Maurice Maeterlinck's Pelléas and Mélisande (1892)

[Image source: https://sibeliusone.com/music-for-the-theatre/pelleas-et-melisande/ . Photo: The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland (SLS). It shows a still from the 1905 production of Pelléas och Mélisande at the Swedish Theatre in Helsinki (translation by Bertel Gripenberg with incidental music by Sibelius). Mélisande was played by Gabrielle Tavastjerna and Pelléas by Gunnar Wingård.]

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Scene 3: The vaults of the castle

Scène 3: Les souterrains du château

Enter GOLAUD and PÉLLÉAS.

Entrent GOLAUD et PÉLLÉAS.

GOLAUD.

Take care; this way, this way.—You have never penetrated into these vaults?

 Prenez garde ; par ici, par ici. – Vous n’avez jamais pénétré dans ces souterrains ?

PÉLLÉAS.

Yes; once, of old; but it was long ago….

 Si, une fois, dans le temps ; mais il y a longtemps…

GOLAUD.

They are prodigious great; it is a succession of enormous crypts that end, God knows where. The whole castle is builded on these crypts. Do you smell the deathly odor that reigns here?—That is what I wished to show you. In my opinion, it comes from the little underground lake I am going to have you see. Take care; walk before me, in the light of my lantern. I will warn you when we are there. (They continue to walk in silence.) Hey! hey! Pélléas! stop! stop!— (He seizes him by the arm.) For God's sake!… Do you not see?—One step more, and you had been in the gulf!…

 Ils sont prodigieusement grands; c’est une suite de grottes énormes qui aboutissent, Dieu sait où. Tout le château est bâti sur ces grottes. Sentez-vous l’odeur mortelle qui règne ici ? – C’est ce que je voulais vous faire remarquer. Selon moi, elle provient du petit lac souterrain que je vais vous faire voir. Prenez garde; marchez devant moi, dans la clarté de ma lanterne. Je vous avertirai lorsque nous y serons. (Ils continuent à marcher en silence.) Hé ! Hé ! Pelléas ! arrêtez ! arrêtez ! (Il le saisit par le bras.) Pour Dieu !… Mais ne voyez-vous pas ? – Un pas de plus et vous étiez dans le gouffre !…

PÉLLÉAS

But I did not see it!… The lantern no longer lighted me….

 Mais je n’y voyais pas !… La lanterne ne m’éclairait plus…

GOLAUD.

I made a misstep…. but if I had not held you by the arm…. Well, this is the stagnant water that I spoke of to you…. Do you perceive the smell of death that rises?—Let us go to the end of this overhanging rock, and do you lean over a little. It will strike you in the face.

 J’ai fait un faux pas… mais si je ne vous avais pas retenu le bras… Eh bien, voici l’eau stagnante dont je vous parlais… Sentez-vous l’odeur de mort qui monte ? – Allons jusqu’au bout de ce rocher qui surplombe et penchez-vous un peu. Elle viendra vous frapper au visage.

 

PÉLLÉAS.

I smell it already;… you would say a smell of the tomb.

 Je la sens déjà… On dirait une odeur de tombeau. 

GOLAUD.

Further, further…. It is this that on certain days has poisoned the castle. The King will not believe it comes from here.—The crypt should be walled up in which this standing water is found. It is time, besides, to examine these vaults a little. Have you noticed those lizards on the walls and pillars of the vaults?—There is a labor hidden here you would not suspect; and the whole castle will be swallowed up one of these nights, if it is not looked out for. But what will you have? nobody likes to come down this far…. There are strange lizards in many of the walls…. Oh! here … do you perceive the smell of death that rises?

Plus loin, plus loin… C’est elle qui, certains jours, empoisonne le château. Le roi ne veut pas croire qu’elle vient d’ici. – il faudrait faire murer la grotte où se trouve cette eau morte. Il serait temps d’ailleurs d’examiner ces souterrains. Avez-vous remarqué ces lézardes dans les murs et les piliers de voûtes ? – Il y a ici un travail caché qu’on ne soupçonne pas ; et tout le château s’engloutira une de ces nuits, si l’on n’y prend pas garde. Mais que voulez-vous ? personne n’aime à descendre jusqu’ici… Il y a d’étranges lézardes dans bien des murs… Oh ! voici… sentez-vous l’odeur de mort qui s’élève? 

PÉLLÉAS.

Yes; there is a smell of death rising about us….

Oui, il y a une odeur de mort qui monte autour de nous…

GOLAUD.

