ANGEL AK I

journal of the theoretical humanities

volume 11 number 2 august 2006

ot until the composition of one of his last

books, The Poetics of Reverie, published
in 1960, does Bachelard define his particular
philosophical perspective: as a differential
ontology (The Poetics of Reverie 167).
Though the outline of such a differential
ontology can be traced back through his earlier
works, it is characteristic of Bachelards thinking
to specify such an ontology only in retrospect.
Indeed, in an article first published in 1952,
Bachelard writes that philosophical thought
would be that through which everything
recommences and everything is amazed . . ..
Philosophic thought is one continuous, deeply
muted hesitation . . . even while advancing, it
doubles back on itself (The Right to Dream
180). And so it is in returning to one of
Bachelards early works, The Dialectic of
Duration (published in 1936), that we are able
to reassess that is to say, perhaps assess for the
first time his differential ontology.
As the title indicates, The Dialectic of
Duration takes as its initial task a critique of
Bergsonian duration. In response, then, to
Bergsons philosophy of fullness does
Bachelard posit the opposition of unfolding
instants (perceived time) against intervals (constituted time). Bachelard writes, Of Bergsonism
we accept everything but continuity, choosing
instead to distinguish between the time we
refuse and the time we use, between on the one
hand time which is ineffective, scattered in a
cloud of disparate instants and on the other, time
which is cohered, organized, and consolidated
into duration (The Dialectic of Duration 28,
91). So, it is not the sensation of duration itself
that Bachelard rejects (and in this sense
Bachelard does not exaggerate when he asserts
that of Bergsonism we accept everything but
continuity), but rather the notion that such

jessica wiskus

THOUGHT TIME AND

MUSICAL TIME
thinking bachelard
through messiaen
duration can be intuited directly. For Bachelard,
a homogeneous flow cannot describe sufficiently the framework of atomization that quantum physics reveals: in taking account of the
atomic level, he develops not a philosophy of
fullness but a philosophy of difference, of change.
Bachelard, at the outset of The Dialectic of
Duration, declares his intention to develop a
discontinuous Bergsonism so that he might
demonstrate the correspondence [that] the
phenomena of thought exhibit between themselves and the quantum characteristics of reality
(The Dialectic of Duration 29). These quantum
characteristics of reality whereby the appearance of continuity or discontinuity shifts according to point of view propel Bachelard to suggest
that the task of thinking be pursued within a

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN1469-2899 online/06/020179^11 2006 Taylor & Francis and the Editors of Angelaki
DOI: 10.1080/09697250601029366

179

thought time and musical time

polytemporal framework, a plurality of durations (The Dialectic of Duration 47). Rather
than flowing along a linear, two-dimensional
plane from now-point to now-point,
Bachelards moments of the now move also
through vertically ordered layers; yet, for
Bachelard, each layer reveals its own characteristic lacunae, and only by removing intention
from one level plane of time by means of vertical
reorientation can a vision of continuity of any one
layer be achieved. Continuity, Bachelard
writes, is not given but made (The Dialectic
of Duration 19; original italics). Thus, for
Bachelard, Bergsonian duration consists of perception at a higher level within this hierarchical
sequence, from which vantage point the discontinuities or lacunae of perceived time have been
constituted into an appearance of continuity.
However, it is important that we do not
relegate The Dialectic of Duration solely to the
realm of Bergsonian criticism. By reassessing
an already-instituted philosophical framework
does Bachelard find the means for instituting
his own framework. And so The Dialectic of
Duration moves far beyond a simple critique of
Bergsonism; increasingly, Bachelards unique
philosophical expression becomes clear.
In addition to drawing a conception of layered
temporality, Bachelard proposes a means by which
the philosopher might attempt to move along these
layers, in a kind of lateral or vertical movement
of the mind. This movement is achieved through
an increasing formalization of thought of
thinking about thought. Bachelard writes:
The temporal axis that lies perpendicular to
transitive time, to the time of the world and of
matter, is an axis along which the self can
develop a formal activity. It can be explored if
we free ourselves from the matter that makes
up the self and from the selfs historical
experience, in order to consolidate and sustain
aspects of the self which are progressively
more formal, and which are indeed the truly
philosophical experiences of that self.
(The Dialectic of Duration 108)

