Abstract

This essay offers a broad overview of the reflections developed by Jeanne Hersch and Simone Weil about the relationship between music and time. The originality of their perspective consists in the importance they assign to the circular motion of time. Both are convinced that the contemplation of time is the very key to the life of men as a lived feeling, to be understood not only as a pure aesthetic code, but as a political and educational code which involves the affective dimension. Music introduces us to the proper dimension of a non-objectifiable experience that springs from the very depths of consciousness. Indeed, the laws governing consciousness are irreducible and irrepressible, and true freedom means obedience, a new creation from the datum of perception. In creative and receptive activities, the possibility of infinity that we have within us is always conditioned by the necessity of finite time. This essay ends with the analysis of a few evocative pages by Simone Weil suggesting that the sea and music share the same timeless breath of time.