VTHE LYRICS OF LIFE
During the cruellest hours, when the war about me has been heaping agony upon agony, when I have been able to find nothing, nothing to which I could any longer attach my confidence and my need of hope, I have often been surprised to find, running through my head, one of those airs that I know so well, those airs that I love and that escort my soul, like watchful and radiant personages, through the chaos of the days. And I would think bitterly: “Just fifteen quite simple notes! but they carry a meaning so beautiful, so profound, so commanding that they would suffice, I am certain, to resolve all conflicts, to discourage all hatreds, if men knew them well enough to sing them all together with the same attentive tenderness.”
It may be that the philosophy which absorbs you is one that leaves no room for indulgence. Perhaps you feel yourself full of bitterness for your fellows, perhaps you have made up your mind not to see inthe activity of the living any but motives of greed and covetousness. Do not laugh! Do not be in too great haste to prove yourself right! Above everything, do not rejoice in being right in so dismal a fashion.
I say it again, if certain pages of Beethoven were better known to those who suffer and slaughter one another they would succeed in disarming many a resentment, they would restore to many a tense face a soft, ineffable smile.
If you do not believe this, you are not accustomed to living among simple people, you have never watched an irrepressible class of little children whom their master dominates and calms by making them sing, you have never heard a multitude of people intoning a hymn in some cathedral, you have never seen a great flood of workingmen, in some foul slum, break into the rhythm of a revolutionary song, perhaps you have never even seen a poor man weeping because a violin had just recalled to him his youth and the obscure thoughts he believed he had never in all his life confessed to anyone.
Think of all these things and then form some notion of what it is the thoughts of the great masters can do with the soul. Why, why is it not better known, this thing which is, indeed, knowledge and revelation itself? Why does it not reign over the empires, this which is sovereignty, grandeur,majesty? Why is it not more ardently invoked in the hour of crisis, this that teaches, equally well, fruitful doubt and serene resolution?
True, he who says ecstatically, “The world is governed by love, goodness, generous passions,” surrenders himself to a childish error. But he who cries, “The whole world is enslaved by egoism, violence and base passions,” speaks foolishly.
As we look about us, we might perhaps imagine that from one or the other of these two moral attitudes there is no escape. Must we believe that the spirit of system has such an irresistible hold over everyone who sets about the business of living?
The world! The world! It is much more beautiful and complex than that. It always upsets our prearrangements, and that is why we cherish it so dearly. But we also love to foresee things, and system seems to arrange them so that we can.
What does it signify in a world that is capable of everything? Amid the evil and the mediocre there will always shine forth consolingly something noble, something wondrous. Is it not shameful to predict the basest things so glibly only to close our eyes the more obstinately before the beauty that is unknown and unforeseen?
I assure you, in spite of all, that two lines ofmusic can turn a multitude back and agitate the deepest springs of its behavior. If the miracle does not result from harmonious sounds, it will be borne, perhaps, of ten warm, rhythmical words, or the sight of a statue or the evocation of an image.
The worship of immediate realities leads us to those easy victories that intoxicate the coarse spirits. At times it results in irreparable disasters, for it inclines us to misprize those secret and delicate things that pave the way for the soul’s most daring flights and ventures.
Some other time I shall tell the story of the general who, in order to allay the grievances of his mutinous troops, offered them a cask of wine and, thanks to this blunder, suffered a defeat.
People who reason in a wholesale fashion get along successfully from day to day till the hour when a tiny error destroys their success forever.
If the thoughts of great men no longer cause miracles it is because they are too little understood, or are misunderstood, or are purposely distorted. You are mistaken if you think they are powerless because they are beautiful.
The war, which has crushed such great masses of men, has brought us face to face with this melancholy evidence, it has enabled us thoroughly to examinemany individuals and to put many experiences to the proof. It has permitted us to measure the whole humiliation of moral civilization before that other, the scientific and industrial civilization which we might still better call practical civilization.
Gifted, serious, good men have said to me, “First of all one has to live. You can see, in the midst of this hurricane, what would become of a people weakened by idealism and given over to the works of the spirit. My son will study chemistry. The coming century will be a hard one, my son will perhaps never have the time to read Emerson or acquaint himself with the works of Bach! Too bad! But first of all one has to live.”
Does it not seem as if error had a dazzling power to seduce us and overwhelm us? Men are always hoping to conquer it by yielding to its demands. No one has the courage to turn his own steps away from its shifting shore. No one, for example, says to me: “The moral culture of the world is in peril. Mechanical progress monopolizes and swallows up all human energy. The generous soul of the best men is forgotten, in exile. Let us, with a common voice, with all our strength, summon it to come back to us, or let us go and die in exile with it, in an exile that is noble and pure.”
I shall speak to you again of all these things; we must talk a great deal more about the future if we wish to enter it without blindness, shame, and horror.
