Musical Memories | Page 7

diction, which, in my
opinion, are indispensable to both. Instead, they distrust melody.
Declamation is no longer wanted in operas, and the singers make the
works incomprehensible by not articulating the words. The composers
tend along the same lines, for they give no indication or direction of
how they want the words spoken. All this is regrettable and should be
reformed.
As you see, I object to the mania for reform and end by suggesting
reforms myself. Well, one must be of one's own time, and there is no
escaping the contagion.
CHAPTER III
VICTOR HUGO
Everything in my youth seemed calculated to keep me far removed
from romanticism. Those about me talked only of the great classics and
I saw them welcome Ponsard's Lucrece as a sort of Minerva whose
lance was to route Victor Hugo and his foul crew, of whom they never
spoke save with detestation.
Who was it, I wonder, who had the happy idea of giving me, elegantly
bound, the first volumes of Victor Hugo's poems? I have forgotten who
it was, but I remember what joy the vibrations of his lyre gave me.
Until that time poetry had seemed to me something cold, respectable
and far-away, and it was much later that the living beauty of our
classics was revealed to me. I found myself at once stirred to the depths,
and, as my temperament is essentially musical in everything, I began to
sing them.
People have told me ad nauseam (and they still tell me so) that
beautiful verse is inimical to music, or rather that music is inimical to

good verse; that music demands ordinary verse, rhymed prose, rather
than verse, which is malleable and reducible as the composer wishes.
This generalization is assuredly true, if the music is written first and
then adapted to the words, but that is not the ideal harmony between
two arts which are made to supplement each other. Do not the rhythmic
and sonorous passages of verse naturally call for song to set them off,
since singing is but a better method of declaiming them? I made some
attempts at this and some of those which have been preserved are:
_Puisque ici bas toute âme_, _Le Pas d'armes du roi Jean_, and La
Cloche. They were ridiculed at the time, but destined to some success
later. Afterwards I continued with _Si tu veux faisons un réve_, which
Madame Carvalho sang a good deal, _Soirée en mer_, and many others.
The older I grew the greater became my devotion to Hugo. I waited
impatiently for each new work of the poet and I devoured it as soon as
it appeared. If I heard about me the spiteful criticisms of irritating
critics, I was consoled by talking to Berlioz who honored me with his
friendship and whose admiration for Hugo equalled mine. In the
meantime my literary education was improving, and I made the
acquaintance of the classics and found immortal beauties in them. My
admiration for the classics, however, did not diminish my regard for
Hugo, for I never could see why it was unfaithfulness to him not to
despise Racine. It was fortunate for me that this was my view, for I
have seen the most fiery romanticists, like Meurice and Vacquerie,
revert to Racine in their later years, and repair the links in a golden
chain which should never have been broken.
The Empire fell and Victor Hugo came back to Paris. So I was going to
have a chance of realizing my dream of seeing him and hearing his
voice! But I dreaded meeting him almost as much as I wished to do so.
Like Rossini Victor Hugo received his friends every evening. He came
forward with both hands outstretched and told me what pleasure it was
for him to see me at his house. Everything whirled around me!
"I cannot say the same to you," I answered. "I wish I were somewhere
else." He laughed heartily and showed that he knew how to overcome
my bashfulness. I waited to hear some of the conversation which,

according to my preconceived ideas, would be in the style of his latest
romance. However, it was entirely different; simple polished phrases,
entirely logical, came from that "mouth of mystery."
I went to Hugo's evenings as often as possible, for I never could drink
my fill of the presence of the hero of my youthful dreams. I had
occasion to note to what an extent a fiery republican, a modern Juvenal,
whose verses branded "kings" as if with a red hot iron, in his private
life was susceptible to their flattery. The Emperor of Brazil had called
on him, and the next day he could not stop talking about it constantly.
Rather ostentatiously he called him "Don Pedro d'Alcantara." In