Minkowski, Eugne. Retentir (Lauditif). Trans. Deborah Bouchette, 2014. Vers une cosmologie: Fragments philosophiques.

Paris: ditions Payot & Rivages, 1999.

9. TO REVERBERATE (The Auditory) If, after having fixed before the minds eye the primitive form, we ask ourselves the question of knowing how this form comes into being and fills itself with life, we discover a new category dynamic and vital, a new property of the universe: to reverberate. It is as if a spring found itself inside a closed vessel and its waves, in echoing always anew against the walls of the vessel, filled it with their resonance; or again, it is as if the sound of a hunting horn, sent to all parts by its echo, was making to shudder, in a common movement, the slightest leaf, the slightest wisp of moss, and was transforming all the forest, and filling it up to its edges, into a world sonorous and breathing. The scientist will not fail to object that these are commonplace events relevant to acoustics. For us, however, they are only images, borrowed it is true from the auditory sphere, but destined before all to illustrate, to highlight an essential phenomenon of life, that of reverberation. Without doubt, the word reverberate can be limited by the acoustic events that it sets, among others, to designate, but this would be the intentional mutilating of it because, in reality, there is a much larger meaning. To restore it is the point of this study. Moreover, as of now we discern, behind the elements of sensory nature that compose our images, the actual significance of the phenomenon of reverberation, which, far from depending on those elements, connect them, on the contrary, into a living whole. What is secondary in these images, or, in other words, that which makes these images only images for us, are the resonant spring, the hunting horn, the closed vessel, the echo, the reflection of the sonorous waves against the inner walls, in a word all that appears to the material and palpable world. Let us suppose that these elements come to be missing. Then really will nothing living remain in front of us? For my part, I believe that it is there that we would see the world come to life and fill itself, apart from any instrument, apart from any physical property, with penetrating and deep waves which, in order not to be sonorous in the sensorial sense of the word, will not be any less harmonious, echoic, melodic, susceptible to determine all the tonality of life. And this life itself will reverberate, to the depth of its being, through contact with these waves, sonorous and silent at the same time, will permeate within, will vibrate in unison with them, will live through their life, intermingling with them all the while. This will be the very essence of the phenomenon to reverberate. It is necessary for us to try now to highlight this phenomenon even more. More than once, just as easily in regard to the images which we have used as independently of them, we have been lead to say that the world filled itself with sounds, with resonance, with waves sonorous but silent. It is this filling that will serve as the main theme. We know how a liquid can fill a vessel. Filling here has a quantitative character. To fill a vessel with water, we must travel through all the intermediate stages; we can very well fill the vessel halfway or three quarters; furthermore the vessel will be large enough, furthermore we will need water; and if inadvertently we pour in too much, the overflow will run over and spill itself on the ground. In a more abstract realm, we can ask if the material fills the space entirely, but there too it will be a matter, as it is hardly difficult to realize, of a relationship developed on the design and the contents of the container and having, like in the preceding cases, a static character, a character in which nothing will be changed if we attribute to the matter the property of moving, in one form or in another, in space. We say also sometimes that we are full of remorse or of anger. We mean that the remorse is so bitter or the anger so violent that it occupies our entire being and determines entirely, for the time being, our behavior and our reactions; we only have remorse or anger. But

Minkowski, Eugne. Retentir (Lauditif). Trans. Deborah Bouchette, 2014. Vers une cosmologie: Fragments philosophiques. Paris: ditions Payot & Rivages, 1999.

