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Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande: Symbolism and Neurosis

Part II: Paper 1, Candidate 2560M


Abstract: A study of Pelléas et Mélisande as a work of symbolist theatre arising from the literary and visual
movements in France and Belgium in the late nineteenth century, and as a exploration of what was later to be
called 'Neurosis' in its various characters. The study will approach both through early interpretations and recent
stagings and writings, reflecting several angles on the elements of mental disturbance intrinsic to the play and
opera. Debussy's reactions to this element in the play will form a final focus.

The late nineteenth century in Belgium, France, Germany and England saw a plethora of
literary, artistic and philosophical reactions to rationalism, positivism, empiricism and
naturalism. Simultaneously, a new discipline evolved from medicine and philosophy which
analysed the intellect, the emotions and the will: a field that we now know as psychology. In
French and Dutch literature, in response to the detailed naturalistic works of authors
including Balzac, Zola and Couperus, and to the theatre of Scribe, a style was developed
1

which used symbols as a means of expressing profound ideas, for example, in the poetry of
Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Mallarmé. In the visual arts, symbols were likewise employed to
show emotions and ideas. In England, the Pre-Raphaelite movement revived Medieval
symbols, myths and topoi. On the continent, there was a similar evocation of nostalgia for a
pre-industrialised, pre-rationalist era, though here the topoi were not limited to the Medieval
era. Medieval paradigms and settings were also revived in drama by playwrights including
Maeterlinck, Claudel, Strindberg and Kaiser. The philosophies of the Middle Ages
2

emphasised Platonic Ideas and paranatural forces, and their revival in drama counteracted the
rationalist and positivist thought of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Kant had
attempted to reconcile empiricist thought with a world of experience, but it was
Schopenhauer who was seminal to the undermining of these ideals. In 1819, he published
The World as Will and Idea which opens with the subjectivist statement: ‘Die Welt ist meine
Vorstellung.’ 3

It was from these soils that Maeterlinck’s work flourished. First, some of the influences on
Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande will be examined. Whilst these include symbolism and
neurosis, it becomes clear Maeterlinck’s interest in the Medieval era was more influential.
Based on this, an assessment can be made of how true Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande was to
Maeterlinck’s style. Because of restrictions in a dissertation of this size, the focus will be
largely upon Act I, scene ii of the play, which became Act I, scene i of Debussy’s opera.

1 Louis Couperus (1863-1923) was a prominent author in the Dutch naturalist movement. Other authors in the
Netherlands included van Deyssel, Emants and Heijerman, and, in Belgium, Buysse, the Loveling sisters and
Streuvels. See www.ucl.ac.uk/dutch/vdd/studypacks/english_language/couperus/pages/intro.html.
2 For a detailed account of Medieval modernism in drama in this period, see Carole J. Lambert, The Empty
Cross: Medieval Hopes, Modern Futility in the Theatre of Maurice Maeterlinck, Paul Claudel, August
Strindberg and Georg Kaiser, (New York, Garland Publishing, 1990).
3 ‘The world is my idea,’ Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Ideas, trns. Jill Berman, (London,
Everyman, 1995), p. 3.
Maurice Maeterlinck was born in 1862, and raised in Oostacker, near Ghent, to middle-class
catholic parents. Three aspects of his early life seem to have been seminal to the composition
of Pelléas et Mélisande: firstly, the landscape at Oostacker, secondly, his education, in
particular at the Jesuit Collège de Sainte-Barbe; and thirdly, the Arbeidersbeweging — the
workers’ movement in Belgium in the late nineteenth century.

The landscape at Oostacker was typically Flemish. Maeterlinck’s garden led down to the
canal between Ghent and Terneuzen, and it seemed as if the very ships themselves passed
through it. The Flemish landscape, on account of its latitude and low altitude, is often subject
to radiation fog, which hangs over the fields and canals until heat or the wind blows it away.
In contrast, on clear days, there are broad open skies and distant horizons. It is no surprise,
then, that in Pelléas et Mélisande there is much symbolism surrounding clarity of vision, be it
in darkness and light, mists and clear skies, blindness and sight, or truth and lies. In
Maeterlinck’s approach to writing drama, and in his theories of the human spirit, there
emerges the idea that surface language and behaviour can obscure the deeper soul. This was
described by Ruysbroeck, a Flemish mystic who lived from 1293-1381, and whose work
Maeterlinck translated. The landscape at Oostacker, with its mysterious fogs and passing
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ships, was in many ways metaphorical for the ‘soul’ as Maeterlinck described it.

Maeterlinck had attended two schools which his father had found unsatisfactory before he
was sent to the Collège de Sainte-Barbe. There, he had a typical classical education. The
teaching was in French, not Dutch, and poetry and literature in the vernacular were forbidden.
Maeterlinck’s charismatic mistress, the actress Georgette Leblanc, wrote in her memoir:

One single bad memory in these years of happy wisdom, a single rancour that darkens the
fine hours of youth, Maeterlinck will never forgive the Jesuit Fathers of the Collège de Ste-
Barbe for their narrow-minded tyranny. I have often heard him say that he would not have
his life over again because of his seven years at college. For him, there is one crime that
cannot be forgiven, that which poisons the joys and destroys the smiles of a child. 5

Although later in his life Maeterlinck wrote of his teachers with great respect, it would seem 6

that dramatic ideas regarding the control of others and domestic forms of tyranny could well
have stemmed from his experience at the Collège de Sainte-Barbe, if Georgette Leblanc’s
account can be trusted. The character of Golaud, who sees fit to punish Mélisande on the
basis of his suspicion of her regarding an act she has not committed (Act IV, scene i), is not

4 See page 6.
5 Georgette LeBlanc, Morceaux choises de Maurice Maeterlinck, Introduction, p. (vii) (unnumbered), cited in
W. D. Halls, Maurice Maeterlinck: A Study of his Life and Thought, (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1960), pp.6-7.
6 Halls, pp. 7-8.
unlike an overly disciplinary school teacher who is jealous of the very innocence of his pupils
and desires to control them.

However, the Collège de Sainte-Barbe’s more fundamental influence on Maeterlinck’s work


was through its emphasis on death and sin, and the rationalistic approach to education. Death
is always present as a shadow in the background in Pelléas et Mélisande, be it in Golaud’s
hunting, Pelléas’s father’s illness, Arkël’s old age, the starving peasants in the cave, the sheep
who are no longer on the road to the stable, or Mélisande’s fatal wound. The apparent
fascination with death is self-evident, for as well as being a regular feature in sermons at the
Collège de Sainte-Barbe, it is a phenomenon which polarises catholic teaching and
rationalism.

That the teaching at the Collège was in French, and not in Dutch, is a reflection of the epoch.
In the nineteenth century, the official language of the government in Belgium was French, for
the Belgians were keen to show their autonomy from the Dutch following the Belgische
Onafhankelijkheid in 1830. The catholic government of 1884 began a movement to
reintroduce Dutch, known as the Vlaamse Beweging, but it was not until 1930 that Ghent
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University started teaching in Dutch. Where Maeterlinck was growing up, the bourgeois
could and did speak French, as well as Dutch, whereas the laity, who had not been educated,
knew only Dutch. Maeterlinck himself was able to translate Ruysbroeck from Medieval
Dutch when he was in his mid-twenties. The language difference is significant, not because
Maeterlinck wrote in French rather than Dutch — a logical decision given the greater literacy
among Francophones — but because it isolated the lower classes from the literate and richer
middenstand and aristocraten. The setting of Pelléas et Mélisande in a castle isolated from its
kingdom by dense forest is in some ways an analogy of the language polarisation in Belgium
in the late nineteenth century; however, this parallel runs deeper.