Lean over; have no fear…. I will hold you … give me … no, no, not your hand … it might slip … your arm, your arm!… Do you see the gulf? (Moved.)—Pélléas? Pélléas?…

 Penchez-vous ; n’ayez pas peur… Je vous tiendrai… donnez-moi… non, non, pas la main… elle pourrait glisser… le bras, le bras… Voyez-vous le gouffre ? (Troublé.) – Pelléas ? Pelléas ?…

PÉLLÉAS.

Yes; I think I see the bottom of the gulf…. Is it the light that trembles so?… You … (He straightens up, turns, and looks at GOLAUD.)

Oui ; je crois que je vois le fond du gouffre… Est-ce la lumière qui tremble ainsi?… Vous… (Il se redresse, se retourne et regarde GOLAUD.)

GOLAUD (with a trembling voice).

Yes; it is the lantern…. See, I shook it to lighten the walls….

(d’une voix tremblante).  Oui ; c’est la lanterne… Voyez, je l’agitais pour éclairer les parois…

PÉLLÉAS.

I stifle here;… let us go out….

 J’étouffe ici… sortons…

GOLAUD.

Yes; let us go out….

Oui, sortons...

                                                      [Exeunt in silence.    [Ils sortent en silence.

 

(Act III Scene 3 of Maurice Maeterlinck's Pélléas et Mélisande (1892). English translation by Richard Hovey.

Being more familiar with even older plays than Pelléas and Mélisande I couldn't help being reminded of the scene in Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling where Deflores takes Alonzo for a backstage tour of the "full strength" of the castle in Alicante. 

Unlike Alonzo, Pelléas gets out alive. Late the previous night Golaud had run across his half-brother messing around with Golaud's young wife Mélisande (III.2). He's thoroughly disturbed, but he isn't sure. 

During the visit to the vaults Golaud tries to behave as the protective elder brother who talks seriously about serious things, with an underlying message to Pelléas about the need to grow up -- which means, taking care ("si l’on n’y prend pas garde") --, but his own feelings aren't entirely in control, and he twice feints at causing a fatal accident. Maybe he's trying out what it would be like to kill Pelléas. When Pelléas seems about to confront the signs of Golaud's inner disturbance (with the single word "Vous.."), Golaud goes into retreat, and allows Pelléas to lead them out of the vaults. 

The half-brothers are doubles to some extent, their actions often shadowing each other. Golaud says (in his letter) that he loves Pelléas "more than a brother". (And he asks Pelléas to place the light to signal his welcome; thus unwittingly preventing his brother from leaving the castle; at least in Arkël's view.) Perhaps Golaud especially wants to show off his new wife to Pelléas.

It's Pelléas who keeps saying "Prenez garde" in the ring scene, and it's he who offers to hold Mélisande's hand when she leans over, he who acts as guide to the underworld in the grotto scene. When Golaud drags Mélisande around by the hair, we remember Pelléas playfully tying her hair to the willow. 

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In the dream-like world of the play, characters can merge. So can times; what is happening has already happened, what is going to happen is already happening now. So can places, for instance the play's two springs and this stagnant lake and the two lakes in the grotto. Over-definite interpretations are sure to fall short. But in the notes that follow I'll probably make some over-definite interpretations of my own.

Act I Scene 1: opening the castle gate. The servants.

At the castle gate, which for a wonder is actually opened. It signals something new: the start of a story, the arrival of a new and unexpected character (Mélisande). The maidservants (cf. V.1) recognize her as one of their own, simply because she's a stranger to the castle's ruling family.

Act I Scene 2: Golaud finds Mélisande in a forest.

Golaud is an unfulfilled hunter, prominent actor or non-actor in the sad fossilised world of this castle family: activity without change.

Mélisande's past. It basically mirrors her future relationship with Golaud; someone makes her into a princess, she is hurt, she escapes. That's her story. Golaud, appointing himself her rescuer, risks simply repeating the hurt. 

Act I Scene 3. Arkël, Genevieve, Pelléas. Golaud's letter, announcing his marriage.

Arkël is nearly blind. He is wise so doesn't learn: he uses his feeble remaining authority to stop Pelléas leaving. Families cling.

Genevieve is the mother of Golaud and Pelléas, the daughter of Arkël, and the wife of Pelléas' father who is supposedly on his deathbed somewhere in the castle. Despite all these connections Genevieve plays a very minor role in the action, disappearing after the next scene (except for offstage glimpses of her with Mélisande (III.4) and her husband (IV.1)).

Act I Scene 4. Looking at the sea; Pelléas and Mélisande beginning to converse.

