The Great Bird of the Midsummer Moors

In the heart of the moors, where the heather hums and the sky never stays still, there is told the tale of a bird vast beyond imagining—its wings like stormclouds, its cry a falling of glass.

None know its name, for it has none, and none who have seen it close have spoken of it afterward, save in silence.

It comes only once a year, on Midsummer’s Eve, when the sun hovers long and unwilling above the horizon. The air grows heavy, the insects vanish, and the marsh-lights tremble low. Then a wind, cold and without scent, rolls over the land, and the great bird descends.

Some say it is the soul of the sky, shedding its weight for a single night. Others call it a punishment older than sin, still circling in search of something lost.

But Diamante, being of clearer sight, once followed it.

He climbed the White Tor with bare feet, ignoring the cries of those who loved him, for they feared the bird’s shadow more than they feared death. He waited with patience not his own, and at the stroke of dusk, it came—wings beating slow, soundless, immense.

It did not see him at first.

But Diamante, with no weapon and no words, opened his arms—not in defiance, but welcome.

And the bird alighted.

It stood taller than the tallest pine, and yet bent its head to meet him. Its eyes were not eyes, but mirrors of skies he had never seen. It spoke without voice, and this is what he heard:

“I carry the weight of things unsaid. I am memory that will not fade, longing without rest. I have flown a thousand years with no place to land.”

Diamante answered:

“Then rest in me.”

And the bird did. It folded itself into him—into his bones, his breath, his being.

When he descended the tor, he was not the same. He moved slowly, as one who carries something vast within. He no longer feared silence. He no longer needed speech.

That year, the harvest was rich.

Edmond Bailly, 1909

 

“On that world, composed of beings and objects infinitely varied and all of perfect transparency, it is the difference in the density of bodies which indicate surfaces to the Elierians’ expert eyes. With the utmost skill, they can comprehend at a glance the forms of everything; and those forms, themselves penetrable, by no means prevent their gazes from comprehending, through the nearest forms, those of bodies which the first would have hidden if they had been opaque. Thus, an inhabitant of Elier, casting down his exploring gaze from the top of a mountain, perceives at first, on the surface of the ground, the forests spreading out a layer of diaphanous vegetation in dense tufts; and, thoroughly analyzing with his eyes each tree and each bit of moss, he can just as easily and distinctly study the superficial and deep strata from that point on down to the center of the world. His gaze, going through the entire thickness of Elier, can even, by means of a telescope, examine the buildings of a city at the antipodes—if, however, it is not forced to turn away before the rays of a sun blazing at the nadir.”

C.I. Defontenay, 1854

 

O our king, for the delights

Grant us again your palaces, your gardens, your fountains,  

And your golden terraces where the sea of evening breaks,  

And your magic forest where in the night you lead  

The silver Unicorn, the Wyvern, and the black Fawn.  

Grant us again the sweetness of your dead Brides  

Who sleep in the tomb of your soul and who lie  

Under the double lock of gates and doors—  

Your regret, your posthumous love, and your shiver.  

We, who are the eternal Letter of the Book—  

Symbol null, if no one reads the sleeping word!—  

Be the spirit that impresses and stirs and gives life,  

And the triumphal Love that saves from death.  

Tie our hair as a pennant to your standard,  

Sweet knight, dream through us your scattered dream,  

And come to us through life and through chance—  

We are the Mirror and the Amphora and the Lamp.  

Henri de Regnier, 1890

 

“Go into the labyrinth, spend time in the arbors—and read my book, page by page, as if you were a solitary walker, turning over a scarab beetle, a pebble or a dead leaf with the tip of your long, jasper-handled walking-stick, on the dry sand of the pathway.”

Henri de Regnier, 1897

“If you live close to the end, as today we all do, you want to see the course by which the eagle makes his swift descent. Unlike the dove, he leaves a trail of smoke, somehow, in the air. Not that there will not be a new world, but this is the end of ours. And being selfish, we are concerned with that.”

