by Charles Baudelaire
Music cannot flatter itself, I have often heard it said, to convey any idea with certainty, the way words or paintings can. That is true to a certain extent, but not entirely. Music has its own way of communicating, through the means that suit it best. In music, as with painting and the written word, there is always a gap that must be filled by the listener’s imagination.
This fact doubtless steered Wagner toward dramatic art: that is to say, the uniting, the synthesis of various art forms into a synchronous and perfect art: art par excellence. What better example than the famous overture to Lohengrin … I read in a performance program from the Italian Theater in Paris, “From the very first bars, the soul of the solitary devotee who seeks
the Holy Grail plunges into vast, infinite spaces … A sacred procession passes before him and becomes more and more ecstatic; it grows, expanding with ineffable aspirations awaking within it. It surrenders to a faithful grace, finding itself ever nearer to the enlightened apparition. When at last the Holy Grail appears, the choir falls into an ecstatic adoration as if the entire world had suddenly disappeared. The Holy Grail showers its blessings on the devoted man at prayer, and consecrates him as its knight. In the midst of his bliss, the host of angels regains once again its celestial heights … they vanish into the vast profundity of space, in the same way in which they came.”
Let us consider the illustrious pianist, artist and philosopher Franz Liszt, who translates in his own imaginative way the same piece of music: “This introduction re-affirms the mystical element always present and always hidden within the piece. To impart the unerring power of this secret, Wagner first shows us the ineffable beauty of a sanctuary … He initiates us into the Holy Grail; he creates a temple of incorruptible wood that shines before our eyes, with fragrant walls and gates of gold … only those with elevated hearts and pure hands approach its splendid porticos. He conveys this not through an imposing and real structure, but by nurturing our fragile senses—he reveals this vision to us as reflected in some celestial realm … or an iridescent cloud.”
“It opens with a broad, dormant layer of melody, a vaporous ether that extends to endear the sacred vision to our profane eyes; an effect exclusively entrusted to the violins ... The motive is played again by the sweetest of wind instruments; the horns and the bassoons join in to prepare the entrance of the trumpets and the trombones, who repeat the melody a fourth time, with a dazzling burst of color. … The sacred building, luminous and radiant in all its magnificence, blinds us with its brilliance. But the vibrant sparkling grows by degree into an intense, brilliant solitude that quickly goes out like a celestial glimmer. The night closes its transparent vapor and the vision disappears little by little into the same many-colored incense from which it appeared. The piece ends with the first six measures, which have become even more ethereal. Its character of ideal mysticism in heard above all in the orchestra’s sustained pianissimo, interrupted in a faint moment by the brass section’s marvelous illumination of the introduction’s only motive.”
May I now convey with words my own imagination’s inevitable rendering of the same piece of music, when I heard it for the first time, eyes closed, and felt myself, so to speak, raised up from earth? … The reader will know what point we’re after here: to show that true music suggests analogous ideas among different minds.
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 qui 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.* Nature is a temple where living pillars Give voice, at times, to confused words; Man passes there through forests of symbols That observe him with understanding eyes. Like long echoes that mingle in the distance In a deep shadowed unity, Vast as the night and as the light of day, Fragrances, colors, and sounds correspond.
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 qui 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.*
Nature is a temple where living pillars Give voice, at times, to confused words; Man passes there through forests of symbols That observe him with understanding eyes. Like long echoes that mingle in the distance In a deep shadowed unity, Vast as the night and as the light of day, Fragrances, colors, and sounds correspond.
I remember that from the very first measures, I experienced a feeling of contentment that comes to the most imaginative people in the dreams of slumber. Delivered from the bonds of gravity unto an extraordinary, pleasurable memory, ... [I had] fallen into a grand reverie of absolute solitude, an immense horizon illuminated by a diffuse expanse of light; vastness unadorned. Soon I felt a more vibrant clarity, an intensity of light growing with such speed—No dictionary holds the nuances to describe this essence that renews itself of ardor and purity in each moment. I now understood the idea of a soul that dwells in a luminous realm, of an ecstasy born of pleasure and wisdom that hovers above, and far away from, the natural world.
It is important to note the similarities among these three interpretations. In all three we find a feeling of spiritual and physical benediction; solitude; contemplation of something infinitely large and infinitely beautiful; of an intense light that delights the eyes and the soul to the point of swooning—and, in the end, the feeling of vast space extending to the furthest conceivable limits.
Translated by Elisabeth Commanday Swim. Excerpted by permission from the longer passage L’immensité sans autre décor qu’elle même, published by the Grand Théâtre de Genève in 2007.
* From the poem Correspondances, published in the collection Les Fleurs du Mal (“Flowers of Evil,” 1857).
