(This essay has been submitted to turnitin.com, do not plagiarize)
Les Chansons de Bilitis: An Investigation of the Erotic as seen in Debussy‟s Setting Text by Pierre Louÿs The word erotic does not rest quietly on the page. It is a word that tempts and eludes us. It hides behind its dictionary definition – „of, devoted to or tending to arouse sexual desire' – which cannot begin to touch the numerous spheres that it encompasses. For this term is heavily laden with ideological baggage. It darts through our minds, drawing out questions; we want details. And always there is a tinge of excitement as we tread into a secret, forbidden land. Eroticism mingles with anticipation and imagination; it dangles possibilities before us. Eroticism's association with sex carries with it Parisian society's ambivalent attitude towards sex at the end of the nineteenth century. Crime and decadence were on the rise and society was perceived to be at an all-time moral low. As more and more people patronized commercial entertainments, fears of degeneracy, laziness, immorality and hedonism began to surface. Many identified the Republic and its advocacy of liberty as the source of the problem: 'To conservative moralists, the Republic was unleashing unprecedented license: divorce, pornography, alcoholism, nudity on stage, egoism, all seen as ever worsening symptoms of sickness and decline.' Together these elements generated a sense of social disorder and panic. It became clear that the cultivation of the family was the only path towards the survival of the nation. Thus women were expected to be wives, and wives were expected to be domestic, sexless and selfless. 'Maternity defined the essence of womanhood' and male sexual fantasies were saved for the brothel. But prostitutes were classic degenerates, even running the risk of becoming lesbians; they therefore represented 'a terrible threat to the sexual order'. Men had an irresistible pull toward prostitutes and subsequent remorse, and the interplay between fear and male desire ordered in a broader way many other aspects of the history of sexuality in the second half of the nineteenth century. (Trezise, 117)
Within Claude Debussy‟s compositions, links to symbolism and eroticism emerge not only from the texts but from the music itself. For example, the symbolists‟ interest in experimentation with the pure sounds of words finds a parallel in Debussy‟s compositional techniques, such as chord streams and the use of non-diatonic scales. Additionally, Debussy‟s music and Pierre Louÿs symbolist poetry convey a sense of uncertainty. Likewise, Debussy‟s music often abandons traditional structure in its form, harmony, timbre, and rhythmic organization, creating a musical style that displays a subtlety corresponding to that of symbolist poetry. The initial step toward understanding Debussy‟s setting of Les Chansons de Bilitis is an investigation of the texts by Pierre Louÿs. A discussion of the history between Debussy and Louÿs and Debussy‟s ability to perfectly merge textual and musical concepts, with specific attention to the mindset and techniques of Louÿs, provides the background for this analysis.
Claude Debussy and Pierre Louÿs became close friends in 1893. Debussy was instantly attracted to Louÿs‟ carefree lifestyle, his worldliness, his financial freedom, and his ability to live as a true artist, answering only to beauty and art. Louÿs had always been as interested in music as Debussy had been in literature, so they had much in common and much to talk about. Louÿs was an avid worshipper of
Wagner whereas Debussy was trying to rebel against Wagner‟s musical influence. This was a bone of contention that they debated endlessly. (Kerbs: 7) Louÿs‟ bohemian spirit and anti-Christianity intrigued Debussy as the two grew closer. Louÿs knew a lot about ancient cultures and enhanced the erotic mysticism of the ancient Greeks when he imparted knowledge to Debussy. Among his many travels throughout Europe and beyond, Louÿs made six trips to northern Africa where he insisted the climate was most conducive to writing, unlike the chilly Parisian winters. It was there in Africa that he found the inspiration for his Greek-themed works. Andre Gide, Louÿs‟ friend and fellow writer, had just returned from a winter trip to Biskra, Algeria and had brought back many tales of his adventures there. In these stores, Louÿs learned of a beautiful young Arab girl names Meryem ben Ali. Meryem‟s culture permitted young girls to prostitute themselves to secure their dowry for marriage. Based on Gide‟s description of Meryem, Louÿs decided to forgo his usual trip