Pascal Quignard\u2019s __The Hatred of Music_ is the densest, most arcane, most complex book I\u2019ve read in ages. It\u2019s also a book that covers a topic so basic, so universal\u2014almost primordial\u2014that just about any reader will be perversely thrilled by the intersections Quignard unearths between the mind and the world of sound. And that topic is just that: sound. How all manner of sounds constitute music, how some predate music and how our perception of sound\u2014our history with it\u2014affects our appreciation of music.<\/p>\n
The nonfiction book is divided into what Quignard terms 10 treatises, but it often reads like a collection of connected fragments from the author\u2019s journal. Entries are separated by a small bullet point, and the book feels in sections like a prose poem, or really, at times a riddle. As The New Yorker<\/em> has noted, Quignard is a writer with \u201can oblique, aphoristic bent.\u201d In an interesting and detailed Translator\u2019s Note at the end of the book, the author is quoted as saying the work falls into a category called \u201cspeculative rhetoric,\u201d and it\u2019s a type of writing, he says, that dates back to the invention of philosophy. Readers schooled not only in the classics but in the classics in their original language (Greek, Latin, French, et al) will be in good stead since the superb translators, Matthew Amos and Fredrik R\u00f6nnb\u00e4ck, preserve the richness of the original text by including snippets of the original languages.<\/p>\n Quignard, a noted novelist, music aficionado, and winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, is adept at illuminating the overlooked role that our sense of hearing plays in all things and all thoughts. One of the most poignant examples is St. Peter, the Catholic Apostle who is considered the religion\u2019s first Pope. According to the Christian Bible, Peter thrice denied Jesus as he was being led off to slaughter, only to hear the sound of a cock crowing, as his master had warned. Quignard tells us in the book\u2019s first treatise, called \u201cThe Tears of Saint Peter,\u201d \u201cIt is said that as Peter grew older he could no longer bear cocks.\u201d Indeed, he had any kind of animal of flight in and around his home killed. As I read this, I found myself grieving, if you will, for St. Peter, across the centuries. How he must have regretted his denial, how he must have been hemmed in by his mistake, which was marked forevermore in an inescapable shorthand by the sound of a bird\u2019s call. None of that ever occurred to me before reading Quignard\u2019s book.<\/p>\n In the book\u2019s eponymous, seventh treatise, he also makes the painfully astute observation that music was the only art to have been an instrument in the Nazis\u2019 extermination of the Jews. The Germans used marches and other songs to reinforce discipline and compliance. Quignard quotes none other than Primo Levi as saying that the music heard in the camps \u201cwill be the last thing from the Lager we will forget\u201d because it is \u201cthe voice of the Lager.\u201d <\/p>\n Yet as dense and erudite as the book is, \u201cThe Hatred of Music\u201d abounds with short, pithy thoughts that cause the reader to wonder why these ideas aren\u2019t routinely bandied about in everyday conversation. In the second treatise, Quignard writes, \u201cTo hear is to be touched from afar.\u201d Oh, yes, c\u2019est vrai<\/em>! A page later, he writes, \u201cBefore birth, until the final moment of death, men and women hear without a moment\u2019s respite. There is no sleep for hearing.\u201d Well, now that you mention it.<\/em> In another section, a fragment reads simply, \u201cNot knowing the name of what haunts us in sound.\u201d Yes, that<\/em>. These ideas are collected in the chapter called, \u201cIt So Happens That Ears Have No Eyelids.\u201d<\/p>\n All of these straightforward yet profound statements build a case for hearing as perhaps the most powerful of the five senses, a hidden motor of activity that can be blamed for all manner of problems and conditions and predilections that travel with us from birth to death. It\u2019s as if he\u2019s peering into our thoughts. Indeed, he\u2019s often writing about things we sense but cannot articulate. He\u2019s writing about sound in a way that\u2019s arguably rare for the common reader in America to come upon, including this reviewer, but which nonetheless is germane and perceived on some level by every single person alive. That\u2019s because he\u2019s approaching sound as a primordial force within us, that is common to all of us, whether we routinely read the work of French essayists or not. To wit, he writes, \u201cNonvisual sounds, forever withdrawn from sight, roam within us. Ancient sounds tormented us. We did not yet see. We did not yet breathe. We did not yet scream. We heard.