David Stacton, 1960

“When will someone come along and put an end to this dreadful notion, so popular at the moment, that it is as easy to be an artist as a dentist? Why don’t we stop making the secrets of the art so readily available? Let us not keep so many people away from their true vocations at the haberdashery counters of our department stores.”

Claude Debussy, 1912

“Who could tell what unexpected discoveries and what superhuman masterpieces might find a theater in the soul of the Martian god, nestling within its cupola of stone?

Gustave la Rouge, 1908

"I believe in capricious magic of alcohol, and I’m not adverse to feeling its affects. I have about a half-pint of whiskey every night... Strange that it sometimes brings us close to things we’re familiar with, and allows us to see them in a new light.”

Claude Debussy, 1912

 

“Everyone agreed that they had never eaten anything more flavorsome. Then, tranquilly, Scaramouche said: ‘What you are eating, Messieurs, is Human! And I think that if you search carefully in the sauce, you won’t fail to find a few small bones revelatory of the kind of meat you’ve been eating with so much satisfaction.’

“The writhing and the laughter redoubled. But Scaramouche, said, imperturbably: ‘If I’m not the Night herself, I’m her cook. The immense blue vault is a transparent frying-pan, on which I fried, holding it by the Milky Way, which is its handle, Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Neptune and all the stars, on the stove of the eternal Sun. The comets, which have the form of a cruet, pour flamboyant oil; every red bolide is a grain of Cayenne pepper, and the wind of infinite space has the function of a bellows that activates the fire under the frying-pan—with the consequence that it’s the sky, cooked to perfection, that I’ve served you for supper. Not all the sky; the planets, being tough, remained in the cooker; but the little parasites of the heavenly bodies—I mean the living beings of the firmament—have sizzled in the sauce, and you’ve nourished yourself on your celestial resemblances.’

“At the same time, with a long black leg that raked the whole table, Scaramouche tipped over, broke and extinguished the candelabra; and in the darkness, while he roared with laughter, the dead-drunk scientists, sickened and frightened by the execrable feast, vomited parcels of cutlets, backs, fillets, ribs and fry of Mars, Mercury, Saturn and the divine flesh of Venus, which is golden in the blue of beautiful skies.”

Catulle Mendes, 1888

“Light rays, as well as sound rays, are each formed of a continuous series of globules constantly in vibration.

“This subtle transpiration is radiant because the expansion which provokes it is an equal, uniform Force. It is thus, by radiating, that globes of very large dimensions like the sun, the stars, transpire their light, and globes of small dimensions such as the Earth, having much more condensed envelopes, transpire a more subtle fluid, the caloric. 

“Finally, each terrestrial body, each man, each animal, each plant, each fragment of rock or metal, enjoys the transpiring faculty. Each projects a subtle fluid which, according to the circumstances, remains homogeneous, caloric, or splits into two fluids of different subtlety which balance each other and which constitute it in the magnetic or electric state.”

Pierre Hyacinthe Azaïs, 1831

“'What is an olotelepan?'

“'It’s an apparatus that instantaneously transports the senses to indefinite distances, without any wires. You heard it ring several times; you thought it was my watch, but it was my olotelepan. It’s the latest model!' Gigolus took from his pocket the object that he had held in his hand during his conversation with Dame Marthe. 'Nothing bears a closer resemblance to a watch, but it’s not a watch; it’s an olotelepan. I can’t explain the scientific theory, because I’m not very good at physics, but I can tell you how to make use of it. The first condition is to be in contact...'

“Gigolus put the olotelepan into Gourdebec’s free hand.”

Henri Austruy, 1925

“I was walking in Monsieur Azaïs's garden. He pointed out to me a rather considerable heap of decomposed vegetable matter, under which he had placed a small vessel filled with distilled water, and in which he thought small animals would be created whole, by the action of heat alone upon the liquid's elements. I did not learn the results of the experiment, which was to last, I think, for a year; but at any rate I strongly doubt that the ingenious author obtained the result he expected.”

