s 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.

Genius has a right to be what it will--to trample underfoot, if it
wishes, taste and morals and the whole of society. But when those who
are not geniuses wish to do the same thing they only make themselves
ridiculous and odious. There have been too many monkey Wagners in
France. During the last ten or twenty years scarcely one French musician
has escaped Wagner's influence. One understands only too well the revolt
of the French mind, in the name of naturalness and good taste, against
exaggerations and extremes of passion, whether sincere or not. _Pelleas
et Melisande_ came as a manifestation of this revolt. It is an
uncompromising reaction against over-emphasis and excess, and against
anything that oversteps the limits of the imagination. This distaste of
exaggerated words and sentiments results in what is like a fear of
showing the feelings at all, even when they are most deeply stirred.
With Debussy the passions almost whisper; and it is by the imperceptible
vibrations of the melodic line that the love in the hearts of the
unhappy couple is shown, by the timid "Oh, why are you going?" at the
end of the first act, and the quiet "I love you, too," in the last scene
but one. Think of the wild lamentations of the dying Ysolde, and then of
the death of Melisande, without cries and without words.

From a scenic point of view, _Pelleas et Melisande_ is also quite
opposed to the Bayreuth ideal. The vast proportions--almost immoderate
proportions--of the Wagnerian drama, its compact structure and the
intense concentration of mind which from beginning to end holds these
enormous works and their ideology together, and which is often displayed
at the expense of the action and even the emotions, are as far removed
as they can be from the French love of clear, logical, and temperate
action. The little pictures of _Pelleas et Melisande_, small and
sharply cut, each marking without stress a new stage in the evolution of
the drama, are built up in quite a different way from those of the
Wagnerian theatre.

And, as if he wished to accentuate this antagoni