“Free Fantasiesˮ: Fictionalization of Autobiographical Narration with the Help of Music

The article explores the fictionalization of autobiographical texts with the help of music. The theoretical basis of the research lies in an analysis of fictionality from a comparative perspective of arts and media. Central to the analysis is the concept of “automediality” which is closely linked to the cultural and media nature of individual and collective identities as well as the principles of intermediality. Within such a theoretical framework, subjectivity is seen as a concept constructed using bodily and medial techniques. Thus, the study aims to reveal a model of creative becoming in the way it is presented in the autobiographical short story “The Future of Beauty” („Die Zukunft der Schönheitˮ, 2018) by the contemporary German writer Friedrich Christian Delius (1943–2022). It is stated that the decisive role in the described process of remembering adolescence and youth by the author is played by a well-known concert of free jazz saxophone player Albert Ayler, which F. C. Delius attended in 1966 as a member of the not least famous meetings of Group 47 at Princeton. The analysis revealed how American free jazz is becoming an important non-narrative form of self-construction and the main modus for portraying oneself. The concert is depicted as a revelation of one’s own creative life. It is argued that the German writer has a particular media-specific technique of reflecting on one’s own creative personality, namely that he skilfully semanticizes specific performances of the jazz concert and, thus, fictionalizes the autobiographical story. Communication with one’s past, contextualized and activated by a jazz concert, is perceived as a fictional event, specifically in its performability aspect: within a concert, as a performative act, we observe gradual and immediate change not just in the perception of music but also in the attitude toward one’s past.