Georges Cuvier, 1833

 

“New projectile launched by Mars towards Earth today…. Supreme Jovian Council met on Ganymede…. After a demand addressed in vain to the people of Mars to cease their unjustified hostilities in the name of sidereal Fraternity and immanent Justice, which are the supreme rules of planetary humankinds, and of which Jupiter has constituted herself the defender on behalf of the Solar System— decides unanimously to come to the aid of our sister planet Earth by any means possible, and decrees…in view of the unspeakably obstinacy of Mars…that the aforesaid felon planet is set outside the law of love and sidereal fraternity, and that all the scientific resources of Jupiter will be set to work with the least possible delay to inflict the most exemplary chastisement upon the Martians. To the people of Earth, courage and fraternity!” 

Theo Varlet, 1921

 

“Our three young men lived in harmony. The spectra of colors and the music of the spheres sang in their eyes and ears, and all their senses, charmed, combined with one another, melted into the infinite harmony. The eddies of waves and crowds and the beating of their hearts were all a rhythm. 

“People came to stand beneath the windows of the madhouse in order to listen, with terror and delight, to the frightful manifestations of that harmonic power, which sometimes took flight with great wing-beats and departed, further and further, all his vigor driving it in that direction.”

Louise Michel, 1888

 

“The Earth will therefore move through space at the whim of my desire, for I intend to steer it, matter being made in order to be vanquished. Then, riding my planet, I shall go to visit my brothers, the tyrants who are ruling the other planets. I shall play my part in the concert of potentates of the sidereal universe, who range constellations in battle and use asteroid-fire in bombardments...”

Louis Boussenard, 1888

“No, it wasn’t possible that the century that utilized electricity so easily as a means of transport, which challenged distance by the manipulation of steam, perfected destruction by inventing terrible weapons, and reckoned with air and water by the simple use of gasoline-powered propellers, could be incapable of responding to an invasion of animals emerged from a test-tube in a laboratory. Oh, how illogical I was being, given my science!

“‘In any case,’ Monsieur Vernet went on, ‘are the macrobes as much to be feared as interested journalism proclaims? How do you expect these animals, emerged from a culture broth, as vastly developed as one can imagine, to nourish themselves on human flesh?’”

Andre Couvreur, 1909

 

“Symptoms of revolt have appeared among the Atmophytes. These machines have proffered seditious squeaks; these slaves have insulted citizens; and several among them, emerging from the subterranean region to which our constitution restricts them, have taken the air in the street. These fits are the result of the excessive development that you have allowed the Atmophytes’ organs to acquire— unconsidered improvements by which you have given them not merely instincts, but souls and the power of thought.”

Le Comte Didier de Chousey, 1884

 

Les Quat'z'arts Magazine

'Memories Without Regrets'

“An old man, a traveling singer, went proclaiming in the courtyards the word of God.

“To the tune of a very old carol or Christmas song, he would intone in a soft and distant voice a song whose words it was impossible to catch. Whether it was French, Celtic, Greek, Hebrew, the words with their strange sounds would fly away into the air, leaving in the souls a trail of soft light.

“His song finished, he would collect the coins that had been thrown to him, bow and leave the court, starting his refrain again: 'Love yourselves! etc.' We had nicknamed him The Prophet.

“My mother, a musician curious about all musical oddities, wanted to know more. While the prophet was singing, she went down and asked him the origin of his song,— Would it be possible to have the words? she asked, promising she could transcribe the music under dictation.

“The man, his large hat in his hand, with a salute of great lordship fixed my mother with his large clear eyes, smiled gently and said to her—My songs are from a distant world. Do charity: give to the poor without hope of reward and do not seek to know mysteries that you could not understand. Thank you, madam. Then having put his large hat back on, the Prophet turned on his heel and walked away slowly, making a large gray stain on the snow of the sidewalk.

“He died during the Commune, and when I arrive at this page of my memories, I will tell you of his death, too, mysterious, as strange as his life as a traveling musician.”

