he swears. His the cosmic soul. A man who infuses into his tales
something of the Mimes of Herondas, La Bruyère’s Characters, and
the Lucian Dialogues, with faint flavors of Racine and La Fontaine
superadded, may be pardoned his polychromatic faiths. This chromatism
in creeds, a trust in all or none, is rather diverting. But the
classic world of thought shows several exemplars for M. France, from
the followers of Aristippus to the Sophists. Nevertheless, there is
a specific note of individuality, a roulade altogether Anatolian in
the Parisian. No one but this accomplished sceptic could have devised
The Opinions of Jerome Coignard, and his scheme for a Bureau of
Vanity (Villiers de l’Isle Adam invented a machine for manufacturing
glory). “Man is an animal with a musket,” declares Anatole. Here is a
morsel for hypocrites: “Even virtue may be unduly praised. Since it
is overcoming which constitutes merit, we must recognize that it is
concupiscence which makes saints.” This sounds like William Blake done
into choice French; Blake who has said that “the fool cannot enter the
kingdom of heaven be he ever so pious”; that Blake who believed that
the road to wisdom lies through the valley of excess.
Henry James has declared that the province of art is all life, all
feeling, all observation, all vision. According to this rubric, M.
France is a many-sided artist. Philosopher as well, he plays with the
appearances of life, lifting betimes the edge of the curtain to curdle
the blood of his spectators with the sight of Buddha’s shadow in some
grim cavern beyond. He shows his Gallic tact in decorating the empty
spaces of theory and the blank spots of reality. A follower of Kant,
in his denial of the objective, we cannot imagine him approving of
that sage’s admiration of the starry heavens and the moral law. Both
are relative, would be the report of the Frenchman. Yet he yearns for
faith. He humbles himself beneath the humblest. He excels in exposing
the splendor of the simple soul, though faith has not anointed his
intellect with its chrism. He admires the golden filigree of the
ciborium; its spiritual essence escapes him. At the portals of Paradise
he lingers, or stoops to pick a rare and richly colored feather. He
eloquently vaunts its fabulous beauty. But he hears not the whirring
of the wings whence it has fallen. Pagan in his irony, his pity wholly
Christian, Anatole France betrays a nuance of Petronius and a touch
of St. Francis. Because of this spiritual dislocation--or dare I say
bilocation?--he is in art, letters, and life a consummate flowering of
the dilettante.
XVII
A MASQUE OF MUSIC
Here is an evocation of a projected Masque of Music. Not a Miltonic
hymn in praise of the melting art, nor yet an Alexander’s Feast
celebrating its power, after the manner of John Dryden, but a grandiose
vision which would embrace the legend of sound from its unorganized
beginnings to the to-morrow of the ultimate Kalmuck. It is written
with such men as Reinhardt, David Belasco, Gordon Craig, Stanislavsky,
Michel Fokine, and Richard Ordynski in view. They, or artists of their
calibre, might make the idea viable in the theatre. What music would
best envelope my Masque is a question answered by the composers whose
names are figuratively deployed. Or what gifted American composers
might “set” the Masque in a symphonic poem! Where this kaleidoscope
would be produced and how many evenings it might need for complete
interpretation are puzzles I do not seek now to solve; suffice to
add, that I have for the sake of dramatic unity placed myself at the
centre and circumference of this prose recital, as sensations are
veritable hallucinations for me. In a performance the spectators
would occupy the same relative position.... The curtains of Time and
Space drew apart. I stood on the cliff of the World, saw and heard
the travailing and groaning of light and sound in the epochal and
reverberating void. A pedal-bass, a diapasonic tone that came from the
bowels of the firmament, struck fear to my heart; this tone was of such
magnitude as might be overheard by the gods. No mortal ear could have
held it without cracking. This gigantic flood, this cataclysmic roar,
filled every pore of my body. It blew me about as a blade of grass
is blown in a boreal blast, yet I sensed the pitch. Inchoate nature,
the unrestrained cry of the rocks and their buried secrets--crushed
aspirations, and the hidden sorrows of mineral, plants, and animals
became vocal. It was the voice of the monstrous abortions of nature,
the groan of incomplete or transitional types, born for a moment and
shattered forever. All God’s mud made moan for recognition.
