The Jazz Musician and the Listener in the Literature of Luis Artigue: Analysis and Theoretical Implications

Abstract

This article analyses the presence of jazz in two literary works by the Spanish writer Luis Artigue: the novel Café Jazz el Destripador (2020) and the collection of poems Tres, dos, uno… jazz (2007). This allows us to appreciate that, in the first work, Artigue focuses on the jazz musician, whereas, in the second, he focuses on the listener. In both cases, the effect that music has on both is an essential concern. But this analysis not only aims to unravel the link that these two works have with music, but also proposes three theoretical insights: 1) the concept of poem (or narration) in musica (that is fictionally written while music plays) as a way of expressing not only music, but the effect of listening to it; 2) the concept of eidolon as the basis to understand many musical poems and the distinction between linguistic eidolon and visual eidolon; 3) the difference that formal and structural analogies present with respect to the other three types of imitation of music in literature regarding the imitating element, which leads to argue that the contents may also be the basis of formal analogies.