SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
specially French character
The cause of the artistic success of Pelléas et Mélisande is of a more specially French character, and marks a reaction that is at once legitimate, natural, and inevitable; I would even say it is vital–a reaction of French genius against foreign art, and especially against Wagnerian art and its awkward representatives in France.
Is the Wagnerian drama perfectly adapted to German genius? I do not think so; but that is a question which I will leave German musicians to decide. For ourselves, we have the right to assert that the form of Wagnerian drama is antipathetic to the spirit of French people–to their artistic taste, to their ideas about the theatre, and to their musical feeling. This form may have forced itself upon us, and, by the right of victorious genius, may have strongly influenced the French mind, and may do so again; but nothing will ever make it anything but a stranger in our land.
It is not necessary to dwell upon the differences of taste. The Wagnerian ideal is, before everything else, an ideal of power. Wagner’s passional and intellectual exaltation and his mystic sensualism are poured out like a fiery torrent, which sweeps away and burns all before it, taking no heed of barriers. Such an art cannot be bound by ordinary rules; it has no need to fear bad taste–and I commend it. But it is easy to understand that other ideals exist, and that another art might be as expressive by its proprieties and niceties as by its richness and force. And this former art–our own–is not so much a reaction against Wagnerian art as a reaction against its caricatures in France and the consequent abuse of an ill-regulated power.
Genius has a right to be what it will–to trample underfoot, if it wishes, taste and morals and the whole of society. But when those who are not geniuses wish to do the same thing they only make themselves ridiculous and odious. There have been too many monkey Wagners in France. During the last ten or twenty years scarcely one French musician has escaped Wagner’s influence. One understands only too well the revolt of the French mind, in the name of naturalness and good taste, against exaggerations and extremes of passion, whether sincere or not. Pelléas et Mélisande came as a manifestation of this revolt. It is an uncompromising reaction against over-emphasis and excess, and against anything that oversteps the limits of the imagination. This distaste of exaggerated words and sentiments results in what is like a fear of showing the feelings at all, even when they are most deeply stirred. With Debussy the passions almost whisper; and it is by the imperceptible vibrations of the melodic line that the love in the hearts of the unhappy couple is shown, by the timid «Oh, why are you going?» at the end of the first act, and the quiet «I love you, too,» in the last scene but one. Think of the wild lamentations of the dying Ysolde, and then of the death of Mélisande, without cries and without words.
this was: Specially French Character
go to next chapter: opposed to the Bayreuth ideal
