amount of critical attention has been given
to classical music and/or sound, barely any musico-literary attention has been paid to
the interrelations between popular music and modemist writing. Ronald Schleifer's
exemplary study, Modernism and Popular Music (2011 ), is an example of the latter
providing a political view of how jazz and popular music engage with modemist
cultures in general and occasionally intermedially with literary modemists such as
William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, and Virginia Woolf. But
the focus of the monograph is still the media type music. Likewise, Christopher
Ballantine's aim in "Modemism and Popular Music" (2014) is to argue that lowbrow
culture such as popular music is still an inherent part of the radical project of
modemity.
Studies of songs in Joyce and Eliot have unleashed the potential of intermedial
references to traditional and folk music, and to popular music of course, but not with
such popular connotations, perhaps, as popular, contemporary music had in the
1910s and 1920s. It is no surprise, then, that the author who called the 1920s the
'jazz age," F. Scott Fitzgerald, figures in critical studies on the use of popular music
in modernist fiction. A groundbreaking analysis that situates Fitzgerald 's prose in the
popular music ofhis times is Ruth Priogozy's '"Poor Butterfly': F. Scott Fitzgerald
and Popular Music" (1977). Although it mostly catalogues music that Fitzgerald
1 1 For a more extensive analysis ofLowell's musical writing, see Chap. 1 in Fekadu's (2013 ) book.
Fekadu argues that Lowell charts music as a figure of thought in her approach to a "new poetry"
whose ( originally) oral, performative character she intends to preserve. ln addition to this, Debora
Van Durme explores further the musical connection between imagism and Lowell's poetry with a
special focus on the music ofDebussy (Van Durme 2018).
788 N. Salmose
refers to, Priogozy also identifies how Fitzgerald uses popular music in his works:
(1) to make his characters articulate emotions, (2) to refine characters' moods and
relationships, and (3) to provide background music and intensify settings (see
previous discussion in subsection "Audio Techniques, Sound, Noise, and
Soundscapes"). ln addition to these three uses, popular music, according to
Priogozy, also becomes intertwined with themesand leitmotifs in Fitzgerald's
work. T. Austin Graham develops Priogozy's ideas by offering the term "literary
soundtrack" to refer to ''written references to specific pieces of music that compel
extra-literary responses in readers and thereby heighten, color, or otherwise com
ment upon the text that contains them" (Graham 2009, 519). By analyzing
Fitzgerald's major novels, Graham not only delivers a detailed survey ofFitzgerald's
use of popular music but also highlights the complexities for later readerships
regarding identifying the contemporary contexts surrounding these songs. Critics,
he claims, need to resort to "musical archeology" to annotate the meaning of these
songs for a modem readership (Graham 2009, 520). 12 Toe latest study to investigate
popular musico-literariness in Fitzgerald is the insightful F Sco tt Fitzgerald's Sho rt
Fiction: From Ragtime to Swing Time (2019) by Jade Broughton Adams. Chapters
on jazz and ragtime dance, musical theatre, and popular music contextualize
Fitzgerald's less researched short stories in terms of the New York music scene. ln
the chapter titled "Satyre upon a Saxophone: Fitzgerald and Music," Adams confi
dently discusses Fitzgerald's incorporation of jazz in terms of the wider, complex,
history of jazz music with tenets of class and race. Adam's work complicates
Fitzgerald's jazz references but in a positive way, suggesting that they are not only
literary soundtracks but integrated facets of his organic writing style. This also
entails an added understanding of the often-cited concept of some stories being
'jazzy," which is taken as a sign that jazz also operates on an extracompositional
level.
Sonic Sweden
Since most intermedial analyses of relations between music and literature have
referred to Anglo-American, Austro-German, or French modemist literature,
Thomas Seiler's discussion of music's role in Swedish modem aesthetics is a
welcome contribution. "Instrumental-, Partiturlyrik, Tonpoesi Zur Bedeutung
musikalischer Begriffiichkeit im scwhedischen Modemismus" (2006) departs from
the influential 1932 essay "Dikt och music" (Poetry and Music) by Swedish poet
Gunnar Ekelõf. As Seiler argues, Ekelõf's essay identifies a rupture in how poetry
relates to music. Modemist poetry focuses on the emotions and feelings of music in
their transformative state, whereas poetry before that era embraced the sound quality
of poetic phonetic qualities (Seiler 2006, 137). Hence, Seiler's chapter is an
12For a more extensive discussion on the concept of literaiy soundtracks, see Graham (2013), who
broadens the corpus from Fitzgerald to also include T. S. Eliot and poets of the Harlem Renaissance.
