Impressionism and

Symbolism
Stefan Jarocinski
Notes by Wan Wong
Preface by Jankélévitch
Edward Lockspeiser’s two volumes of Debussy: his life and mind- most famous.

After the impressionist Debussy of the earliest usicologists, Jean Barraqué sees
him as true originator of the serial music of today.

“Comparative study of the harmonic languages of Fauré and Debussy” by

Francoise Gervais -- stresses melody as compared to harmony.

All interpretations equally valid. all throw light on one aspect or another of the
inexhaustible treasures these works contain.

Jarocinski’s thesis: to explain Debussy in terms of Symbolism. Be suspiscious of

ties between music and painting. Resist temptation to confuse the temporal order
of auditive senations with the visual order of spatial coexistence.
 In accordance with this symbolical and spiritual
His Aims (viii-ix) interpretation that skryabin in his prometheus
envisaged the correspondence between sounds
- Denies the right of either the listener or the and colors.
performer to conceive music in terms of
the three dimensions of optical space; -For this reason, MUSIC. a language at once
- question the possibility of translating a ambiguous and ambivalent, and even capable of
landscape in terms of temporal succession meaning more than one thing at at time, a
- Juxta-linear correspondence between language which is, in fact, the opposite of a
sounds and colors are purely metaphorical language, music never has to make a choice
nature, the universal correspondence between one meaning rather than another, as is
between qualities, through the the case with rational speech.
intermediary of memories and
associations, is the whole essence of - Suggestion of hidden energy: power of
symbolism. suggestion has a magical force which is
irresistible.
La Mer
Author says, L Mer symbolises the awakning of Iberia:
life and expansion of the forces that lie dormant
in the depths of Nature. Parfums de la nuit 2nd mvt

As Skriabin- I summon you to life, O mysterious has nothing to do with olfactory sense or visual
forces. imagination.

-World: equivocal world. halfway between real yet it disturbs us profoundly. creating in us a
and figurative meaning. meaning in its literal or kaleidoscope of images, sensations, qualities.
grammatic, as opposed to its pneumatic sense.
filling us with sensation of dizziness and languor
Everything is ethereal, allusive, unsubstantial, of which poet speaks of.
forever changing and perpetually transformed.
Distant, dream-like. Liquidity. Diffluence of
sensations.
Faure’s second quartet: he spoke of a desire for non-existent things. Irrealism.
Poetry: mysterious symbols and correspondences.
Not mere transcriptions of sounds in nature, nor pointiliste representations of waves. BUT on the
otherhand, cannot be reduced to purely psychological subjectivism.

Fulfilled already, Debussys wish: open air theatre at Béziers

Compared with Fauré

Debussy’s objectives? (xi)
Harmonic Sensuality

Craving for new sonorities which make it impossible to attribute to him any kind of
inner unhappiness or introvert subjectivity

Feeling for pure sound in itself a very French characteristic. Liszt, Chopin.
Ineffable and entrancing sounds. Debussy wrote: “French music desires, above
all, to give pleasure’. (page xi) ‘Music must humbly seek to give pleasure’.
Where music Exists (xii)
Music becomes difficult when it’s no longer music. Music becomes more
complicated when composer has nothing to say.

Music was not made to be written down on paper, but for the EAR.

Music is not graphic phenomenon, but aural.

Author’s description of spontaneity: ‘trans-discursive music’ -- which is very

different from the conceptual, coded variety favored by the disciples of wagner.
Realist Tendencies (nature) (xiii)
Author agrees with Russian musicologist Jules Kremlev

This goes to show the relativity of the various caegories and headings under which
we were hoping to classify debussy.

D himself hated concepts.

Author quotes Monsieur Croche speaks of that ‘music in the open air’ where one
hears nothing but the ocean, the wind in the leaves, the shrill chirping of the
swallows, and the sound of far-off bells.
At the risk of reverting to professional abstraction
Debussy: all the elements of the phenomenology of the immediate.

Immediate would seem to be more static than genuinely temporal:

immediate is the immediacy of a minute in suspense, an instant of immobility.

