“'What! You are singing in a theatre!' exclaimed my aunt, when I told her of my engagement at Brussels. 'My poor child! You will be everlastingly damned! Who would ever have thought such a thing possible? A little girl of our family going to be an actress—one of those women who could not be buried in consecrated ground in the old days! The curé himself has told me all about it. It's terrible, terrible!' she cried, rocking herself back and forth in her chair and bursting into tears. 'I will pray for you!'”

Emma Calve, 1922

“We read also, that they in Apulia that were touched with a kinde of dangerous Spider, were astonished untill they heard a certain sound, at the hearing of which every one riseth up and danceth.”

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, 1533

“Have the beautiful magic lantern set up in your home. It won't cost you more than fifty-five sous. Until now it has only been the pleasure of children, but I have invented a magic lantern for the usage of adults, which will show you a thousand ingenious and various tableaux for the amusement of parents and the tranquility of children.

“Attach a white sheet to your wall, while calling to me through the window, and arrange yourselves very sagely, like the Tuesday spectators at the Comédie Française. I shall come with my apparatus, and then you will have pleasure for your money. You will see the Good God, and Monsieur le Soleil, Madame la Lune, Mesdemoiselles les Étoiles, the King, the Queen, the Gendarme, the Executioner, Morning, Midday, Evening, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Elements and many figures of an enticing modernity.”

Théodore de Banville, 1883

 

“After a comfortable dinner, as we were lighting cigars, plunged in profound armchairs, someone pronounced the word occultism, and our conversation turned toward strange things.”

Gabriel de Lautrec, 1922

“I don’t imagine I shall ever be 'influential.' I've been too thorough in cultivating my indifference to my fellow human beings, which is probably the only way one can choose between them.”

Claude Debussy, 1901

“My first sensations under the new drug were similar to those induced by a strong dose of Cannabis indica. There was the same protraction of the time-sense, by which mere minutes were stretched out into ages; and the same spatial expansion, by which my laboratory walls appeared to recede to an immense distance, and my own body, as well as the familiar objects about me, extended themselves to prodigious height and length. The legs of my chair were tall as the famed sequoias. My hand and arm, reaching up to make sure that the graph was correctly adjusted on my forehead over the pineal gland, seemed to scale a gulf like that of some profound canyon. A carboy loomed like a giant monument.

“I gazed on a medley of strange-angled forms that might have materialized from a geometrician's nightmare.”

Clark Ashton Smith, 1933

 

“Hashish is composed of a extraction of Indian hemp, butter, and a small quantity of opium. Take a clump the size of a nut, fill a small spoon, and happiness will be yours: absolute happiness with all its intoxication, its youthful folly, and its infinite blessedness. 

“As far as possible, you need a fine apartment or a beautiful scene, a free and unconcerned mind, and a few accomplices whose intellectual talents are similar to your own; and a little music if you can get it.

“Then the hallucinations begin. External objects take on a monstrous appearance. They show your senses forms heretofore unknown. Then they are deformed and finally enter into your being, or rather you enter into theirs. Sounds have colors, and colors have a music. Musical notes are numbers, and you perform mathematical calculations with terrifying speed as the music flows into your ears. You are seated and you have a smoke; you start to think that now you're inside the pipe, and it's you whom your pipe is smoking; you yourself are being exhaled in the form of bluish clouds.”

Charles Baudelaire, 1860

“For today, be content to know that this crocodile is a cruel being, but cunning, as the wicked are, and timid, like them.

“In fact, by dint of agitating, the crocodile is oozing a thick foam from all its pores, which emits a noxious odor. In addition, torrents of fire emerge from its mouth, which would have intimidated the most intrepid of men. That foam and that fire amalgamate together and are transformed into an innumerable multitude of maleficent animals of every species, which circulate en masse in the atmosphere, obscuring it to such an extent that nothing at all can any longer be discerned, and not the slightest particle remains that is breathable.”

Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, 1798

 

“I had taken hashish three times with little result, beyond a slight disturbance of the optical perceptions. The fourth time, I increased the dose by a fourth of the usual amount, and waited patiently among my books.

“I gazed upon them with the dreamy languor of a god.”

Clark Ashton Smith, 1920

“Thanks to the labors of a science which is comparatively recent, and more especially to the researches of the students of Hindu and Egyptian antiquities, it is very much easier today than it was not so long ago to discover the source, to unravel the underground network of that great mysterious river which since the beginning of history has been flowing beneath all religions, all faiths, and all philosophies: in a word, beneath all the visible and every-day manifestations of human thought.”

Maurice Maeterlinck, 1922

 

“On the eleventh day, in the morning, Ab-Hakek was not yet dead. A noise of heavy footsteps was heard in the stairwell of the turret. The door opened: a phantasmagoric and portentous being entered. It was Agraman. 

“At the sight of him, the magician, burdened and statue-like as he was, stood up. ‘I am hungry!’ he murmured, ‘I am going to die: it is time to tell me the last word of science.’

“Agraman took him by the wrist and shouted in his ear, with a violent and metallic burst of laughter: ‘Master! Science is the shadow of a shadow: umbra umbræ!’”