It was night. The strong fair sky of the South was sown with dartings
of silver and starry dust. I walked under the great windbowl with its
few balancing clouds and listened to the whirrings of the infinite. I
knew that I was close to the core of existence, and though sound was
less vibratile than light, sound touched earth, embraced it, and was
content with its eld and homely face. Light, a mischievous Loge; Sound,
the All-Mother Erda. I walked on. My way seemed clearer....
Reaching a plain, fabulous and mighty, I came upon a Sphinx,
half-buried in sand and looming in the starlight. As I watched her
face I felt that the tone had ceased to surround me. The dawn filtered
through the dark and there were stirrings abroad in the air. From afar
sounded a fluttering of thin tones. As the sun shone rosy on the vast
stone, like a clear-colored wind came back the tone from the sea. And
in the music-filled air I fell on my knees and worshipped the Sphinx,
for music is a window through which we gaze upon eternity. Then
followed a strange musical rout of the nations; I saw defile before me
Silence, “eldest of all things”; Brahma’s consort, Saraswati, fingered
her Vina, and Siva and his hideous mate, Devi, sometimes called Durga;
and the brazen heavens were like a typhoon that showered appalling
evils upon mankind. All the gods of Egypt and Assyria, dog-faced,
moon-breasted, and menacing, passed playing upon dreams, making choric
music, black and fuliginous. The sacred Ibis stalked in the silvery
footsteps of the Houris; the Graces held hands. Phœbus Apollo appeared.
His face was as a shining shield. He improvised upon a many-stringed
lyre of tortoise-shell, and his music was shimmering and symphonious.
Hermes and his Syrinx wooed the shy Euterpe; the maidens went in woven
paces, a medley of masques flamed by, and the great god Pan breathed
into his pipes.
I saw Bacchus pursued by ravening Mænads, saw Lamia and her ophidian
flute, as Orpheus sorrowfully sped, searching his Eurydice. Neptune
blew his wreathéd horn. The Tritons gambolled in the waves. Cybele
changed her cymbals. And with his music Amphion summoned rocks to
Thebes. Jepthah danced to her death before the Ark of the Covenant,
praising the Lord God of Israel. Unabashed behind her leered the
rhythmic Herodias, while were heard the praiseful songs of Deborah
and Barak as St. Cæcilia smote the keyboard. With her timbrel Miriam
sang hymns of triumph. Before the Persian Satrap on his purple litter
Abyssinian girls, their little breasts carolling to the sky, alluringly
swayed; the air was crowded by the crisp tinklings of tiny bells at
wrist and ankles as the Kabaros drummed; and hard by in the brake
brown nymphs moved in languorous rhythms, droning hoarse sacrificial
chants. The colossus Memnon hymned, priests of Baal screamed as they
lacerated themselves with knives, Druid priestesses crooned sybillic
incantations. And over this pageant of Woman and Music the proud sun of
old Egypt scattered splendid burning rays.
From distant strands and hillsides came the noise of unholy instruments
with names, sweet-sounding, and clashing. Nofres from the Nile,
Ravanastrons of Ceylon, Javanese gongs, Chinese Pavilions, Tambourahs,
Sackbuts, Shawms, Psalteries, Dulcimers, Salpinxes, Keras, Timbrels,
Sistra, Crotala, double flutes, twenty-two stringed harps, Kerrenas,
the Indian flute called Yo, and the quaint Yamato-Koto. Followed fast
the Biwa, the Gekkin, and its cousin the Genkwan; the Ku, named after
a horrid god; the Shunga and its cluttering strings, the Samasien,
the Kokyu, the Vamato Fuye--which breathed moon-eyed melodies--the
Hichi-Riki, and the Shaku-Hachi. The Sho was mouthed by slant-haired
yellow boys, while the sharp roll of drums covered with goatskins never
ceased. From this bedlam there occasionally emerged a splinter of tune
like a plank thrown up by the sea. No melody could I discern, though
I grasped its beginnings. Double flutes gave me the modes: Dorian,
Phrygian, Æolian, Lydian, Ionian; after Sappho and her Mixo-Lydian mode
I longed for a modern accord.