The second half of the nineteenth century in Belgium saw a rise of the working classes. There
were stirrings long before the Belgian Workers’ Party was founded in Brussels in 1885: in
Ghent, for example, the textile workers had established a union in 1857, some ten years
before prohibition on unionisation was lifted. When Maeterlinck was thirteen, in 1885, there
were strikes in Hainault and demonstrations in Brussels and Antwerp. The Belgian Worker’s
Party was striving for universal suffrage, compulsory education, social legislation and a
separation of church and state, in a movement known as the Arbeidersbeweging. Economic
depressions in 1873 and 1886 further exacerbated the atmosphere, but it was not until 1893,
after the completion of Pelléas et Mélisande, that the vote was given to all men over twenty-
five, and even then the votes of the middenstand and aristocraten counted for more than the

7 ‘Dutch’ and not ‘Flemish’ is the name given to one of the three official languages spoken in Belgium.
votes of the workers.

The isolation of the family in Pelléas et Mélisande is not unlike the isolation of the Belgian
bourgeoisie during the Arbeidersbeweging. There are references in the play to starving
peasants: in Act IV, scene i, Golaud tells Arkël

On vient encore de trouver un paysan mort de faim, le long de la mer

[They have just found another peasant dead of hunger, along by the sea 8 ]

Perhaps this was one of the three beggars that Mélisande and Pelléas encountered in the sea
cave in Act II, scene iii. Mélisande’s reaction to the peasants suggests that she is afraid, for
she is apparently unable to say what it is she saw:

Ah!... Il y a... Il y a...

[Ah!... There are... there are...]

Pelléas’ response, however, implies both a naïve lack of understanding and an intuition that
there is potential for danger:

Ce sont trois vieux pauvres qui se sont endormis... Il y a une famine dans le pays...
Pourquoi sont-ils venus dormir ici?... ...Prenez garde, ne parlez pas si haut... Ne les
éveillons pas... Ils dorment encore profondément...

[It is three old poor men fallen asleep... There is a famine in the country... Why have they
come to sleep here?... ...Take care; do not speak so loud... Let us not wake them... They are
still sleeping heavily...]

That Pelléas questions why the beggars sleep in the cave suggests that he is unaware of the
possibility that it might be their only shelter. However, given the symbols in the play of
darkness and light, and waking and sleeping, it could be that Pelléas intuits that it would be
unwise to wake the peasants, perhaps even in the metaphorical sense of stirring them into
rebellion. That the beggars are sleeping heavily is also significant, for it means that they are
experiencing a different reality from Pelléas and Mélisande. Just as the working classes in
Maeterlinck’s Belgium were distinguished by languages and a lack of education, so too are

8 All English translations of the play Pelléas et Mélisande are from Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelléas et Mélisande,
trns. Richard Hovey, (Chigago and New York, Herbert S. Stone and Company, 1896), reprinted by Kessinger
Publishing, (2007).
the beggars in the cave experiencing a different existence. It is fitting, then, that Arkël’s
kingdom is called Allemonde, a combination of the Dutch word ‘alle,’ meaning ‘every,’ and
the French ‘monde’ for ‘world,’ and, moreover, a name which combinations the two
languages which polarised Belgian society. Although Allemonde has no specified national or
temporal setting, there are some allusions to the situation in Belgium when Maeterlinck was
writing.

The 1880s and 1890s saw a decline in power among the bourgeoisie in Belgium, in which the
middenstand lost their credibility in politics. The decline did not threaten the livelihood of the
generation of bourgeoisie; it operated more on a political and ideological plane, with a
waning of the sense that the middenstand had any value as a political entity. The writers, such
as Maeterlinck, Van Leberghe, Le Roy, Verhaeren and Rodenbach, naturally all belonged to
the French-speaking middenstand and aristocratie, and they found themselves living amidst a
social class that had lost its ideology. In reaction to their rationalist education, and in order to
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find an ideology on which to base their writings, this generation of writers turned to nostalgia
and symbols.

For Maeterlinck, Medieval paradigms provided a wealth of inspiration, in particular, in their


emphases on symbols and their interpretations. The interpretation of external signs as divine
symbols which helped explain phenomena where there was no certainty — such as the future,
the moods of others and the weather — was a key part of Medieval thought. Carole J.
Lambert summarises the research of Huizinga, Lewis and Bloch thus:

According to them, the Aristotelian conception of an ordered universe prevailed then, and
external signs always pointed to higher religious and philosophical meanings. Medieval
man was attentive to dreams and physical manifestations of ineffable entities, such as cloud
formations which might represent armies of angels. He felt extreme fear and joy, but
dreams, signs, and emotionality were all in the context of God’s will and His control of all
phenomena.10

The medieval world view preceded the Renaissance and Enlightenment philosophies, which
repress irrational and inexplicable forces in favour of that which is visible and can be
rationalised. Instead, in Medieval paradigms, man used his imagination to draw conclusions
from signs and symbols, and believed that there were paranormal forces, divine or otherwise,
which affected his existence and emotions. This is of course linked to Schopenhauer’s
9 Andrew Jackson Matthews compares the generation of Belgian authors in this period to the Puritans in
America. Even though its theological sanction had lost its credibility, a generation of Puritan authors including
Dickenson, Emerson and Hawthorne still upheld the ideals in their literature. Andrew Jackson Mathews, La
Wallonie 1886 - 1892: The Symbolist Movement in Belgium, (Vermont, King’s Crown Press, 1947), pp. 10-11.
10 Lambert, p. 2.
subjectivist view that ‘the world is my experience’ (as opposed to ‘I experience the world’). 11

Foucault described the Medieval view in the following manner:

The world is covered with signs that must be deciphered, and those signs, which reveal
resemblances and affinities, are themselves no more than forms of similitude. To know
must therefore be to interpret: to find a way from the visible mark to that which is being
said by it and which, without that mark, would lie like unspoken speech, dormant within
things...12

However, far from discussing the possible interpretations of the symbols that they encounter,
the characters in Pelléas et Mélisande merely present the reader or the audience with signs
that must be deciphered, such as the state of the light, the depth and cleanliness of the water,
the ring, the golden ball, the sheep and so forth. Therefore, the audience are left to ponder
over the possible meanings of the symbols. In this way, Maeterlinck encourages his readers
and his audience members to think according to Medieval paradigms.

In 1885 Maeterlinck discovered the writings of Jan van Ruysbroeck. Ruysbroeck lived in
Belgium in the fourteenth century, and he had pre-rationalist views of language and the
human spirit. These were not unlike contemporary theories regarding the subconscious.
Maeterlinck wrote in the introduction to his translation of Ruysbroeck:

Le miroir de l’intelligence humaine est entièrement inconnu dans [Ruysbroeck]; mais il


existe un autre miroir, que nous recelons au plus intime de notre être; aucun détail ne s’y
voit distinctement et les mots ne peuvent se tenir à sa surface [...] mais autre chose se
montre par moments; est-ce l’âme?...

