162 Lectures on Modem Music
“Nature is a temple whose living pillars at times let fall
confused words. There man passes through forests of sym-
bols which observe him with familiar glances.
“There—like echoes, which at a distance, mingle into a
dark and profound unity, vast as the night and as the light
of day—the colors, sounds, and perfumes to each other
make answer”1.
Beautiful and prophetic lines which foreshadow clearly
the manner in which the changing, sensuous beauty of the
spectacle and, most of all, the mystery of man’s relationship
to it were to fascinate and tease the minds of the symbolists.
For a Mallarme or a Samain, so strange and obscure is the
nature of man’s part in it all, that one cannot hope to
state, or even to describe, the quality of the relationship.
It is too dark, too subtle and eludes all efforts at analysis.
Yet man’s sense of his kinship with the outer world is
deep and ineradicable. He feels, though he does not under-
stand it. It is a matter of instinct rather than of reason.
Consequently, if he would draw aside the curtain and look
beyond, the poet must abandon, for a moment, the ordinary
processes of thought, sink back into the realms of the sub-
conscious and trust for temporary guidance to the obscure,
spontaneous movements of the soul and to the warm imme-
diacy of sense perception.
Then and then only can he paint the beauties of the
outer world and at the same time suggest, by the psycho-
logical accuracy of his images and the order in which they
occur, that dim and distant region where nature and human
nature touch, where the objects of the visible world melt,
1 La nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l’observent avec, des regards familiers.
Comme de longs échos gui de loin se confondent
Dans une ténébreuse et profonde unité,
Vaste comme la nuit et comme la clarté,
Les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se répondent.