Fugue and flight in Claude Simon's Bataille de Pharsale.(Critical Essay)

Publication: The Modern Language Review

Publication Date: 01-APR-05

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Fugue and Flight in Claude Simon's Bataille de Pharsale by Jean Duffy

The article argues that Claude Simon has drawn heavily on fugal patterns of composition in the writing of La Bataille de Pharsale and examines the aesthetic, thematic, and linguistic factors which determined this choice of musical model. Close analysis of the structure of Simon's novel and of its use of narrative voice and perspective reveals striking correspondences with the internal dynamics of the fugue's movements and its-polyphonic variations, while consideration of the text's recurrent motifs stews an extended exploration of the thematic and etymological links between fugue and flight.

Although less conspicuous than visual and plastic allusions, music also figures as a prominent point of reference in Claude Simon's work. Musical 'inter-texts' play important thematic roles in several key novels, including Histoire, Les Georgiques, and Le Jardin des Plantes. (1) In Histoire, the interweaving of the evocation of a performance of Verdi's Aida at the Paris Opera, attended by the narrator's mother as a young woman, and the description of the amateur musical soirees held in her home during the final stages of her illness (pp. 55-60) suggests a capacity for passion and sensuality and a taste for theatricality that underlie the outward decorum and piety of this provincial 'femme de bonne famille'. In Les Georgiques, the recurrent references to Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice not only provide formal and thematic links between the three narrative strands, but also suggest a mythical equivalent of the attempts of the three protagonists to revive the past through writing. (2) In Le Jardin des Plantes, references to various types of music and dance punctuate the text and combine, with the references to architecture, religion, and ritual, to highlight the diversity of the cultures encountered by S. on his travels. Musical terms and comparisons also figure prominently in Simon's critical and aesthetic vocabulary. Repeatedly in his statements of aesthetic intention he draws attention to the roles played by rhythm, cadence, tempo, periodicity, and harmony in the construction of his texts, and the musical properties of his work have been noted and analysed by several critics. (3) Other critics have been keen to unearth musical substructures, notably in La Route des Flandres, (4) but also in Histoire and Les Georgiques. (5) However, it is Simon's fondness for counterpoint and, in particular, the fugue that is most fully documented. Most significant in this respect was, of course, his acknowledgement that Lecon de choses has a fugal structure, a revelation which has prompted several illuminating analyses of the novel's musical qualities and framework.' Moreover, as Christine Genin points out, Simon's interviews and correspondence have offered further regular confirmation of his fascination for fugue: his 1992 radio interview with Marianne Alphant (7) highlighted his 'gout pour les musiques tres maitrisees, presque mathematiques, fugues et contrepoints notamment', (8) while one of his published letters to Dubuffet revealed his passion for Beethoven's Grosse Fugue: 'cette joie rare (ou plutot cette sorte d'enchantement quelque peu magique) que procurent les chefs-d'oeuvre et que, pour ma part, je n'eprouve pleinement qu'en d'exceptionnelles occasions, comme, par exemple, chaque fois que j'entends la Grande Fugue pour quatuor a cordes de Beethoven'. (9) As he has admitted on more than one occasion, even his discovery of a drawing by Bach in the British Museum gave him quite unexpectedly the thrill of recognition and pleasure in the knowledge of shared aesthetic aims: 'J' ai ete tres frappe lorsqu'un jour j'ai vu au British Museum un dessin de Bach dormant une image de la facon dont il concoit la fugue: mieux calligraphic que par moi, c'etait sembable a celui que j'avais fait pour la petite preface a Orion aveugle et par lequel j'essayais de figurer les cheminements de l'ecriture qui serpentent, reviennent sur eux-memes, se recoupent'. (10)

Given this context, it is surprising that the only sustained study to date of musicality in La Bataille de Pharsale, arguably Simon's most formally rigorous text, appeared as recently as 2002. Thierry Marin's lengthy chapter on the novel offers a sensitive reading of its detail, tracking the narrative devices which, at the level of its microstructure, give the text its rich polyphonic and contrapuntal texture. (11) However, despite the attentiveness and the ingenuity of his analysis, Marin's argument that the novel should be read in terms of musical serialism fails to offer a perspective on the text's macrostructure and, curiously, ignores Simon's own explicit commentaries on its musical features. These authorial commentaries do not invalidate Marin's analysis of detail, but they do suggest the presence of an overall textual framework which is rather more structured than he suggests and which is perhaps closer to fugue than to the rather freer serial form which he evokes.

Simon's statements on La Bataille de Pharsale have been relatively rare, but the few insights which he has offered have been very instructive. Particularly helpful are his remarks on the novel at the 1971 Colloque de Cerisy:

Pour Pharsale, c'est encore un autre genre de composition, que f on pourrait peutetre appeler musical: c'est-a-dire qu'apres un court prelude ou les differents themes (ou generateurs, comme les a tres bien appeles Ricardou) sont brievement exposes, se developpe une premiere partie 'installant' ces dents themes repris ensuite, approfondis avec des variations f un apes f autre, aparement, dans la seconde partie: Batailles, Guerrier, Machine, Cesar, Voyage, O enfin qui [...] donne une clef du livre tres expressement defini comme un 'systeme mobile se deformant sans cesse autour de rares points fixes' ou intersections. Quanta la troisieme et derniere partie du roman, elle rassemble une nouvelle fois les principaux themes et leurs derives, les brasse et les combine dans une polyphonie dont le tempo se fait plus rapide et hache. (12)

So too is the following passage, taken from a letter, cited by Stuart Sykes:

J'ai cherch a composer ce roman a la facon de certaines oeuvres musicales, en trois parties:

1. exposition des themes (ce qui signifie aussi leur invention), tatonnements;

2. exploration plus poussee et developpement de certains de ces themes;

3. reprise et synthese de tous ces themes dans une structure differente et un 'tempo' plus rapide. (13)

Each of these commentaries provides a schematic analysis of the text which, although it does not explicitly identify the musical genre which served as model, suggests very strongly that the novel has a fugal form. The present article takes these very clear authorial cues as its point of departure. It has two main aims: first, to determine the extent to which the overall framework of La Bataille de Pharsale has been informed by fugal patterns of composition; second, and more important, to ascertain the likely aesthetic, thematic and indeed linguistic factors which determined this choice of structure. Thus, the first section will focus on the issue of formal textual and musical equivalences, while subsequent sections will consider Simon's polyphonic treatment of narrative voice and his exploration of the thematic and etymological links between fugue and flight.

Fugal Form in 'La Bataille de Pharsale'

Close analysis of the structure of La Bataille de Pharsale reveals a striking correlation with the principles of fugal construction and with the internal dynamics of the fugue's movements. The first section of the novel serves as an exposition in the musical, as opposed to the literary, sense in that it does not offer background information about character or events, but rather introduces the principal themes and motifs of the text: it 'exposes, lays before us, the essential thematic resource' of the composition. (14) The short segments of text which make up this exposition are the equivalent of the entries of the various parts, voices, or thematic strands, each of which, as it enters, effectively pursues or causes to flee the previous one." In Simon's text, although views differ about the number and, indeed, the identity of the thematic strands, it is possible to isolate certain distinct and recurring series. Most critics agree on a combination of the following: (a) the activities and movements of people, birds, and vehicles in a Paris square and on the street running along one of its sides, together with the changes in the skyscape above and in the reflections of an upstairs window; (b) the anxious watch kept by a jealous man outside the apartment in which he believes his mistress is making love with...

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