The choir went whirling on with Citharas, Rebecs, Citoles, Domras,
Goules, Serpents, Crwths, Pentachords, Rebabs, Pantalons, Conches,
Flageolets made of Pelican bones, Tams-tams, Carillons, Xylophones,
Crescents of beating bells, Mandoras, Whistling Vases of clay,
Zampognas, Zithers, Bugles, Octochords, Naccaras or Turkish Castanets,
and Quinternas. I heard blare the two hundred thousand curved trumpets
which Solomon had made for his Temple, and the forty thousand which
accompanied the Psalms of David. Jubal played his Magrephá. Pythagoras
came with his Monochord. To the music of the Spheres Plato listened.
The priests of Joshua blew seven times upon Shofars, or rams-horns.
Then fell the walls of Jericho. To this came a challenging blast from
the terrible horn of Roland of Roncesvalles. The air had the resonance
of hell as the Guatemalan Indians worshipped their Black Christ upon
the Plaza; and naked Ishtar, Daughter of Sin, stood shivering before
the Seventh Gate. A great silence ensued. I saw a green star drop over
Judea and thought music itself were slain. The pilgrims with their
Jew’s-harps dispersed into sorrowful groups. Blackness usurped the
sonorous sun. There was no music in all the universe, and this tonal
eclipse lasted long. From remote coasts came faint cries: The Great God
Pan is dead! They have slain Our Lord and we know not where to find
Him....
I heard as if in a magic mirror the submerged music of Dufay, Okeghem,
Josquin Deprès, Orlando di Lasso, Goudimel, and Luther; the cathedral
tones of Palestrina, the frozen sweetness of Arezzo, Frescobaldi,
Monteverde, Carissimi, Tartini, Corelli, Scarlatti, Jomelli, Pergolesi,
Lulli, Rameau, Couperin, Buxtehude, Sweelinck, Byrd, Gibbons, Purcell,
and the Bach; with their Lutes, Monochords, Virginals, Harpsichords,
Clavicytherums, Clavichords, Cembalos, Spinets, Theorbos, Organs, and
Pianofortes, and accompanying them an army, vast, formidable, of the
immemorial virtuosi, singers, castrati, the night-moths and midgets of
music. Like wraiths they waved desperate ineffectual hands and made
sad mimickings of their dead and dusty triumphs.... Again I heard the
Chromatic Fantasia of Bach, ever new, yet old. In its weaving sonant
patterns were the detonations of the primeval world I had just left;
also something disquieting and feminine. But the Man predominates in
Bach, subtle, nervous, magnetic as he is in this Fantasia.
A mincing, courtly old woman bows low. It is Joseph Haydn, and there
is sprightly malice in his music. The glorious periwigged giant of
London conducts a chorus of a million. The hailstones of Handel pelt
the pate of the Sphinx. “A man!” I cried, as the very heavens stormed
out their cadenced hallelujahs. A divine youth approaches. His mien
is excellent, and his voice of rare sweetness. His band discourses
ravishing music. The primeval tone is there, but feminized, graceful;
troupes of painted stage players in fallals and furbelows present
pictures of rakes, rustic maidens, and fantastics. An orchestra minces
as Mozart disappears. Behold, the great one approaches, and beneath his
Jovian tread the earth trembles! Beethoven, the sublime peasant, the
conqueror, the god! All that has gone before, all that is to be, is
globed in his symphonies, was divined by this seer. A man, the first
since Handel! And the eagles triumphantly jostle the scarred face of
the Sphinx. Von Weber prances by on his gayly caparisoned arpeggios,
Meyerbeer and Verdi follow; all three footlight folk. Schubert, a
panpipe through which the wind discourses exquisite melodies; Gluck,
whose lyre is stringed Greek fashion, but bedecked with Parisian gauds
and ribbons; Mendelssohn, a charming, girlish echo of Bach; Chopin
and Schumann, romantic wrestlers with their muted dreams, strugglers
against ineffable madness and sorely stricken at the end; Berlioz, a
primitive Roc, half-bird, half-human, also a Minotaur who dragged to
his Crete all the music of the Masters; and the Turk of the keyboard,
Franz Liszt, with Cymbalom, Czardas, and crazy Kalamaïkas pass. But
suddenly I noted a shriller tonal accent, the accent of a sun that
has lost its sex, a sun that is stricken with moon-sickness. A hybrid
appears, followed by a cohort of players. A huge orchestra plays
straightway; the Sphinx wears a sinister smile....
