Reflections between literature and music

A selection of novels close to so-called magic realism; visionary, bizarre, poised between dream and reality. Sometimes surreal, weird and grotesque, sometimes suspended and impalpable. Each novel is paired with an album that mirrors its atmospheres and serves as a soundtrack to the reading.

Sofia Tolstaya – Song Without Words

(Written around 1898, published in Italy by La Tartaruga in 2017)

In 1897 Sofia Tolstaya is struggling to return to life. A year and a half earlier her son Ivan, just seven years old, died of scarlet fever, tragically marking the woman's existence. This immense grief has piled onto the anxieties of a relationship that had always been stormy with her husband, Leo Tolstoy. The Russian writer (who had married Sofia when she was eighteen) has always been a difficult man, headstrong, prone to shifting moods and ideas, a slave to his art and his principles.

But Sofia is no less formidable: a proud, scrupulous woman, she doesn't let herself be intimidated by her husband's whims and indeed manages to stand up to him, careful never to be overwhelmed. In short, she is the prototype of the modern woman who, freed from patriarchal authority, pursues her own vision and leads an autonomous existence geared toward her own fulfillment. At the same time, though, Tolstaya is a devoted wife: she supports the writer in his work, corrects and copies out drafts of his writings, and handles all the bureaucratic matters. She too is prey to mood swings, jealousy and possessiveness toward her husband. Quarrels in the Tolstoy household are thus the order of the day, with the husband frequently running off, followed by regrets, reconciliations and fresh battles.

As it happens, Sofia is also a gifted writer herself; she doesn't venture into sprawling constructions like her famous husband, but she knows how to portray the anguish of the soul, managing to capture those knots of anxiety and happiness that characterize romantic relationships, describing them with grace and passion. As early as 1893 she had published "Whose Fault?", a kind of heartfelt response to the merciless analysis of marriage found in Tolstoy's "The Kreutzer Sonata". After that attempt, however, she had chosen to devote herself to tending to her husband's spirit and art, setting aside her undoubted talent.

Following the painful loss of her little son, though, something changes: the flame of inspiration is rekindled thanks to her meeting with the talented pianist Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev, who had for some time been a guest at the Tolstoy household, trying to soothe Sofia's suffering through music. Before long, the woman's passion for the musician's performances overflows the banks of pure artistic interest and blossoms into feeling. Her husband notices, and jealous outbursts once again set the atmosphere ablaze. Through it all, the pianist doesn't seem to reciprocate Sonya's interest, and she sinks back into painful longing, beginning to put her emotions down on paper. The result of this ordeal will be "Song Without Words", which will remain buried in a Moscow archive and only come to light in 2010. It arrived in Italy in 2017 thanks to La Tartaruga.

The narrative of "Song Without Words" seems to unfold propelled by a musical movement, now gentle, now impetuous, that of the compositions by Felix Mendelssohn that Taneyev used to perform in the Tolstoy household, and which the novel's charismatic protagonist, Ivan Ilyich, plays for the young Sasha. She suffers from acute depression following the loss of her mother, and the attentions of her husband, a mild, good-natured man whose only interest is botany, do nothing to help. When Ivan Ilyich moves near Sasha's summer dacha and begins practicing at the piano, the notes finally unlock the woman's heart, bringing her back to life and granting her intense flashes of happiness.

The descriptions of Sasha's rapture as she listens to Ivan's music are passages of rare beauty; one seems to savor with every sense this burst of pure joy that the music stirs in the woman's soul. As had happened to Sonya, Sasha too, amid countless fears and second thoughts, is swept up by a feeling that is not simply musical passion, but a desire to fully embrace both art and the artist. It is at this point that Tolstaya's words become truly enchanting in describing Sasha's inner struggle, as she longs to fully experience the purity of art only to realize that her interest is increasingly settling on the man himself. From here on it will be a slow descent into the depths of the most intense emotion, if not outright madness.

"Song Without Words" is the mirror of the existence of a woman who chose to live with uncommon fervor, indifferent to social rules and impositions. A deeply tormented and in some ways heroic life, one step away from losing her mind, yet intense, truly alive.

Colonna sonora: David Sylvian – “Secrets Of The Beehive” (1987)

It goes without saying that the perfect accompaniment to "Song Without Words" would be the almost identically titled piano work by Felix Mendelssohn, composed between 1829 and 1845. But wanting to move into more modern territory, the choice falls on "Secrets Of The Beehive", the masterpiece by David Sylvian which in some way announces itself as a kind of landing point after two other hugely significant works, "Brilliant Trees" and "Gone To Earth". A landing point because it tries to leave experimentation behind and searches for purity. As if the author wanted to settle something within himself, no longer darting left and right across the sonic spectrum, but instead seeking a luminous point of awareness. In this quest, he chooses to record "Secrets Of The Beehive" largely with acoustic instrumentation, returning to essentials and offering a range of songs that, beneath their rarefied surface, conceal a burning, restless heart—exactly like the pages of Sofia Tolstaya's novel.

The opening "September" settles into an atmosphere of autumnal (or late-summer) suspension; those piano chimes are the same ones you might imagine when Ivan Ilyich plays more quietly, shooting burning arrows into Sasha's soul. Or "Maria", which draws on the work of another great Russian artist, Andrei Tarkovsky's "The Sacrifice". Listening to it, one seems to glimpse Sasha's dimly lit house, with the protagonist alone, losing herself among the rooms and consumed by her own torments. "The Boy With The Gun" is the restless stirring of the senses that finds no peace, seeking moments of purity ("Orpheus", "Mother And Child") only to have them overwhelmed by desire ("When Poets Dreamed Of Angels").

In the end, what Sasha longs for is the balance between the elevation of art and the rapture of sensuality, a balance that Sylvian hopes for in "Let The Happiness In", with the narrator's earthly torments desperately searching for glimmers of harmony.

Sofia Tolstaya and David Sylvian: tormented souls understand each other.

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