Instead, they distrust melody.
Declamation is no longer wanted in operas, and the singers make the
works incomprehensible by not articulating the words. The composers tend
along the same lines, for they give no indication or direction of how
they want the words spoken. All this is regrettable and should be
reformed.
As you see, I object to the mania for reform and end by suggesting
reforms myself. Well, one must be of one's own time, and there is no
escaping the contagion.
CHAPTER III
VICTOR HUGO
Everything in my youth seemed calculated to keep me far removed from
romanticism. Those about me talked only of the great classics and I saw
them welcome Ponsard's _Lucrece_ as a sort of Minerva whose lance was to
route Victor Hugo and his foul crew, of whom they never spoke save with
detestation.
Who was it, I wonder, who had the happy idea of giving me, elegantly
bound, the first volumes of Victor Hugo's poems? I have forgotten who it
was, but I remember what joy the vibrations of his lyre gave me. Until
that time poetry had seemed to me something cold, respectable and
far-away, and it was much later that the living beauty of our classics
was revealed to me. I found myself at once stirred to the depths, and,
as my temperament is essentially musical in everything, I began to sing
them.
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