ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between masochism and sentimentalism as the basis of interpretative thoughts on Schumann's depiction of Chopin in his piano cycle Carnaval. Masochism is a contentious and shifting notion. The central role of suspense – so important for Deleuze – was identified by Theodor Reik in his Masochism in Modern Man (1941), where the three main characteristics are ‘phantasy’, ‘suspense’ and the ‘demonstrative’ – imagination, anticipation, and display. The aestheticization of the erotic by various artistic forms in which narrative expectations are subverted by a play of suspension, ritual, allusion, and parody leads to the aesthetic itself becoming viewed as the realm of the feminine. The painful vulnerability of the sensitive body, particularly in conditions of listening to music which move the subject between sensuality and inwardness, between physical and psychical, are vital in the interacting figurations of Schumann, Chopin, and Masoch.