Bachelard suggests that this formal activity be

developed by means of a thinking emptied of
content and concerned rather with its own

thinking. Thus, he plays with Descartess

famous formula, writing: I think that I think,
therefore I am. Bachelard asserts:
We can see even now that existence as it is
averred by the cogito cogitem will be much
more formal than existence as it is implied by
thought alone . . .. If, continuing a little further,
we reach the I think that I think that I think,
which will be denoted by (cogito),3 then
separate, consecutive existences will appear in
all of their formalizing power. We have now
embarked upon a noumenological description
which, with a little practice, will be shown to be
exactly summable in the present instant and
which, by virtue of these formal coincidences,
offers us the very first adumbration of vertical
time. (The Dialectic of Duration 10809)

What Bachelard describes as vertical time could

be conceived as a depth of the present moment,
and, as Bachelard writes, here, thought would
rest upon itself alone . . .. This tautology is a
guarantee of instantaneity (The Dialectic of
Duration 110). And to this achievement of
(cogito),3 Bachelard assigns a distinctive value.
There is a kind of vertical relativity that gives
pluralism to mental coincidences and that is
different from the physical relativity which
develops at the level where there is the passage
of things . . .. This line running perpendicular
to the temporal axis of life alone in fact gives
consciousness of the present the means to flee
and escape, to expand and deepen which have
very often led to the present instant being
likened to an eternity. (The Dialectic of
Duration 105)

In other words, for Bachelard, there is an art to

thinking, achieved through increasingly formalized thought that brings one to this experience of
the eternity of the present instant in the realm of
what Bachelard calls thought time, where we no
longer determine our own being by referring to
things or even to thoughts, but rather by
reference to the form of a thought (The
Dialectic of Duration 111). He concludes: The
life of the mind will become pure aesthetics
(The Dialectic of Duration 111).
At first glance, this realm of thought time
seems to separate itself from the thinker and

180

wiskus
inhabit a neo-Platonic realm of pure ideas. But
one should not so easily be seduced into believing
that for Bachelard, the realm of thought time is
the highest realm of thought; indeed, Bachelard
does not posit (cogito)3 as the first, that is to say,
the initial, idea from which all other perception
can be deduced. The process that he describes is,
in fact, quite the opposite: (cogito)3 is achieved
only through I think and I think that I think.
And in this sense, (cogito)3 does not serve as a
primary cause of linear effects. A reference to
Bachelards assessment of causality in microphysics provides a useful analogy. He writes:
Statistically, the different states of a single
atom in duration and a group of atoms taken
at a particular instant are exactly the same. If
we reflect on this principle, we ought to be
persuaded that in microphysics, antecedent
duration does not propel the present and
that the past does not weigh upon the future.
(The Dialectic of Duration 76)

In reference to microphysics, then, Bachelard

speaks of a causality that moves not from past to
future, but a causality that is, as he says, formal,
a causality that rests upon itself, summable in the
present instant: instantaneity (The Dialectic of
Duration 109). Likewise, thought time is better
compared to a fold than to a line. In other words,
(cogito)3 represents the folding of cogito upon
cogito but not a thinking above thought,
rather, a thinking folded through itself, as an
additional dimension.1 And it is this fold this
dimension that will help us to understand that
the life of the mind as pure aesthetics is
aesthetics founded not upon the principle of
representation or derivation but upon the principle of imaginative differentiation. For it will be
shown that Bachelards differential ontology
an anti-Platonist ontology is indeed commensurate with poetry, and also with music.
*

* *

Let us therefore turn first to the words of a poet.

I want to be a poet, writes Rimbaud in the
famous Letter of the Seer
and Im working to turn myself into a seer:
you wont understand at all, and its unlikely

181

that Ill be able to explain it to you. It has to

do with making your way towards the
unknown by a derangement of all the senses.
The suffering is tremendous, but one must
bear up against it, to be born a poet, and I
know thats what I am.2

Rimbaud conceives of the poet as seer. But

what does the poet see? Bachelard writes that the
poetic
image owes neither its principle nor its power
to what is visually given. To justify the poets
conviction and the images frequency and
naturalness, we must interrogate with it
those constituents that we do not see, and
whose nature is not visual. (Water and
Dreams 163)