to Bayreuth for the Wagnerian Festival and headed instead to Algeria, bearing gifts for Meryem from Gide. Upon arrival in Biskra the third stop on their trip, Louÿs became very ill and had to return to Constantine, their second stop. Meryem came to Constantine the next month and Louÿs became completely infatuated with her. She most likely became the muse for Les Chansons de Bilitis, which were begun in Constantine and completed in Paris. The manuscript holds a dedication to Gide “in memory of Meryem ben Ali.” (Ibid) Louÿs bathed his erotic fantasies in beautiful language and the protective arms of history. Venturing back to the past, especially ancient Greece, became a common artistic trend. Richard Jenkins explains: 'The Greeks … invented nudity' and 'the classical world lends respectability to what is essentially a picture of a pretty girl taking her clothes off', offering 'a way in which a dangerous subject could be broached or forbidden fantasies indulged'. (Jenkins: 241, 256) The hoax behind the publication of the Chansons de Bilitis allowed the reader to revel in the erotic activities of Bilitis without feeling any tinges of moral guilt. This was history, not fiction, and the authenticity of Bilitis made her even more enticing. (Clive: 10-12) Readers and reviewers alike often commented on the erotic character and underlying lesbianism of the work. Nevertheless, after reading Les Chansons de Bilitis, Debussy wrote a letter to Louÿs dated 22 January 1895 in which he noted, “everyone‟s clutching Bilitis,” meaning that the poems were being well received. Debussy, at this time, was involved in the first revisions of his opera, Pelleas et Melisande, noting in that same letter, “Pelleas and Melisande are my only friends at the moment.” It was not until December of 1897 that he had the occasion to look at the poems with a thought to using them musically. M. Floury, the owner ofL’Image, a literary artistic magazine, approached Debussy with an offer to publish a composition. Debussy then turned to Les Chansons de Bilitis and wrote his first work inspired by Louÿs‟ poems. Eroticism in music existed long before Debussy. In fact, there are conventions of eroticism in all art forms – music is no exception. The standard take on the eroticism within what Barthes calls 'the authority of the fundamental code of the West, tonality', (Barthes: 152) plays out as follows: A minor increase of tension is created by the musical movement into dissonance and followed by enjoyable tension relief as the music returns to consonance. Thus the playful mastery of the threat of being overwhelmed by sounds becomes an enjoyable ego activity which contributes to the total enjoyment of the music. Susan McClary has referred to 'the metaphorical simulation of sexual activity' within music, with tonality, 'with its process of instilling expectations and subsequently withholding promised fulfillment until climax' as 'the principal means during the period from 1600 to 1900 for arousing and channeling desire'. (McClary: 12) Wagner is the master manipulator of these erotic codes: Wagner's music relies heavily on the traditional semiotics of desire available in the musical styles he inherited, and listeners understand his music in part because they too have learned the codes (the minor sixths demanding resolution, the agony of the tritone, the expectation
that a dominant-seventh chord will proceed to its tonic, and so on) upon which his metaphors depend. (Ibid: 25) Debussy's eroticism does not often operate according to these codes. In fact, it is the rejection of these codes that enables his own form of eroticism, an eroticism of uncertainty, of ambiguity, of excitement, of freedom. That Debussy thought in these terms is clear. He writes, 'For a long time the continuous use of sixths reminded me of pretentious young ladies sitting in a salon, sulkily doing their tapestry work and envying the scandalous laughter of the naughty ninths.' He criticizes composers who claim 'to encapsulate life in chords of the seventh' and speaks of 'floating' chords, through which one can 'travel where one wishes and leave by any door'. He says, 'There is no theory. You merely have to listen. Pleasure is the law.' 