Alphonse Esquiros, 1838

 

“This opera by Zola and Bruneau is full of symbols. I must say I don’t understand this excessive need for symbols. They seem to have forgotten that it is still music that is supreme in its beauty. As you would expect, each symbol takes the form of a leitmotiv; once again music is weighed down by these obstinate little phrases, which insist on having their say no matter what else is going on. Really, to pretend that such-and-such a succession of chords represents this or that sentiment, and that so-and-so phrase is one or another character—it is nothing but an anthropometrical game.”

Claude Debussy, 1901

“Baudelaire really gets on my nerves.”

Eugène Delacroix, 1857

“Certain omens of battle were beginning to appear in the heavens and in the speeches of diplomats. The first days of spring had arrived, and spring seemed, in the opinion of all men of war, to be the best time to undertake the mutual massacre of nations.”

Paul Adam, 1893

“Claude Debussy is little known by the crowd, goes nowhere, composes, I fancy, only when he feels inclined, and lives like a recluse, scorning all noisy advertisement. What an admirable and rare example! And what a lot of valuable time some men waste nowadays in preparing their publicity, in writing and distributing notices that proclaim their own glory. Having shut himself up in this haughty seclusion, M. Debussy seems intent on expressing the transient impressions of the dream he is in quest of, rather than the eternal passions of the world which he shuns. There is a certain amount of danger in this tendency for, sooner or later, truth and reality must triumph over illusion, be it ever so seductive.”

Alfred Bruneau, 1900

 

To the Illustrious Cabaner

“May he be cursed, this Wagner

Who stole your glory from you!

Glory to your name, Cabaner!

Nerve—

Where all harmony vibrates!”

Anonymous, 1881

 

“Symbolism dead! But it is, precisely, that which does not die, for it’s the quivering idea, living in all forms. In art as in nature, everything can be a symbol, since everything has a hidden meaning.”

Willy, 1901

 

“‘Everything is possible to science,’ said Archibold, authoritatively. 

“‘Easy, even,’  Hatchitt approved. “‘The world will be ended by science, as Edenic humankind perished. All religions have predicted it.’ 

“‘Science must have limits?’  I objected, in order to reassure myself. 

“‘Science has no limits,’  Archibold replied. “‘Science is progress—a forward march, with no pause, and no terminus. Its law, the law of mind, is to accelerate, just as the law of bodies is to accelerate as they fall, increasing their speed in proportion to the square of the distance. It’s only two hundred years since man began the conquest of science; he’s still stammering its elements, trying his first steps—but he will take his course, and his speed will be multiplied by the square of centuries. We would go mad if it were given to us to see where man has arrived a thousand years hence, progressing at such a pace, and yet it is we ourselves who will have made that road. For humankind, Pascal says, is but one man ‘who always subsists and who learns incessantly;’ one man who will know, one day, the ultimate limits of things; for whom his world will have no more secrets, and who, disdaining even the puerile work of destroying it, will kick it away like a cadaver worn out by the scalpel, and will pursue his studies on a better planet, on golden Vulcan, or even in a sun.’”

Comte Didier de Chousy, 1884

 

“The unaccustomed flamboyance of Mars—uniquely due, perhaps, to the general adoption of the Auer mantle by the inhabitants of that planet—has brought the ever-interesting topic of interastral communication back to the table of discussion. 

“How can we signal to them, and inform them that the Earth, our beloved little Earth, is populated by intelligent beings (I mean my readers) perfectly capable of entering into communication with them? 

“Charles Cros was very interested in this question and published a curious little essay in which he proposed a system of luminous signals, beginning with a very simple rhythm and progressing to more complicated rhythms, susceptible to being perceived and understood by individuals of a cerebral organization analogous to ours.

“If the Martians have their backs turned to us at present, it’s necessary to shout very loudly to make them turn round. You’re beginning see the plan: to mobilize, for an hour, the entire human species, all the animals, all the bells, all the pistols, rifles, cannon, all the parliamentary assemblies, all the orchestras, from Lamoureux’s to the municipal band of Honfleur and the Queen of Madagascar’s fanfare, etc., etc., pianos, mothers-in-law—in brief, all creatures or objects capable of making a noise.

“Mars being separated from the Earth by so many leagues, and sound travelling at so many leagues per second, the Martian will hear our concert after so many hours, minutes and seconds. After a lapse of twice that time, plus the time needed to organize a response, if we don’t hear any astral clamor, it’s either because the Martians are as deaf as posts or that they’re giving us the cold shoulder, like their premier lager, Mars beer.”

Alphonse Allais, 1902

“[At New Caledonia,] I had my own ideas for an orchestra: I wanted to shake palm branches, strike bamboo, create a horn from shells, and use the tones produced by a leaf pressed against the lips. In short, I wanted a Kanaka orchestra, complete with quarter tones. Thanks to knowledge I had gotten from Daoumi and the Kanakas who brought supplies, I believed I knew enough to try. But my plan was blocked by the Committee for Light Classical Theater. Indeed, they accused me of being a savage.”

Louise Michel, 1888