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AbstractMusic may have a strong influence on literature. Many novels have reflected this by thematizing music in many different ways. However, this engagement can also adopt the form of an imitation or a formal presence that does not actually require the text to say anything about music. This paper aims to explore some aspects of musical imitation in literature that have not been analyzed in depth. Departing from the approach developed by Werner Wolf, I propose a distinction between imitating and imitated elements that applies to any case of study. Furthermore, at the core of this article, I advocate for a fourth dimension that the imitation of music in literature may have and that should be added to word music, formal and structural analogies, and imaginary content analogies. I call this fourth category "graphic analogies." It implies an imitation whose imitating element is the graphic, written aspect of the linguistic signifier. Finally, this leads to the idea that, in the case of the imitation of music in literature, there is not a necessary correlation between imitating and imitated elements.

Ricardo Mendendez Salmón's La ofensa (2007) and Medusa (2012) are two of the latest Spanish novels that are set in World War II. The Asturian writer establishes this military conflict as the frame where some of his most idiosyncratic themes as a writer can be displayed, namely the reflection on evil and the role that art plays facing it. This paper aims to analyze these novels' common plan: silence as a response to horror, which is an attitude represented both by Kurt and Prohaska, the main characters on each story. Thus, two core ideas will be developed: the silence of the individual (Kurt and Prohaska) and the silence of the art (Prohaska and the own narrator of both novels). This generates a metanarrative dimension in which the narrator makes use of the same detachment strategies that the main character carries out in order to depict war. Ultimately, all these features respond to the construction of an appropriate setting that allows the development of the thematic invariants that define Menéndez Salmón's literature. ; La ofensa (2007) y Medusa (2012), de Ricardo Menéndez Salmón, son dos de las últimas novelas españolas que recrean la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El autor gijonés elige este conflicto como marco en el que situar algunos de los temas más característicos de su literatura, particularmente la reflexión sobre el mal y el papel del arte frente al mismo. Este trabajo pretende analizar dichas novelas en tanto que implican un planteamiento común: el silencio como respuesta al horror, actitud que encarnan tanto Kurt como Prohaska, protagonistas de sendas narraciones. Se propondrá, de este modo, un análisis de las distintas formas en las que las dos novelas tematizan el silencio a partir de dos ejes: el silencio del sujeto (Kurt y Prohaska) y el silencio del arte (Prohaska y el propio narrador de ambas novelas). Se genera así una dimensión meta-narrativa en la que el propio narrador pone en práctica las mismas estrategias de distanciamiento y desapego que su personaje emplea para la plasmación del conflicto bélico. Todo ello responde, en último término, no tanto a una voluntad de interpretar la Segunda Guerra Mundial como a la construcción de un marco que resulta idóneo para desarrollar las constantes temáticas que interesan al autor.