'Beauty has its own laws.' Debussy is concerned not with the conscious withholding of resolution, but with the conscious rejection of the need to resolve at all. Debussy did not abolish the musical language of his time; rather, he separated its elements and recombined them in different ways. (Trezise: 122) A few years after Louÿs's death a vast array of manuscripts was discovered, which revealed real fascination with the written expression of eroticism and an obsession with feminine sexuality, 'autonomous and independent of man'. Louÿs seems to revel in the beauty and power of his women, and this attitude is reinforced by the beauty of his language. These 'secret' works emphasized lesbian scenes and sexual escapades in private boarding schools and convents. Goujon even asserts that 'Louÿs felt a certain pleasure in putting himself in the place of the women, or, more exactly, to assume a role of a woman.' Louÿs described young girls 'for whom sex is second nature, their only thought and occupation, to which they yield themselves with a naturalness so perfect that it strongly eclipses the obsession that adults can have'. In these writings, 'the traditional entities, God or Society, are deliberately replaced by sex, a new divinity, infinitely more tyrannical and cruel than the others, because it breaks all norms and all values, only in order to ordain excess'. (Goujon: xxx-xxxi) Among these manuscripts were the 'Secret Songs of Bilitis', twenty-one more poems with more emphasis on children and lesbianism. In 'Les petits enfants', Bilitis watches the little children play in the river, trying to engage in sexual encounters and frustrated by bodies that are too young. She then enters the water and allows them to use her body for their (and her) pleasure. The many small comments mentioning Bilitis, the published poems and Debussy's settings all take on a new meaning when considered in light of this vast amount of erotic writing. Given the length and the nature of their friendship, it seems completely plausible that this was not a part of himself that Louÿs kept hidden from Debussy. The non-secret poems of Bilitis are arranged in three parts, corresponding to the three phases of her life. She was born in Pamphylia, where she fell in love with a goatherd, Lykas, and had a child, whom she abandoned. This is the section from which the three poems set by Debussy are taken. (Trezise: 129) Each song consists of four prose stanzas, suggesting the probable length of a prose version of a Sapphic or Alcaic stanza – a correspondence which unquestionably aided in winning credence for the hoax. The verse comes to a full stop at the end of each stanza. Beyond this restriction, the poems have a complete freedom, and the infinite changes of rhythm possible in such lyric prose defy analysis. These poems deal with erotic initiation and consecration. And even though Bilitis's first sexual encounter with Lykas occurs against her will, she does not lose her strong sense of self or her overwhelming desire for her lover. Throughout these poems she follows her own erotic inclinations, relating even to nature in a very sensual way. “La Flute de Pan” In “La Flute de Pan”, Bilitis describes her erotic flute lesson with Lykas:
For the day of Hyacinth, he gave me a syrinx made of carefully cut reeds united with white wax that is sweet as honey to my lips. He is teaching me to play, seated on his lap, but I am trembling a little. He plays after me, so softly that I can hardly hear him. We have nothing to say to each other, so near we are, one to the other; but our songs want to answer each other, and taking turns our lips unite over the flute. It
is late. Now comes the song of the green frogs that begins with the night. My mother will never believe that I have stayed so long searching for my lost sash.
The syrinx is an erotically charged instrument, even from its mythological creation: the nymph Syrinx was transformed into reeds to escape the god Pan, who cut the reeds and crafted them into the flute with which he became associated. Thus, through making music he literally has Syrinx on his lips, a connection that helps to establish the sexual tension between Lykas and Bilitis, a tension already present by the physical proximity of her sitting on his lap. As it does for Pan and for Mallarme's faun, the flute serves here "to transform sexual frustration into art" (Wenk: 180). Like Louÿs's poem, Debussy's setting exploits both aspects of the syrinx's meaning, to which the composer was no stranger. The erotic power of the syrinx and its ability to seduce with its floating melody constitutes a dominating theme in the works of Debussy (Trezise: 126). He made musical reference to the syrinx in several other compositions, most notably the Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune. This first Bilitis song begins with an initial seven-note flourish in the piano, evoking the seven tones of the traditional pan flute. This theme recurs both at a central point in the text and at