31 The Sonification of Modernist Fiction: A Criticai Review 789
important contribution to a modemist meta-text about musico-literary relations and
ambitions; it builds on Magdalena Wasilewska-Chmura's study of musical poetics in
Swedish modem literature (Wasilewska-Chmura 2000). Paul Tenngart's analysis
complements these two studies; he analyzes Ekelõf's agenda of musicalized poetry
and its influence on late Swedish modemist lyricism and lyricism since the modem
ist era (Tenngart 2002).
Virginia Woolf
It is a queer experience, lying in the dark and listening to the zoom of a homet which may at
any moment sting you to death. It is a sound that interrupts coo! and consecutive thinking
about peace. Yet it is a sound - far more than prayers and anthems - that should compel one
to think about peace. (Woolf 1940, n.p.)
As is already evident in this chapter, Woolf had an intimate bond with both sound
and music in her fiction, which has opened up a critical space for musico-literary
readings of her works. It is quite surprising, then, that few critics have paid more
attention to her literary soundscapes than to her musical influences and the musical
ization of her prose. 1 3 Cuddy-Keane's chapter "Virginia Woolf, Sound Technolo
gies, and the N ew Aurality" is a rare example, as are Marcus 's works, of an analytical
perspective that specifically discusses the emergence of a new sound media land
scape in Woolf's writing and theorizes the complexities oftranslating sound to visual
media:
Besides the problem of mediating sound through a visually oriented discourse, there is the
fundamental problem of mediating sound through language at ali - the inevitable translation
of sound into a conceptual category that takes place in the process of verbalization [ . . . ] But
there is a significant difference between the linguistic representation of sound and the
linguistic conceptualization of it [ . . . ] Wben Big Ben chimes the hours throughout Virginia
Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, the words "The leaden circles dissolved in the air" (4) describe the
pattem of sound waves, not a human construction of their meaning. (Cuddy-Keane 2000, 70)
Cuddy-Keane legitimately acknowledges that there is a lack of narratological
terminology for describing sounds in literature, and she suggests "diffusion" to refer
to the emission of sound from a specific source and "auscultation" to refer to the
complementary aspect of narrative focalization, for example, who hears rather than
who sees (Cuddy-Keane 2000, 70-7 1 ). Cuddy-Keane provides an insightful aural
analysis ofthe section "Time Passes" in Woolf's To the Lighthouse, which stands out
since there is no proper auscultation in this passage due to the lack of characters.
13 It is worth mentioning The Reading of Silence: Virgínia Woolf in the English Tradition, in which
Patricia Ondek Laurence looks at silence in a selection of Woolf's novels from a predominantly
feminist perspective, and Annika J. Lindskog's two chapters on silence in Woolf's works, which are
part ofher doctoral thesis Silent Modernism. Soundscapes and the Unsayable in Richardson, Joyce
and Woolf (2014).
790 N. Salmose
Sound is therefore mediated without human consciousness in an attempt to record
nonhuman reality. This is a chimera, of course, as Cuddy-Keane is the first to admit,
since sound is still mediated through narration and is aimed toward an implied
reader. However, as Cuddy-Keane argues, this is a literary attempt to resist "the
reduction of sound to an idea, concept, or sign" (Cuddy-Keane 2000, 85).
Most critics have focused on music, though they have perhaps been inspired by
Woolf's own statement that she conceives ali of her writing as music (Woolf
1975-80, 426). Elicia Clements, in "Transforming Musical Sounds into Words: Nar
rative Method in Virgínia Woolf's The Waves," engages in a compelling analysis that
not only focuses on musical influence but on formal imitation. After acknowledging
how early essays such as "Street Music" (1905), "Toe Opera" (1906), and "lmpressions
at Bayreuth" (1909) "deal with music as subject-matter and address its affect on
community," she argues that "Woolf deliberately attempts to reconstitute novelistic
methods by looking to the 'classical' tradition of music as a potential model" (Clements
2005, 160). ln relation to The Waves, Clements provides a thorough parallel reading
between how the formal aspects of Beethoven's late String Quartet in B flat Major,
Opus 130, constitute a "new novelistic 'form"' that reconceptualizes the construction
and idea of characterization. Although Woolf evidently listened to Beethoven while
writing The Waves, Clements' analysis goes beyond influence when she maps out the
novel's formal similarities to the quartet and fugue forms. ln the novel, Beethoven is
considered "signifying" rather than influential, an "intermedial [ . . . ] link, an exchange
of ideas that circulate at a particular historical moment in time facilitated by two
different media" (Clements 2005, 163). Clements further connects Woolf's musico
literary method to the theories of Wolf, especially regarding the differentiation between
a nondominant medium (music) and a dominantMais conteúdos dessa disciplina
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