\u201d The thought is so true and essential that, though it appears only on page 9, one could put the book down, having already grasped something vital about the connection between sound and consciousness.<\/p>\n Yet a reviewer should issue this warning: Abandon all hope\u2014ye who read this book\u2014of traditional structure or tight narrative weave. As the journal Quarterly Conversation<\/em> has noted about Quignard\u2019s oeuvre, \u201cOne is struck by the feeling that they are witnessing someone transcribing his thoughts, pure and fresh as they form in the mind, or to use a fitting mythological connection, Athena springing from the head of Zeus.\u201d Indeed, in the translators\u2019 notes at the end of the book, they say Quignard strives to \u201cmake language an endeavor of disorientation,\u201d which often gives his prose a \u201crefined coarseness.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the sentences in the book are almost prohibitively arcane, including this gem: \u201cThere is a fragment by Pacuvius that formulates what interrupts the plurimillennial hammering march.\u201d This sentence is followed first by a sentence in French that is translated only in the footnotes and then by the same thought in Latin, which is untranslated. Which is not to suggest the translators, Amos and R\u00f6nnb\u00e4ck, phoned this job in. On top of writing a comprehensive afterword, they have been careful to insert footnotes throughout the text, even indicating at one point where the popular definition of a word (formidable<\/em>) deviates from Quignard\u2019s usage in the text. (Oh and, if ever a book needed a team of translators, it\u2019s this one.) <\/p>\n Here and there in the early sections of the text, Quignard signals how sound in the form of music has become his own personal torture device. For example, he writes, without elaboration, \u201cThe recent religion of happiness turns my stomach.\u201d Then in the book\u2019s ninth treatise, which is tellingly called \u201cTo Disenchant,\u201d he writes by way of explanation that music is now so ubiquitous in modern life that \u201cit has become incessant, aggressing night and day, in the commercial streets of city centers, in shopping centers, in arcades, in departments stores . . . even at the beach . . .\u201d In the translators\u2019 afterword, we learn that in 1994 Quignard suddenly retreated from all of his professional activities\u2014including his senior roles at the Gallimard publishing house and the International Festival of Baroque Opera and Theater at Versailles. He resolved only to write in solitude. <\/p>\n One hopes Quignard will find the solitude he needs to write because this reviewer believes he could recount the entire history of literature through the lens of sound. And here\u2019s hoping he does just that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pascal Quignard\u2019s __The Hatred of Music_ is the densest, most arcane, most complex book I\u2019ve read in ages. It\u2019s also a book that covers a topic so basic, so universal\u2014almost primordial\u2014that just about any reader will be perversely thrilled by the intersections Quignard unearths between the mind and the world of sound. And that topic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[65496,3426,65476,65486,44896,1646,65506,19016],"class_list":["post-305536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-fredrik-ronnback","tag-french-literature","tag-jeanne-bonner","tag-matthew-amos","tag-pascal-quignard","tag-review","tag-the-hatred-of-music","tag-yale-university-press"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305536"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315596,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305536\/revisions\/315596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nIn one especially evocative section, he speaks of the continuity of sound, even within our heads when nothing external could potentially reach our ears. He uses the term \u201csurging hums,\u201d which strike us as we walk, modulating \u201caccording to the rhythm of our gait.\u201d What are these \u201csurging hums\u201d? Hymns, he says. Old songs. \u201cChildish and protective refrains. Lullabies and nursery rhymes. Polkas and waltzes. Singalong tunes.\u201d He\u2019s probing an internal soundtrack of which we are often dimly aware even as it\u2019s broadcast inside of our heads.<\/p>\n