there again, without us lingering in the sense that might have the intensity there where it is a question of psychological facts, we are not pained to notice that the expressions employed aim at the maximum degree that can be reached of the anger or of the remorse. We allow therefore tacitlyand that is consistent with our experiencethat the anger or the remorse can, in other circumstances, be less violent; we only say therefore that we absorb it, that it invades us, that it fills us entirely. And when the anger becomes overly violent, it will overflow and will put us outside ourselves. But let us return to our images. Here to fill and fullness will have a whole other sense. This is not a material object that comes to fill another, in marrying the form that the latter imposes on it. No, this is the dynamism of the sonorous life itself, which, in uniting and appropriating for itself all that it finds in its path, fills, in making it reverberate, in breathing into it its own life, the portion of space, or better, the portion of the world that it assigns to itself by its movement. The word portion furthermore must not be taken in a geometric sense. It is not a question of the possibility of decomposing, really or virtually, the world into sonorous bowls, nor of tracing the limits of the sphere determined by the propagation of waves emanating from a sonorous spring. Basically, in our examples, the closed vessel, the forest, likewise fill themselves with sounds, form like a closed whole in itself, a sort of microcosm, a unique microcosm besides in regard to the idea of the infinite universe, because in itself it represents a cosmos all full, characterized by the reverberation and therefore capable to establish its own life. When we say that the forest fills itself with the sound of the hunting horn, we have not the point of view that the sound emitted by the horn propagates progressively into the forest to be lost then in the distance. The scene can, in other circumstances, be experienced like a phenomenal whole, but this is not that which interests us here. For what is at the forefront, this is neither the propagation of the sound, nor the sound progressively diminishing as it moves away from the sonorous spring, but, on the contrary, the event of the sound, an abstraction made to fit the breath of the horn, in reflecting and in echoing in all parts, filling the forest, by making it quiver and vibrate in unison with it. Thus the plenitude (fullness) has here a pure qualitative character. It would not be a question of filling more or less, nor of traversing the intermediate stages, nor of overflowing. There does not exist any direct relationship between the fullness and the intensity of sound. One murmur hardly perceptible can fill the silence of the night whereas one shrill tone will tear, like in following a broken line, the space, will pierce it without stopping there not even for an instant. There are only two alternatives where the phenomenon occurs or it does not; but where it occurs, it does then and there with the characteristic of fullness, fullness that is inherent to it and that, in giving by itself its own measure and incapable therefore of modifications of intensity, determines one of its essential traits. That makes us sense that this fullness, inherent as we come to speak of it in the sonorous world, perhaps is living without sonority in the sensory sense of the word. That is what we conveyed earlier in speaking, of a paradoxical manner at first glance, of horns sonorous and silent at the same time. The fullness of which we come to speak makes us think of a phenomenon described earlier, that of lived synchronicity (1). We were designating it in this manner because, at the moment, it was a question of revealing its temporal character. But again in that case we are interested in its general nature and have insisted that the sympathy or the contemplation, phenomena representative of the lived synchronicity or of the normal response to the environment*, were

Minkowski, Eugne. Retentir (Lauditif). Trans. Deborah Bouchette, 2014. Vers une cosmologie: Fragments philosophiques. Paris: ditions Payot & Rivages, 1999.

sufficient in themselves, were giving their own measure, were finding in themselves and their end and their reason for living. Hence, the feeling of purely qualitative fullness of nature, characteristic of these phenomena. This takes us back again to reverberation, which also is one of the pillars on which rest all phenomena relevant to lived synchronicity. We know that when I share the joy or the pain of others, or when I am absorbed in the contemplation of a landscape, the situation is not exhausted by the fact that I sympathize with the grief of another person, nor, in the second case, by the fact that I attentively look at the objects that I have before me; the particular movement that comprises the sympathy and the contemplation overflows profusely and the people and the real objects to which it applies; this movement now fills with its solemn waves just as well the environment of my own self who, together with it, commune, and, in blending well into a whole, form like a closed world which finds in itself its reason to live. This reminds us of what we said in connection to our previous study on the structural significance of psychic phenomena. Lived synchronicity, syntony (the normal response to the world), when we envision not so much its temporal characteristics as the way in which it situates itself in the world, appear to go back to reverberation, like we have highlighted above, to the same extent where the sound of the hunting horn would make the forest to resonate. Without doubt, the tone of the horn misses it; it is in silence that sympathy or contemplation reverberates. But we have already expressed the highest doubts on the subject of the prominent place assigned, among the essential signs of reverberation, to tone in the sensorial sense of the word. These doubts make room now for a certainty: tone is only a secondary sign, only one particular form of reverberation which, itself, constitutes one of the fundamental properties of life. We speak fluently, for the relevant phenomena of sympathy, of harmony, of resonance, of the power to vibrate in unison with the environment or to wear its tune. But why do we borrow, in this domain, from the unique metaphors of a world of sounds? For us, this predilection for acoustic metaphors, far from surprising us, seems completely natural, as is so for the language which created them. These metaphors reveal to us the structural identity between the phenomena of lived synchronicity and the world of sounds, the latter like those resting on a fundamental property of life: reverberation. They cease in this way being metaphors strictly speaking. This reverberation is thereby way more primitive than the opposition between the self and society, such as is the usual conception of psychology. It is common to the two and, where such an opposition is made, it unites them always in the same movement. A melody, a symphony, even a single sound, above all when it is solemn and deep, prolongs in us, penetrates all the way to the core of our being, resonates, really reverberates in us, as does equally a wave of sympathy. It would obviously not be a question of a second melody which, under one form or another, would be a reflection of the first or if it would be played one way at all; in fact, there is only a single melody which, in filling all the environment with its sounds, defines and forms everything on contact in making it reverberate, and in penetrating us at the same time, carrying us both, basing ourselves on everything melodious and resonant.

Minkowski, Eugne. Retentir (Lauditif). Trans. Deborah Bouchette, 2014. Vers une cosmologie: Fragments philosophiques. Paris: ditions Payot & Rivages, 1999.