The poet as seer looks toward the invisible, the

non-visual, or, as Rimbaud writes, toward the
unknown. Precisely this unknown is time. Let
us recall, as Bachelard in fact suggests, the
etymological sense of the word poetic (The
Poetics of Reverie 152) as
o& and revisit
the role of the poet in ancient times, because for
the early Greeks, the poet was associated with the
soothsayer with respect to the complementary
roles of looking toward the invisible: the poet
looks toward the past, and the soothsayer looks
toward the future.3 But for Rimbaud and
Bachelard, both poet and soothsayer become
one, as the seer. Both the past and the future are
called forth through the reveries of the imagination. For the poet-seer, Isnt dreaming upon an
origin going beyond it? Bachelard writes (The
Poetics of Reverie 110). That is to say, to imagine
an origin the past is to go beyond it, to
envision a possible past, a future-past. Bachelard
continues, One poet tells us the past must be
invented . . .. And when the poet invents those
great images which reveal the intimacy of the
world, isnt he remembering? (The Poetics of
Reverie 110). That is to say, the poet is
remembering even when inventing a possibility, a future. At the same time, the activity of the
imagination even when directed to the past in
looking toward a possibility (the possible past),
necessarily engages the future, for, as Bachelard
writes, If we cannot imagine, we cannot foresee
(The Poetics of Space xxxv). Through the

thought time and musical time

productivity of the imagination, then through
the twofold role of the poet-seer in recovering the
unknown, as Rimbaud says possibility and
recollection are intertwined. In looking toward
the past, the poet posits a possible past: a futurepast; the poet posits a past that might exist only
through the imagination. For Bachelard, poetic
recollection (literally as
o&) possesses an
essentially creative character; we have to
compose our past (just as, for Bachelard, we
must compose duration) (The Dialectic of
Duration 64). And he writes that, thanks to the
poet, One feels that a past of what could have
been is united with a past of what was . . . thus the
images of the poets reverie dig life deeper,
enlarge the depths of life (The Poetics of
Reverie 155). Or, as one could say, the poets
reverie enlarges the depths of time: vertical
time.
Such a creative past, the future-past of the
poet-seer, does not belong to the experience of the
poet; it belongs to the expression of the poet,
which is to say that it does not belong to the
individual of the poet at all. Because the poet
binds the real with the imaginary, poetic
recollection introduce[s] us to a being preconditional to our being, a whole perspective on the
antecedence of being, in other words, to a world
somehow before the experience of the poet: the
world of expression (The Poetics of Reverie 108).
This antecedence of being not a memory of
history but a memory of the cosmos as the
invisible vision of the poet-seer, discloses the
realm of the non-I (The Dialectic of Duration
119). Rimbaud tells us, I is someone else. The
creative past is an anonymous past, writes
Bachelard, a pure threshold of life, original life,
original human life (Poetics of Reverie 125). It
gives us the world of worlds it is a cosmic
reverie. It is an opening to a beautiful world, to
beautiful worlds. It gives the I a non-I which
belongs to the I: my non-I (The Poetics of
Reverie 13).
It is the rhythm of this non-I belonging to the
I that generates artistic expression, for, as
Rimbaud says, to be born a poet is not his
fault (ibid.). And he continues, Its wrong to
say I think: one should say I am thought. Forgive
the pun. I is someone else. Tough luck to the

wood that becomes a violin . . .. (ibid.). Thus,

the expressive activity of the poet-seer arises not
by means of possession of an experience, but
through an essential opening. For Bachelard, the
artist permits the antecedence of being to come
to expression, which can then be said to belong to
the poet only by virtue of such permission
(The Dialectic of Duration 37). The painter Max
Ernst confirms Rimbauds insight, writing that
just as, ever since the celebrated Letter of the
Seer, the poets role consists in writing under the
dictation of what thinks itself, what articulates
itself in him, the painters role is to circumscribe
and to project forth what sees itself within him.4
Expression, then, speaks through the artist; in the
process of artistic creation, there develops a kind
of reciprocal influence between the artist and
the work of art, as conducted through the fold
of the imagination the imagination as that
creative capacity which makes the dream real and
the real dream. Bachelard refers to the
writer Henri Bosco for an illustration of this
process and its effects. Bosco writes, in The
Antiquary:
What I was living, I thought I was dreaming
and what I was dreaming, I thought I
was living . . .. Very often, those two worlds
(of the real and the dream) interpenetrated and, without my knowing it,
created a third equivocal world for me
between reality and dream. (Poetics of
Reverie 16061)