Des Pas Sur La Neige

La Sérénade interrompue

Ce qu’ a vu le vent d’ouest

There isn’t a story that the wind is telling. Just a minute in the history of the world.
Bergsonian
Author says it’s not Debussy who’s Bergsonian, Mouvement (Book 1 of Images)
but Fauré.
merely turning round on itself. its not actually
“thanks to incessant movement of sonorous going anywhere. does not link one point to
particles...something is always happening in this another. eternal.
music;” (xiv)
something is always happening but nothing is
conntinual deformation is neither an evolution happening at all. this comes to the same thing!
nor a becoming, but a succession of
instantaneous fluxions. Nothing happens during the eternal dialogue of
the wind with the sea, or in the motionless
“It is this succession of infinitesimal whirling of sounds and scents in the twilight. no
discontinuities which makes a continuity.” (xiv) events. no progress in time. nothing but patches
of duartion. stagnant and sluggish water.
Aesthetic and Philosophical insight
Importance to social and historical and historical aspects does not exclude, but on
the contrary implies, a very high degree of speculative culture and an obvious
taste for theoretical problems.

But no need to emphasise these features.

As author understands, Debussy still linked with impressionism through “ the

paradox of certain elusive external similarities. It is not easy to explain how these
contradiction between sensorial discontinuity and the continuity of dreams-
between scattered and disparate qualities and the fluidity of a dream can ever be
resolved.” xiv
Introduction 1
Goals: to underline what is meant by
symbolism

to verify and to what extent the term

impressionism can be applied

to show aesthetic movement which

influenced Debussy’s artistic personality
most strongly, which is Symbolism
Impressionism
The early coinage Accused of being hedonistic and lacking in
profundity.
enabled him to establish himself without meeting
too much opposition. Presents the work of this composer in a false
perspective.
Soundpainting

Primitive meaning remained unchanged.

“It is to be hoped, therefore, that this book,
which deals with various aspects of the arts in a
deliberately polemical fashion, will encourage
Problematic: unlikely to arouse any deep
aestheticians and those concerned with the
emotions, lacking gravity of Bach or Beethoven
theory of music -- and not only music -- to make
a thorough study of the problems it raises.” (3)
Impressionism Chapter 2
Artist movement

Empirical basis: effects of sunlight in nature. art fidelity. reality. represent what
artist sees and not what he knows.

Momentary impression. Reconstitution of a phase in an ever-changing reality.

Rehabilitated the sense and spontaneous sensations. Revolted against

impersonal art of academic naturalism. against cult of technical skill and its
insensibility to color which made every picture look as if it had been painted with
tobacco juice.
Knowledge (Chapter 2 of impressionism)
pg 6

Static reproduction of reality:

replacing knowledge through the intellect by knowledge through the senses, and
dethroning rationalism in favour of a purely sensuous approach.

Impressionists: only 2 dimensions to express

Richness of color: irritated those with romantic tradition. accusations of hedonism,

narcissism, aestheticism.
Impressionism- dematerialisation of matter
Tachism

world was not being, but becoming

Formed new conception of space, not only because abandoned noble subjects of
the renaissance, but because analyze scientifically the qualities of light. Destroyed
not only social distinctions, but the corresponding categories of the theoretic
representation of the world.

pg 9
 Merleau Ponty
Represent world in its mobility
true nature of objects is from its relationship with one another.
System of interdependent forces
Man being both observer and participant

New vision of world.

Methodological climate → developments in pure mathes. freed from bonds
of realism, and at same time, relativity physics. Cartesian principles of
knowledge were obliged to give way to more flexible methods, more
conducive to a better understanding of the dynamic and dramatic character
of both the natural and the historical developments that were taking place.
Musical Impressionism Chpt 2 pg 11
Early opinion: emphasized work in its supremacy of color over form and design.
enabled conclusions to be drawn concerning composer’s aesthetic theories.
compare these with actual intentions.

Debussy disregarded Saint Saens recommendation to avoid F sharp major. He

allowed himself to use melodic themes whose tonality could not be classified as
either major or minor. sequences involving four or five different keys, whole tone
scales, plagal cadences, common chords, combined with seventh, sequences of
ninths and major thirds.
Printemps
Not descriptive sense, but seen from human angle.