[The mirror of human intelligence is wholly unknown in [Ruysbroeck]; but there exists
another mirror, which we have in the most intimate part of our being; no detail can be
clearly made out and words have no purchase on its surface [...] but something else emerges
occasionally; is this the soul?]13

The notion of a deeper level of being, which underlies language and rational surface
behaviour, is fundamental to Maeterlinck’s writings. Language itself is inadequate to express
and describe this level.

11 Maeterlinck had read the whole of Schopenhauer’s works in a translation by Theodule Ribot.
12 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, (New York, Vintage Books,
1970), p. 32, cited in Lambert, p. 7.
13 L’Ornament des noces spirituelles de Ruysbroeck l’Admirable, traduit du flamand et accompagné d’une
introduction par Maurice Maeterlinck, (Brussels, Lacomblez, 1891), p xiii, cited in Patrick McGuinness,
Maurice Maeterlinck and The Making of Modern Theatre, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 37-38.
The idea of there being a deeper level of the soul is of course also fundamental to the studies
in psychology which were being carried out when Maeterlinck was writing. Maeterlinck
would have almost certainly been aware of contemporary studies of neuroses and of the
underlying theories. He travelled to Paris in 1885. Sigmund Freud arrived in October of the
same year to work with Jean Charcot, a distinguished physician, who had recently turned his
attention from neurology to the study of neuroses and the use of hypnosis as a method of
treatment. Charcot’s work was well known through his demonstrations of hypnosis and his
public lectures on neuroses; indeed, he was known in Paris as the ‘Napoleon of neuroses’ and
his lectures were very popular. One of Charcot’s researchers, Pierre Janet, developed a theory
of neurosis during the years following 1885 and this was published as a doctoral thesis in
1889, three years before Pelléas et Mélisande was completed and performed.

Freud’s publication of Studies on Hysteria in 1895 was seminal in the study of neurosis.
Although this post-dates the completion of Pelléas et Mélisande, the theories underlying the
study would have been familiar to Maeterlinck from his education and from the theorists who
preceded Freud. Freud learnt the Herbartian notion of the ‘unconscious mind’ whilst in the
sixth form in Vienna. At school, Maeterlinck would have been required to study modern
philosophy, so he too would have been familiar with the notion of the unconscious and its
supposed role in determining behaviour - although Charcot’s observation to Freud that ‘sex is
always at the bottom of the trouble’ probably did not feature in Maeterlinck’s catholic
education. Other postulates of Freud and Janet were psychic determinism, the goal-
directedness of behaviour, which was not necessarily conscious; and the use of historical or
developmental explanations to account for present behaviour. All of these notions were part
of the Zeitgeist surrounding the study of neuroses in the late nineteenth century and none of
these can be regarded as the sole creation of Freud. Maeterlinck had greatly admired
Théodule Ribot, whose conclusions following studies of heredity, the memory, the will and
the personality are akin to the Freud’s. As J. A. C Brown wrote:
14

Freud was a very great man, but it is preposterous to assume with the uncritical that all his
basic concepts were entirely original or with the very erudite that they originated from such
exalted sources as Plato, Spinoza, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. On the contrary, they were
based on ideas which in one form or another happened to be in the air at the time he was
developing his theories and amongst psychiatrists, psychologists and physicians rather than
amongst philosophers…..15

14Théodule Ribot, Heredity: A Psychological Study of its Phenomena, Laws, Causes and Consequences,
(London, Henry S. King and Co., 1875) and Diseases of Memory, Diseases if the Will and Diseases of
Personality, trns. J. Fitzgerald, (New York, The Humboldt Publishing Co., 1887).
15 J. A. C. Brown, Freud and the Post-Freudians, (Middlesex, Penguin, 1961), p. 6.
It is also important to remember that the behaviours that Freud described and attempted to
rationalise in Studies on Hysteria predated its publication — at the risk of stating the
blazingly obvious, Freud was merely describing the manner in which some human beings had
been behaving for millennia.

In Act I, scene ii, Mélisande demonstrates some of Freud’s observations in the behaviour of
neurotics. The mechanisms which we see in Mélisande are, in Freud’s terminolgy, repression,
sublimation and conversion. Mélisande has repressed the details surrounding the person from
whom she has fled, for she seems unable either to name him or to describe the manner in
which she was hurt. Maeterlinck would have been aware of this mechanism from his reading
of Ribot’s translation of Schopenhauer, even if he had not encountered early psychoanalytical
descriptions of it.

Mélisande’s reaction to the crown is extreme enough to suggest that she regards it as more
than an inanimate object:

Golaud: Qui-est-ce qui vous a donné une couronne? - Je vais essayer de la prendre...
Mélisande: Non, non, je n’en veux plus!... je n’en veux plus... Je préfère mourir.. mourir
tout de suite!...
Golaud: Je pourrais la retirer facilement; l’eau n’est pas très profonde.
Mélisande: Je n’en veux plus! Si vous la retirez, je me jette à sa place!...

[Golaud: Who was it gave you a crown? - I will try to get it...
Mélisande: No, no, I will have no more of it!... I will have no more of it... I had rather die...
die at once!...
Golaud: I could easily pull it out; the water is not very deep.
Mélisande: I will have no more of it! If you take it out, I throw myself in its place!...]

Instead, she has transferred her fear of Bluebeard to the crown, which has come to represent
him. Freud called this displacement of emotion sublimation. In literary terms, the significance
of the crown can be taken even further. The crown is a symbol of Mélisande’s past in which
she suffered as a wife of Bluebeard. It lies just below surface of the water, and this is perhaps
metaphorical for the space occupied by Bluebeard on Mélisande’s conscience. Furthermore, 16

Golaud threatens to draw out the suffering, which in fact he does, by first assaulting
Mélisande (Act IV, scene i), and then giving her a wound which ultimately kills her (Act V,

16 For further discussion of the symbolism surrounding the crown and the ring and the two fountains into which
they fall, see Linn Bratteteig Konrad, Modern Drama as Crisis: The Case of Maurice Maeterlinck, (New York,
Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1986), pp. 46-48.
scene ii).

The third element of neurosis which Mélisande demonstrates is conversion, where inner
conflicts are transformed into physical symptoms. This mechanism naturally has its place in
Symbolist literature. Mélisande often remarks that she is cold. In literary symbolism,
coldness is associated with death, so it is particularly fitting that Mélisande begins to feel cold
shortly after meeting Golaud:

Golaud: Vous avez l’air très jeune. Quel âge avez-vous?


Mélisande: Je commence à avoir froid

[Golaud: You look very young. How old are you?


Mélisande: I begin to feel cold]
Rather than telling Golaud her age, Mélisande reveals the far more important metaphor for
the sensation of approaching death. In psychoanalytical terms, this coldness is a physical
manifestation of her mental state following the abuse she suffered from Bluebeard.

In the above example, Maeterlinck used symbols, unanswered questions and repetition to
give clues as to the working of his characters’ sub-consciences. This is in contrast with the
17

naturalist authors, such as Balzac, Zola and Couperus, who presented extensive discourses on
the mental states of their characters and the reasons underlying their behaviour. Instead,
Maeterlinck lets us observe these mechanisms at work, so that the informed reader or
audience member might take on the role of a psychoanalyst.

