PRIMENA LEVI-STROSOVIH IDEJA O MITU I MUZICI NA PRIMERU SARTROVE „MUČNINE“ I KORTASAROVOG „PROGONITELjA“

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate main ideas about the relationship between myth and music elaborated by the French philosopher and anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. The essential ideas of the aforementioned relationship are represented through the example taken from Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel La Nausée and Julio Cortázar’s short story “El Perseguidor”. Beside the key ideas regarding myth and music explained by Claude Lévi-Strauss, the paper also demonstrates the musical thoughts of Jean-Paul Sartre and Julio Cortázar, whose affection for music is widely present in both La Nausée and “El Perseguidor”. This study analyzes the mythical space which Antoine Roquentin, the protagonist of La Nausée, creates by listening to the notes of the ragtime Some of these days, and the mythical space created through the saxophone that Johnny Carter, the main character of “El Perseguidor”, plays. The musical aspect is a crucial starting point for the interpretation of both texts since characters use music to create their own mythical space outside of the real world and physical time that passes through it. In both cases, myth and music offer a certain form of escapism to the protagonists, who escape the existential angst of the real world although they access it through different perspectives: either the listener’s or the composer’s.