the end, becoming a type of seductive ritornello. Even before the text begins, the presence of the syrinx suggests both an idyllic landscape and, through its association with Pan, a sexually charged atmosphere. The choice of musical material for Debussy's "recreation" of the sound of the syrinx plays a significant role in establishing both a pastoral sense and a more general evocation of antiquity-elements that, while critical to the creation of the narrative of Louÿs's poems as well as to the usual understanding of Debussy's selection, are almost entirely absent from the actual text of "La Flute." Each time the syrinx motive appears, its florid seven-note pattern forms a Lydian scale using the raised fourth scale degree (in this case, E#). The melody of the flute rises and falls back on itself. This harmonic and melodic swirling is beautiful and sensual, the static nature of the music mirroring the emotions of Bilitis. She does not want to leave, but would rather linger in the moment. Even her declamatory vocal line turns back on itself. The use of the Lydian mode is not limited to the initial expression of the syrinx; the E# appears in the repeating cadential patterns, where it functions as the third of a C# Major triad. Lydian is not the only scale suggested, however; the initial descending fifth in the bass suggest the possibility of a G# Dorian harmonic center. This use of these "Greek" modes helps to establish, if not a specifically Greek atmosphere for the piece, then at least a sense of the piece as in some way "ancient." This technique serves to communicate a sense of the temporal (and, to a certain extent, the geographic) setting of the poems, effectively creating a musical allusion to the introductory materials to the poems, found in Louÿs's "biography" of Bilitis. (Gibbons) Susan Youens has spoken of 'the wonderfully Symbolist tension between what is remembered and/or dreamed and the present', and Debussy's music enhances this very idea. Bilitis begins the poem in the past tense: 'he gave me a flute', as if she were recounting the event. The opening bars can thus be interpreted as the melody of Lykas's flute in her mind, as she remembers it. She begins to sing and the same melody repeats under her, as if still playing within her mind. Only through memory can a person be in two different time spheres at once. Bilitis speaks in the present about the past, and the music we hear is the same music she hears – music of the past. She becomes so entangled in this memory that she cannot break from her repetitive melodic pattern, and then everything stops on the phrase 'like honey'. When the music begins again, she sings in the present tense: 'He is teaching me to play.' She has lost all sense of time as she now relives the events leading to the touching of their lips on the very flute she hears. It is memory that has brought her back to the past, and music that makes her past present. Debussy has achieved a musical time warp and revealed the power of memory through music. The presence of the syrinx motive in the postlude, even after the return to real time, serves both as a reminder of the events of the night and as foreshadowing--the sexual tension established by this poem persists, since Bilitis has resisted completely giving in to the seduction of the music. (Youens) “Le Chevelure”
From the first line of "La Chevelure," the next poem in the poetic cycle, Louÿs departs from the lyric form established so carefully in "La Flute." He casts nearly the entire poem as a quotation: Lykas speaks to us through the voice of Bilitis, as she relates a dream he has described to her. The exact nature of this dream is unclear: although in the complete Chansons de Bilitis this poem takes place before the two have had sexual intercourse, the context of the Trois Chansons suggests that Lykas may be remembering a version of past events. Nonetheless, the relationship has advanced by this point, and the two no longer require the syrinx as a sexual mediator; it is replaced by the recurring image of Bilitis's hair.
He said to me, "Last night I dreamt I had your hair around my neck. I had your locks wrapped like a black collar around the nape of my neck and over my chest. "I caressed them and they were mine; and we were bound like this forever, by the same locks, mouth on mouth, like two laurels having only one root. "And little by little, it seemed to me our limbs were so entwined--that I became you or that you entered into me like my dream." When he had finished, he softly laid his hands on my shoulders and looked at me so tenderly that I lowered my eyes, shivering.
