Introduction

In 1902, Andrei Biely composed Dramatic Symphony, a work in some movements with a structural dependence on repeated leitmotifs or, in his own terms, “musical phrases.” The Russian writer’s quest was to become a seminal impetus for many writers in the twentieth century: the modernist pursuit of a “musical” literature. “Words multiplied by music: modernism was fascinated with the possibility,” writes Sebastian Knowles. The imprint of musical forms such as sonata, theme and variation, or fugue can certainly be found in modernist literary works, but it was primarily the internal structuring principles of music that provoked and compelled a series of radical literary innovations. Music can stand as a marker of what is unspoken in literature, a space to acknowledge moments of inexpressibility. The most prevalent and compelling manifestation of trans-formal inspiration in musical modernist texts is the leitmotif. The symbiosis between music and poetry is exemplified by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore.