164 Lectures on Modem Music
An art thus based on the fugitive impressions of sense and
instinct is peculiarly adapted to rendering those diffused
and subtle moods of revery which rise mysteriously to the
surface when the mind is silent and the senses alert. The
half-shades of the evening with their accompanying sense
of the changing and transitory, the languorous melancholy,
the silence, mystery, and the magic beauty of the night;—
these are the themes which inspire the poems of Mallarme
and his school, poems which, in the words of Remy de
Gourmont, are “the most marvellous pretext for revery
that has ever been offered to man”.
The statement is equally apt when applied to the music
of Debussy, for the latter springs from the same panthe-
istic view of nature and is the product of a similar technique
of sensuous suggestion. The landscape, for Debussy, as it
is for the symbolists, is “a state of the soul”. He is haunted,
as they are, by the desire to render simultaneously its out-
ward and visible beauties and their inner and human signi-
ficance. Consequently, the marvellous imagery of his music
is a means, not an end. For example, what is chiefly re-
markable about “Nuages” is not the faithfulness of the pic-
ture but rather the manner in which the composer has sug-
gested the melancholy solitude and desolation of spirit
which the sight of clouds, drifting slowly and aimlessly
across the sky, so frequently arouses in us.
Consider, for a moment, the titles of some of Debussy’s
compositions: “Clouds”, “Wind on the Plains”, “Reflec-
tions in the Water”, “The Sea”, “Fog”, “Goldfish”, “Per
fumes of the Night”. Obviously what attracts him most,
as it does the symbolists, is the fugitive and mysterious side
of nature.
In the human realm, however, Debussy is drawn in pre-