Debussy accomplishes this depiction largely through tempo, dynamic, and texture changes. The highly chromatic music focuses on creating a sense of tonal displacement and uncertainty, rather than establishing a goal-directed sense of tonality. The tempo, however, is substantially more goal-directed; marked in the beginning as assez lent, it increases steadily in urgency, moving through stages of moins lent, en augmentant peu a peu, en pressant, and en pressant peu a peu et en augmentant, with only a single brief interruption halting the acceleration that culminates at the fermata in m. 19. This measure likewise marks the high point dynamically; while the majority of the song is piano or pianissimo, mm. 18 and 19 reach fortissimo. In addition, the piano texture changes rather abruptly in m. 18, becoming denser and entering a higher register. The voice behaves in much the same manner, reaching up to a high F#--the highest note of the vocal part. In short, all musical elements build to mm. 18 and 19, which set the text where Lykas recounts his complete union with Bilitis, an obvious allusion to the buildup and release from sexual climax. (Gibbons) The idea of physical union forms the crux of the poem. As their limbs intertwine, Lykas becomes Bilitis, and in a certain sense, through narrating his dream to the listener/reader, Bilitis becomes Lykas as well. This union (physical and poetic) forms the central point in the cycle: the first poem leads up to it, and the third deals with its consequences. "La Chevelure" also functions as a fulcrum between the other two poems in its removal from any sense of landscape--the action could happen anywhere. This feature assumes importance for the poem's intermediate role in the pastoral development of the cycle. Both the first and last songs in the cycle depend heavily on landscape to serve as a symbol of Bilitis's. The lack of a sense of Bilitis's physical environment in "La Chevelure" creates a point of neutrality or transition in the pastoral aspect of the song cycle; it represents neither the idyllic world of "La Flute de Pan" nor the barren landscape we will see in "Le Tombeau des Naiades." The narrative function of "La Chevelure" in the Trois Chansons (as opposed to in the larger cycle) is to demonstrate that the relationship between Lykas and Bilitis has become physically intimate; the loss of that relationship will eventually destroy the pastoral atmosphere and force Bilitis to leave Pamphylia. As we have seen, the text of the poem is somewhat vague on this issue, but the music serves to remind the second-level model listener of this critical element of Louÿs's plot. In order to make the point clear, Debussy's music for "La Chevelure" must essentially narrate the sexual act. (Kerb: 137) Following these two measures, the piano returns to the placid initial figure, the tempo relaxes to premier tempo, plus lent, and the dynamics fall to piano. All three musical features then begin to die away, a process that continues through the end of the piece. Even the inexorable eighth-note pattern of the introduction falters in the last few measures, where rests and fermatas separate individual musical cells. Given an awareness of the overarching poetic narrative, the musical parallels to the physical culmination of Bilitis's and Lykas's relationship in "La Chevelure" are unmistakable. Debussy constructs the song so as to leave little doubt in the listener's mind about the nature of the relationship
between the two characters, even for listeners unfamiliar with Louÿs's poetic cycle. For that matter, if the listener were unaware of the extent of the relationship between the two (if, for example, the listener were to assume that Lykas's dream never came to fruition), and then the depth of melancholy seen in the final song would be disproportionate to the relationship as Debussy frames it. Here the narrative expansion works to a certain extent on both first- and second-level model listeners; the latter are again given music that reflects the elements of the larger plot with which they are familiar, while basic elements of that same plot are, to an extent (and perhaps subconsciously), conveyed to first-level listeners in preparation for the final song of the set. (Ibid: 138-139) “Le Tombeau des Naiades” Like the first song of the cycle, "Le Tombeau des Naiades," relies heavily on landscape imagery. In contrast to the idyllic warm summer evenings presented in "La Flute," however, "Le Tombeau" presents a harsh winter scene:
Along the length of the woods covered with white frost I walked; my hair before my mouth blossomed with tiny icicles and my sandals were heavy from the soiled, compacted snow. He said to me, "What are you searching for?" "I follow the tracks of the satyr. His small cloven steps alternate like gaps in a loosely woven white cloak." He said to me, "The satyrs are dead. "The satyrs and the nymphs also. For thirty years there has not been such a terrible winter. The track you see is that of a goat. But let us rest here, where their tomb is." And with the iron of his hoe, he broke the ice from the spring where once laughed the water-nymphs. He lifted the large frozen pieces, and raising them toward the pale sky, he gazed through them.
