Charles Gounod

“ I dread an artist's life for him, knowing, as I do, the many difficulties which beset it. But I will not ever reproach myself, nor let my son reproach me, with having hindered his career, or spoilt his happiness. I want to make quite sure, before all else, that his talent is real and his vocation true. And so I beg you will put him to the severest test. Place everything that is most difficult before him. If he is destined to be a true artist, no trouble will discourage him; he will triumph over it all. ”

“ Have men forgotten that the artisan is but part of the artist, that is, the man—that it is the man who must be touched, enlightened, carried away, nay, transfigured, so that he shall be lost in passionate adoration of that immortal beauty which ensures not momentary success alone, but the never-ending empire of those masterpieces which have been the light and guide of human art from the ancients down through the Renaissance to our own time, and will endure after it, and for ever! ”

“ Naples is like a smile from Greece; the horizon glowing with purple and azure, the blue sky reflected by the sapphire sea, even the ancient name, Parthenope, carry us back to that brilliant civilisation on which nature had bestowed such an exquisite setting. But Venice smiles on the traveller in quite a different way. She is coaxing and she is false, like a feast laid out on the trap-door of a dungeon. This doubtless is why involuntarily I felt more relief than regret when I departed, in spite of the masterpieces of art and the mysterious and magic charm I left behind me. ”

“ But what, again, is all that worth, if it costs us those hours of delicious calm—I had almost said of divine hope—when we await (with a longing less frequently disappointed than some would think) the advent of a real emotion, or of some deeply touching truth?
What is all the glare of outside show beside the inner light, serene and glowing, of the beloved Ideal each artist follows without ever wholly reaching it, but which yet draws us on until we feel it loves us more even than we love it? ”

“ AT ROME AT a juncture like the present, when, under the mask of so-called naturalism in Art, an effort is being made to cast disfavour upon that noble and beneficent institution, the Academy of France in Rome, it appears to me a duty to enter a protest against the destructive tendencies, which, could they aspire to the dignity of being called doctrines, would end in nothing short of the utter obliteration of the Fine Arts, in their highest sense, and which, moreover, have no foundation save in the very emptiest and most frivolous of arguments. ”

“ To bore one's own self. To try every imaginable dodge to get away from oneself! Is there any poverty in all the world so pitiful as this? And what compensation for that which is bestowed on them can be expected from such a class?
There are certain current opinions, the substance of which people seldom trouble themselves to verify, and which form the huge patrimony of the accepted absurdities. One of these is the belief, the self-persuasion, that the sympathy and protection of the social world are indispensable to an artist's success. ”

“ What a sense of spiritual power in the empty space, so significant in its very narrowness, left by the painter between the finger of the Creator and the form of the creature; as though he would bid us mark that the Divine will knows neither distance nor impediment, and that for the Deity desire and accomplishment are but one act.
What beauty in the submissive attitude of the first woman, drawn from Adam's side in his deep slumber, as she stands for the first time before her Creator and Father! ”

“ Is not the balance of happiness and charm on the side of cultivation and abundant growth?
It is not labour that kills. It is sterility. To be fruitful is to be young and full of life.
Yet I would not be thought so crotchety, so surly, such a hater of my kind, as to look on an artist as a sort of solitary. It is undoubtedly true, and I willingly acknowledge it, that modern society, in enlarging its borders, has multiplied the artist's opportunities of sharing in various social phases, and meeting many charming and some very useful people. ”

“ It has been said and frequently repeated, parrot-wise, that Monsieur Ingres was intolerant and exclusive. That is utterly untrue. If he had a way of imposing his opinions, it was because of his intense belief—the surest means of influencing others. I never knew any one with such a power of universal admiration, simply because he knew better than most what to admire, and wherein beauty lay. But he was discreet. He knew full well how prone youthful enthusiasm is to fall down and worship unreasoningly before the personal peculiarities of an artist or composer. ”

