Towards a Poetics of Criticism: Adornoian Negativity and the Experiential in the Essays and Musical Marginalia of Virginia Woolf
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Parker Dixon, Amy (2011) Towards a poetics of criticism: Adornoian negativity and the experiential in the essays and musical marginalia of Virginia Woolf. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2338/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] Towards a Poetics of Criticism: Adornoian Negativity and the Experiential in the Essays and Musical Marginalia of Virginia Woolf Amy Parker Dixon BA (Hons), MMus Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Literature and Department of Music Faculty of Arts University of Glasgow June 2010 © Amy Parker Dixon, June 2010 2 Abstract Through an analysis of the work of Virginia Woolf and T.W. Adorno’s theory of the aesthetic, this dissertation seeks to develop a poetics of criticism that takes account of the philosophy of the non-identical in subjective experience. As the subversion of the positivist and subjectivist tendencies of identity thinking, Adorno’s negative dialectic is read here in parallel with Woolf’s work as an example of a discourse that preserves the particularity of experience. Much of Woolf’s writing about music is in the form of diary entries, letters and notes or jottings and is singularly unfinished. Her writing about music pushes her to the extremes of essayistic practice where she is forced to improvise and invent a musical-critical voice. This dissertation argues that subjectivity and aesthetic experience are constructed negatively in Woolf’s diaries, letters and essays and by reading her tendency to resist describing musical experiences as a resistance to the domination of conceptual subsumption, I hope to show that Woolf’s writing could offer a new perspective on criticism. The present work attempts to develop a three-fold thesis, the presentation of which will constitute a poetics of criticism. Firstly, Woolf’s attempts to write a critical selfhood actually serve as a critique of transcendental subjectivity and undermine the ideology of a priori subjectivity. Secondly, Woolf’s essays complement work done by Adorno on genre theory which asserts that contradiction remains essential to the critical essay, contradiction which secures the identity of negative dialectics and a contradiction that can simultaneously be read as fundamental to the architectonics of a modernist subjectivity. Woolf’s essays, therefore, will be read for their potential status as a means of critique. And thirdly, the technique of parataxis as a form of writing that Adorno thought best expressed the inaccessibility of objectivity will be shown to be decisive in analyzing Woolf’s fragments. What I hope to assemble, therefore, is a constellation of ideas that map several points of connection between Adorno and Woolf. By effecting a salvaging of Woolf’s musical marginalia this thesis argues that ostensibly ill-informed or naïve testimony can be given legitimacy within contemporary music criticism. In addition, this thesis presents all the references to music found in Woolf’s diaries and letters, and, as such, the appendices found at the back of the dissertation constitute not only the first attempt to bring this material together, but are also presented in such a way so as to reinforce the paratactical nature of Woolf’s writing about music. That is to say, structurally, the appendices appear as they appear in Woolf’s original texts, and this thesis has, self-consciously, tried to resist the conceptual over- determination of these fragments. This structural consideration implies that this dissertation fulfils a performative, as well an analytical function. 3 Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 5 Abbreviations 7 Introduction 8 Literary Resources 11 Bloomsbury and Musical London 17 Chapter 1 -Philosophical and Methodological Considerations 22 The Dialectic 22 Expertise and Enigmaticalness 27 Essayism 31 Chapter 2 - The Case for a Woolfian Renewal of Music Criticism 48 Judgement 49 Brief History of Music Criticism 51 Issues in Contemporary Criticism 61 The Problem of Mastery 64 The Renewal of Criticism 67 Chapter 3 - ‘Innumerable Threads’: Writing Unreconciled Subjectivity 71 ‘The Common Reader’ 74 ‘Street Haunting: A London Adventure’ 78 ‘Sketch of the Past’ and ‘Evening Over Sussex: Reflections in a Motor Car’ 80 ‘Tympan’ and an extract from The Waves 84 Chapter 4 - Narcotic Pleasure: The Essay as Form 89 Woolf’s ‘The Modern Essay’ and Adorno’s ‘The Essay as Form’ 91 ‘Street Music’ 100 ‘Impressions at Bayreuth’ 106 ‘The Opera’ 110 Chapter 5 – Aspectual Non-Identity: