Towards an Early Experience of Surrealist Aesthetic: Re-Thinking the Rite of Spring

This study examines The Rite of Spring as a work that challenges the structural and aesthetic boundaries of modernist music, exploring its potential affinities with surrealist aesthetics through specific formal and rhythmic configurations. Rather than relying on linear historical continuity, the relationship between music and the arts is conceptualized as an aesthetic field shaped by belated and transversal reappearances. The transitional space between The Rite of Spring and surrealist aesthetics is explored through the lenses of psychoanalysis, music-aesthetic theories, and philosophical reflection—not to assert a direct connection, but to investigate the resonant interplay between unconscious processes and musical form. In this context, rhythmic and formal structures are approached as surfaces of aesthetic and psychic tension. Employing the concept of somathemes, the analysis traces how unconscious impulses may be inscribed in rhythmic patterns. Through an interdisciplinary framework, this study proposes an alternative way of thinking about musical form and meaning in relation to modernity and its cultural aftermath.