“ Rome is the echo of the Scriptural words of the Maker of the human soul to His own handiwork: "I will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably to her." So various is she in herself, and in such deep calm is everything about her lapped, that no conception of her immense ensemble and prodigious wealth of treasures is possible at first. The Past, the Present, and the Future alike crown her the capital not of Italy only, but of the human race in general. ”

“ Happiness no more consists in the absence of suffering than genius implies freedom from all faults.
Men of genius must and do suffer, but they need no pity. They know raptures which are a sealed book to others, and if they have wept for sadness, they have shed tears of ineffable joy as well. That in itself constitutes a heaven that can never be too dearly bought.
Berlioz was one of the greatest emotional influences of my youth. Older than myself by fifteen years, he was a man of four-and-thirty when I, a lad of nineteen, studied composition under Halévy at the Conservatoire. ”

“ You cannot expect thirty-six millions of blind men to do the work of one telescope, or thirty-six millions of sheep that of one shepherd! Was it the world at large that formed Raphael and Michael Angelo, Mozart and Beethoven, Newton and Galileo? The world!—which spends its life making and unmaking its own judgments, in a perpetual alternate condemnation of its own infatuations and prejudices. How can the world judge anything? ”

“ It is this absence of visible effort, of worldly trick, and of conceited affectation which makes the greatest works so unapproachable. The intellect which conceives them, and the raptures they express, are alike indispensable to their production.
But what shall I say of the prodigious, the gigantic talent of Michael Angelo! The amount of genius he heaped up and lavished, both as a painter and a poet, on the walls of this unique building, is beyond anything man can measure. ”

“ But, on the other hand, the public has a distinct right to expect and demand that a play or opera should satisfy those particular instincts the satisfaction and gratification of which it seeks within the playhouse walls. The success of a dramatic work then does not depend solely on the quality of its form and style. Both are no doubt essential—nay, indispensable—to save it from the rapid ravages of Time, whose scythe spares naught that is not essentially true and beautiful. But form and style are not its only, nor even, in a sense, its strongest support. ”

“ Between the masterpieces of Michael Angelo and Palestrina such close analogy of thought, such kinship of expression exist, that one is almost forced to recognise the identity of the talents—I had almost said the virtues—which each master-mind displays. Both have the same simplicity, even humility of manner; the same seeming indifference to effect, the same scorn for methods of seduction. There is nothing artificial or mechanical about them; the Soul, wrapped in ecstatic contemplation of a higher world, describes in humble and submissive language the sublime visions that pass before its eyes. ”

“ In a word, Morality (or the definition of what is good) , Science (or the definition of what is true) , Art (or the definition of what is beautiful) , were all lacking until the advent of Man. And Man, in his quality of high priest of a temple, thenceforward dedicated to Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, was destined to dower and glorify the world by their bestowal.
What, then, is an artist? What is his function with regard to this conception of Nature, and, as I may almost say, this investment of her capital?
Man's sublime function is literally and positively that of a new earthly Creator. ”

“ But even allowing for these ups and downs of popularity, it cannot be said that Art resides in the drama only. There is not the faintest analogy between the violent shock caused by some striking theatrical situation and the calm and noble delight to be derived from an exquisite and perfect work of art. Nobody could think of comparing the feelings produced by a melodrama to the emotion roused by a contemplation of the Frieze of the Parthenon, or the "Dispute du St Sacrement." A whole abyss lies betwixt the domain of mere sensation and that of intellectual feeling. ”

“ Let any one try to realise what can in fairness be expected from the mind of a man incessantly torn hither and thither by evening parties, dinners, perpetual invitations to social gatherings of every sort, a mass of correspondence which leaves him no peace, and the guilty authors of which never dream of saying to themselves, "I am stealing this man's time and thoughts, his very life;" and by all the petty tyrannies, in fine, which go to make up that monster one, called the indiscretion of the public. ”

