Il divenire discontinuamente continuo in Vladimir Jankélévitch: ritmo e istantaneità per una metafisica post-bergsoniana

How do we reconcile Jankélévitch’s apparently inconsistent interests, he who was a Bergsonian and at the same time philosopher of music passionate about Debussy? Yet the two lines of discourse, metaphysical and musical, not only do not remain unrelated, but agree rather than clash. To deny any possible suspicion of “patricide” towards Bergson, his great master, Jankélévitch ultimately seems to be attempting to “bergsonize” Debussy, placing him in a completely original sort of post-Bergsonian continuationism: through the discontinuity of pauses, the interruption of development and the immobility of the soft pedal, Debussy would not disintegrate the irreversible flow of lived time, but only the inert time of musical rhetoric based on rigid formulas. The Debussian rhythm allowed Jankélévitch to complete the durée, to overcome it while preserving it, by adding, through the deepening of the “instant”, a dimension of mystery and tragedy that Bergsonian intuition originally did not have.