This third equivocal world of Bosco represents

the very fold of the human imagination, and it is
this fold upon which Bachelard relies when he
attempts to overcome the subjectobject problematic (though, to be sure, his terminology
remains, as it were, problematic). Bachelard
writes that the shortest route of all is between
the imagining subject and the imagined image
because the imagining consciousness holds its
object (such images as it imagines) in an absolute
immediacy (The Poetics of Reverie 151, 153).
That is to say, the imagined image is, for
Bachelard, my non-I: the dream, the future
possibility that crosses the threshold to presence
through the fold of the imagination, becoming a
past that never existed. As Bachelard writes,

182

wiskus
The man of reverie and the world of his reverie
are as close as possible; they are touching; they
interpenetrate (The Poetics of Reverie 158). By
means of this interpenetration, the imagination
increases the intensity the amplitude of every
encounter. So it is that Bosco remarks:
When everything was back in order, I would
get no other indication of it [the third
equivocal world] than a sudden and extraordinary faculty for loving noises, voices,
fragrances, movements, colors and forms,
which all of a sudden became perceptible in
another way and yet with a familiar presence
which delighted me. (The Poetics of Reverie
16061)

Boscos writing thus demonstrates the imaginations capacity for generating the novelty of
the familiar in life, where the bonds between the
world and the human soul are strong (The
Poetics of Reverie 119).
The interpenetration of the dreamer and the
dream carried through to the artist and the
work of art, as well as the poet and the past
distinguishes Bachelards notion of the process of
artistic expression from that of Platonist imitation. That is to say, the goal of artistic
production, according to Platonism, is to imitate
an ideal; the work of art must strive to evoke an
immutable model by means of resemblance. In a
similar sense, the goal of recollection for Plato
can be described as oriented toward an unchanging, pre-instituted past. But poetic recollection
precisely is not a simple reproduction or copy of
the past; the poet the dreamer does not
attempt to imitate an ideal. The mutual commerce between the poet and his past ensures, in
fact, something of the reverse: the model is
instituted through the poet. Bachelard writes,
The being of the dreamer of reverie is
constituted by the images he conjures up . . ..
Reverie assembles being around its dreamer
(The Poetics of Reverie 152). Thus, the antecedence of being which reveals itself through
poetic recollection cannot be regarded as a
Platonist ideal. It is not a stable past of the
always already there. On the contrary, as
Bachelard writes, expression creates being
(The Poetics of Space xxiii). Bachelard further

183

clarifies this anti-Platonism, writing that the

poetic image is essentially variational, and not, as
in the case of the concept, constitutive (The
Poetics of Space xix). Thus, poetic expression is
not constituted by means of a one-way, linear
derivation from an absolute past to an individual
image; poetic expression develops its own past
that is to say, its own model through the
variations (the reciprocal influence between the
past and the possible) worked by the human
imagination. The antecedence of being does not
assume the role of an absolute cause that might
set into motion artistic expression as an effect.
The antecedence of being is given through it is
in fact an effect of the variations of expression.
It is in this sense that, as quoted above, the poet
tells us the past must be invented (The Poetics
of Reverie 110). Indeed, Henri Bosco reflects in
wonder, From an imaginary memory, I retained
a whole childhood which I did not yet know to be
mine and yet which I did recognize (The Poetics
of Reverie 12223). For the artist, then, this
imagined memory functions as, in Bachelards
words, my non-I. Through creative memory,
the poet possesses a past that never existed, yet
which is recognizable as ones own a past that
becomes a model instituted only through the
expression of the poet.
Due to the retroactive capacity of the poets
imaginative impulse, a possible past becomes
folded within the cumulative layers of memory.
Bachelard writes:
Reverie toward our past then . . . seems to
bring back to life lives which have never taken
place, loves which have been imagined . . .. In
reverie we re-enter into contact with possibilities which destiny has not been able to make
use of. A great paradox is connected with our
reveries toward childhood: in us, this dead
past has a future, the future of its living
images, the reverie future which opens before
any rediscovered image. (The Poetics of
Reverie 112)