Charles de Sivry, 1898

“It is official today that the whole of our solar system is moving, insensibly, towards the celestial point marked by the sixth star of the constellation of Hercules (or Zeta Herculis, according to our language). This igneous abyss—of dimensions such that the numbers which express it would somewhat confuse thought (if, for those who think, the apparent sky could have any importance)—seems, in astronomy, to be the end or the inevitable erasure, in fact, of our set of phenomena.”

Auguste Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, 1890

“When all is said and done, Desire is what counts. You have this crazy but inescapable longing, a need almost, for some work of art (a Velazquez, a Satsuma vase! or a new kind of tie), and the moment of actual possession is one of joy, of love really. A week later, nothing.”

Claude Debussy, 1893

 

“Know, then, that in fact, everything that happens down here among humans in the order of external things is figured on the surface of all the spheres that circulate in the heavens, and that everything that humans operate with so much care, so much importance and so much pride has been represented since the beginning of time on the envelope of those same spheres, which are veritably covered in all those signs, as your skin is covered with little wrinkles and little stars whose arrangement and symmetry is infinitely variable. All the marvels of which humans boast on earth, therefore, ought no longer to flatter their self-esteem, since they are not their inventors, and they are only repeating in a servile and mechanical manner what the surfaces of the heavenly bodies imprint on them as they pass over them.”

Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, 1798

 

“Forms are held together and summon one another by a mysterious bond. The universe is like a sumptuous fabric. As soon as one seizes it, it unfurls entirely, embroidered with signs in gold and crimson. You will never lift, even in moments of ecstasy, the sacred veil of Isis, but you might surprise, at any moment, a different movement of the goddess and find her present everywhere...”

Gabriel de Lautrec, 1903

“The telechromophotophonotetroscope eliminates absence in an even more radical fashion. The telechromophotophonotetroscope is, as everyone knows, an almost synoptic succession of instantaneous photographic prints, which reproduces electrically the face, speech and gestures of an absent person with a verity equivalent to presence, and which constitutes not so much an image as an apparition, a duplication of the absent individual. This very simple apparatus consists of a chromophotograph that provides color prints, a megagraph that magnifies them, a stenophonograph that receives and transcribes the subject’s speech, aided by a microphone that amplifies it, enclosed in a telephone conjoined with a tetroscope, to propagate the image and the sound.

“You can imagine all the benefits of such an instrument and all the vitality that it lends to relationships. No more isolation or solitude; whether one likes it or not, one receives spectral visits from absent friends, provincial relatives or idle neighbors at all hours, arriving unceremoniously to spend and hour or a few days in your home. What a unification of all the inhabitants of the country, linked into a single family by threads so tight that one could not sever a limb without making the entire body cry out, nor pull out a single hair without tearing off the entire scalp!”

Le Comte Didier de Chousey, 1884

“Mirrors open a bizarre door to the unknown. One dare not look at them too closely when one is alone, for fear of perceiving that one is no longer alone. Astral larvae take refuge on the other side of the wall in an unreal apartment that reproduces, with a slightly satanic exactitude, since it is reversed, all the details of this one. What apprehension there is of perceiving, in the tilted light of candles, a face other than our own! How necessary it is to be attentive to taking the necessary precautions!”

Gabriel de Lautrec 1904

 

“We are currently living through the most extraordinary days in the history of our planet. Humanity in the 20th century is being given the opportunity to witness an incredible astronomical evolution. We can no longer speak of the Earth in the singular, but that our planet, under the effect of unknown causes, has split along a plane perpendicular to the equator, making our globe into two halves, one of which bears the Old World, the other the New World. At present, it is a split earth that gravitates in space, and its two halves, although bathed in the same atmosphere, are separated by a distance of about fifty kilometers. Will this gap widen? Will we see, during their respective revolutions, one of the two halves of our globe collide with the Moon?”

Jacques Spitz, 1935

“The first observations made had revealed the full extent of the disaster. It was confirmed—but in this case, was confirmation necessary?—that we were in the presence of an unusual cataclysm. On all coasts, a retreat of the sea was noted. The Baltic, according to German estimates, had dropped by three meters. The Mediterranean was slowly emptying; its level was dropping by two centimeters per day and the current was such in the Strait of Gibraltar that erosion, noticeable to the eye, was eating away at the ancient Pillars of Hercules. But of all the news, the strangest was the silence of America. No wireless communication had been established with her.