However, tempting as it may be to interpret Pelléas et Mélisande in purely psychoanalytical


terms, there is a broader, literary symbolism at work, as shown above. The Medieval view is
therefore more in accordance with Maeterlinck’s writing than contemporary theories of the
subconscious and neurosis, for it allows for symbols and the interpretation of symbols as well
as theories of the subconscious or an autre miroir. Many of the phenomena which
psychologists sought to rationalise had Medieval explanations: psychic determinism and
goal-directed behaviour were the result of paranormal forces, and neurosis was either the
result of demons or because of an imbalance in the four humours. Whereas the psychologists’
focus was on using empirical evidence to rationalise behaviour, Medieval paradigms were
more akin to subjectivist philosophies because they allowed for the subject to interpret the
symbols he perceived as being left as signs and guidance by higher forces. Furthermore, in
the Medieval view, there is an acceptance that language has its limitations as a means to

17 For a more detailed pseudo-psychoanalytical account of Mélisande in this scene, see Elliot Antokoletz,
Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartók: Trauma, Gender, and the Unfolding of the
Unconscious (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 38-42.
express the inner-soul — something that Freud attempted to address in his free-association
technique but never reconciled.

The ineffectiveness of words for Ruysbroeck’s autre miroir has uncomfortable implications
for the playwright, for whom language is the main tool. Maeterlinck wrote in Le Tragique
Quotidien of the limitations of surface language and of the existence of a deeper level of
language:
...it is not in the actions but in the words that are found the beauty and greatness of
tragedies that are truly beautiful and great; and this not solely in the words that accompany
and explain the action, for there must perforce be another dialogue besides the one that is
superficially necessary. Side by side with the necessary dialogue will you almost always
find another dialogue that seems superfluous; but examine it carefully and it will be brought
home to you that this is the only one that the soul can listen to profoundly, for here alone is
it that the soul is being addressed... One may even affirm that a poem draws the nearer to
beauty and loftier truth in the measure that it eliminates words that merely explain the
action, and substitute for them others that reveal, not the so-called ‘soul state,’ but I know
not what intangible and unceasing striving of the soul towards its own beauty and truth. 18

The deeper dialogue in Pelléas et Mélisande lies hidden in the superfluous, the silences, and
in that which is left unsaid. McGuinness refers to this as ‘second degree dialogue.’ 19

In Act I, scene ii, Mélisande reveals more about her experiences and her state of mind
through her lack of concrete answers to Golaud’s questions and the apparently superfluous
repetition of certain words, than she might through detailed recollection and description.

Golaud: D’où venez-vous?


Mélisande: Je me suis enfuie!... enfuie!... enfuie!...
Golaud: Oui, mais d’où vous êtes-vous enfuie?
Mélisande: Je suis perdue!... perdue!... Oh! oh! perdue ici... Je ne suis pas d’ici... Je ne suis
pas née là...
Golaud: D’où êtes-vous? Où êtes-vous née?
Mélisande: Oh! oh! loin d’ici!... loin... loin...

[Golaud: Whence come you?


Mélisande: I have fled!... fled!... fled!...
18 Maurice Maeterlinck, The Treasure of the Humble, trns. Alfred Sutro, (Chicago and New York, Herbert S.
Stone and Company, 1903), reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, (2007), pp. 111-112.
19 ‘Second degree dialogue’ implies both the absent (what language leaves out) and the omnipresent (what
language is none the less always about)... The unspoken governs, shapes, and confers meaning on the language
that tries to exclude it. McGuinness, p. 247.
Golaud: Yes, but whence have you fled?
Mélisande: I am lost!... lost!... Oh! oh! lost here... I am not of this place... I was not born
there...
Golaud: Whence are you? Where were you born?
Mélisande: Oh! oh! far away from here!... far away... far away...]

The repetition of ‘fled,’ ‘lost,’ and ‘far away’ emphasise the ambiguity surrounding
Mélisande’s situation, and also indicate to the actress playing Mélisande that she is probably
sobbing at this point. Her avoidance of direct answers gives whatever trauma it was she
experienced a darker shadow than would any detailed explanation, because the lack of
information leaves only the imagination of the reader or audience member to create possible
scenarios to explain Mélisande’s state. The unsaid thus has far greater power than any long
account of a traumatic experience, far it forces the reader audience to introspect and draw
upon their own fears and unpleasant experiences to rationalise Mélisande’s behaviour. In this
way, as well as obscuring surface language to clarify the state of Mélisande’s inner-soul,
Maeterlinck draws away the mists obscuring the autre miroirs of his readers and audience to
reveal to them their personal fears.

As has already been observed, there are strong Medieval influences in Pelléas et Mélisande
in the symbolism, the idea of a subconscious and in Maeterlinck’s style of writing. The
Medieval era, and later romanticisations of this epoch, also provided many of the stories,
symbols and settings used in Pelléas et Mélisande. The nineteenth century revival of
Medieval stories, myths and topoi took place most famously in the visual arts, with the
paintings by Rosetti, Waterhouse and Burne-Jones. Illustrated volumes of fairy tales with
Medieval settings were also extremely popular. The use of Medieval settings and stories was
not driven by historical research; it was purely a romanticisation of the era in reaction to
positivism and industrialisation. Michael Gibson described this phenomenon thus:

At the end of the 19th Century, while science and positivism triumphantly announced a
brave new world founded on reason and technology, some people were primarily aware of
the loss of an indefinable quality which they had found in the former cultural system, in the
values and meanings signified by what we might call its “emblematic order.” 20

The romanticisation of the Medieval era was perhaps a consequence of the nostalgia for the
former cultural system.

Maeterlinck’s study was decorated with prints of Burne-Jones’s paintings. He owned a copy

20 Michael Gibson, Symbolism, conception: Gilles Néret, (Köln, Taschen, 1996), p. 17.
of Grimm’s Household Stories illustrated by Walter Crane. Here he would have encountered
Rapunzel, whose long hair descends from her tower to her lover below, which surely inspired
Act III, scene ii of Pelléas et Mélisande in which Pelléas stands at the base of Mélisande’s
tower entangled in her hair. The story of Bluebeard, which has a Medieval setting (but dates
from the seventeenth-century), was also illustrated by Walter Crane, and it is implicit that
Mélisande is one of the wives of Bluebeard who escaped. 21

Medieval stories, and stories with Medieval settings, also provided the names of the
characters, and the symbols, settings and themes in Pelléas et Mélisande. For example, there
is a knight called Pelléas in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur who becomes embroiled in a love
triangle. Rings, swords, doves, fountains, wells, forests, castles and towers all feature in
22

Medieval literature. Some of the themes of the play that have Medieval undercurrents include
the love-triangle and the story of the injured Fisher King. In the Middle Ages, the marriage
23

of a young girl to an older man, as in the case of Mélisande and Golaud, often led to a
passionless union and thus to extramarital relationships between the girl and men of a similar
age. This is the basis of Tristan and Isolda and of Dante’s Paolo e Francesca. According to
the story of the injured Fisher King, when a king and his linage suffer, the kingdom suffers as
well; thus the famine in Allemonde could be the result of the illness of Pelléas’ father, and the
sheep in Act IV, scene iii, that suggest the famine is over, might have appeared because
Pelléas’ father is recovering (Act IV, scene i).

