A literary soundtrack: Music in the (de)construction of cinematographic illusion in literature

From the interaction between cinema and literature emerges, among other things, the notion of “cinematic literature”, which usually points to a comparison between the perspective of the literary narrator and that of the moving camera; to a discussion of the applicability of the concept of montage to the novel; and to observations about the possibility of turning the literary narrator invisible, supported by an idea of cinema as the art of “showing not telling” (cf. Kellman 1987; Bellardi 2017). Through his concept of “literary soundtrack,” Austin T. Graham extends these comparisons to the function music plays in each one of these arts, allowing us to consider it an element that can contribute to the notion of cinematic literature. According to Graham, this literary soundtrack generates extra-literary responses in the reader and, therefore, intensifies, colors and comments the narrative (Graham 2013, 77). To these effects we should add a forth, related to the temporal dimension of the literary action, which “music for the inner ear” and its “static quality” (Cook 1990, 86) can change in drastic ways. These alterations depend on whether the reader associates a literary soundtrack to real and audible musical works, or she/he considers a soundtrack that is fully imaginary, but, either way, they create a space for the discussion of Henri Bergson’s concept of “cinematographic illusion”. This notion implies a consideration of cinema as a dis- tortion of reality – defined by Bergson as constant movement (cf. Bergson 1907) – and, again, allows us to debate and question what we mean by “cinematic literature”.
Through the analysis of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the shore – characterized by multiple references to real musical works – and John Steinbeck’s The Pearl – which presents us with an im- aginary soundtrack that accompanies the protagonist’s actions –, this presentation aims to explore the ways in which music – real and fictional – can foster or unveil the cinematographic illusion of time and evoke a cinematic listening in literature.