Dans un monde sonore

by Victor Segalen

Works by the polymathic French author Victor Segalen, including a previously untranslated essay, a novel, and a libretto. Victor Segalen (1878–1919) had one of France's most curious literary careers, applying his imagination to musicology, ethnography, exploration, medicine, synesthetics, Chinese history, and the occult. This collection gathers together his previously untranslated essay “Synesthestics and the Symbolist School” and his novel In A Sound World , a work of fantasy concerning an inventor lost in his own immersive harmonic space. Segalen's medical training (he had a career as a ship's doctor) inspired an interest in the link between the prevailing Symbolism of the time and synesthesia, the condition whereby one sense affects the perception of another. This edition also includes an essay by the musician and cultural historian David Toop that explores the historical context of Segalen's ideas. Also included is Segalen's libretto for Orpheus Rex, a collaboration with the composer Claude Debussy, which he would use as an opportunity for further explorations of his synesthetic concepts. This book makes available all three texts for the first time in English.

Genres: Music

42 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2010

About the author

Victor Segalen was a French naval doctor, ethnographer, archeologist, writer, poet, explorer, art-theorist, linguist and literary critic.

He was born in Brest. He studied naval medicine in Bordeaux. He traveled and lived in Polynesia (1903–1905) and China (1909–1914 and 1917). He died by accident in a forest in Huelgoat, France ('under mysterious circumstances' and reputedly with an open copy of Hamlet by his side).

In 1934, the French state inscribed his name on the walls of the Panthéon because of his sacrifice for his country during World War I.

He gave his name to the Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2 University of medicine, literature and social sciences in Bordeaux under the Academy of Bordeaux where he studied, and to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Brest where he was born.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[ninon · Rating 3 out of 5]

peut etre faut juste etre orphee desfois c est dimanche

[Mads · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting little journey through the associations of sound and the mind. The opening story I found to be quite interesting and similar in a sense to Samuel Beckett's 'Not I' monologue. Something about the pacing and the intensity of thought and flow in it really reminded me of that, though I can't say if the comparison holds any water beyond my own connection. The would-be opera at the center of the book was fascinating. I don't know much about the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice to be honest, so maybe some of it was lost on me because of that, but it felt so booming and all encompassing and while nearly impossible, I think it would have been really interesting if it had ever come to be an actual opera in its time. The final portion, Segalen's musings on or more his call to action for synaesthesia to be taken seriously in the scientific world, was a little dry and rambling but equally as interesting to hear his perspectives as someone writing from a place in time where it was seen as either preposterous at best or degenerative at worst.

I've always enjoyed a more sensory based writing style so this was an interesting read for me

[Vendedor de rápida · Rating 3 out of 5]

Este volumen reúne un relato de Victor Segalen y otros textos sobre Debussy que quizás iluminan ciertos misterios del primero. ‘En un mundo sonoro’ se lee así en clave impresionista y sus reflexiones sinestésicas (auténticas locuras del protagonista) en una misteriosa cámara de resonancias adquieren más sentido.

[Cobertizo · Rating 3 out of 5]

"En la penumbra del día grisáceo había distinguido, a mi izquierda, un arpa inmensa, y otra detrás de mí, ésta disimulada a medias bajo una cortina afelpada. En cuanto a las luces tenues y azulinas que parpadeaban en sus tubos de cristal ... ¡Ah! ¡Ah!... Eran la fuente de mis vocecitas: dos llamas cantarinas, ligeramente disonantes sin duda con el fin de tornasolar con latidos y ondulaciones el sonido resultante. Y nada más que esa parafernalia de acústica elemental"

[Jack Kelley]

The first short story is definitely the star here, and is a really strong distillation of everything that follows in this assortment.

The libretto for Debussy’s Orpheus Rex is good, and a very Segalenian take on the classic tale that does render it fresh. But at the end of the day how fun is it to just be reading a libretto? Especially one that would have been met by compositions by Debussy?

The synesthesia essay is fine. The clam analogy and Hegel invocations are enough to keep me reading but at the end of the day, I’m not that into this collection as sound isn’t really what I want to be reading Segalen for!

I only skimmed Troop’s essay at the end but it seemed a little boring idk