Slow painful genesis of objects

Upsurge of expansion and development culminating

in

overwhelming joy of being born again to a new life.

No program though. Is not simply describing what he sees, but convey purely
musical mens, idea of awakening to life, expansion of somnolent forces and the
creation of Man.

TO isolate purely abstract idea which for us is symbolised by the word Spring.
Ideology of ‘Impressionism; p14
conservative quarters on all artistic fronts Critique of D’indy:
against the movement
“This music will not live because it is without
Critique Jean d’Udine: form” p16

“It is impossible to imagine a more subtly Debussy feared technical analyses:

impressionist symphony. Consisting entirely of
sound-spots, it does not evolve within the “so far as the beauty of a work of art was
framework of any precise melodic pattern, but concerned, it would ‘certainly never be possible
the way in which the chords and different to discover how it was done’ (17)
timbres are blended and manipulated-- what the
Ernst Kurth (1920)
painters would call its harmony -- gives it a kind
of very strict homogeneity in which beauty of line
His principle was: developments in musical form
is replaced by an equally plastic beauty resulting
depended on immanent psychic energy, which is
from skilful way in which orchestral sonorities
constantly disturbing and even disrupting and
are distributed and logically sustained. (15)
destroying the rationalised and functional
Ernst Kurth p.18 con’t
Kinetic energy represented by melody his conclusion:

attained peak in Romanticism path of debussy follow Wagner’s even though

he himself had declared that his aims was to
gradually transforming itself into potential form liberate music from the influence of wagner.
of energy easily assimilated by pure sonority
combined with color Coupled wagner and debussy in same decadent
movement
this tendency reached climax in debussy’s
music insisting that harmony was almost essential
ingredient of Debussy’s method of composition

Confirmed thesis of Hamann: that the chief

direction of future researches would to be
purused if they were to lead to the discovery of
the true image, of debussy’s music.
Mersmann p.20
Work as organism

Field of conflicting energies

Activated by tectonic forces.

Attempt to reconcile analysis with a unique kind

of hermeneutic sui generis and create a bridge
between a work and its perception
Images 2
titles suggest our imagination definite objects The bells of Claude Monet’s vibrant cathedral
plays their part in this quivering tissue of sound,
apply in reality to very advanced technical every delicate nuance of which is disseminated,
studies corresponding to the pointilliste decomposed and muted, as it were, by the
techniques of the painters. --- Vuillermoz foliage through which they pass.

Almost scientific demonstration of Impressionist

composition
Whole tone scale. Realized spectral analysis of
What the musician wishes to represent is the sound which is almost a laboratory experiment,
passage of the sound-waves through the air, but is still from beginning to end an astonishing
opening and closing like a fan- clashing and and enchanting musical experience. (21)
mingling, giving off an iridescent glow as they
meet, and suffusing the air with an atmosphere
of poetry and dreams.
Chpt 3 Symbol in Art
Seeking a definition Analysis of the structure of artistic
communication is essential if we are to study
Relation between reality and imagination and learn about the structure of ideas, as well as
the structure of society.
relation between artist and his public

Symbol: employed to arouse our sensibility and

communicate experience

Cassirer interprets this concept in context of

aesthetics. Symbol is= the vehicle perceptible to
the senses of spiritual values.
Symbol in definition
That previous definition ignores one fact:

in regards to the arts

sign versus signal in the sense that it is indirect ‘vehicle of spiritual values’

vehicle of a content which is not completely realised.

Other modalities of symbolic function (Expression, representation, pure meaning)

Cassirer does not mention art, which is of suggestion, which cannot be confused
with the expressive function (appeal to senses and spiritual content) of Myth.
Symbol con’t
distinguish direct and indirect representation Allegory is always didactic

F.W. Leakey’s definition: double meaning is only a coquettish disguise

does not go far enough. calls it ‘a metaphor of not spontaneous, but calculated and deliberate
which the first term is abstract and the second
concrete’. This fails to speak of the richness and daughter of reason, not of inspiration
originality of all the efforts to achieve immediate
(23)
communication in poetry since mallarme.

how is this definition distinguishing between

symbol and allegory? Poets themselves didnt
know the distinction. we got fauns, swans,
sirens, virgins...
Goethe on symbol vs allegory
Allegory Even when expressed in every language it will
always remained unexpressed. (p23)
transforms the phenomenon into a concept

concept into an image

in such a manner that concept can only be

stated confirmed or expressed in the image in a
way that is always limited and incomplete.