Despite these strong Medieval and quasi-Medieval influences, there is nothing specific
written in the script of Pelléas et Mélisande to guide a producer to this era. The stories,
imagery and symbols mentioned above could plausibly belong to other epochs. When
preparations were being made for the first production, Maeterlinck wrote to the director
Lugné-Poe that

Costumes should be in the style of the eleventh, twelfth century, or following Memling [sic]
(fifteenth century), whichever suits you and according to the circumstances, The most
important thing will be to harmonise details between costumes and stage set. 24

21 In Maeterlinck’s Ariane et Barbe-bleue (1902), there is a Mélisande among Bluebeard’s wives who is so
similar to the Mélisande of Pelléas et Mélisande that one assumes they are the same character. See Langham
Smith, “The play and its playwright,” Roger Nichols and Richard Langham Smith ed., ‘Pelléas et Mélisande,’
Cambridge Opera Handbooks, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 18-19, (henceforth referred
to as COH).
22 For further discussion of the origins of names of characters in Pelléas et Mélisande, see Langham Smith,
Ibid., pp. 13-18.
23 See Lambert, pp. 87-90.
24 Maeterlinck in a letter to Lugné-Poe, quoted in Robichez, Le Symbolism au Théâtre, (Paris, L’Arche, 1957),
p. 165, cited in Frantisek Deak, Symbolist Theatre: The Formation of an Avant-Garde, (Maryland, Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 164.
The lack of distinction between the eleventh and twelfth and fifteenth centuries suggests that
historical accuracy was not Maeterlinck’s priority. Instead, the evocation of a vague, distant,
romanticised Medieval era provided both a coherent enough setting to prevent educated
audiences from protesting about anachronisms, and one sufficiently vague to allow for
symbols and second degree dialogue to take priority over surface action and discourse.

Vagueness was very much a feature of the first production of Pelléas et Mélisande, which
took place at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens in Paris on May 17th, 1893. The scenery was
limited to paper flats, which were painted by Paul Volger, a moving curtain on a wire, and a
few properties. The lighting was more complex, for the play requires clear distinctions
between different lights — for example, in Act II, scene i, between sunlight and shadow, and
in Act IV, scene iv between moonlight and shadow — and because the states of the light are
part of Maeterlinck’s symbolism. W. D. Halls described the production thus:

The set was almost Shakespearean in its bareness. The lighting, shining from overhead, cast
grey tones and slight shadows everywhere. The costumes were compiled from portraits by
Memlinc and from simple Pre-Raphaelite decorations in the albums of Walter Crane. The
stage was separated from the audience by a thin gauze curtain. It was hoped thereby to
stimulate the mysteriousness of this setting, ‘out of time and out of place,’ blurring in
shadow the outlines of reality.25

The blurring of the actors beneath the gauze was made even more effective by their make-up,
which was ‘a washed-out grey, obscuring individual features almost to the degree of turning
the face into a mask.’ Moreover, the style of acting was very restrained, with the actors
26

whispering or intoning their lines and ‘lengthy silences, and slow, rhythmical movements.’ 27

The overall effect would have been the creation of a vagueness that almost dehumanised the
characters, and focused the audience instead upon the language of symbols and deeper levels
of dialogue. Furthermore, the simplicity of the plot, with its lack of sustained dramatic action,
places the emphasis on the inner, psychological action or second degree dialogue.

Unfortunately, in the first production of Pelléas et Mélisande in London, these deeper aspects
of the play were ignored. As Virginia Crawford recalled:

Produced with a scenic splendour and an elaboration of detail in accordance with the
orthodox traditions of the English stage, this most charming of love idyls became little
more than a drama of domestic intrigue, with here and there episodes of almost childish

25 Halls, p. 39.
26 Deak, p. 166.
27 Virginia Crawford, Studies in Foreign Literature, (London, Duckworth, 1899), p.167.
triviality. Its weird, elusive beauty seemed to shrivel up in contact with the material
accessories of the stage. Golaud became the conventional jealous husband; little Yniold [...]
developed into the precocious enfant terrible of domestic farce; and Mélisande herself,
tender, ethereal, and, above all, inconsciente, gave proof in Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s hands
of a hitherto unsuspected cousinship to the intrigante, to the woman with an unknown past
who wrecks the happiness of a noble family[...] Pelléas alone appeared to be conscious of
the hidden, unseen influences which should pierce through the enclosing envelope of the
spoken word. But admirable as Mr. Harvey’s acting was in the love scene of the Fourth Act,
I question whether his reading was not wrong, whether the scene should not have been
played throughout on a level of tender soul-communication rather than of passionate human
emotion.28

It would seem that the actors were the main problem in the neglect of the ‘hidden, unseen
influences’ beneath the spoken word. Maeterlinck had at one point rejected actors completely
in favour of marionettes, for he regarded it as almost perverse that art should be represented
by people. He remarked that

Performance puts things back exactly where they were before the arrival of the poet. The
mystical density of the work of art has disappeared. It produces, in relation to the poem,
more or less the same effect as would be produced if you extended a painting into ordinary
life.29

Evidently the words on the paper were not enough to ensure a performance of the play that
was true to Maeterlinck’s intentions. Without the playwright’s influence in the London
production of Pelléas et Mélisande, the deeper levels of action and meaning were lost. A
playwright can set down words for actors to speak, and give some direction as to how each
line might be spoken, but he is essentially powerless regarding the inflection and dynamic of
each phrase. A composer, however, has total control of inflection, and a far greater range of
dynamics and performance directions he can adopt in the setting of words. In this way,
Debussy was able restrain the actors in a manner that Maeterlinck could not.

There can be little doubt that Debussy’s approach to the composition of Pelléas et Mélisande
was devised to be as true as possible to Maeterlinck’s drama. Debussy’s respect for
28 Ibid., pp. 166-167.
29 Maurice Maeterlinck: Introduction à une psychologie des songes (1886 - 1896), Textes réunis et commentés
par S. Gross, (Brussels, Labor, 1985), cited in McGuinness, p. 97.
Maeterlinck also said: All in all, theatre today is absolutely the opposite of art, because it is the production of
the artificial by means of nature itself, that is to say, the inverse of what it should be, like a statue made of
flesh.... (“Un Théâtre des Androïdes,” Annales de la Foundation Maurice Maeterlinck, 23 (1977), 7 - 23, cited in
McGuinness, p. 97).
For further discussion of Maeterlinck’s views of the limitations of theatre, see McGuinness, pp. 95-98.
Maeterlinck’s work is clear in the correspondence that survives from this period and in his
approach to the setting of words. Henri de Régnier wrote to Maeterlinck, at Debussy’s
request, to ask permission for the writing of the opera:

[Debussy] has begun some charming music for Pelléas et Mélisande, which deliciously
garlands the text while scrupulously respecting it 30

and it was thus that Debussy was able to arrange a meeting Maeterlinck. Afterwards, Debussy
remarked to Chausson:

When I thanked him for entrusting Pelléas to me, he insisted it was he who ought to be
grateful to me for wishing to set it to music! As my opinion was diametrically opposite, I
had to employ what little diplomacy nature had endowed me with. 31

Debussy’s admiration of Maeterlinck can be explained by the manner in which Pelléas et


Mélisande fulfilled Debussy’s dream of an operatic text. In 1889, three years before
Maeterlinck’s play was published, Debussy described his ideal poet as

One who, only hinting at things, will allow me to graft my dream upon his; who will not
despotically impose on me the ‘scene to be set’ and will leave me free, here and there, to
show more artistry than him and to complete the work. 32

Maeterlinck’s work was incomplete in that it lacked the directions which ensured that the
second degree dialogue was brought out, as Crawford had observed in the production she
attended.

