On my recent visit to Edinburgh’s Writer’s Museum, I found myself astonished at the sheer number of persons present at the funeral of the Scottish poet Robert Burns. I was awed by the importance people held towards poetry at the time – I realised that human longing for poetry is still very prevalent today through the admiration we hold towards musical artists.
The recent confirmation of £5 million in government funding towards the conversion of a Leeds church into the UK’s first poetry foundation is another example of poetry’s importance to the fabric of British society today. A slightly different, but equally interesting, argument for the value of poetry is that the communication of early human history started out as the passing of songs and stories. Homer’s celebrated epics The Iliad and The Odyssey were communicated orally alongside instrumental accompaniment before they were ever put down on paper. Indigenous history has been similarly communicated through the ages. The historical record (both written and unwritten) thus shows that music and literature have always been interlinked through interaction.
This past synonymy between music and literature is reflected in the Japanese Award-Winning author Haruki Murakami’s approach to writing. Most famously known for his novels Kafka on the Shore, 1Q84, and Norwegian Wood, Murakami merges his love for music into the fabric of his novels, both through theme and writing style.
Before turning towards writing at the age of 29, Murakami and his wife owned and ran a Jazz Bar, Peter Cat. In an interview with the New York Times, Murakami talks of the jazz and music he was constantly surrounded by through his work at the bar, and reflects on the influence music has on his writing:
“Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep reading your work. I learned the importance of rhythm from music — and mainly from jazz. Next comes melody — which, in literature, means the appropriate arrangement of the words to match the rhythm. If the way the words fit the rhythm is smooth and beautiful, you can’t ask for anything more. Next is harmony — the internal mental sounds that support the words. Then comes the part I like best: free improvisation. Through some special channel, the story comes welling out freely from inside. All I have to do is get into the flow.”
Murakami’s book title Norwegian Wood mirrors the 1965 song “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” by the Beatles. The novel follows a character who, upon listening to the Beatles’ track “Norwegian Wood,” reminisces on his grief-ridden days at university following the death of a friend. This nostalgic portrayal of loss similarly encompasses the Beatles song, where John Lennon reflects on the failure of an affair.
According to a The Story article, across his 28 novels, Murakami has managed to mention 96 songs in his works. However, is this attempt at intertextuality limiting? Does it alienate readers who otherwise might not be familiar with the songs and genres he draws inspiration from? Despite these questions, I believe that his incorporation of music into his novels is an insightful attempt to play with music’s ability to draw out emotions and memories within the context of literature.
Book cover of Norwegian Wood by Murakami