Rhythm and Satire in Woolf’s Urban Musical Observations 114 Rhythm 119 ‘Victorian Values,’ music, and Bildung 129 Humour in Woolf’s musical writings 134 4 Chapter 6- Sovereignty and Autonomy in Aesthetic Experience 140 Aesthetic Negativity 145 Processuality 149 Conclusion 157 Towards a Poetics of Criticism 166 Appendices 169 Bibliography 232 5 Acknowledgements I would sincerely like to thank my two supervisors – Professor John Butt and Dr Jane Goldman. Professor Butt has shown great patience with my work and has remained consistently enthusiastic about this particular subject area. My conversations with Dr Goldman have proved vital to me over the last few years; her knowledge and passion for Woolf studies has been inspirational, especially at times when this work could have easily faltered. My thanks go also to the Music Department and Arts Faculty at the University of Glasgow, and to the AHRC for funding this project. To my fellow researchers, thanks also, for providing a context in which this work could happen. A great debt of thanks must go to my external examiners, Dr Bryony Randall, Dr Sanja Bahun and Dr Anthony Gritten, who have given me a renewed sense of possibility with respect to both the value of, and the challenges facing, interdisciplinary research. I must thank my parents. Without them, unquestionably, this dissertation would not have been completed. Their tireless support and generosity, not to mention their unwavering commitment to their grandchildren, has been of enormous help. My deepest thanks of all go to Martin. Without him, there would seem little reason to ‘throw our bottles into the sea’. And finally, of course, our two children, Theia and Jude John Robert, who have often provided welcome relief from the task at hand and who are a constant source of entertainment and inspiration. 6 Author’s declaration I declare that this thesis is entirely my own work, and that all quotations from other people’s research are clearly marked as such and fully referenced. I also declare that I have never submitted any of this work to this or any other institution in fulfilment of any academic qualifications. 7 Abbreviations Works by Virginia Woolf BP Books and Portraits CR1 The Common Reader CR2 The Common Reader: Second Series CE Collected Essays D The Diary of Virginia Woolf E The Essays of Virginia Woolf GR Granite and Rainbow L The Letters of Virginia Woolf MoB Moments of Being RO A Room of One’s Own SE Selected Essays W The Waves Works by T.W. Adorno AT Aesthetic Theory MM Minima Moralia ND Negative Dialectics NL Notes to Literature Editorial note My own editorial ellipses are in square brackets. All other ellipses are the author’s own . 8 Introduction We went to Salome (Strauss, as you may know) last night. I was much excited, and believe that it is a new discovery. He gets great emotion into his music, without any beauty. However, Saxon thought we were encroaching upon Wagner, and we had a long and rather acid discussion. He has an amazing knowledge of detail – I can’t think why he doesn’t say something more interesting…I must start for the opera. (Virginia Woolf, letter to Vanessa Bell from Tuesday 24 August, 1909 1) Woolf’s veiled attack on Saxon Sydney-Turner’s urbane musical literacy reveals a question about the nature of musical criticism that precipitates much of the work done in this dissertation. Her accusation that ‘knowledge of detail’ does not necessarily yield something ‘interesting’ exposes more about the complexity of the relationship between aesthetic experience and criticism than this seemingly incidental remark would have us believe. But therein lies its importance. Woolf’s distracted afterthoughts about the limitations of technical interpretation touch on a potentially philosophically rich terrain, and yet, she resists developing it. This dissertation will continually evoke Woolf’s critical exemplarity via her own eschewal of intellectual mastery of the domain of music. Her writings about music are framed by an anxiety arising from the practical impossibility of sound judgement around music. She writes to Ethel Smyth in 1932, ‘My taste is very limited. I can’t judge music any more than someone else can judge articles in the T.L.S.’ (L4: 135) It is with this in mind, then, that my approach to Woolf focuses on a less well defined area of her work and of Woolf scholarship in general, namely, her music criticism. Even at this early stage, it might be a little misleading to speak in “concrete terms” of Virginia Woolf's music criticism as a bona fide subgenre of her oeuvre. Such a category might imply that a well-defined body of work of music criticism already exists, waiting to be examined.