Through imagination, then, temporality does not

unroll along a linear track from now-point to
now-point, as we have seen. Nor does it sustain
the immediate, deep continuity of Bergsonian
duration because, as such, duration would harbor

thought time and musical time

no need for poetic imagining of the possible; the
possible would already be given (The Dialectic of
Duration 28). Rather, temporality exhibits a kind
of movement of reciprocity or oscillation: a
reverberation commenced through the interpenetration of past and future a past instituted
through the future as much as a future instituted
through the past. Particularly, the past, in this
sense, is contingent; it must be called forth
renewed. It emerges through the curious folding
of temporality. We must think of the past not as
cause leading to effect; the past is better thought
as a cause instituted only through retroaction: as
an effect of an effect. Thus, we recognize the
poetic recollection not by looking back, but by
looking in simultaneity.
This cause as an effect of an effect, like
Bachelards formula for the construction of
duration (I think that I think that I think),
exhibits an increased formalization. But in
this case, it is not formalized thought that
generates the cause as an effect of an effect;
it is formalized reverie. Bachelard writes,
Imagination is at work in the summit of our
minds, like a flame, and it is to the region of the
metaphor of metaphor . . . that we should go in
our search (Psychoanalysis of Fire 110).
Thought, through its increased formalization,
gives to us the first adumbrations of vertical
time; but the imagination, through the poet as
seer, gives us what Bachelard describes as the
depth of time [that] is concrete, concretely
temporal (The Poetics of Reverie 114). The
imagination of the poet acts, as Paul Valery
writes, like a preparatory world where everything clashes with everything, and in which
chance temporizes, takes its bearings, and finally
crystallizes itself on some model. A work can only
emerge from a sphere so reflective and so rich in
resonances in a way that it falls headlong into
time.5 And this depth of time, according to
Bachelard, is vertical time: constructed duration.
Constructed in this case must be emphasized, for Bachelard consistently makes exactly
this distinction between his vertical time and
Bergsons duration. The simultaneity of vertical
time employs a reversibility that is not truly
circular. The retroactive capacity of the poetic
imagination results in the very lacunae upon

which Bachelard insists as being inherent within

temporality. The notion of creative memory itself
ensures that a re-encounter with the poetic past
can never be conceived as a retrieval of the same.
The formalizing activity of the imagination sets
into motion multiple transformations that institute change. Bachelard writes:
Imagination is always considered to be the
faculty of forming images. But it is rather the
faculty of deforming the images offered by
perception, of freeing ourselves from the
immediate images; it is especially the
faculty of changing images. If there is not a
changing of images, an unexpected union of
images, there is no imagination, no imaginative action. (On Poetic Imagination and
Reverie 19)

Between the immediate images of the perceived past and the deformed images of
imaginative recollection their difference constituting precisely change itself there remains
something in excess: a reverberation. The attempt
at retrieval an attempt to grasp a true past
shifts necessarily to construction, quite simply
because to recall (to remember) is not to live
again (not to return) but to imagine a return. So,
the circularity is never complete; the recollection
never duplicates experience. Always a difference
a lacuna is brought forth. Bachelard writes
that there is no memory where there is no
construction. And, he continues, there is no
temporality
without differences. Duration is a complex of
multiple ordering actions which support each
other. If we say we are living in a single,
homogeneous domain we shall see that time
can no longer move on. At the very most, it
just hops about. In fact, duration always needs
alterity for it to appear continuous. Thus, it
appears to be continuous through its heterogeneity, and in a domain which is always other
than that in which we think we are observing
it. (The Dialectic of Duration 65)

In fact, this difference can be thought of as excess

because it exists only as a constructed relation, as
a metaphor (hence Bachelard writes that duration
is a metaphor). Indeed, this excess represents
more than either the primary past or the poetic