Symbol transforms the phenomenon into an

idea, and the idea into an image, and does this
in such a way that the idea in the image has
infinite repercussions and remains intangible;
two main features of symbol
1) conveys an imprecise meaning - which can be interpreted in various ways;
the transposition of its meaning has a dynamic character
a) the simpl meanings contained in the word-units are multiplied and enlarged by the poetic
diction charged with a symbolic function
i) Bergson: poets sugges to us things that language is incapable of expressing
ii) Succeed by avoiding using words in their literal sense, by arousing our sensibility
through not only meaning of the words, but also their sounds, their arrangement and
their movement when spoken, and by the placing of stresses in a sentence… by all
these different means the result of which is to make poetry sometimes sound like music.
(24)
Two main features of symbols part 2
Ambiguity as essential atmosphere of symbol --- von Sydow

symbol is never a translation, this means that it can never be translated -- Baruzi

Unlike allegory, symbol represents nothing concrete, and expresses nothing. it

merely makes present- by bringing us into its presence, a reality which cannot be
grasped in any other way, seeming to emerge suddenly, prodigiously far away, like
some strange apparition -- Blanchot

Speaking word, where meaning intended to be conveyed is still in an embryonic

state… existence is polarised in a certain direction which cannot be defined by any
natural object. --- Merleau-Ponty (as distinct from spoken-word)
Two main features of sym part 3
T. S. Eliot: objective correlative-- the only way of expressing an emotion in an
artistic form is to find for it an objective correlative; a group of objects, a
succession of events which will constitute a formula for this particular emotion-
with the result that, when the external facts which will give rise to an emotion in
which the senses are involved are present, then the emotion is immediately
evoked. (24)

Symbol is not an expressive sign, but a concrete and dynamic system of signs
activating the intelligence and stimulating one’s sensibility.

Essence of symbol is conceptualisation in its formative state-- the meaning of the

work translated by the artist into a perceptible form before being fully realised --
Bayer
Symbol part 4
Symbol arouses that state of tension and expectation which is one of its
characteristics.

Charm: due to the fact that it is polyvalent; it allows different interpretations, while
everything it contains is left to the imagination of the spectator

who must respond very actively if he wants the work of art to yield up all its secrets
and all its values.
Symbolism through the ages
Sound Symbols - not symbolic sounds. platonic doctrine of ideas in christian thought

primitive cultures- kernel. essence of al medieval: nature is only a symbol of a reality of

incomprehensible phenomena. a superior kind. Church rich in symbols.

magic intervenes where science can do nothing. Human conscience began to free itself from
religious domination. influence of casual
supernatural thinking.

symbol’s action was directed towards formal symbolism degenerated. quest for
phenomenon, never towards man himself. symbols and allegories became futile intellectual
exercise, a superficial fantasy based merely on
analogy
Symbolism through the ages 2
By equating salvation with a rational existence,
Romanticism is man against
protestantism directed men’s minds towards
more terrestrial goals. rationalist conception. world. romantic genius as
Enlightenment.
victor of world.
reason was not able to solve all problems
spiritual and philosophical
or elucidate all mysteries.
awakening using Poetry.
irrational is repressed in subconscious. Poetry,
the most semantic of arts, first to play in a
Poetic mediation of the
compensatory role - 19th century lack of aporia.
harmony between man and the world.
Poetry
the need for a full and complete existence took the form of a metaphysical
revendication.

German Pre-romantics: novalis, jean paul, hoffmann, arnim

English: Blake, coleridge, Shelley, Poe

France → finally with Baudelaire.

New Development
metaphysical aspirations of the romantic poets

successors no longer have anything in common with christian metaphysics

Purpose of symbol changes: not as a transfer of human thoughts from nature to

god, but to concentrate on the poet. German romantics: universe as a visible sign
of the aspirations of human soul.

