Una camera piena di silenzio. Malraux e la musica

Overview & Synopsis

André Malraux's writings are full of musical terms and comparisons with music. This art seems to be superior to all the others, thanks to its capacity to transcend language. This is particularly remarkable when one considers that Malraux never dedicated any essay to this discipline. Not only that : following what Jean-François Lyotard argues, sound represents for Malraux the possibility of thematising a total alienation of the ego, that experience of an « I-without-me » that he mentions in Lazarus, while his hospitalisation. There exists a musical moment which precedes our listening, which even exceeds it and frightens us because “inhuman”. We will attempt to reconstruct this ambivalence of approach, showing how these perspectives emerge in Les voix du silence and in the novels.