184

wiskus
recollection alone even though, as a difference
between the two, it maintains no independent
existence as such. Alone, the excess is in fact
silence. And it is precisely this sustained tension
between excess and difference (as duration and
lacunae, expression and silence) that informs
Bachelards differential ontology. Thus,
Bachelard writes, The decisive centers of time
are its discontinuities (The Dialectic of
Duration 54).
Having arrived at this differential ontology,
let us extend our analysis to a brief study of
temporality in music. For music as formalized
thought, as expression without content gives
voice to excess; Bachelard acknowledges as much
when he writes, Imagination is not, as its
etymology would suggest, the faculty of forming
images of reality; it is rather the faculty of
forming images which go beyond reality, which
sing reality (On Poetic Imagination and
Reverie 15). And the poet goes further; Rilke
writes, Singing is Being.6
*

* *

And so it is precisely to music that Bachelard

turns, in the seventh chapter of The Dialectic of
Duration, when he explores, as the title of the
chapter reveals, Metaphors of Duration. A
work of music reveals its structure only by
constructing an expectation (a future possibility) that becomes real (present) only in
retrospect: through creative recollection.
Bachelard writes, regarding the musical phrase:
we shall not remember having expected it; we
shall simply recognize that we ought to have
expected it. Thus, what gives melody its light,
free continuity is this wholly virtual expectation which is real only in retrospect, and just a
risk to be run, a possibility. (The Dialectic of
Duration 124)

Music operates, then, through temporal reciprocity; the causality of music, as Bachelard says,
cannot be understood from the articulation of the
first phrase, but only afterwards, by means of
reverberation or recurrence of impression (The
Dialectic of Duration 123).
Let us now examine some of the musical
structures in Messiaens Quartet for the End of

185

Time, for the manner by which the musical

structures construct the metaphor of duration
reveals precisely excess as difference. Through its
employment of periodic, symmetrical, and transformative rhythmic and melodic structures,
Messiaens End of Time presents the end of
what Bachelard terms our vulgar conception of
time. Indeed, Messiaen views his musical compositions as exploring realms in some way equivalent to those of philosophy, declaring, Without
musicians, time would be much less understood
(Pople 13).
With respect to the Quartet specifically, he
explains, My initial thought was of the abolition
of time itself, something infinitely mysterious and
incomprehensible to most of the philosophers of
time, from Plato to Bergson.7 In thus declaring
an intention to go beyond precisely Plato and
Bergson, Messiaen places himself in alliance with
Bachelards anti-Platonist and post-Bergsonian
thinking of time. Indeed, as we will see,
Messiaens musical structures demonstrate
Bachelards differential ontology.
We will focus specifically on the first movement of the Quartet, the movement that is
believed by scholars to have been composed
precisely last of the eight movements. This
emphasis upon a first movement that is the
last naturally recalls a musical work by
Guillaume de Machaut, entitled Ma fin est mon
commencement. The allusion is more than
convenient, for it is precisely to the musical
techniques of Machaut a fourteenth-century
composer that Messiaen turns when composing
the Quartet.8
The first of these techniques is that of
isorhythm, a complex device involving a principle
of return that illustrates, at the same time,
difference. An isorhythmic structure plays upon
the division of melodic and rhythmic elements
into two different patterns, a color for the melody
and talea for the rhythm, such that their rate of
repetition does not coincide. Repetition in this
case, therefore, initiates a kind of shift: a
difference. Let us look, for example, to the cello
line (see Example 1). Here, the color consists of
only five notes: C, E, D, F#, and B[. These five
notes repeat throughout the movement. However,
one can see that the rhythmic values of each

thought time and musical time

EXAMPLE1. Cello line.

1 1 1

1 1

4 3 4 4 1 1 3 1 1

EXAMPLE 2. Rhythm in cello.

individual note are not the same throughout the

iterations. The first C has a value equal to four
eighth-notes, but the second C has a value of one
eighth-note. This is because the rhythmic pattern,
the talea, consists not of five elements (like the
color), but of fifteen units. The chief fascination
achieved through the employment of melodic and
rhythmic patterns that are based upon a contrasting number of elements resides in their interaction. By means of independent repetition of the
color and talea, a difference is precipitated.
Likewise, the piano part employs differentiated
melodic and rhythmic patterns. But in this case,
the piano color consists of a cycle of twenty-nine
chords, and the talea consists of seventeen
rhythmic units. In contrast to the cello line,
whose color unit of five pitches fits neatly within
the talea unit of fifteen, the relationship between
the color (twenty-nine) and talea (seventeen)
in the piano generates a structure that is
considerably more complex, a structure that,
indeed, the listener cannot begin to perceive
until several cycles of each pattern have been
completed.
With respect to these isorhythmic techniques,
it is interesting to consult, once again,
Bachelards writings about music. He writes
that it is
reform that does indeed give form . . .. Thus
poetry, or to be more general melody, has
duration because it begins again. Melody
duets dialectically with itself, losing itself so
that it can find itself again, knowing it will be
absorbed in its first theme. In this way then, it
gives us not really duration but the illusion of

