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This course will consider experiences at the juncture between memory and forgetting, history and oblivion, narration and music. Such liminal experiences are frequently interpreted in psychoanalytic theory as trauma, though there is no reason that a purely negative definition should prevail. The suspension of the self and the concomitant immersion in the sensible world could just as well be regarded as an ecstatic experience. This course will examine the notions of immediacy, singularity, power, and sensuality in psychoanalytic theory (Freud, Lacan, Klein, Malabou) and beyond. Kleist’s “Die heilige Cäcilie” and Kafka’s “Josefine, die Sängerin” will serve as touchstones for our exploration of the ecstasy that literature at once produces and reproduces as a verbal representation and musical medium.