After reading “A Wondrous Oriental Tale of a Naked Saint” I feel that the beautiful language that Wackenroder uses helps to illustrate the quality of music the saint is hearing. We can’t hear the music the Saint is listening to, yet we witness the profound impact it has on him. The music is his escape from the constantly grinding wheel of time. I think the language Wackenroder uses illuminates the effect music can have upon a person. It is a break from the doldrums of everyday life. Music is an art form that can allow the human mind to travel to a different space and experience a new form of expression through sound. Yet, in this story, we do not hear anything; we simply read the experience of the saint in relation to the music and the lyrics he hears. It is not the same thing as actually listening to music with your own ears. I think the power of music isn’t quite embodied in language but can only be experienced by listening to it. Language read on a page has a different impact on the human senses than the impact of music. Although this story can be read out loud and we can experience it through sound, it does not encompass the freeing sensation elicited by music. I think you can argue against this, but from my own experience, reading language and listening to a song have two different effects on me. I feel that music often offers a greater emotional pull.
I didn’t see many fairy tale aspects in this story. The one thing I noticed that appeared fairy tale like was the transformation of the Saint at the end of story. There is that element of magic that is in fairy tales, but I feel like the metamorphoses we observe in fairy tales are often of humans into animals or vice versa. In this story the saint turns into a spirit. I think this connects much more to the literary fairy tales of the Kuntsmarchen. The fact that he turns into a spirit suggests something much more supernatural and mystical and is in line with literary fairy tales’ emphasis on the psychology of the mind. He turns into a free spirit after he has heard the music which transports him into a higher state of being. This point in the story is philosophical and less childlike and pedagogical than the elements in the fairy tales we read from Grimm’s.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree with you that the language of the poem allows us as readers to hear the powerful music that transforms the saint into the spirit. However I am not sure that we need the words in the form of a poem to do this. I can almost hear the music in the descriptions of the beauty of the night - the beauty of creation, prior to the poem. The poem itself seems somewhat superfluous.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you in that the experience of listening to music is much more emotional than reading the poetic language on a piece of paper. It's interesting to think about the fact that as readers we can understand the meaning the music has for the genius, without actually hearing the music ourselves.
ReplyDelete