duration. In some respects, melody is a kind of

temporal perfidy. While it promised us
development, it keeps us firmly within a
state. It takes us back to its beginning and in
doing so, gives us the impression that we
ought to have predicted where it was going.
Yet strictly speaking, melody does not have a
primary source, a central point from which
it spreads out. Its origin is revealed by
recurrence and just like its continuity, this
origin is a composition. (The Dialectic of
Duration 123)

Let us underline the last sentence: musics

origin is revealed by recurrence that is to
say, musics causality is an effect of an effect
and just like its continuity, this origin is a
composition that is to say, musics form (the
primary source) is given only afterward, as a
consequence of the retroactive capacity of the
creative imagination. And it is precisely through
the technique of isorhythm of a melody (color)
that repeats within a shifting rhythmic pattern
(talea) that Messiaen demonstrates this creative
process.
At the same time, however, these very complex
isorhythmic lines in addition to the difference
demonstrated through their changing cycles
illustrate a kind of motionless depth (as
Bachelard writes, it keeps us firmly within a
state). The talea of the isorhythmic lines
demonstrates a formalization that exhibits simultaneity as identity (see Example 2). Looking at
the rhythmic pattern for the cello, for example,
we see that the pattern is constructed through a
kind of symmetry: the first three values are the

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wiskus
The Major Scale and Transposition

The Whole-Tone Scale as a Mode of Limited Transposition

EXAMPLE 3. Modes and scales.

same in reading from left to right as from right to

left, as are the remaining twelve. That is to say,
the pattern exhibits symmetry through its
reversibility. This may recall to our mind
Bachelards conception of melody: It takes us
back to its beginning . . .. In fact, if one re-aligns
the sequence so that it begins at the sixth unit
from the end, we see that the pattern overall
exhibits this reversibility precisely when it takes
us back to its beginning. (And indeed, this cello
line repeats twenty-one times throughout the
movement.) But Messiaen establishes simultaneity in a perhaps more abstract manner as well,
through the employment of what he refers to as
modes that cannot be transposed (Messiaen 1)
(see Example 3). If one takes, for example, the
pitch set described as the C major scale (C, D, E,
F, G, A, and B) and transposes the intervallic
pattern to a different scale degree (for example,
beginning on the pitch D), we find that the
collection overall has generated a new set: D, E,
F#, G, A, B, and C#. This ability to generate new
pitch sets throughout all possible transpositions
along the chromatic scale that is to say, by
beginning the intervallic pattern on C or on C#
or on D, etc. is a characteristic of the major and
minor scales (those that are employed in tonal
music). Messiaen, however, does not utilize the
major or minor scales in constructing the melodic
material in his Quartet. Instead, he designs his
own modes such that they exhibit a unique
property: when transposed, they create replicate
sets. Messiaen calls these modes that cannot be
transposed. For example, looking again to the
cello part, we see that the pitch collection (C, E,
D, F#, and B[) functions as a subset of the
whole-tone scale (only the pitch A[ is missing) a
rather unique pitch set in that it replicates itself