“It was beginning to be feared that the earthquake had assumed an even greater importance in the New World than in the Old. The story of Atlantis naturally came to mind, and all that was talked about was sunken continents. The newspaper headlines read: 

WHERE IS AMERICA? 

IS AMERICA AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA?”

Jacques Spitz, 1935

“More and more gigantic eagles are waiting to leave the nest to circle over the last hiding places of mankind; already thousands of iron spiders are rushing tirelessly to and fro to weave shining silvery wings for them.” 

Gustav Meyrink, 1922

 

“Lunched with Richard Strauss, his son and daughter-in-law, at the Hofmannsthals’ in Rodaun. Strauss aired his quaint political views, about the need for a dictatorship, and so on, which nobody takes seriously.” 

Count Harry Kesler, 1928

THE FALL 

The black collapse of the first darkness
Is accomplished. And Satan, lover of the lights
Of punch, of impure vice and of the orgy in rut,
Fell from the top of the sky like a rough rock falls
 
He fell so long that the immense ages
Rang in turn to the bells of the madness
That God placed here and there in the boundless space.
 

Charles Cros, 1874

 

Les Quat'z'arts Magazine

'Memories Without Regrets'

Paris during the Prussian war, without bread, without potatoes. In the cafés, once bright, people lit candles. The jewellers of the Palais-Royal put on display (under a globe) BUTTER!! Twenty francs a pound, moreover.

At the Halles market, they sold—dearly—horse legs with their feet still shod. 

We had the good fortune to come across a servant as resourceful as she was honest. From time to time, she asked my mother for permission to take a half-day. She went to the outposts, provided, naturally, with the necessary money, and never returned empty-handed.

Once at the height of hostilities, she returned triumphant, bringing a beautiful piece of meat that weighed at least two pounds.

Strange thing: no skin, no trace of fat.  We were astonished; but, having declared that it smelled good and looked good, we cooked the mystery.

It could not be veal,

Nor pork,

Nor donkey,

Nor platypus,

Nor horse.

The mystery, once cooked, was declared succulent.

The next day, we had the good fortune to have Dr. Cros at lunch.  He was served the same meat.

He brought the dish back to examine it. Scrutinizing the fibrils, examining especially the sauce which, similar to goose fat, had not set:

"I know what it is," he cried triumphantly, "it's human flesh." Then, very gently, to my mother, "Madam, I'll ask you for more."

My fiancée, with her heart not yet hardened, left the table.

I confess, to my shame, that I continued to eat with much more interest.

Charles de Sivry, 1898

“Just now I have seen the sphinx fly away. He galloped off like a jackal.” 

Gustav Flaubert, 1874

 

“I might tell you that the sun will be hurled from Heaven and you would believe me. I might tell you that a worm is creeping through my brain—you would believe me—you would even see it and catch it!”

Hanns Heinz Ewers, 1910

 

“As for the song of the Sirens in the celestial concerts, very rash would be anyone who attempted to analyze it. It is one of those ineffable harmonies of which the Divinity keeps the secret, one of those luminous sounds of which mortals only grasp the shadow.

“The song of the Sirens-birds, souls of the stars, stars themselves, belongs to this class of cosmic harmonies. We can define it even less easily than we can define the voice of the speaking statue, that is to say the sound of the rising sun and the setting sun, the sound of the moon whistling its light through space, the moan of nature shivering in contact with the morning breeze, and the music of the rain falling rhythmically on the ground.”

Jean-Georges Kastner, 1858

 

“There are doubtful creatures, the Corallines, for instance, that are claimed by all the three kingdoms. They tend towards the animal, they tend towards the mineral, and, finally, are assigned to the vegetable. Perchance they form the real point at which Life obscurely and mysteriously rises from the slumber of the stone, without utterly quitting that rude starting-point, as if to remind us, so high placed and so haughty, of the right of even the humble mineral to rise into animation, and of the deep and eternal aspiration that lies buried, but busy, in the bosom of Nature.”

