Sur un motif rythmique en musique, en vers et en prose : le contretemps

Abstract

The article aims to study the phenomenon of the offbeat (selected both as a formal motif and as a thematic motif ) from both a rhythmic and an existential point of view. In the modern age, we are witnessing the emergence of a reflexive awareness, not only of the facts of the mind, but also of the movement of the body and its accidentals. After having clarified, with Rousseau in support, the notion of offbeat (in its dual meaning of ‘sense’ and ‘direction’), we propose to examine the various manifestations of this process in literature, theater, and music. Among the musicians figure Wagner and Debussy; among the playwrights, Beckett; among the poets Baudelaire; among the novelists, Flaubert and Proust