Debussy’s style of vocal writing remains close to speech, except in the opera’s Act III, scene
i, when Mélisande sings a song from her tower, and to some extent in Act IV, scene iv.
33

Debussy rejected melody on the grounds that it is useful only for expressing a simple feeling,
and instead crafted his music around the words and, moreover, the thoughts of the characters:

It is surely far better that music should attempt by simple means - a chord? a curve? - to
represent the [various] ambient and psychological states as they follow one another, without
30 Georgette Leblanc, Souvenirs: My Life with Maeterlinck, trns. Janet Flanner, (New York, publisher not stated,
1932), p.168, cited in David Grayson, “The opera: genesis and sources,” COH, p. 32.
31 La Revue Musicale (1920 - ), (1925), p. 124, cited in Robert Orledge, Debussy and the Theatre (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 53.
32 Debussy in an interview with Ernest Guiraud, recorded in Maurice Emmanuel, ‘Pelléas et Mélisande.’ Etude
historique et critique. Analyse musicale., (Paris, Mellottée, 1926), Ibid., p. 49.
33 Debussy cut four scenes of Maeterlinck’s play: Act I, scene i, Act II, scene iv, Act III, scene i and Act V,
scene i. See page 27.
forcing them to follow the pattern of a preordained symphonic development, which is
always arbitrary34

Furthermore, Debussy attended the first performance of Pelléas et Mélisande in 1893, so he


would have seen for himself how it was that Maeterlinck had asked for his play to be
performed.

In the opera’s Act I, scene i, Debussy’s vocal writing for the Golaud and Mélisande reflects
their changing ambient and psychological states. The rhythms are close to speech patterns. In
terms of pitches, music naturally covers a broader tessitura than the spoken word; however,
Debussy’s style is recitative-like and thus, in operatic terms, speech-like. In Golaud’s part, the
varying degrees of urgency and tenderness of his questions are shown in the intervals across
which the questions rise or fall. His first question is set to a rising major third:

to suggest that he is speaking gently. Later, when Mélisande is being uncooperative, Golaud’s
questions are set to rising perfect fourths:

which is more akin to questioning intonation than to tenderness. Finally, Golaud’s request
that Mélisande comes with him is across a rising perfect fifth:

This is his most important question in terms of the development of the plot. The fifth G# to
D# outlines the dominant of C# major, which is the opera’s final key following Mélisande’s
death. Thus, as well as giving Golaud’s question greater urgency, the interval hints at the
opera’s conclusion and suggests that Mélisande’s fate is known to some external force.

The vocal writing for Mélisande shows a sensitivity to the enunciation of repeated words and
to the different types of silence. Debussy gave very precise directions for the singing of each

34 François Lesure, “La Longue attente de Pelléas (1895-1899),” Cahiers Debussy 15, 3-12 (ed.) 1993, cited in
Philip Weller, “Symbolist Opera: trials, triumphs, tributaries,” The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth Century
Opera, ed. Mervyn Cooke, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 249.
repeated word, for example:

Here, Debussy distinguished between an exclamation mark and a three dots according to
Maeterlinck’s original punctuation by setting the final ‘enfuie’ with a decrescendo on a falling
interval, as opposed to rising intervals with crescendos that acknowledge the exclamation
marks. Maeterlinck was scrupulous in his use of punctuation at the ends of phrases to depict
35

silence. As McGuinness wrote:

For Maeterlinck, silence like speech has its own expressive register, just as it has its own
graphic code: a dash may denote interruption, rupture or shock, while three dots may
signify the petering out of discursive energy, the phrase dwindling into nothingness, an
unfinished sentence, or the point at which dialogue ebbs away. It may be a pregnant pause,
or semantic discontinuity, and, as it is used by Maeterlinck, it is far from the ‘opposite’ of
speech, if by this we mean to imply that speech expresses while silence does not.36

However, Debussy did not follow Maeterlinck’s punctuation consistently in this scene.
Whereas Maeterlinck wrote ‘Oh! oh! loin d’ici!... loin... loin...’ [Oh! oh! far away from
here!... far away... far away...], Debussy set the second ‘loin’ as if there is an exclamation
mark:

by placing two accents on the word, and setting it to the highest note of the phrase. This is not
simply a matter of the edition of Pelléas et Mélisande that Debussy used, more a deliberate
move on Debussy’s part to ‘graft his dream’ onto Maeterlinck’s. 37

Debussy was also sensitive to the stage directions, both those which Maeterlinck specified in
parentheses, and those embedded in the text itself. This comes across in the vocal writing and
in the orchestral accompaniment. For example, Maeterlinck wrote that Mélisande ‘sobs
profoundly’ after saying ‘Oh! oui! oui! oui!’. Debussy’s vocal line ascends, as if the sob is

35 For the original punctuation in an English translation, see Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelléas et Mélisande, trns.
Richard Hovey, (Chigago and New York, Herbert S. Stone and Company, 1896), reprinted by Kessinger
Publishing, (2007), pp. 61-162.
36 McGuinness pp. 154-155.
37 Unfortunately, there was neither space nor time to investigate in detail Debussy’s attention to Maeterlinck’s
punctuation. This would form an interesting project which would help further arguments regarding the extent to
which Debussy can be described as Maeterlinckian.
welling up:

Accompanying Mélisande are violins that play in half-diminished harmony, striking the
‘Tristan chord’ on the third crotchet beat of the bar to suggest her crying (VS p. 8). The half- 38

diminished realm introduces Mélisande: Golaud hears these harmonies in the strings and
recognises them as sobbing, rather than the actress playing Mélisande having to cry herself.
Similarly, Golaud’s coughs are played by the orchestra rather than given by the actor (VS p.
5).
Just as Maeterlinck wrote plays to be enjoyed as much by the reader in his armchair as the
audience member in his theatre-seat, one wonders whether Debussy’s opera might have been
composed with the phonograph listener in mind, such is his attention to extra-verbal detail.

