“A Magical Translation”: The Performative Magic of Music

In this final chapter, I foreground music as the constant horizon of Seth’s work. Why is Seth so irresistibly attracted to the musical model? I start with an analysis of the dialectic between the part and the whole in An Equal Music, a novel striking both for its emphasis on the loneliness of the individual and the sense of communion afforded by the Maggiore Quartet. A similar dialectic plays out in Seth’s libretti, which structurally establish a singular mode of authorship, both collaborative and interdisciplinary. In the second half of the chapter, I examine Seth’s obsession with the musical model in An Equal Music and A Suitable Boy and tie his inter-semiotic endeavors to the questions of literary reprise and originality central to his work.