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In speaking of the moral reasons of the success of Pelleas et Melisande, I would like to draw your attention to a form of thought which is not confined to France, but which is common nowadays in a section of the more distinguished members of European society, and which has found expression in Pelleas et Melisande.  The atmosphere in which Maeterlinck’s drama moves makes one feel the melancholy resignation of the will to Fate.  We are shown that nothing can change the order of events; that, despite our proud illusions, we are not master of ourselves, but the servant of unknown and irresistible forces, which direct the whole tragicomedy of our lives.  We are told that no man is responsible for what he likes and what he loves—­that is if he knows what he likes and loves—­and that he lives and dies without knowing why.

These fatalistic ideas, reflecting the lassitude of the intellectual aristocracy of Europe, have been wonderfully translated into music by Debussy; and when you feel the poetic and sensual charm of the music, the ideas become fascinating and intoxicating, and their spirit is very infectious.  For there is in all music an hypnotic power which is able to reduce the mind to a state of voluptuous submission.

The cause of the artistic success of Pelleas et Melisande is of a more specially French character, and marks a reaction that is at once legitimate, natural, and inevitable; I would even say it is vital—­a reaction of French genius against foreign art, and especially against Wagnerian art and its awkward representatives in France.

Is the Wagnerian drama perfectly adapted to German genius?  I do not think so; but that is a question which I will leave German musicians to decide.  For ourselves, we have the right to assert that the form of Wagnerian drama is antipathetic to the spirit of French people—­to their artistic taste, to their ideas about the theatre, and to their musical feeling.  This form may have forced itself upon us, and, by the right of victorious genius, may have strongly influenced the French mind, and may do so again; but nothing will ever make it anything but a stranger in our land.

It is not necessary to dwell upon the differences of taste.  The Wagnerian ideal is, before everything else, an ideal of power.  Wagner’s passional and intellectual exaltation and his mystic sensualism are poured out like a fiery torrent, which sweeps away and burns all before it, taking no heed of barriers.  Such an art cannot be bound by ordinary rules; it has no need to fear bad taste—­and I commend it.  But it is easy to understand that other ideals exist, and that another art might be as expressive by its proprieties and niceties as by its richness and force.  And this former art—­our own—­is not so much a reaction against Wagnerian art as a reaction against its caricatures in France and the consequent abuse of an ill-regulated power.