Jules Michelet, 1861

“When the god Pan assembled the seven pipes of his syrinx, at first he imitated only the long drawn out and melancholy note of the toad voicing his sorrows in the light of the moon. Later he turned to birdsong. It is probably from that moment that the birds enriched their repertory. These are her sacred origins of which music can well be proud and which enables her to maintain an element of mystery. In the name of all the gods let us try neither to deprive her of them, nor to seek to explain them.”

Claude Debussy, 1913

“Let photography quickly enrich the traveler’s album, and restore to his eyes the precision his memory may lack; let it adorn the library of the naturalist, magnify microscopic insects, even strengthen, with a few facts, the hypotheses of the astronomer; let it, in short, be the secretary and record-keeper of whomsoever needs absolute material accuracy for professional reasons. 

“So far so good. 

“Let it save crumbling ruins from oblivion, books, engravings, and manuscripts, the prey of time, all those precious things, vowed to dissolution, which crave a place in the archives of our memories; in all these things, photography will deserve our thanks and applause. 

“But if once it be allowed to impinge on the sphere of the intangible and the imaginary, on anything that has value solely because man adds something to it from his soul, then woe betide us!”

Charles Baudelaire, 1859

“Paris and its inhabitants strike me as uncanny. The people seem to me to be of a different species from ourselves; I feel they are possessed of a thousand demons.”

SIgmund Freud, 1885

“The photographic lens does not see the forms. They must, therefore, be immaterial—and yet I can see them. Are they, then, the shades of the dead, as Dagerlöff appears to believe? But why should I see the dead revive because I see things 100 years in advance? I’ve only ever seen the present— or, more exactly, the fraction of the present that will endure for a long time. Let’s silence our imagination and appeal to the rationality that has never deceived me. What is it in the present that lasts the longest, and which is immaterial? Answer: ideas. After the bodies, the cadavers, the skeletons, it is the ideas of human beings that are most durable. I am therefore seeing the forms of ideas. Judging by the manner in which the majority of brains function, there’s nothing astonishing in their being a trifle vague—but why do they have faces? An idea has no face.”

Jacques Spitz, 1939

 

‘We’re almost there,’ murmured Jacques, ‘because this opening is the hollow peak of the Menelaus crater.’ And, indeed, the tunnel came to an end and they emerged near the Acherusia promontory, not far from the Plinius crater in the Sea of Serenity,

As far as the eye could see a silent, raging sea was rolling with breakers as high as cathedrals. On all sides were cataracts of congealed spume, avalanches of petrified waves, torrents of mute howling, a whole seething tempest compressed and anaesthetised in a single stroke. It extended so far that the eye, confused, lost all sense of proportion, amassing mile upon mile, regardless of the possibilities of distance and time.

J.-k. Huysmans, 1887

 

“I write solely for myself, and other people’s impatience doesn’t concern me.”

Claude Debussy, 1908

 

The plot I had written for The Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath was a simple one. After the destruction of all life on our planet, Hell was established here, where things were very suitable. The stage looks like a lunar landscape. Satan is seated on top of a Parisian building whose base rests in molten lava. The end comes when the globe itself crumbles. All the spirits are absorbed in the forces of nature, whose chorus is heard in a night crossed by flashes of lightning. The general clamor of the orchestra diminishes little by little. First one instrument, then another, becomes silent. Finally nothing is left but a chorus of harps, and one after the other they too fall silent. Then only one remains, and it fades in a pianissimo sweeter than water falling on leaves. At last these final notes also fade away, and all is silent.

As I was working at the piano that Sunday on the music for the scene of the infernal hunt, someone rang the doorbell. It was the grandmother of one of my pupils. She must have been listening to me outside. “Is it really you,” she asked, “who is responsible for that savagery I have been hearing?”

“Yes,” I answered. “It is I.” 