Stage directions concerning the movement of the characters are also in the music.
Maeterlinck was sparing with directions in parentheses, but in Act I, scene ii (Debussy’s Act
I, scene i) he requests two actions: first, that Golaud approaches Mélisande, and second, that
Mélisande ‘trembles, starts up and would flee.’ As well as quoting these directions in the
score, Debussy composed music to suggest the movement. Mélisande’s trembling is depicted
in the playing of her theme in appropriately trembling triplet rhythms, with half-diminished
harmonies that suggest her distress. Golaud’s walking towards Mélisande is played on low
strings that sound the theme from the very opening of the opera:

The crotchet movement is close to footsteps. These are distinctly masculine footsteps because
of the low register, the march metre and the strength of the perfect fifth. The first bar suggests
Golaud lacks the delicacy to assist Mélisande because of its strong intervals, which, when
compared to the delicate pentatonic that is associated with Mélisande, seem as if he is striding
in a manner which asserts his male dominance rather than tenderness. The last three notes,
which are enharmonic to F# major, are later contextualised, for F# major is the key of love
and light. Once this context is realised, one sees that Debussy introduces Golaud’s desire for
39

Mélisande several lines before Golaud remarks that she is beautiful. Thus as well as
following Maeterlinck’s stage directions, Debussy uses ‘simple means’ to represent the
ambient psychological states of Golaud as he interpreted them.

38 It has been noted by several scholars, including Holloway, Langham Smith and Abbate, that the ‘Tristan
chord’ is used whenever there is a reference to crying, presumably as a pun on the French ‘triste.’
39 See Langham Smith, “Tonalities of Darkness and Light,” COH, pp. 107-139.
Debussy is also aware - as all good actors should be - of stage directions embedded in the
text. Just before Golaud sees the crown, a fanfare-like motif is played on muted trumpets to
draw the listeners’ attention to the presence of something with royal associations (VS p. 11).
It would be a coarse actor indeed who said the line as or, worse, before he acknowledged the
crown. Golaud is directed again by the text and the music to look at the crown a second time
before he comments that ‘it seems very beautiful’ (VS p. 14). This time, the crown’s motif is
orchestrated for two flutes and two clarinets, and these softer instruments suggest that
Golaud’s curiosity for the crown is waning. There is a distinction here between the crown as
an object and Golaud’s perception of the crown. Debussy’s orchestration focuses on the
experience rather than the object itself. When the crown is first noticed by Golaud, the fanfare
is marked with a crescendo from pp to sf, and played by brass instruments, to show both that
he has noticed the crown and that he is curious. The second playing suggests that Golaud sees
the same object but that his interest has lessened. The distinction between objects and the
subject’s perception of objects was very important in the philosophies of the nineteenth
century — in particular in Schopenhauer’s writings — as well as in Medieval ideas about
symbols, and these, as I have said earlier, were inspirational to Maeterlinck.

The score of Pelléas et Mélisande thus lends itself to an analysis of the minutiae, in which
the associations of each gesture are unearthed and compared with Maeterlinck’s drama, in
particular its second degree dialogue. Joseph Kerman described the piece as ‘opera as sung
play,’ and this is perhaps how the opera might best be studied. Yet, strangely, most
40

musicological accounts focus instead upon the use of character motifs and tonalities — a
valid exercise only in as much as it provides material that can be used to illuminate Debussy’s
setting of each of Maeterlinck’s phrases — or on how far the opera was inspired by Wagner. I
have tried to show how, through approaching the play in the manner of a sensitive actor or a
literary scholar, one can see the reasons underlying Debussy’s setting of words and his use of
gestures and motifs at specific moments.

As well as respecting the text at the level of the phrases and thoughts of Maeterlinck’s
characters, Debussy demonstrated an appreciation of the broader inspirations for Pelléas et
Mélisande. The Medieval inspiration for Maeterlinck’s symbolism and second degree
dialogue would have been more evident to Debussy, who not only saw the first Paris
production with its Remlinc-inspired costumes and painted backdrops, but also lived when
the Medieval era was being romanticised in art and in the theatre. Debussy was also
interested in literature and art which had a vaguely Medieval setting: he set Rossetti’s poem
La damoiselle élue as a cantata in 1888, and he saw Wagner’s operas at Bayreuth, where they
were produced with Medieval costumes and scenery.

40 Joseph Kerman, “Opera as Sung Play,” Opera as Drama, (London, Faber and Faber, 1989), pp. 140-157.
Debussy’s music evokes a Medieval setting. Medieval music would have been known to
Debussy’s audiences though the plainsong sung in Catholic churches in Paris and through
folk songs. The opening theme of the opera has echoes of plainsong, for it stays within the
interval of the perfect fifth and moves in whole tones. The consecutive fourths between A and
D, and C and G, echo Medieval organum technique, and the flattened seventh suggests a
modal rather than a tonal realm:

When this theme occurs three bars later, it is harmonised further in the modal realm to
maintain the sense of D dorian. Maurice Emmanuel labelled this ‘les temps lointains,’ which 41

seems most appropriate given both its musical qualities and Maeterlinck’s vague Medieval
setting. Mélisande’s song in Act III, scene i has folk-song qualities because of its simplicity
and its flattened sevenths. Her character motif is similarly folk-like in its use of the pentatonic
scale:

Golaud’s motif, which moves between two tones, is simple enough to suggest plainsong and
thus to echo the Medieval era, even when it has a wholetone harmonisation. The letter in the
opera’s Act I, scene ii is read to a plainsong-like chant, and it was perhaps Debussy’s
intention here to echo the chanting of the Eucharistic prayer in the mass because of its
associations with an inevitable sacrifice. By writing music that was evocative of a Medieval
era, Debussy guided the audience towards Maeterlinck’s Medieval-inspired symbolism and
views of the soul.

Debussy’s ideas of the soul and different levels of dialogue were similar to Maeterlinck’s.
Music, unlike language, does not rely upon words and can therefore come closer to second
degree dialogue. Debussy said that

Music begins at the point at which the word becomes powerless as an expressive force:

41 Maurice Emmanuel, ‘Pelléas et Mélisande,’ (Paris, publisher not stated, 1925), p. 135, cited in Roger
Nichols, “Synopsis,” COH, p. 62.
music is made for the inexpressible. I should like her to appear to emerge from the shadows
and at times to return there.42

This echoes Ruysbroeck's autre miroir, where ‘words have no purchase on its surface.’
Furthermore, the notion of music staying in the shadows is remarkably similar to
Maeterlinck’s actors’ performing behind a veil. However, Debussy made this comment in
1889, long before Maeterlinck had completed Pelléas et Mélisande. This is important, for it
shows that Debussy’s thoughts regarding language, music and the inexpressible predate his
discovery of the play rather than stem from it. Debussy moved to Paris in 1887 when Freud,
Charcot and Janet were developing their theories, so it is probable that he would have read
about their studies of levels of conscience. However, Debussy’s ideas regarding sub-
conscious levels of thought were more likely to have stemmed from his interest in the poetry
of Baudelaire, Verlaine and Mallarmé, which he set as mélodies. Chadwick describes a
‘transcendental symbolism’ in which objects not only depict emotion and thoughts, but also
another reality, to which our existence stands as an imperfect representation. This of course
43

reflects the Aristotelian idea of an ordered universe, which underlies Medieval thought (as
outlined above) and Maeterlinck’s symbolism.

