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Trouble in Paradise: Colette’s Claudine s’en va (1903) and the Problem of Writing about Wagner

par Heck, Adeline
Référence Routledge Companion to Music and Modern Literature, Routledge, Ed. 1
Publication Publié, 2022-06-30

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Résumé :

This chapter explores the Bayreuth Festival passages in Colette’s Claudine s’en va (1903), the fourth volume of her semi-autobiographical Claudine series. As a turn-of-the-century novel, Claudine s’en va is ideally placed at the juncture of two modes of writing about live music: a nineteenth-century approach that focuses on the outward reactions of the audience and a more modern take on music that is associated with the representation of inner responses from specific individuals. I argue that this novel can be read allegorically as an illustration of these two methods, with Colette taking sides and signalling her preference for a middle ground, the tenets of which are explored in her music criticism. The chapter concludes with a consideration of how Colette’s idiosyncratic manner of writing about music – at once concrete and elusive – contributes to making Claudine s’en va a modern work of literature because it triggers our active participation as readers.