“ The Uffizi Gallery with its wonderful Tribune (a very shrine of exquisite relics) , the Palazzo Pitti, the Academy, Churches and Convents, all teem with masterpieces. But even here, in lovely Florence, Michael Angelo reigns supreme, from the proud eminence of that wonderful and overwhelmingly impressive Medici Chapel, on which, as on the Vatican at Rome, his genius has stamped its mark—unique, incomparable, overshadowing every other.
Wherever Michael Angelo's hand has been, devoutest attention is instinctively aroused; when the master speaks, all others hold their peace. ”

“ It is the immortalisation of mortal things by a wise process of elimination, not by a blind and servile worship of their defective and perishable qualities. At all costs and against all comers, then, let us preserve our splendid École de Rome, whose archives bear such names as those of David, Ingres, Flandrin, Regnault, Duret, Hérold, Halévy, Berlioz, Bizet—none of which, as far as I am aware, warrant the scornful pity under which some people would fain wither a dynasty already over a century old. ”

“ Ah! if young people only guessed what an education for their intelligence, what mental pabulum for all their future, this sanctuary of the Sistine Chapel holds, they would spend their days in drinking in its lessons. Characters formed in such a noble school of fervour and contemplation will soar far above any self-interest or regard for notoriety.
It was my duty to study opera, as well the sacred music of which the services in the Pontifical Chapel preserved the best traditions. ”

“ The artist who gives himself up too much to social intercourse runs yet another risk, concerning which it may not be amiss to say a word or two.
By dint of living in the buzz of so many varied opinions, and admirations, and criticisms, and infatuations for some one or other of the fashionable art productions of the moment, he gradually comes to lose confidence in himself, in his own artistic nature, in those dictates of his personal feeling which at one time led him onward, and he ends by finding himself in a hopeless maze. ”

“ Literature is not music.... No! in good truth. But it is Art, which is ancient and modern too. Art, universal and eternal. And in Art the artist (not the artisan) must find his food, his health, his power, his very life. After all, what is this so-called naturalism in Art? ”

“ Every one knows that famous saying of his, "Drawing is the honesty of art." He said another thing before me once, which is a perfect volume in itself, "There is no grace where there is no strength." True, indeed! for grace and strength are the two complementary constituents of perfect beauty. Strength saves grace from degenerating into mere wanton charm, while grace purifies strength from all its coarseness and brutality—the perfect harmony of the two thus marking the highest level art can reach, and giving it the stamp of genius. ”

“ Staging, ballet, scenery, dresses, book, fifty things go to make or mar an opera. The public, if its interest is to be kept alive, demands constant "variety." Many works of the very highest merit in some respects, have failed, not in rousing the admiration of true artists, but in winning popular favour, simply through their lack of this "spice," so indispensable to that class of the public which is not content with the simple charm of intellectual beauty.
I do not for a moment desire to claim the benefit of this excuse for my "Sappho." ”

“ Necessarily called into existence, in the first place, by the fostering rays of a personal sentiment, a true work of art must reach its perfect form in the full and impersonal light of reason. Art is concrete and visible reality, glorified by that other abstract and intelligible reality which the artist bears within himself, and which is his ideal; that is to say, the inner revelation, the supreme tribunal, the ever-growing vision of ultimate possibility after which the whole fervour of his being strives. ”

“ Let us have no more flaunting of these equivocal and noisy titles, naturalism, realism, and so forth! Art is Nature, yes, in the first place; but Nature verified and registered, weighed—judged, in a word, before the tribunal of a discernment which analyses, and a reason which rectifies and restores her. Art is a reparation of the failures and forgetfulness of Reality. ”

“ What vivid power clings to those relics of departed splendour, which seem to call aloud to the blue sky, beseeching it to save them from the abyss that slowly but surely sucks them down, and will end some day by engulphing them for ever!
Rome stands for meditation, Venice for intoxication. Rome is the great Latin ancestress whose conquests are destined to give the world one catholic and universal language—a prelude and a means to another Catholicism, deeper and vaster yet. Venice is a true Oriental—Byzantine, not Greek ”