For the moment, glance at the people who surround us, the restless people we see on all sides. There are some of them who know what is beautiful. They rejoice in it, almost in secrecy, and despise those who do not share their faith. As for the others, they do not know it, and that is all one can say. They are, according to their several characters, ignorant and sceptical, or just simply ignorant. They see how works of art and the spirit miraculously survive the decadence and the prosperity of empires: that astonishes them without convincing them. Many divine that this has something to do with a secret and sacred power, but they do not dare and they do not know how to avail themselves of it. They catch glimpses of the feast of the heroes and they cannot realize that their place is marked and waiting for them.
Among my everyday companions are many educated men upon whom the universities have lavished their care and their degrees. Many of them are interested neither in their duties, nor in their comrades, nor, one would say, in their own thoughts. They play cards, read the papers, think aboutwomen and complain of ennui, for the war has enthroned boredom. And yet these souls, I assure you, are of good material and full of energy and resource.
What is to be done? How is one to introduce them to a larger, fuller life? How can one dare to do that without presumption, and also without fear of pomposity? How do it with affection, without lecturing them, without preaching to them? How be useful and friendly with simplicity? They have suffered, they have experience and obstinate views of their own. They do not believe that they have been dispossessed of anything. You have to listen very attentively to hear their soul groaning in the depths.
I spoke to one of them about music. He replied with an indifference in which there was a touch of discouragement; “For my part, I don’t understand music. It can’t interest me.” We went on talking and I discovered that he was strangely sensitive to architectual matters, that he had a very subtle understanding and lacked nothing but enlightenment, knowledge, to have applied himself to it with passionate interest.
It is usually that way. The field of moral activity is so large that it has in reserve for every soul a path of his own choice, accessible and full of allurement. I do not believe there is a single individual who cannot end by meeting, in the limitless realmof art, with a mode of expression that touches him, conforms quite accurately to his powers and tastes.
You see I have waited a long time before pronouncing the word. I must at last make up my mind to call art by its name. Listen and do not confuse modesty with timidity.
The past century has produced important artists in every country in the world. That was a beautiful, fertile and truly generous century! And yet it witnessed the birth of a misunderstanding that grows more obdurate, that increases as it grows older. Should one ever allow a misunderstanding to grow old?
The romantic writers and, following them, all the artists of their epoch, intoxicated with their own genius, honored art as a religion. It was natural enough since at that moment, as we know, mankind was beginning to detach itself from its divinities, and it is hard to live without God. I cannot bring myself to condemn that enthusiasm. I love art too well, and I shall always hold it as one of the distinguishing marks of man and one of the greatest things in this world.
But the priests of this new God have acted like all priests: they have hurled anathemas and brought in a reign of intolerance. They have grown madwith pride, when there was reason and when there was no reason for it. They have cried out at all hours of the day, “Away, profane ones!” Many of them, who have had very noble souls, have discouraged, as if designedly, those whom their radiant face has fascinated. Others, instead of struggling, have held the epoch responsible for their ill-fortune. All of them, poets, painters, musicians, have let it be understood that they exercised a divine power and that the mass of men must only wonder and be silent, without themselves attempting anything of the sort.
No doubt there is a certain virtue in this attitude; it has lavished solitary consolations on those who have turned their backs on fashion.
The worthiest heirs of these illustrious men have confirmed their tradition. They have devised a splendid isolation, raised up a tower of ivory and dug all about it a moat that every day grows deeper. They have also stirred up childish and shame-faced adversaries with a desire for the commonest sort of popularity, and the confirmation of billboard success.
Yet humanity is waiting and longs to be treated neither as intruders nor as children.
It cannot be said any longer that pure art is of no use: it helps us to live.
It helps us to live, in the most practical manner and every day.
Every moment you make instinctive, reiterated, and forcible appeals to all the forms of art. And that not only in order to express your thought, but still more and above all to shape your thought, to think your thought.
You find yourself in the midst of a landscape, and there is an image at the back of your eye. The manner in which you accept and interpret this image bears the mark of your personality and also of a crowd of other personalities which you call to your aid without knowing it.
The day when the painters of our continent invented that convention we call perspective, they modified and determined, for many long years, our way of seeing things. It must be recognized equally that since the reign of impressionism we have understood, possessed in a new way, the colors of the world.
You live in a sonorous universe where everything is rhythm, tone, number and harmony: human voices, the great sounds of nature, the artificial uproar of society envelopes you in a vibrant and complex network that you ought unceasingly to decipher and translate. Well, this you cannot do without submitting to the influence of the great souls who have occupied themselves with these things. The understandingof movements, harmonies, rhythms, only comes to you at the moment when the musicians reveal their secret to you, since they have been able, in some fashion, to interest you in them.
And this is true in regard to everything. If you discover something in your environment, if you perceive an interesting harmony between two beings, a curious relation between two ideas, you will succeed in throwing them into relief, in giving happy expression to them, only by means of the poet’s art, and if you cannot find terms and images of your own, you can freely borrow them from Hugo, from Baudelaire, from those unknown artists who have elaborated the common language of men.
