Zwieback and Madeleine: Creative Recall in Wagner and Proust

Author(s): Marc A. Weiner

Source: MLN, Vol. 95, No. 3, German Issue (Apr., 1980), pp. 679-684
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2906698
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 Zwieback and Madeleine:
Creative Recall in Wagner and Proust

Marc A. Weiner

As [Tristan] half-awakens from a death-

like sleep, the "alte, ernste Weise," the
melancholy tune piped by the shepherd
on his shawm, serves as Tristan's Proust-
ian "petite Madeleine," helping him to
summon his past.'

The reference to Proust in connection with the Wagnerian music drama is

by no means fortuitous. Wagner's influence on the latter half of 19th-
century French literature has long been recognized, and Proust himself on
several occasions wrote perceptively of Wagner's reception by the French.
Indeed, Proust's quotation from Die Meistersinger in his "M6lancolique Vil-
legiature de Mme de Breyves" of 1893, as well as his entire leitmotif tech-
nique, indicates acquaintance with Wagner's work.2
Studies of similarities between Wagner and Proust have been limited to
Wagner's influence on Proust and structural parallels between their works,
rather than the kind of thematic similarity which will be suggested here.3
The central preoccupation in Tristan und Isolde and A la recherche du temps
petdu with memory, layers of thought, repression and a kind of self-
analysis offers parallels between both the respective protagonists and the
genesis of the works themselves. An amusing incident during Wagner's
creation of Tristan may shed some light on certain similarities between both
men's creative processes.
In 1859 Wagner, exiled from Germany for his participation in the 1848
uprisings in Dresden, had set to music the first two acts and part of the third
act of Tristan, with which, as he confessed to Mathilde Wesendonk, he was
progressing slowly, having stopped at the line "Die nie erstirbt / sehnend
nun ruft / urn Sterbens Ruh / sie der fernen 'Arztin zu." On May 9th of

MLN Vol. 95 Pp. 679-684

0026-7910/80/0953-0679 $01.00 ? 1980 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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 680 NOTES

that year Wagner wrote Frau Wesendonk, thanking her for a shipment of
Zwieback. The letter is partially quoted here:

Kind! Kind! Der Zwieback hat geholfen; er hat mich mit einem Ruck uber eine
bose Stelle hinweggebracht, uber der ich seit acht Tagen stockte und nicht weiter
konnte. Gestern gings mit dem Arbeitsversuch jammerlich. Meine Laune war
schrecklich und ich liess sie in einem langen Brief an Liszt aus, in dem ich ihm
ankundigte, es ware nun mit dem Componiren bei mir aus; sie sollten nur in
Karlsruhe auf 'was anderes denken.... Da ich schon vor acht Tagen im
eigentlichen Componiren nicht weiter konnte (und zwar bei dem Uebergang von
"vor Sehnsucht nicht zu sterben" zur kranken Seefahrt), hatte ich's damals liegen
lassen, und hatte dafur zur Ausarbeitung des Anfangs gegriffen, was ich Ihnen
vorspielte. Nun ging's aber heute auch damit nicht mehr weiter, weil es mir ist, als
ob ich das Alles fruher schon einmal viel schoner gemacht hatte, und mich jetzt
nicht mehr darauf besinnen konnte.-
Wie der Zwieback kam, merkte ich nun, was mir gefehlt hatte: mein Zwieback
hier war viel zu sauer, dabei konnte mir nichts vernunftiges einfallen; aber der
suisse, altgewohnte Zwieback, in Milch getaucht, brachte auf einmal alles wieder
in's rechte Geleise. Und so warf ich die Ausarbeitung bei seite, und fuhr im
Componiren wieder fort, bei der Geschichte von der fernen Aerztin. Jetzt bin ic
ganz glucklich: der Uebergang ist uber alle Begriffe gelungen, mit einem ganz
wunderbaren Zusammenklang zweier Thema's. Gott, was der richtige Zwieback
nicht Alles kann!-Zwieback! Zwieback! du bist die richtige Arzenei fdr ver-
stockte Componisten,-aber der rechte muss er sein!-Jetzt habe ich schonen
Vorrath davon; wenn Sie merken, dass er ausgeht, sorgen Sie nurja von Neuem:
ich merke, das ist ein wichtiges Mittel! .. .4

