auxiliary. It, too, is full of the sense of the shadowiness of things
that weighed upon Debussy, has not a little of the accent of the time.
This "vieille et triste legende de la foret" is alive with images, such
as the old and somber castle inhabited by aging people and lying lost
amid sunless forests, the rose that blooms in the shadow underneath
Melisande's casement, Melisande's hair that falls farther than her arms
can reach, the black tarn that broods beneath the castle-vaults and
breathes death, Golaud's anguished search for truth in the prattle of
the child, that could not but call a profound response from Debussy's
imagination. But, above all, it was the figure of Melisande herself that
made him pour himself completely into the setting of the play. For that
figure permitted Debussy to give himself completely in the creation of
his ideal image. The music is all Melisande, all Debussy's love-woman.
It is she that the music reveals from the moment Melisande rises from
among the rocks shrouded in the mystery of her golden hair. It is she
the music limns from the very beginning of the work. The entire score is
but what a man might feel toward a woman that was his, and yet, like all
women, strange and mysterious and unknown to him. The music is like the
stripping of some perfect flower, petal upon petal. There are moments
when it is all that lies between two people, and is the fullness of
their knowledge. It is the perfect sign of an experience.

And so, since Debussy's art could have no second climax, it was in the
order of things that the works succeeding upon his masterpiece should
be relatively less important. Nevertheless, the ensuing poems and songs
and piano-pieces, with the exception of those written during those years
when Debussy could have said with Rameau, his master, "From day to day
my taste improves. But I have lost all my genius," are by little less
perfect and astounding pieces of work. His music is like the peaks of a
mountain range, of which one of the first and nearest is the highest,
while the others appear scarcely less high. And they are some of the
bluest, the loveliest, the most shining that stretch through the region
of modern music. It will be long before humankind has exhausted their
beauty.

Ravel

Ravel and Debussy are of one lineage. They both issue from what is
deeply, graciously temperate in the genius of France. Across the span of
centuries, they touch hands with the men who