Then I saw the tone-color of each instrument. Some malign enchanter
had diverted from their natural uses every member of the tonal army.
I saw the strings in rainbow hues, red trumpets, blue flutes, green
oboes, purple clarinets, horns glorious golden yellow, scarlet
trombones, dark-brown bassoons, carmilion ophecleides, as the drums
punctured space with ebon crepitations. That the triangle always had
been silver I never questioned, but this new chromatic blaze, these
novel tintings of tone--what did they portend? Was it a symbol of the
further degradation and effeminization of music? Was art become as the
sigh of a woman? A vain, selfish goddess was about to be placed on
high and worshipped; soon the rustling of silk would betray her sex.
Released from the wise bonds imposed upon her by Mother Church, music
is now a parasite of the emotions, a modern Circe whose “feet take
hold on hell,” whose wand enchants men into listening swine. Gigantic
as antediluvian ferns, as evil-smelling and as dangerous, music in
the hands of this magician is dowered with ambiguous attitudes, with
anonymous gestures, is color become sound, sensuality masking as chaste
beauty. This Klingsor evirates, effeminates, disintegrates. He is the
spirit who denies all things natural, and his revengeful theatric music
goes about in the guise of a woman. She hastens its end, its spiritual
suicide is at hand. I lifted my eyes. Surely I recognized that short,
dominating figure conducting the orchestra. Was it the tragic comedian,
Richard Wagner? Were those his mocking, ardent eyes fading in the
morbid mist?
A fat, cowled monk stealthily marches after him. He shades his eyes
from the fierce rays of the Wagnerian sun; to him more grateful are
moon-rays and the reflected light of lonely forest pools. He is the
Arch-Hypocrite of Tone, and he speaks in divers tongues. Brahms it
is and he wears the mask of a musical masquerader. Then swirled by
a band of gypsies, with guitars, castanets, and led by Bizet. Spain
seemed familiar land, Spain with the odors of the boudoir. Gounod and
Faust go simpering on tiptoe; a disorderly mass of Cossacks stampeded
them, Tchaikovsky at their head. They yelled as they banged upon
resounding Svirelis, Balalaikas, and Kobzas, dancing the Ziganka all
the while. And as a still more horrible uproar was heard I became
suddenly conscious of a change on the face of the Sphinx; streaked with
grey it seemed to be crumbling. As the clatter increased I diverted my
regard from the massive stone and beheld an orgiastic mob of men and
women howling and playing upon instruments of fulgurating colors and
vile shapes. Their skins were white, their hair yellow, their eyes of
victorious blue.
“Nietzsche’s Blond Barbarians, the Apes of Wagner!” I exclaimed,
and I felt the ground giving away. The naked music, pulsatile and
opium-charged, turned hysterical as Zarathustra-Strauss waved on
his myrmidons with frenzied philosophical motions. Music was become
vertiginous, a mad vortex wherein whirled mad atoms madly embracing.
Dancing, the dissonant corybantes of the Dionysiac evangel scarce
touched earth, thus outvying the bacchantes. The roar of enemy
cannon pursued them as the last Superman yielded his ghost to the
Time-Spirit....
Then there gravely marched a group of men of cold cerebral expression.