Before examining the relevance of this admittedly tongue-in-cheek

passage to Proust's work, let us note that the Wagner/Wesendonk Brief-
wechsel, integral to an understanding of the genesis of Tristan, was among
the most avidly read documents of Wagnerian literature. Gustav Mahler
praises them, for example, in 1904 in his letters to his wife.3 The Bib-
liotheque Nationale lists its first French version in 1905.i
Proust could have read them, even though he does not mention them
when discussing precursors of his memory episodes. Although in the very
letter in which he mentions Nerval and Chateaubriand he discusses
Wagner in another light, the possibility of his having read or heard discus-
sion of these letters is not to be entirely dismissed, for a significant analogy
presents itself.7
It is interesting to note, for example, that Wagner writes of a
"Zwieback." This is a close equivalent to the "biscotte" which Proust re-
members (in Contre Sainte-Beuve, 1909) after having dipped some "pain
grille' into his tea.8 This episode of the "biscotte," recorded four years
after the translation into French of the Wagner letter, is of course the germ
for the petite madeleine episode, one of the key passages in A la recherche du
temnps perdu.
It is, then, uncertain whether Proust actually read the "Zwieback" letter.
Direct influence of Wagner on Proust, particularly on such a trivial matter

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 M L N 681

as the kind of baking product that triggers memory, is improbable, con-

sidering Proust's frankness in acknowledging his sources. What remains is
an interesting and provocative coincidence in the artists' specific stimuli
which generate creation and the protagonists' predilection for remem-
brance and analysis.
Proust's experience with his toast and cup of tea is more than passingly
similar to Wagner's; both were crucial in the progress of the works in-
volved, as the biographical experiences of the artists correspond to the
thematic material of the artworks. George D. Painter, in discussing the
significance of the experience for Proust, writes:

At that moment he saw it only as a symbol of his present theme, the nature of
artistic creation; for the act of unconscious memory combined both the aspects of
art of which he had written a few days before, the sensation in the depths of the
self of a pure reality, and the discovery of an affinity between two feelings. He did
not yet realize that this was the missing key which he had sought ever since the
beginning ofjean Santeuil in 1895, to the creation of his novel.9

Both artists' recollective experience led to their respective artworks.

Robert Gutman writes of Wagner as "someone who had described compo-
sition as recollection.""' This explains in part Wagner's statement:

Nun ging's aber heute auch damit nicht mehr weiter, weil es mir ist, als ob ich das
Alles frtiher schon einmal viel schoner gemacht hatte, und michjetzt nicht darauf
besinnen konnte.

Recollection was for Wagner, as for Proust, inherent in the act of creation;
creation in their works, then, is never totally novel, but rather integrally
bound with the artist's past. Proust wrote near the end of the Ouverture to
Du c6te de chez Swann:

Grave incertitude, toutes les fois que l'esprit se sent depasse par lui-meme; quand
lui, le chercheur, est tout ensemble le pays obscur oui il doit chercher et oui tout
son bagage ne lui sera de rien. Chercher? pas seulement: cr~er."1

This concept is reflected in the structural and thematic material of both

men's works, for Tristan is at times as recollective and ruminative as the
narrator Marcel. Actually, every Wagnerian music drama deals with re-
membrance of past events. Of course the link between Proust and his
narrator is more direct than that between Wagner and Tristan. Proust
transfers his sensate experience to Marcel. In the course of Tristan's re-
collection in Act III of the opera we do not find him eating Zwieback.
Let us examine the passage in T-istsan on which Wagner began work
following the Zwieback episode. Up to this point of the third act Tristan,
abandoned by Isolde, has awakened out of a deep sleep and scarcely rec-
ognizes his surroundings. He ponders the darkness from which he woke
and the early death of his parents. Wagner had brought Tristan to a cry of
despair and then couldn't proceed further in his work. The reason for this
is perhaps that the opera here takes a dramatic turn. Tristan's general,