Without the need to reestablish the narrative of the complete poetic collection, Debussy writes music that in fact goes beyond the strict confines of Louÿs's poems. The music conveys this sense of searching: Debussy's piano ritornello evokes Bilitis's fragile state of mind, the indeterminate, directionless harmonies and the static repetitions of the cycling ostinato aptly portraying the numb aimlessness of her trek. Rather than filling in the gaps in the plot of the overall narrative, the music of "Le Tombeau des Naiades" explores another important theme of the poem: reflection on the lost past. As the music approaches the place in the text where the male speaker breaks the ice with his hoe, elements of musical settings often associated with the pastoral creep into the texture, emerging prominently after the key change to F# Major at m. 25. The repeated left-hand sixteenth and dottedeighth pattern in this section evokes a pastoral rhythm, particularly when introduced as a completely new rhythmic gesture emerging from the incessant wintry sixteenth notes found up to this point in the music. These pastoral settings effect subtle reflection on Bilitis's idyllic past. Just as the speaker in the text looks through the ice into the past, the music suggests Bilitis's reflections on her lost pastoral youth. Though Louÿs's poem provides no such indication, Debussy's setting allows the listener some idea of what she sees--through the music (and only through the music), we also are allowed to glimpse through the ice. (Gibbons) Similarly, in the final measure of the piece the piano concludes with the same rising sixteenth-note figure heard in the opening of "Le Tombeau des Naiades," but the final iteration occurs in a higher register for the first time, suggesting the register of the "syrinx" motive from "La Flute de Pan" with a similar rising gesture. This final statement of the cycle thus also represents reflection on the beginning of the cycle. In a larger sense both of these subtle musical references to the first song hint at a framing device for the entire narrative: the older Bilitis looking back at the events of her youth, a gesture made more explicit throughout the complete Chansons de Bilitis. (Miller: 26) Regardless of the ways in which the music of "Le Tombeau des Naiades" expands upon the themes of the poem, it is the only one of the Trois Chansons that has no narrative requirement to express cardinal points of the larger cycle. The text of the poem makes the plot perfectly clear. We find therefore a somewhat ironic relationship between the text and the music of the three pieces. In the purely pastoral first poem, although the text dwells lyrically on a single evening, the music is responsible for the creation of a complex narrative spanning dozens of poems in the larger collection, establishing with its setting the framework of the poems and Bilitis's childhood. Similarly, in "La
Chevelure" Debussy uses the music to inform the listener about the nature of the relationship with Lykas. In contrast, "Le Tombeau des Naiades" contains the most textual action of the three, but the music has no responsibility to the narrative other than to describe the cardinal point outlined in the text of the poem. (Ibid: 27-28) Pierre Louÿs elaborates on the life of Bilitis throughout the cycle of poems that bear her name. As Stacy Kay Moore points out, she "is a clearly defined, three-dimensional, almost novel-like character, whose persona develops throughout the collection--she acquires a past, a history that impinges on later poems". Debussy‟s setting fills in the gaps for the listener, either by employing pastoral setting, as in the case of "La Flute de Pan," or in the depiction of important events missing from the selected poems in the case of "La Chevelure." In the Les Chansons de Bilitis, Debussy demonstrates one of many ways that music can contribute to the development and perpetuation of an overarching narrative that exceeds the boundaries of the texts themselves. (Moore: 162) Ultimately, Debussy has not only had a widespread influence over music of the early 1900‟s, but he has also affected the musicians of our own time. Through his writings, composers became more concerned with musical feeling, expanded rhythms, and well-chosen ideas of instrumentation. Along with his friends and fellow artists in literature, Debussy created a style of music that finally combines poetry and music in a way that perfectly compliments both Art forms.
Cititations:
Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text. New York: Hill And Wang, 1978. Clive, H. P.. Pierre Louys: A Biography. Unknown: Oxford University Press, 1978. Gibbons, William. "Debussy as Storyteller: Narrative Expansion in the Trois Chansons De Bilitis." Current Musicology Vol. 85 (2008): 7. Goujon, Jean-Paul, ed. Louÿs, L'œuvre érotique. Paris: Sortilèges, 1994. Jenkins, Richard. Dignity and Decadence: Victorian Art and the Classical Inheritance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. Kerbs, Susan. 2000. Les Chansons de Bilitis: A Discussion of the Original Stage Music and its Resulting Transcriptions. DMA dissertation, Rice University McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Miller, Dawn. 1991. The Intimate Connection Between Music and Poetry in Claude Debussy‟s Compositions Moore, Stacy Kay. 2001. Words Without Songs, and Songs Despite Words: Poetry and Music in the French Melodie. PhD dissertation, Cornell University. Trezise, Simon, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Debussy (Cambridge Companions to Music). New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Wenk, Arthur. Claude Debussy and the Poets. Berkeley: Univ Of California Press, 1976. Youens, Susan. "Music, Verse, and Prose Poetry: Debussy's Trois Chansons de Bilitis." Journal of Musicological Research Vol. 7 (1986): 86.