187

through successive transpositions. For example,

when this particular pitch set is transposed to the
pitch D, it generates precisely the same pitches as
when it begins on the pitch C (and so forth).
Thus, through his employment of the whole-tone
scale, Messiaen suggests a musical world that
reflects itself in the process of transposition,
demonstrating an increased formalization. We are
reminded of Bachelards phrase, Tautology is a
guarantee of instantaneity (The Dialectic of
Duration 110).
In comparison to these complex structures in
the piano and cello, Messiaen employs rather
simple material in the clarinet and violin: the
melodic material of these two instruments
imitates birdcalls. (Messiaen specifies that the
clarinet imitates a blackbird and that the violin
imitates a nightingale.) These two instruments
unlike the piano and cello engage only in
mimesis; that is to say, their material does not
shift through auto-generative cycles of return.
Perhaps, then, one could say that, for Messiaen,
the clarinet and violin lines, as representatives of
birds, highlight the distinction between birdsong
and human melody, the latter subject to the
transformations of the human imagination and
the complex temporality thereby engendered.
But thus far, we have interrogated only the
individual melodic lines themselves. What about
their interaction? For in this the relationship
between these layers do we find the full musical
expression of Bachelards differential ontology.
Messiaen provides a program note for the first
movement, which indeed invokes Bachelards
notion of lacunae gaps of silence generated by
means of increased formalization. Between three
and four in the morning, writes Messiaen, the
awakening of birds: a solo blackbird [clarinet] or

thought time and musical time

nightingale [violin] improvises, surrounded by a
shimmer of sound [piano and cello] . . ..
Transpose this onto a religious plane and you
have the harmonious silence of Heaven.9 We
find the silence in Messiaen only when, as he
writes, transposed onto a different plane in
other words, as Bachelard would say, through an
increased formalization.
In conclusion, let us return to a decisive
passage in The Dialectic of Duration. Bachelard
writes:
From the moment we refuse to allow ourselves
any reference to an absolute duration, we have
to accept fully that rhythms are overlaid and
interdependent. It would not indeed work if
we took there to be one fundamental rhythm
to which all the instruments refer. The
different instruments in fact support each
other and carry each other along . . .. Our
impression of continuity and fullness stems
from this correlation. (The Dialectic of
Duration 130)

In addition to supplying a strikingly accurate

description of the multiple rhythmic layers
employed by Messiaen in the first movement,
the originality of Bachelards insight can be
gleaned from the last phrase: Our impression of
continuity and fullness stems from this correlation. That is to say, the feeling of duration
stems not from accumulation of the many
layers themselves, but rather from their correlation from the relationship between these
layers. As a relationship, this correlation consists
of excess something more than the sum of each
individual part, so to speak. Yet this excess itself,
as a kind of reverberation between independent
musical events, is generated through the interaction between distinctive instrumental lines. Thus,
we find in the Quartet an impression of
continuity achieved in expression through
difference.
Could we say that it is in this way, then, that
Messiaen and Bachelard demonstrate the emergence of novelty even within constructed duration? For if novelty consists precisely in
difference, this difference itself is born of a recommencement of the familiar, and therefore it is
in this respect that the difference is one of excess.

The difference generated through interrelation is

excessive because it begins again. Bachelard
writes, To begin is to know one has the right to
begin again (The Right to Dream 179).
Consequently, we must emphasize once again
that what emerges as novelty is not an effect, but
rather a cause as effect of an effect generated by
means of the retroactive capacity of the human
imagination. This recommencement initiates an
increasingly formalized framework where time
itself is, as Bachelard writes, iridescent, shimmering, unceasingly active in its
inversions (Poetics of Space xix).
Thus, Bachelards differential
ontology demonstrates a depth of
temporal expression.

notes
1 In this sense, Bachelards description of thought
time as sur-rationalism finds most appropriately
its echo in surrealism, as a thinking not divested of
its sensible element, but carried through (as it
moves beyond) its sensible armature.
2 Rimbaud 365. Letter to George Izambard
(13 May 1871).
3 Please consult Jean-Pierre Vernants evocative
studies on Ancient Greek culture and thought,
particularly with respect to the distinction
between o& and o o& (Myth and Society in
Ancient Greece).
4 Quoted in Merleau-Ponty 208.
5 Valery 215^16.
6 Gesang ist Dasein. Rilke 227.
7 Pople 13. Pople provides a very clear and thorough analysis of the musical structures that
Messiaen utilizes in composing the piece.
8 Much has been made of the events
surrounding the genesis of the piece. The Quartet
was premiered on 15 January 1941, in a German
prison camp, Stalag VIIIA at Gorlitz, about
55 miles east of Dresden. This article does
not attempt to draw any connections between
these events and the musical structures of
the piece; however, many articles have done so.
See Pople.
9 Pople 17.

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Jessica Wiskus
School of Music
Duquesne University
600 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15282
USA
E-mail: wiskus@duq.edu