“I'm sure you wouldn't dare to continue those horrors in front of me,” she said. “To punish you, I want to hear the rest.” 

Because of that challenge I started The Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath over. The wild motifs made her indignant, but I kept going. 

After my grotesque imitation on the piano of the last fading notes of the last harp, the grandmother looked at me with amazement. “Poor girl,” she said. “Those monstrosities really are yours.” I didn't answer. “The most unfortunate thing about it is that there are some good parts there.” 

“If there weren't any good parts,” I said, “I wouldn't be stupid enough to work on it.” 

“You know very well,” she said, “that you have to be either rich or famous to indulge in things like that.” 

“I'm not simply indulging myself. I intend to stay on here as a teacher, and as proof I shall leave this unproducible piece just the way it is now. It really is a dream, you know, whether it is about covens or real life, and I will throw it away as I have thrown away other dreams.” 

She took my hand. Hers was cold. “Your heart,” she said. “Where will you throw it?” 

“To the Revolution,” I said.

Louise Michel, 1886

“After the blood of the Commune, Death disguised as a shepherd played his pan pipes beside the Seine, every flower a skull.” 

Jules Verne, 1872

“Music is a nocturnal art, the art of the dream.” 

Odilon Redon, 1893

“Odilon Redon made a collection of bits of rainbows, dust from stars and suns. He memorized the growth of plants, the way a petal falls, the sleep of the chrysalis. But he used this botanist’s arsenal to disclose mutations which he discovered in a light of fear and wonderment.” 

André Masson, 1962

“For several months extraordinary signs had been seen in the sky; the Virgin’s Spica had failed to respond to the Observatory’s summons; the Moon had uttered moans, as if she had been hard at work; Berenice’s hair had first appeared powdered with white and then, with a gust of wind, had become as black as crepe. All the stars seemed to be giving simultaneous signs of sadness. There was no longer the harmonious concert that the celestial spheres once enabled Scipio to hear in the abode of King Masinissa; they only rendered sounds as lugubrious as the false drone of cathedral organs, or as discordant as the howls of various animals. Finally, some people even thought they could see in the region of the stars, something reminiscent of big crocodiles, writhing with horrible contortions.” 

Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, 1798

 

“The result of this music has been to accentuate the German race-feeling, which much of Wagner’s music had already been instrumental in emphasising. Richard Strauss not only caused the Germans to feel even more sentimental about their country than had his predecessor, but, by a grandiose portrayal of battle through the medium of music, he glorified war and strife, creating thereby a thought-form, which was used by the Dark Forces to help precipitate the war itself.”

Cyril Scott, 1933

 

“The world exists for us to think it to tatters.” 

Gustav Meyrink, 1927

 

“At last I was able to catch sight of [the composer Edward] Grieg. From the front he looks like rather a pleasant family photograph. From behind, because of the way he wears his hair, he looks more like a sunflower so loved by parrots and planted in ornamental gardens at country railway stations.”

Claude Debussy, 1903

 

“Because he was a heavenly artist, Beethoven naturally aspired to Silence. That’s why he received the blessing of falling deaf—so he might better hear the song of his genius. 

“Wagner stubbornly believes that music is a combination of different noises, and his supreme ambition is what he calls ‘music-drama.’ You can’t get any more German than that. He needs Beauty that appears to the eyes in your head, which the vilest lowlife’s ears can hear—something anybody at all can fondle like a strumpet. In a word, he gives you the music of materialism and the senses—at the highest level, if you will. 

“Music-drama, good God! Well, it’s been impressively achieved—just as I felt when I heard Tannhäuser—by BOMBARDMENT. A lyric tragedy! Can’t you hear the music of the spheres?”

Leon Bloy, 1893

“The passages [in Pelleas and Melisande] I love the most are the ones without text. When Pelleas emerges from the underground vaults, there are a few lines that are truly permeated by the freshness of the sea and the scents of the roses that the breeze wafts to him. Of course, there’s nothing ‘human’ about it, but it’s exquisitely poetic.” 

Marcel Proust, 1911