To Robert Godet
Paris, Thursday (12 february 1891)
…..even so, I’ve not been master of myself of late and, as all I could have offered was a soul in blatant disarray, I felt silence was the best policy. I'd like to have had you there with me and told you my sufferings, great and small, face to face. It’s not the same, having to rely on tear-jerking epithets — it all comes out dry and turgid. but heaven knows, I’ve missed you! I hope this outburst from the heart will serve as an apology for my silence. In any case it wasn’t really silence because I desperately needed to unburden myself, but there was no one to talk to!
In fact I’m still very confused. I wasn’t expecting that business we talked about! to end so miserably and cheaply, with tales being told and unmentionable things said. I found a bizarre transposition taking place: precisely as her lips pronounced those unforgiving words, echoes of her once-loving voice resounded within me. This battle between the wrong notes (not accidental, alas!) and what I heard inside me was so overwhelming, I hardly understood what was going on. since then understanding has forced itself upon me. I’ve left a large part of myself hanging on those thorns and it’ll be a long time before I get back to my pursuit of art the great healer! (an ironic phrase, if you like, when art offers every kind of suffering there is — and we all know what happens to people who are healed by it.) I loved her so much, but with a sort of despairing passion because it was easy to see she was never going to commit herself utterly and she refused to be drawn when questioned about the strength of her feelings! now I must try and find out whether she really possessed what I was looking for, or was I chasing a void? In spite of everything, I’m still mourning the loss of the dream of a dream!* maybe it’s not so bad, after all! anything rather than those days when death seemed the only solution, and was the one keeping vigil over the corpse!
…….
yours
Cl. A. Debussy
To Ernest Chausson
Sunday (3 September 1893)
Try as I may, I can’t regard the sadness of my existence with caustic detachment. sometimes my days are dull, dark and soundless like those of a hero from Edgar Allan Poe! and my soul is as romantic as a chopin ballade! too many memories come crowding into my solitude and I can’t get rid of them. One must simply live and wait! It remains to be seen whether I’ve picked a lucky number or not for the happiness bus. If not, I’d be quite happy to stand! (forgive this reach-me-down philosophy!) the bell has tolled now to mark my 31st year, and I’m still not confident that my musical attitudes are right; and there are things | can’t yet do (write masterpieces, for example, or, among other things, be completely serious — ı’m too prone to dream my life away and to see realities only at the very moment they become insuperable). maybe I’m more to be pitied than blamed.
……
yours, with affection
C.D.
To André Poniatowski
Thursday (February 1893)
……….
So, if I had written to you in ‘this state of mind’ to use the language of Bourget’s followers, you wouldn’t have been cheered by the result. Being worried doesn’t, I think, give one the right to wrong other people. besides which, however real one’s sufferings are they look rather quaint and dramatic on paper. Anyway the best thing is not to take all these hardships too seriously. They support what I might call the cult of desire. and when all’s 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. The object is there and you spend five or six days without looking at it. The only time the passion returns is when you’ve been away for several months. It’s like the sun, which is so wonderful when you feel it again on an April morning and then all through the summer we’re tired of it. You could write down a formula for desire: ‘everything comes from it and returns to it’. by a rather elegant piece of trickery, the desire to be happy works pretty much on the same lines. One is never happy except by comparison or by giving oneself a certain limit to aim at, whether it’s so many millions in cash or so many children, to provide some relaxation from the onward drive to glory. I don’t know whether, like me, you’re a ‘happiness addict’; that’s to say, whether your wish to be happy in a particular way, using your own resources and with the highest of motives, condemns you to be written off for the most part as either a blackguard or a poor idiot.
…..
yours
C.D.
To Jacques Durand (8 July 1910)
Since you left to take the waters, I’ve been going along with this curious existence which is my life and will be from now on. Those around me resolutely refuse to understand that I’ve never been able to live in a world of real things and real people. That’s why ı have this imperative need to escape from myself and go off on adventures which seem inexplicable because they figure a man nobody knows; and perhaps he represents the best side of me! after all, an artist is by definition a man accustomed to dreams and living among apparitions .. . It’s pointless expecting this same man to follow strictly all the observances of daily life, the laws and all the other barriers erected by a cowardly, hypocritical world.! In short, I live surrounded by memories and regrets. two gloomy companions, but faithful ones — more so than pleasure and happiness! I’m working as much as I can. These are still the moments when I come closest to satisfying my taste for the inexpressible! ıf, as I hope, I succeed with this exploration of anguish, which is what la chute de la maison usher will be, then ı feel ı’ll have made a useful contribution to music ... and to my friend and publisher Jacques Durand!
…….
Think of me with sympathy this Sunday. I shall be listening to eleven performances of the rhapsody for b° clarinet;* I’ll tell you all, if I survive.
Yours
C.D.