Description:
The most obvious association of music and literature is presumably the setting to music of poems or theatrical texts. Songs and operas are however only one form among others of this intertextual relationship. Literature can also borrow writing procedures from music : this ‘ setting to literature ' of musical patterns, this profound intricateness of the two codes, has been one of the most demanding temptations among some 2tfh century writers (e.g. Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Aldous Huxley, or again André Gide or Thomas Mann). Carson MacCullers is in this respect exemplary : a concert pianist before becoming a writer, her use of musical procedures is deliberate and her models clearly identified in her novels and short stories ; to such an extent that some of her works remain strictly abstruse for non-musical readers. The short story we have chosen to analyse («Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland ») belongs to the lot. After stating the thematic omnipresence of music, we will attempt an analysis of structural patterns directly borrowed from the contrapuntal conventions of the fugue in order to demonstrate that the story ’s significance is entirely based upon its musical architecture.