They carried steel hammers with which they beat upon their anvils
the whole-tone scale. Near by hovered Arnold Schoenberg with Claude
Debussy, but they put their fingers into their pained ears as the
Neo-Scythians, Scriabine, Stravinsky, Ornstein and Prokofieff hammered
with excruciating dynamics hell itself into icy enharmonic splinters.
With thunderous peals of ironic laughter the Sphinx sank into the sand,
yawning as it vanished and mumbling: “No longer are there dissonances.
Nothing is true. All is permitted!” By a mighty effort to escape the
nipping arctic air and the harsh grindings of impending icebergs, I
fled.
And that is my Masque of Music.
_PART II_
IDOLS AND AMBERGRIS
“Idols and ambergris and rare inlays....”
--_Ezra Pound._
I
THE SUPREME SIN
“Et Diabolus incarnatus est. Et homo factus est.”
--_From the Litany of the Damnéd Saints._
“Shall no new sin be born for men’s trouble?”
--_Swinburne._
“Let us deny Satan!”
--_Sar Péladan._
I
Idly tapping the metal-topped table of the café with his stick, Oswald
Invern waited for the Hollin boys. They had promised, the night before,
to be punctual. It was past eleven and the pair had not turned up; he
was bored, irritated. If they couldn’t remember their engagement, well
and good; but why----!
“Oswald, have we kept you waiting?” intoned two pleasant tenor voices.
There they were at last! Oswald made room for them on the divan and
at once the twin brothers began smoking. Harry fetched a pipe from
the bulging pocket of his coat and Willy lighted a cigarette. It was
their pet affectation to pretend that they disliked any suggestion of
twinship. Willy wore high heels and fashionably cut clothes so as to
appear taller than his brother, while Harry sported Bohemian velvet
and a broad-brimmed hat. But both agreed as to art and brotherly love.
People endured them for these salient traits, though Oswald declared
that it only made them the more stupid.
“No headache this morning, Oswald?”
“No heartache this morning, Oswald?”
The young man envied them as they pulled their fan-shaped beards and
sipped their vermouth-citron. They were in key with the cosmos and he
was not.
“Neither one nor the other,” he absently replied.
“But is not Miss Tilney a charmer? I saw you looking at her the entire
evening. Come now, say?” Harry Hollin spoke with enthusiasm. Invern
slowly shook his head and he continued to gaze down the Boulevard de
Vaugirard. The café stood at the meeting of this boulevard and the
Place du Maine, across from the Gare Mont-Parnasse. The Avenue du Maine
intersected the Place and, while beyond lay the choicer precincts of
the Quarter, there was no spot on the “left bank” that was gayer in
silent weather or duller when the rain fell. This particular morning
the sky reported a delicate pigeon-blue, a nuance that occasionally may
be seen in Paris after a storm; it had withdrawn above the housetops
and was immeasurably far away; a melochromatic horizon was tinged with
flushes of pink and ochre. The twins followed Oswald’s eyes and boiled
over ecstatically:
“What tones!” cried Harry.
“I could model them in precious gems!” exclaimed his brother.
“There you go, with your atelier slang,” muttered their companion.
“I’ve been in Paris ten years longer than you and you beat me as a
Frenchman.”
“Ça ne biche pas?” Harry continued. “It’s lovely.”
“Oui, c’est kif--kif!” chimed his brother. Invern watched them, the
echo of a smile sounding across his compressed lips. He was not more
than twenty-eight; a slender figure proclaimed his youth. The head
was well set on his shoulders. It was the expression of his frowning
forehead and large, dark, heavy eyes that made the man look much
older. Not dissipation, rather discontent, marred features of a
Byzantine type. Yes, he had been thirteen years in Paris and these
foolish good-hearted fellows only three; but they knew the argot
of the Beaux-Arts better than he, and they openly boasted their
anti-Americanism. He asked them:
“Frankly, what are you going to do with yourselves in America--when you
get there?” They answered in happy unison: “Make money.”
He shook his head.
“Make money by selling tombstones--that’s you, Willy!--and painting
society dames in impossible attitudes, tints, and expressions--that’s
you, Harry.”
