CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS

M. Saint-Saens has had the rare honour of becoming a classic during his lifetime.  His name, though it was long unrecognised, now commands universal respect, not less by his worth of character than by the perfection of his art.  No artist has troubled so little about the public, or been more indifferent to criticism whether popular or expert.  As a child he had a sort of physical repulsion for outward success: 

                     “De l’applaudissement

J’entends encor le bruit qui, chose assez etrange,
Pour ma pudeur d’enfant etait comme une fange
Dont le flot me venait toucher; je redoutais
Son contact, et parfois, malin, je l’evitais,
Affectant la raideur."[110]

[Footnote 110: 

                             Of applause
    I still hear the noise; and, strangely enough,
    In my childish shyness it seemed like mire
    About to spot me; I feared
    Its touch, and secretly shunned it,
    Affecting obstinacy.

These verses were read by M. Saint-Saens at a concert given on 10 June, 1896, in the Salle Pleyel, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his debut, which he made in 1846.  It was in this same Salle Pleyel that he gave his first concert.]

Later on, he achieved success by a long and painful struggle, in which he had to fight against the kind of stupid criticism that condemned him “to listen to one of Beethoven’s symphonies as a penance likely to give him the most excruciating torture."[111] And yet after this, and after his admission to the Academy, after Henry VIII and the Symphonie avec orgue, he still remained aloof from praise or blame, and judged his triumphs with sad severity: 

“Tu connaitras les yeux menteurs, l’hypocrisie
Des serrements de mains,
Le masque d’amitie cachant la jalousie,
Les pales lendemains

“De ces jours de triomphe ou le troupeau vulgaire
Qui pese au meme poids
L’histrion ridicule et le genie austere
Vous mets sur le pavois."[112]

M. Saint-Saens has now grown old, and his fame has spread abroad, but he has not capitulated.  Not many years ago he wrote to a German journalist:  “I take very little notice of either praise or censure, not because I have an exalted idea of my own merits (which would be foolish), but because in doing my work, and fulfilling the function of my nature, as an apple-tree grows apples, I have no need to trouble myself with other people’s views."[113]

[Footnote 111:  C. Saint-Saens, Harmonie et Melodie, 1885.]

[Footnote 112:  C. Saint-Saens, Rimes familieres, 1890.

    You will know the lying eyes, the insincerity
    Of pressures of the hand,
    The mask of friendship that hides jealousy. 
    The tame to-morrows

    Of these days of triumph, when the vulgar herd
    Crowns you with honour;
    Judging rare genius to be
    Equal in merit to the wit of clowns.