The classification of the sensations according to their modalities (colors, smells, etc.), the sensory organs and the notions of stimulus and of excitation constitute for psychology and for physiology the basis of the study of perception. Starting with this basis, everyday psychophysiology is interested, among other things, in the difference that separates the senses into two categories, those requiring direct contact between the source of the excitation and the sensory organ, or that allow, on the contrary, a perception of distant objects. This entirely neglects, on the other hand, the question of knowing how the diverse sensory modalities affect not just the sense organs, but the living self. This, however, should not surprise us, because in order to achieve its starting point and in order to pursue the study of the psycho-physiologic conditions of perception, it cannot help but put aside, with the help of successive abstractions, specific elements of the immediate data of consciousness. For phenomenology, however, some elements are far from being exclusively of the subjective of little importance. It will linger there by preference. Thus, to return to the question which has just been posed, it will discover differences of depth, compared to the living self, between the various senses. It seems although this depth comes out of the distinguishing characteristic of the world of sounds, no other method penetrates as directly, as naturally all the way to the core of my being than the experiences born of this world. A painting, a building can give me keen aesthetic pleasure, but when I look at them, my admiration will go towards them. It is only a melody, it is only sound that penetrates as such in depth and really reverberates to my core, as it does outside me. This penetration in depth, this reverberation we bring back anew to the problem of the particular structure on which rests, from the phenomenological point of view, each modality of perception. Of course, in reading a book, we can enter into its content, but, as it is easy to realize, this state of affairs will not be linked of an immediate fashion to the reading, as such, but through the act of reading, based on the phenomenon of sympathy and on the reverberation of its own. We find the same elements in contemplation, just the same it could have visual perceptions for base material. Moreover, as we have already hinted, it may be that there are some tones that do not penetrate in depth, as for example a shrill cry which we said tears through the air. But this difference with the enshrined habitual frameworks does not have to trouble us particularly. These frameworks do not have force of law and must not prevent us from following our investigations in another direction. Psycho-physiology leaves out elementary sensations. We, on the other hand, have spoken of melodies, of symphonies, of solemn and deep tones. But the elementary sensations are products of abstraction, while we always search above all for the immediate in life. There, it is the melody that is essential before the sound, because it is that which allows the auditive world to form, to integrate directly, in spite of the characteristic of exteriority that we attribute, to our spiritual life, to assert, in its specificity, next to life itself. We may besides pursue the characteristics highlighted above as far as the simple sound, because if we do not especially fix attention on the source from which it emanates, we do not trouble to notice that all sound, provided that it has a certain duration, fills space with its sonority, forms around us like a sonorous sphere of its own and which, in penetrating us, includes us at the same time.

Minkowski, Eugne. Retentir (Lauditif). Trans. Deborah Bouchette, 2014. Vers une cosmologie: Fragments philosophiques. Paris: ditions Payot & Rivages, 1999.

We have said with regard to bitterness, in our study on the metaphor, that it would be necessary to discern for each sensory quality, the particular fashion on which it would affect the human soul. In other words, we believe that each sensory sphere has, outside of its biological role, a phenomenological and structural role to fill, in determining an essential element in the general texture of life. We will speak later of the vital significance of our senses. This vital significance, we have tried hard to highlight meanwhile for the world of sounds or, as it would be perhaps preferable to say where it is a question of the senses, for the auditory. We did this by relying on the essential affinity between the auditory and lived synchronism, both emerging from the vital category of reverberation. To be complete, we will try to do the same, later, for the other sensory modalities. In all these cases in the domain that we come to cover, going rapidly through the rest, we see the auditory place itself under the auspices of a more general property and appear to us therefore not as a point of departure, as the indispensable base or as the genetic source of this property, but uniquely as one of the particular forms under which this one expresses itself and is fulfilled in life. This is, to use a common expression, one which demands to be used now with an extreme caution, the concrete form. Next to this form, sonorous, external, material, there exists the nonsonorous or silent form, internal, spiritual, general (but not abstract, this one having nothing abstract in it). These two forms also join together at more than a point, both resting on the same intimate structure, the structure that we have described under the name of reverberation. ______________________________________ From the very beautiful work of M. Edouard Schneider on Eleanora Duse, I cite, by way of illustration, these passages: He had to grasp at the root of any work the sound of a soul, the echo of an interior life (1). The marvel of seeing how much this nostalgia was harmonizing with the sky, with the light, with the atmosphere of Venice! One could say that each movement and each thought of the redhot creature was tuning there according to the inclination of a music of which the harmonies were possessing their sources much in the secret areas of its person than in the soul of the city The Marangona! murmurs la Duse, with a pious tone. Today is the six hundredth anniversary of the birth of Dante. This is a national and religious holiday. The Marangona! The bell that has sounded all the history of Venice! It is in the middle of the bells that we have left our Friend, everyone stirred, everyone resounding including she of the great divine voice and (she the) traveler.
(1) It is I who emphasized in the cited texts the metaphors which appear to me particularly suggestive.