Debussy: The Preludes 159
this is not strange, since they were written under the strain
of the war and the steady progress of an incurable disease.
André Suares has described, in moving lines, the man’s last
appearance in public. “He was paying out of his own
purse”, says Suares, “his admission to a charity concert at
which some of his works were being given. . . . He had
just been very ill and people said he was doomed. He was;
for, a short time later, he fell again into the clutches of
the malady that was to kill him. I was struck not so much
by his thinness as by his air of absence, his appearance of
gravity and lassitude. . . . In his eyes, which avoided all
contacts, one recognized that desperate irony which men
who are soon to depart this life have for those whom they
leave behind. Between such people there is already such
an abyss. That day, whatever one may suppose or what-
ever may have been his own hopes for himself, Debussy
said his farewell.” He died, after months of struggle and
suffering on the thirty-first of March, 1918.
Émile Vuillermoz, one of the ablest of French music
critics, tells about Debussy an illuminating anecdote which
is worth repeating, for it is so pre-eminently characteristic
of the way in which the composer approached problems of
form. In the light of certain events which it would be
useless to recall here, Vuillermoz had been led to write,
under Debussy’s direction, a sort of manifesto, which
summed up the regulative ideas of the composer's attitude
toward his art. “With all the zeal inspired by my respect
and affectionate admiration for the man, I endeavored”,
writes Vuillermoz, “to give to my résumé all the clearness,
balance and irrefutable logic which so attractive a theme
seemed to demand. I took especial care to solder the
arguments and to chain my phrases firmly together, so that
the arm of an adversary should find no vulnerable spot in