Thus it would seem that, whilst Maeterlinck viewed language, the soul and the interpretation
of symbols mostly through Medieval paradigms, whereas Debussy encountered theories of
the same topics through the poetry, the ideas themselves reduce to the same fundamental
concepts. It is intriguing, in this respect, that one can draw parallels between the lives of
Debussy and Maeterlinck. Maeterlinck’s class had lost their authority through the
Arbeidersbeweging. Debussy had lived during the Paris Commune of 1871, which was a
similarly socialist movement that questioned and undermined, albeit temporarily, the
authority of the bourgeoisie. Perhaps it was the same sense of a lack of value in Debussy’s
social background that led him towards a literature of transcendentalism and symbols.
Furthermore, like Maeterlinck, Debussy had reservations about his education. Maeterlinck
moved away from his traditional education with its emphasis on rationalism, positivism and
empiricism in favour of subjectivism and mysticism. Meanwhile Debussy rejected traditional
classical form and symphonic development in favour of a style he found to be more akin to
his views of the soul:

Explorations previously made in the realm of pure music had led me toward a hatred of
classical development, whose beauty is solely technical and can interest only the mandarins
in our profession. I wanted music to have a freedom that was perhaps more inherent than in

42 In an interview with Ernest Guiraud in 1889, recorded in Maurice Emmanuel, ‘Pelléas et Mélisande.’ Etude
historique et critique. Analyse musicale. (Paris, Mellottée, 1926), cited in Orledge, p. 49.
43 Charles Chadwick, Symbolism: The Critical Idiom, (London, Methuen & Co Ltd, 1971), pp. 2-7.
any other art, for it is not limited to a more or less exact representation of nature, but rather
to the mysterious affinity between Nature and the Imagination. 44

- a style which moreover reflects subjectivist views. There is thus a parallel in the musical
and literary thinking of the two artists. The similarity between these two men extends from
their early experiences to their views of the human spirit, and it is shown to their approaches
to writing and realising drama.

It is largely because of Debussy’s adherence to and respect for Maeterlinck’s text, his use of
character motifs, and his choice of a play inspired by Celtic legends, that there has been an
ongoing debate regarding the extent to which Debussy can be termed Wagnerian. Holloway
argues convincingly that Debussy’s approach to writing opera successfully addressed
Wagner’s complaint in Oper und Drama:

THAT A MEANS OF EXPRESSION (MUSIC) HAS BECOME THE END, WHILE


THE END OF EXPRESSION (THE DRAMA) HAS BEEN MADE THE MEANS45

Whereas Wagner did not address this imbalance in his composition, Debussy was anxious
that any setting of words to music would respect the text, even and often at the expense of
conventional musical development. That Debussy regarded his job as a composer as
completing what the poet had already begun also points towards his adherence to Wagner’s
ideals. The use of character motifs in Pelléas et Mélisande is associated with Wagner’s opera,
but, whereas Wagner’s leitmotifs help give a sense of unity in his through-composed operas,
Debussy’s motifs function at the more local level of illuminating each phrase of
Maeterlinck’s text. Furthermore, as seen in the example of the crown, Debussy’s motifs
depict the experience of the object, whereas Wagner’s leitmotifs sometimes represent the
objects themselves. The Medieval-like music used to give a sense of the opera’s setting,
which is comparable to the settings of Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal, is surely more a
consequence of Maeterlinck’s text than any desire on Debussy’s part to be Wagnerian. The
similarities in plot between Pelléas et Mélisande and Tristan und Isolde, which barely
function beyond the level of the ‘divorce court’ scenario, are surely the consequence of
46

Maeterlinck’s choice of a simple plot which gave greater scope for psychological and
symbolic action. Debussy’s attraction to Maeterlinck’s play may well have been in part
because of its surface similarity to Tristan und Isolde, but the evidence points to
Maeterlinck’s second degree dialogue as Debussy’s main criterion in selecting a text. Thus, if
44 “Why I wrote Pelléas,” Debussy on Music, ed. and trns. Richard Langham Smith, (London, Secker and
Warburg, 1977), p. 74.
45 Quoted by Holloway in Debussy and Wagner (London, Ernst Eulenburg, 1979), p.51. The capitalisation is
Wagner’s.
46 Ibid., p. 60.
Debussy was indeed ‘the most profoundly Wagnerian of all composers,’ then this was surely
47

the by-product of his conscientious attempt to be Maeterlinckian.

How far Debussy was inspired by Wagner in Pelléas et Mélisande has been discussed at great
length by many scholars, but the extent to which Debussy was Maeterlinckian has received
far less attention. This can be explained in part by the lack of scholarship surrounding
Maeterlinck. Patrick McGuinness’ book, published in 2000, was the first book on
Maeterlinck to have been written in English for several decades. Even in French and Dutch,
there seems to be a disproportionate lack of writing surrounding the ‘Shakespeare of
Belgium.’ Moreover, Maeterlinck is often placed incorrectly in the context of French
symbolism, rather than Medieval modernism and Dutch (and French) naturalism — he was,
afterall, a Belgian. Alas there was neither time nor space to examine in depth the influence of
naturalism in Maeterlinck’s drama, an area which would perhaps be of more interest to
literary scholars than to musicologists seeking to approach Debussy through Maeterlinck. I
have attempted to shed some light on Maeterlinck’s dramatic theory as having been inspired
by the Medieval era, which encompassed elements of symbolism and neurosis, as well as the
stories, symbols and characters that were inspirational in Pelléas et Mélisande. Debussy
showed a profound understanding of Maeterlinck’s theories concerning symbols, the soul and
language in his response to Maeterlinck’s text in Act I, scene i, and in his correspondance. It
would require a far greater word limit than this to explore the entire opera in these terms, both
in its minutiae, and in its broader realisations of Maeterlinckian theories. Furthermore, there
is still the all-too-often ignored level of performance to consider; for, even with Debussy’s
control of the pitches, rhythms and dynamics of the text, there is still room for further
interpretation. Underneath the opera there lies a very deep pool of dramatic theory, and, even
after several months of research, I cannot help but feel that I have barely dipped my toes in
the water.

47 Ibid., p. 235.
Appendix

Scenes cut from Maeterlinck’s play in Debussy’s opera

It was with Maeterlinck’s permission, and indeed at his suggestion, that Debussy cut four of
the nineteen scenes of the play for the libretto of his opera. These are as follows:

Act I, scene i

The opening scene of Maeterlinck’s play featured two servants scrubbing a stain from before
the castle gates, and the eventual opening of the gates which had been kept shut by some
unknown force.

Act II, scene iv

In which Arkël persuades Pelléas to postpone his trip away to his dying friend. This is the
only scene where we see Arkël and Pelléas alone together.

Act III, scene i

In which Mélisande sits spinning at her wheel with Pelléas and Yniold. This is the single
occasion on which the three characters are alone together and we see them as a family unit;
indeed, perhaps a more functional family unit than Golaud, Mélisande and Yniold.
Mélisande’s spinning must surely have been inspired by the story of the Sleeping Princess —
another timeless fairy tale from a vaguely Medieval era, and a reference which perhaps
foreshadowed Mélisande’s eternal sleep in Act V, scene ii.

Act V, scene i

Another scene in which the servants discuss events in the castle. They reveal that after
chasing Mélisande through the forest, Golaud stabbed himself, and this explains Golaud’s
references to his own death during Act V.
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DVDs

•Opéra National de Lyon / France 3 / La Sept Radio France / Erato Films (1987)

•Welsh National Opera / Châtelet Théâtre Musical de Paris / Deutsche Grammophon / BBC
television / Caméras Continentales (1992)

•Glyndebourne Festival Opera / Warner Music Group / Channel Four Television (1999)

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