Clearly  the  examiners  did  not  belong  to  the  section
of  the  French  public  whose  accomplishments  in-
cluded an  appreciation  of  Pre-Raphaelitism  and
Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti's  poetry. However,  though
possibly  uncongenial  to  the  examiners,  the  poem
was  well  adapted  to  appeal  to  Debussy's  love  of
abstract  reverie. He  has  always  manifested  a  re-
markable consistency  in  his  choice  of  objective
themes  whereon  to  exercise  his  art. In  the  first
number  of  his  Proses  lyriques  he  has  essayed  to
portray,  both  in  his  own  words  and  in  music,  the
intangible  substance  of  a  waking  dream. He  ends
with  these  significative  words  :  "  My  soul  is  encom-
passed with  old-world  dreams."

Realising  as  he  does  the  unlimited  power  of
suggestion,  possessed  by  the  art  of  music  and
understanding  in  a  very  subtle  degree  its  capability
of  giving  a  fleeting  existence  to  immaterial,
abstract  ideas  he  has  invariably  chosen  delicate,
intangible  subjects  and  flights  of  fancy  which  gain
pre-eminently  an  added  and  prolonged  eloquence
in  music. To  those  who  would  attempt  to  define
the  unknowable,  and  who  would  limit  the  arts  to  -
precise   expression  or  imitation  of  what  they  call


WORKS  37

realities,  Debussy's  choice  of  poets,  his  association
of  ideas  in  music,  even  his  Nature  studies  and
impressions,  must  seem  antagonistic  and  incom-
prehensible. He  is  averse  to  binding  music  down
to  the  exact  reproduction  of  set  programmes,  but
has  rather  chosen  to  amplify  and  expand  evanescent,
shadowy  thoughts — to  distil  their  essence  and  then
capture  and  protract  it  in  sound. His  best-known
work  in  England  and  America,  and  one  that  has
elicited  a  great  deal  of  conflicting  criticism,  the  Pre-
lude Uapres-midi  d'unfaune,  is  based  on  the  work  of
a  poet  whose  temperament  and  idiosyncrasies  are
singularly  akin  to  his  own. Stephane  Mallarme
struck  out  an  individual  line  in  literature  and
followed  it  in  spite  of  raillery  and  contempt  from
a  number  of  his  contemporaries,  remaining  content
with  the  homage  and  respect  of  a  cultured  few  and
the  consciousness  of  his  own  sincerity  and  unfailing
loyalty  to  a  cherished  ideal. He  endeavoured  to
formulate  a  poetic  art  which  would  embody  with
perfect  harmony  a  medley  of  dissimilar  emotions  and
ideas. 