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 682 NOTES

empty thoughts will give way to a more concentrated, determined attempt

to recall his past, to delve through layers of memory in order to arrive at an
understanding of his predicament and fate.
Tristan first remembers his journey to Ireland which precedes the be-
ginning of the opera. The leitmotivs up to this point had conveyed general
emotion and feeling; now they represent a specific event buried deep in
Tristan's memory. The journey to Ireland was a flight from the world,
from society and responsibility, to sleep and forgetfulness. Situated before
the beginning of the drama, it depicts the quintessential "Ur-Erlebnis" of
Tristan, this paean to oblivion, whose last lines are a summation of this
theme: "unbewuf3t-hdchste Lust." Isolde, in her first-act narration, sings
of this very journey accompanied by the same leitmotif that will reappear
when Tristan seeks his past. Erich Rappl describes the falling melody thus:

Sie ist im wesentlichen eine von Halbton zu Halbton absinkende, sogenannte

chromatische Tonleiter. Eine solche ist bei Wagner immer Ausdruck fuir ein
Verl6schen des BewuBtseins, ein Hinabsinken ins Todesreich, in den Schlaf, zu
den Muttern.l2

Wagner's leitmotif technique-it is at this point in the third act that a

motif invokes for the first time a specific memory in the audience-aids the
listener as Proust's "leitmotivic" use of familiar psychic experience aids the
reader. The listener is forced to juxtapose Tristan's scene with Isolde's Act
I narration in much the same way as Proust's reader must juxtapose vari-
ous passages dealing with recollection.
Structurally the process of remembrance in Proust is similar to that in
Wagner. In order to re-find the world temporarily lost to the conscious
mind, Proust initiates contact with the past through a two-fold process: the
"memoire involontaire" or immediate, automatic recollection, is followed
by introspection and analysis. One thus touches the past by happenstance
and then actively comes to terms with it.
In the madeleine passage near the beginning of Du c6te de chez Swann
Marcel disregards momentarily his present situation in favor of the imme-
diate memory of his childhood in Combray, brought about by the il-
luminating taste of the madeleine; the link with the past will be important
enough to lead to his scrutiny of every aspect of this partially hidden past,
and will ultimately generate the artwork of which he is a part.
In comparing this passage to that of the opera one notices that both
Tristan and Marcel are reflecting on their earliest childhood, and that
reflection is in both cases stimulated by an associative catalyst. The rhyth-
mically varied, nearly atonal melody (that is, so constructed that it seems to
free itself of familiar points in time and harmonic space) which Tristan
hears upon awakening immediately recalls his having heard it in infancy,
and is associated with his first memory, the loss of his parents ("MuB ich
dich so verstehn, / du alte ernste Weise, . . ." Act III, sc. 1). This melody,
recalling for Tristan a precursory experience and "an affinity between two
feelings" as Painter would say, serves the same purpose, functions in the

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 M L N 683

same way for Tristan as the descending chromatic line of Isolde's narration
does for the audience. Tristan immediately remembers the one experience
and expresses this recollection. Wagner expresses through Isolde the sea
voyage and allows the audience to remember this in Tristan's narration.
Thus Tristan's creative introspection, brought about by memory, which
generates his subsequent actions, is similar to Marcel's meditation on the
importance of remembrance, which in its turn generates his subsequent
resolve to write his novel.
In the opera there are two dissimilar devices which trigger two kinds of
remembrance; the shepherd's tune and the love potion. The love philtre,
which the lovers reflect upon throughout the opera, represents annihila-
tion of present reality; it is a catalyst effecting severe introspection and
expression of one's inmost emotion. It is obvious that the opera's two
devices operate differently. Perceiving the melody has the equivalent
function to taking the tea and Madeleine. The potion, on the other hand,
operates more symbolically; Tristan remembers it at the climax of his
analysis, started by the shepherd's melody. It is a symbol of understanding;
when Tristan remembers it he sees things in perspective. He comprehends
his present situation in relation to his past and is able to deal with his
predicament. Marcel, in Le Temps retrouv&, upon recalling various acts of
memory, perceives his mission to write his novel in terms of his past.
It is not surprising- that these similarities reveal themselves in the
artworks. The themes of remembrance and oblivion and their technical
equivalent of recapitulation correspond to the act of composing, for both
Wagner and Proust used and were stimulated by memory during artistic
creation. On one level we observe Wagner and Proust using memory dur-
ing composition. On another level Tristan and Marcel analyze events
momentarily lost to their consciousness, and finally the device of recapitu-
lation offers the listener/reader a means of experiencing the narrated act
of remembrance. That Tristan and Marcel strive to recall creatively events
buried in their pasts stems in part from Wagner's and Proust's creative
recollection.