Union with nature- its enigma and secrets-- compensates the poet for his isolation
in a world deprived of God and Social Harmony.

Frederick Schiller
Frederick Schiller
inanimate world can symbolise human nature in two ways:

1) can represent either feelings or ideas

a) by means of symbols, suggest ideas and make allusions to feelings. the charm of aesthetic
ideas of this kind lies in the fact that when we examine them it is like looking down into a
bottomless abyss
2) Schiller contains in germ the whole symbolist aesthetics (p28)
Doctrine of Universal Resemblance
Poetry of Baudelaire

Desire to rediscover our lost unity with the world

correlation between all psychic and physical phenomena

*Plotinus and ancient esoteric traditions

Baudelaire’s theory of Correspondences

Les Fleurs du Mal

Ten commandments of symbolist poets

Doctrine part 2 page 29
Baudelaire- did not restrict poet to just recording scribe of the resemblances

by: allotting a very exalted place to the creative imagination.

queen of all our faculties

analysis - synthesis - sensibility

imagination taught mankind moral significance of color, outlines, sounds and

scents.

“A kind of evocatory magic containing simultaneously both object and subject, the
world outside the artist and the artist himself”
Rimbaud
rejected formal verse-forms

full magic of poetic form in which the distinction between self and non-self ceased
to exist.

Fichte to Hegel: all dealed with ontological dualism.

Hegel’s famous Dictum: Sein und Denken Subject and object. Self and non self is
assimilated.
Edgar Allen Poe
sonorous and significant structures- provoke metaphysical thrill

attempts to reconcile metaphysics with science-- contrast between irrationality of

visions and narrative technique with extreme rationality of his poetic style

Stephane Mallarme

work of art is a symbol, and language of art a symbolic language-- less

widely accepted, but used to be firmly implanted in men’s minds from time
immemorial

Art began to lose artisanal status. Became a profession.

Art for arts sake
Lose artisanal status

Economic pressures of a bourgeois society

how the independence of the artist and the special nature of a work of art could
bes be protected.

Art for Art’s Sake- circulated periodically during 19th century: “nothing but a protest
against the mission which bourgeois patrons of the arts, whatever their political
beliefs, sought to impose upon the arts; in addition to the defence of bourgeois
morality, the eighteenth century had introduced political and philosophical, and
nineteenth, scientific considerations.” (30)
Imposition upon arts
patrons try to impose on art

Emile Zola

Naturalist movement in literature

aspirations of the scientists

Art for Arts sake only absurd when detached from historical context.

Slogan reappears during second empire (Flaubert, Baudelaire)

Art for arts sake 3
directed at censorship

prosecution in law courts for offending public morality

Symbolists adopted the slogan, together with ideological and artistic heritage of
the romantics, baudelaire, poe

Originally to Scorn the bourgeois Philistines, but now impede the progress of
naturalism.

end of 19th century: REVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT

Empirical discoveries in sciences
transformation of the empirical theories that were preventing rapid progress.

Methodological principles (rather than science in the true sense of the term)

→ empiricism was thought of as a threat to authority of rationalism. gave rise to

wave of irrationalism

art faced with fundamental spiritual problems- all part of crise de conscience.

new values- accepted- will determine future developments - cult of decadence-

unwholesome form of aestheticism- mysticism
forms of decadence and denaturalisation
these symptoms appear when social structures and human relationships are going
through a process of transformation-

and affect the whole field of culture.

Mallarmé: “in a society which lacks stability and unity it is impossible to create an
art which is stable and well-defined.” (31)

this culture creates general intellectual unrest, cause for craving individuality.

consciousness of a rupture-- used to rarely be accompanied by determination for

unity, but happened here in symbolism.
Mallarmé’s aesthetic creed (p32)
Faith in reason and ABSOLUTE knowledge.

Meaning of the world- the IDEA

how can a poet penetrate the heart of this phenomena, if language is tied to
traditions?

he must rid words of the dust with which they have been smothered.

