Wednesday, February 14, 2018

From the Tracatus Pathetico-Poeticus

"Melody is the most artificial thing in music." (Boris de Schloezer, via Ezra Pound)

2.1 We hum melodies of our acts to ourselves.

2.11 The melody presents the acts in pathetic time (le temps pathétique), the inspiration and desolation of holistic acts.
2.12 The melody is a siren of ideality.
2.13 The totality of the melody corresponds to the subject of the melody.
2.14 The melody comprises the totality that is actually imposed on us in various ways.
2.15 That the totality of the melody is imposed on us in various ways, represents that people impose on us in various ways. This multiplicity in the totality of the melody is called its texture, and the necessity of this texture provides the function of the representation of the melody.
2.16 In order to be a melody an act must differ in a significant way from what it sings.
2.17 How the melody must depart from ideality in order to be able to represent it after its manner -- justly or unjustly -- is its representative function.
2.18 How every melody, of whatever function, must depart from ideality in order to be able to represent it at all -- justly or unjustly -- is the functional pathos of the Ideal, that is, the function of ideality.
2.19 Melodic pathos is the song of history.

3 The melodic pathos of the act is the feeling.

7 Whereof we cannot sing, thereof we must dance.