Amherst, Massachusetts

NOTES

1 Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: the Man, his Mind, and his Music (New York:
Harcourt, 1968), p. 251.
2 Marcel Proust, "M6lancolique Villegiature de Mme de Breyves," Revue Blanche, 5
(1893), 155-71.
3 For studies of Proust's understanding and use of Wagner see: Andre Coeuroy,
Wagner et l'esprit romantique (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), pp. 310-317; Georges Ma-
tore & Irene Mecz, Musique et structure romanesque dans La Recherche du temps perdu
(Paris: Klincksieck, 1972), pp. 146-160; George D. Painter, Marcel Proust: a
Biography (London: Chatto & Windus, 1965), II, 245; Carlo Persiani, "Proust,
l'Opera et le Ballet," Bulletin de la Societe des Amis de Marcel Proust et des Amis de

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 684 NOTES

Combray, 20 (1970), 994-1009; Georges Pirou6, Proust et la musique du devenir

(Paris: DenoOl, 1960); Albert Sonnenfeld, "Tristan for Pianoforte: Thomas
Mann and Marcel Proust," Southern Review, 5 (1969), 1004-1018; Sybil de Souza,
"L'Importance de la musique pour Proust," Bulletin de la Sociitt des Amis de Marcel
Proust et des Amis de Combray, 19 (1969), 879-888; Robert Vigneron, "Structure de
Swann: Balzac, Wagner et Proust," French Review, 19 (1946), 370-384. A study of
a more technical nature is: Jean Milly, La Phrase de Proust: des phrases de Bergotte
aux phrases de Vinteujl (Paris: Larousse, 1975), pp. 67-73. A good introduction to
the subject of Proust and music is: Michelle Gourmelon, "L'Amateur de
musique," L'Arc, 47 (1971), 88-95. See also: Serge Doubrovsky, La Place de la
Madeleine. Ecriture etfantasme chez Proust (Paris: Mercure de France, 1974); Ruth
Henry, "War Tristan Franzose? Wandlungen und Konstanten des franzosischen
Wagnerverstdndnisses," Bayreuther Festspiele, 1976. Programmheft V, 1- 13 (issue
devoted to Tristan und Isolde); Armand Pierhal, "Sur la composition wagnerienne
de l'oeuvre de Proust," Bibliotheque Universelle et Revue de Geneve, juin 1929,
710-719; "Colloque sur Proust et la musique," Bulletin de la Societe des Amis de
Marcel Proust et des Amis de Combray, 8, 9, 11 (1958, 1959, 1961).
4 Richard Wagner an Mathilde Wesendonk: Tagebuchbldtter und Briefe 1853-1871, in-
trod. Wolfgang Golther, 13th ed. (Berlin: Alexander Duncker, 1904), pp. 133-
134. The passage "sie sollten nur in Karlsruhe auf 'was anderes denken" refers
to Wagner's negotiations with the Karlsruhe Opera. By "Ausarbeitung" Wagner
means work on the short score (particello). The text was complete by this time.
5 See Alma Mahler-Werfel, Erinnerungen an Gustav Mahle?; ed. Donald Mitchell
(Frankfurt/M: Ullstein, 1972), p. 277.
6 Richard Wagner d Mathilde Wesendonk. Journal et lettres, 1853-1871. Traduction
autoris&e de l'allemand par Georges Khnopff. Preface de Henri Lichtenberger
(Berlin: A. Duncker, 1905). It is uncertain whether any of these letters were
published in a French translation prior to this date. I have been unable to find
any periodical pre-publication.
7. Marcel Proust, Letters of Marcel Proust, trans. and ed. Mina Curtiss, introd. Harry
Levin (New York: Random House, 1949), letter #226, p. 383.
8 Marcel Proust, Contre Sainte-Beuve, ed. Pierre Clarac et Yves Sandre (Paris: Gal-
limard, 1971), pp. 211-212.
9 George D. Painter, Marcel Proust: a Biography (London: Chatto & Windus, 1965),
II, 129.
10 Gutman, p. 401.
11 Marcel Proust, Du c6te de chez Swann (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), pp. 55-56.
12 Erich Rappl, Wagneropernftihrer (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1967), p. 128.

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