Erros de diagnóstico na arte e na vida: Wozzeck no consultório do Doutor

Abstract

Error is analyzed by comparing decoding strategies which can be at stake either in music, or in medicine. The fourth scene (1st Act) in Wozzeck by Alban Berg is the starting point for the discussion, which includes the conflict between different aesthetic canons at the reception level. By analyzing the text and music of this scene, the author argues that Büchner develops a very sarcastic picture of the Doctor as representative of the modem paradigm of science and that Berg created its precise sarcastic equivalent in music. So, the only twelve-tone row of the opera, which appears precisely in this scene as a passacaglia theme, should be understood, according to the author, not as a sign of Berg's convergence with Schönberg’s search for a new system, a new theory, after having broken with the old (tonal) system, but, rather, as an encoded caricature of such an attempt. The words ‘Oh! meine Theorie! Oh mein Ruhm! Ich werde unsterblich! Unsterblich! Unsterblich!’ consequently refer also to Schönberg’s twelve-tone theory, as if the latter himself were speaking through the mouth of the Doctor. The return to a pre-established system (deductive thinking) was seen by Berg as bearing the danger of a new academism, that is, as an aesthetic error, comparable with the ethical error that the Doctor and his modem paradigm of science represent (presupposing domination over the inner and the outer nature, as well as of human beings over human beings). This interpretation, which takes into account Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s critique of the Enlightenment, should lead to a new evaluation of primary sources (and to the search for new ones) concerning the relations between Schönberg and Berg during the period of composition of Wozzeck, for it is not plausible that Berg established such a precise connection by mere coincidence, without knowing already what Schönberg’s was searching for.