We do not think alone. Resign yourself, therefore, to being the delighted prisoner of a vast, human system from which you cannot escape without error and loss. Become, with good grace, the friend and the guest of great men.
They will introduce you to a profound, passionate, lyrical life. They will aid you to possess the world. Art is not simply a manner of moving the pencil, the pen or the bow. It is not a secret, technical process. It is, above everything else, a way of living.
If your business is to grow wheat or to smelt copper, perform it with interest and skill. That willrender service to other men whose function is to assemble colors, shapes, words or sounds. They will know how to render service to you, in their own fashion, repay you in turn. But do not imagine that their works are destined merely to divert your leisure. They have a more sacred, a more beautiful mission: that of placing you in possession of your own wealth.
Art is the supreme gift that men make of their discoveries, their riches.
No one has possessed the world better than Lucretius, Shakespeare or Goethe. What do you know of Croesus, who heaped up his gold to such an abnormal and monstrous degree? Nothing has remained of that chimerical fortune but a vague memory. But the fortune of Rembrandt has become and will remain the fortune of our race.
To follow the example of these masters is not so much to try, with pen or palette in hand, to imitate them, as to understand with them, and thanks to them, what they have understood.
This cannot hurt your pride or hinder the expansion of your own personality. Quite the contrary. This studious humility is the surest path toward the conquest of your own soul. The anatomists will explain to you that the human embryo adopts successively, in its quick evolution, all the forms the species has known before its actual flowering. This great law rules also in the moral order, and do not counton escaping it. It is by first knowing the world through the masters that you will succeed some day in grasping it in your hands, dominating it yourself.
Ambition is an intoxicating passion, but to go to school to genius is a prudent measure and a sweet experience, too.
If you are unhappy, oppressed, if you have melancholy doubts of your future, of your ability, of your power to love, and if nothing in heaven replies to your prayer, to your need for deliverance, remember that you are not abandoned without resource. Men remain to you. The best among them have made for your consolation, for your redemption, statues, books and songs.
Open one of these books, therefore, and plunge into it! Sink into it as into a cool forest, as into a deep, running brook.
A man is speaking to you of himself or of the world. Read! Read on! Little by little the harmonious voice envelopes you, cradles you, lifts you up and suddenly bears you away. The tightness in your throat seems to relax, you breathe with a sort of fervor and exaltation. Generous tears start to your eyes or your whole soul shakes with laughter.
This great and wholesome exaltation people attributeto the miraculous presence of beauty. No doubt, no doubt! But that vague and simple explanation is an almost mythical one.
For you must realize that the man with whom you have just been having a sort of intimate colloquy has comforted you and carried you out of yourself mainly because he has been able to prove to you that you were neither abandoned, nor destitute, nor truly disgraced. He has seemed to you great but, in recalling to you that you are of the same race as himself, he has effaced himself before you. He has given you happy, courageous, new thoughts, and you have suddenly seen that you were thinking them also. For a second you have both communed together. And you have felt yourself once more in possession of a treasure that was escaping you.
It is true, all these thoughts are your own, since it is enough for you to see them in writing to recognize them. It is true, you too have your grandeur, your nobility and infinite resources. How could you have forgotten it for a moment? It is enough for you to open that book or to hum that song to remember it. It is true, your life also is astonishing and full of adventures. How did you fall into that despair? What did that discouragement signify?
During the winter of 1917, I made the acquaintance of a young provincial musician who was serving in the same unit with me. At Soissons we found a room where we were able to meet and play together.
Our new comrade was a simple man with a country accent.
He played the violin carefully and with talent. Often, during our concerts, we watched his face as it bent over the instrument, and it seemed to us that in those moments that humble violinist was in communion with the great souls of Bach, Beethoven, and Franck, that he was holding a brotherly and affectionate conversation with them. I felt then that he had nothing to envy in the princes of this world. And it is a fact, I believe, that he did not envy them anything.
Do not tell me that you do not know how to play any instrument. That signifies nothing. There are two skilful professional musicians in my group who play their instruments only just enough to enable them not to lose practice for their calling. They are a sort of mechanician. As for you, you have a heart, ears, and a memory. And that’s the main thing.
Believe that what you hold in your memory is more precious than everything else, for you carry thatwith you wherever you go, through all your days.
Do you think I can ever bore myself, with all those thousands of airs that sing in my head, that secretly accompany all my thoughts and offer a sort of harmonious comment upon all the acts of my life?
If this does not seem possible to you, remember that you possess the immense library of humankind and all its museums. Think of all you have read and admired. Think of it with pride and affection. Think of all that remains to you to see and to read and tell yourself how marvelous it is to be so ignorant as to have such riches in reserve, to have such treasures to conquer.
Amid the ordeals and the disillusionments of your existence, lift your soul every day toward those divine brothers who are our masters, and repeat with a proud humility: “It is sweet to sit down at your feast! And how good to think that it is to you we owe our opulence and our prosperity!”