Schubert, Juan Benet and the music of resignation

The literature of Juan Benet attempts to transport the reader beyond the bounds of reason by means of the arts, and most especially in the relation that binds it to music. Following Schopenhauer and Nietzsche who considered music to be the only art capable of transmitting pure affect without any intellectual mediation, Benet seeks the limits of language and effects persistent sentence modulations with a view to accessing the music of the soul. In this respect, his essay Door of the Earth elucidates the close affiliation between his work and the "music of resignation" which defines Schubert's later work.