Give darker shade to the clear sound of the word nuit. → nuit doesnt sound dark
enough, so precede and follow it with dark sounding words.
Mallarmé’s theory of Suggestion
Poet cannot arouse idea of pure essence of something that lies dormant within us
either by naming it or by selecting the right word to convey its meaning, then all he
can do is to suggest it.” (32)

evoke in shadowy terms

unnamed object

allusive, never direct words

equivalent of silence

----- this is likened to act of creation.

Gradual development of suggestion
“to name an object is to suppress three quarters of the enjoyment of a poem

enjoyment meant to develop gradually: but to suggest it-

that is the ideal. To make a perfect use of this mystery is the function of the
symbol: to evoke gradually an object and discover in it a state of mind by a
process of decoding.” (32)

1864

A verse, then, must not consist of words, but of intentions; and all words are
unimportant when compared with sensations.
Verse
few syllables, remakes a complete new word--achieves Verbal Isolation

Circumscribing and isolating the pure ‘idea’, communicates mystery.

“It is only in this way that one can be brought ‘face to face with the inexpressible’”

Pure truth, which is beauty.

Poetry of emptiness and silence. Poetry that evokes the apparition of the Idea.
Poet must not try to express in words an idea, but the Idea which itself creates the
Word.

(p 33)
Liberated from subjectivism
Mal avoided lyricism in order to escape from psychologism.

desire to seize the objective IDEA, outside time, dreamed of an extra-temporal

language, rejecting subjective deformations.

Like ancient Greek. Fixed.. despite how one feels.

language was unaffected by human intervention. structure is impervious to

subjective attitudes.

Le Livre- total work of art in which the entire personality of the man found its fullest
expression- he had striven to achieve the auto-objectivisation of the idea: (pg 34)
Unity in Mallarme versus Wagner
Total work of art in Mallarme.
Wagner- same integration
Restore unity of culture in a world deprived of divinities
succeeded only in adding one art to another
by abolishing separation between arts and achieving their
integration in his livre

He knew of wagner’s failure.

cherished hopes of succeeding in bringing a real synthesis

between the arts.

transferring reality from the domain of the senses to that of the

intellect- from fact to definition, from time to eternity, chance to
necessity, substitute this creation of the mind for the image we
perceive through our eyes.
Self and nonself in mallarme
like baudelaire, aim to bridge the gap between self and non self

former immersed themselves in pan-psychism and pantheism

mallarme wished to remain on neutral territory of knowledge

by seeking through his poetry the intentional structures of acts of conscience he

hoped to reveal in the symbolism of his work the meaning of the world, because
basically he believed that nothing happened in the universe that was not
intentional. (p35)
Concept of symbol from medieval ages to now, but thanks to symbolist movement, took shape
to form a whole and...

Work of art identified

with the symbol
Music as good medium for symbolism (pg 36)
Paul Valéry

says symbolism is just desire to borrow from music.

Work as symbol

1886 an important date:

symbolist doctrine established.

1) René Ghil published Traité du verbe with preface by mallarmé

a) inspired by rimbaud, conclusion is: if sound can be translated into color, color can also be
translated into sound, and even into instrumental timbres.
Essence of Work
It is the essence of a work of art, on the highest and immaterial plane, lies
precisely in what is not expressed; it is implicitly contained in its lines, without
colors or words; it has no material substance (38).

Sounds, colors, and words have a miraculously expressive value which has
nothing to do with representation or even with the literal sense of the words

Subjectivity of modern Symbolism, which has replaced the impersonal credo of

medieval symbolism, allows for an evolution towards ‘pure art’ devoid of the
element of representation contained in the subject of the work. Impressionism has
been the first important step in this direction: it rescued art from the strangle-hold
of a sterile naturalism.
Music- on a pedestal
poets and painters want to be like musicians. Symbolists: all elements of the world
inter-connected.
use art as symbol, a mode of expression that
would favor the free interplay of ressemblances, Whatever string one touches in any sphere of
associations, or far-off echos and tensions life it will certainly find an echo in all the other
spheres.
result in ‘open’ form capable of receiving various
meanings without having any definite meaning
in itself.
Revival of esoteric traditions, and not one of
materalistic monism.