“Never mind us, Invern. You may never go, but if you do--a comic opera
with a howling success is our wish.”
“I’ll never return--now,” said Invern. “The cursed microbe of artistic
Paris is in my system. And, what’s more, I’ll never do anything. When
a Yankee comes over here to paint he tries to paint like a Frenchman.
Look at the three Salons with their half-baked imitations. Let me
finish”--the brothers had lifted angry shoulders--“and if a Yankee
studies music here he composes French music ever afterward--French
music which is a sad mixture of German and Italian; eclectic style, the
wise ones call it.”
“And if he goes to Germany?” demanded Harry.
“Then he composes German music.” Suddenly Willy stood up.
“I have solved the mystery. This pessimism, Oswald, is the result
of--of--why, you’re in love, man! I know her name. It’s Miss
Tilney--June Tilney. The secret is out.”
“Is her name June?” asked Oswald irrelevantly.
“It’s June and she’s rich as the sound of her name.” The Hollin boys
were irrepressible this gay morning.
“So! But why June?”
“You’re interested. Listen,” interpolated Harry. “She’s a Yankee girl
with a Russian mother--or had one--and she was educated in London,
Russia, Italy, Germany, Paris----”
“Go on! Why not New York?”
“She never saw New York, but she speaks United States.”
“And,” added Willy, “the Count hates it like the dickens.”
“What a pair of rattles you are! Who’s the Count?”
“Why, Count Van Zorn, her guardian, of course. Haven’t you met old Van
Zorn yet? He’s very musical, goes to all the swell musical Salons of
Paris, to the Princesse de Brancovan, to the Comtesse de Blanzay, to
Duchesse de Bellune, to the Princesse de Bibesco--” Oswald held up his
hands in consternation.
“Stop! I don’t care a sou where he goes. Who is he?”
“He’s very rich and looks after June Tilney’s affairs. And--they
say--wants to marry her--only thirty years’ difference--she won’t
have it, though she likes the old codger and is seen everywhere with
him--and they say the Rasta--he’s from Roumania or South America--goes
in for magic and puts spells upon the girl.”
“Drop the mufle,” interrupted Oswald. “The main thing now is breakfast.
And, incidentally, why don’t you marry the girl yourself, Willy?”
“C’est à Bibi!” exclaimed Harry, pointing to himself. “Willy has
signed over all rights and interests to his loving brother. And we have
the cabot on the run--he will be here in five minutes”; the brothers
were embarrassed after this statement. Their friend stared at them
shrewdly for a moment and then laughed--one of his rare “Rosmersholm”
laughs, as the brothers had christened such a happening.
“So that’s the game? Coming here to déjeuner! Miss June with him?” They
blushed over the tops of their beards. Invern began grumbling.
“Oswald!” exclaimed the boys deprecatingly; they were fond of him,
notwithstanding his frowns and gloomy moods. A waiter was summoned and
the order given for the mid-day meal. “Five plates, Louis, and have the
whitest table linen in the house, please!”
After the introductions Oswald again admired the girl he had seen the
previous night. She had accompanied the fraternal pair much against
the wish of her guardian to a ball in the Quarter and she had not,
she said, found it wonderfully diverting. The color of her eyes was
hazel--they were wide with golden flecks in them, the same curious gold
as her hair--and her little ears and nose with its tiny nostrils, that
became inflated when she was interested, held the gaze of the young
man. Under his dyed eyebrows Count Van Zorn regarded the company. It
was not quite to his liking, the Hollin brothers soon discovered, so
they engaged him in conversation and paid him exaggerated compliments.
His bird-like profile, with the dull, prominent eyes, moved slowly from
one brother to the other.
“Who’s your friend?” he finally asked. He was told all sorts of
impossible things; Invern was the coming composer; he had not arrived
yet, but--! The Count grunted. He had heard this blague before. In
Paris all your artistic friends are just about to, but never do,
arrive. Miss Tilney spoke to Invern.
“It is charming to think of an American giving up his great country
for the sake of music--preferring notes to gold.” He made a gesture of
disapproval.