TY - JOUR
TI - Leo Tolstoy's and Joseph Conrad's: Relation to Music
AU - Pudełko, Brygida
TI - Leo Tolstoy's and Joseph Conrad's: Relation to Music
AB - It is important to stress that Tolstoy’s and Conrad’s texts are to be understood to include not only literary, and thus verbal, texts but also elements of other media, such as music, theatre and visual arts. It should be noted that for Conrad music was also one of the arts that he greatly appreciated. Though Conrad’s main concern was to make us “see,” he was also concerned with making us “hear.” The use of music to accompany sexual desire, frustration and violence is a technique often used by the writer. Likewise, music had an enormous influence on Tolstoy. He was fascinated with its power, just as with the power of sexuality, beauty and war. His favourite composer was Chopin, but he also appreciated Mozart, Haydn, Weber, and Beethoven. In The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories Tolstoy expresses his complex and controversial views on marriage and sexuality, focussing on his protagonist Pozdnyshev and his wife, who performs Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata with a spirited violinist Trukhachevskii. The obsessive nature of Pozdnyshev’s jealousy is nowhere more obvious than in the sexual power he ascribes to music, and particularly to the initial part of the presto of Beethoven’s sonata.
VL - 2017
IS - Vol. 12
PY - 2018
SN - 1899-3028
C1 - 2084-3941
SP - 151
EP - 158
DO - 10.4467/20843941YC.17.011.8668
UR - https://ejournals.eu/czasopismo/yearbook-of-conrad-studies/artykul/leo-tolstoys-and-joseph-conrads-relation-to-music
KW - Joseph Conrad
KW - Leo Tolstoy
KW - Beethoven
KW - The Kreutzer Sonata
KW - sexual desire
KW - frustration
KW - jealousy
KW - violence