Genevieve treats Mélisande as a mirror of herself, forty years on. --  But Golaud, making his second marriage (which he realizes may be called folly), does not seem to want just another steadfast castle wife. He gets his wish. 

The ship that they see leaving (perhaps to be wrecked) is the ship that Golaud and Mélisande arrived on. Mélisande's anxiety registers her sense of being irrevocably here in the castle, now and forever. 

Act II Scene 1. Pelléas and Mélisande at the spring: dropping the ring.

It would be over-literalistic to say that Mélisande lies to Pelléas when she says that Golaud "voulait m’embrasser…"; it's true that the text of  I.2 doesn't suggest that he tried to kiss her, but she might well understand that he wanted to. 

The spring water is deep. We are in a life where we cannot see to the bottom of things. 

Act II Scene 2. Golaud injured; Mélisande's unhappiness. Golaud's agitation over the loss of the ring.

One finds blood in Golaud's vicinity, often his own (as here). 

Mélisande makes her own vain request to leave the castle. 

Act II Scene 3: Pelléas and Mélisande at the grotto at night.

We will find out later (IV.2) that Mélisande revisits the grotto in the day. 

There is a famine in the land (but not the ruling family). It is acknowledged but there's an assumption that nothing can be done. Like the bottomless waters or the insufficient light, it images the conditions of everyone's life. 

Act II Scene 4. Pelléas reiterates his plea to leave.

Pelléas has once more asked Arkël if he can leave the castle. The difference (compared to I.3) is that he has now met Mélisande. His request now (like Mélisande's in II.2) is about fleeing temptation; something that neither of them can say. 

Arkël continues to argue against it. He says that meaningful activity consists not in undertaking "useless" journeys but in seizing opportunities here on one's own threshold. It seems to be just a debating point as none of the castle residents seem to seize such opportunities. (This, by the way, is the same Arkël who said that "there are perhaps no useless events"... (I.3)). 

Act III Scene 1. Mélisande spinning, Pelléas,  then Yniold, then Golaud. 

Mélisande "file sa quenouille", that is, plies her distaff. Productions infer the presence of a spinning-wheel. The visual image suggests her domestic future, and also the threads of destiny. 

The scene is outwardly peaceful, but both Pelléas and Mélisande are agitated: sexual tension, thinking that Golaud won't return tonight? 

Pelléas's agitation comes out in his jumpy response to Yniold knocking at the door. Mélisande's agitation comes out in her less than honest denial when Yniold says she's going away. Yniold evidently caught some of her earlier conversation with Golaud (II.2). 

Yniold seems to intuit that the pair are already lovers. (i.e when he doesn't want to go to bed before Pelléas does.)

Pelléas and Mélisande weeping: frustration, when Golaud unexpectedly returns? 

Act III Scene 2. Mélisande brushing her hair at the tower window: Pelléas,  then Golaud.

For her song, see note on versions below. You could suppose that it's late on the same evening as the previous scene, since Mélisande is singing the same song (in the original text). 

Pelléas, playing with her hair, entangling her. This evening both are courting an accident, like the earlier loss of the ring.

Alleging that her hair is more affectionate than Mélisande herself; maybe he refers to her refusal to give him her hand if he is going away. In the folded time of the play Pelléas is always going away, but never does. 

Is the rose in the shadows that Mélisande sees actually the approach of Golaud, the man of blood? 

Act III Scene 3 (text above). Golaud and Pelléas. 

The castle vaults. Is the castle really diseased, tainted, accursed, as scenes like this one suggest? Yes, but not especially. As "Allemonde" the castle represents the life we all experience, with its questionable and unplumbable foundations, its absence of illumination, etc.

There are two opposed interpretations that depend on seeing Mélisande as coming from outside the castle; is she an innocent victim who is overcome by an accursed place, or is she a femme fatale who brings destruction to a tranquil family? Both interpretations are far too simplistic; neither can be entirely dismissed. But also, Mélisande represents the fairytale insight that we all feel like strangers to the wildernesses and dungeons of our own lives. 

Act III Scene 4: Outside the vaults. Golaud and Pelléas. 

 A briefly mundane conversation, as if Pelléas is trying to bury the tainted vaults in oblivion and to recover a belief in safe normality. 

Golaud gives his warning to Pelléas. Mélisande, Golaud says, is delicate, possibly pregnant. Golaud does not expect a response from Pelléas: his authority is enough. And if not... the threat is palpable. 

Golaud characteristically notes the herds going to slaughter. Compare the sheep in IV.3. 

Act III Scene 5. Golaud and Yniold. 

Golaud is active now. First the diktat of authority, but also information gathering; he is insecure. 

As in the vaults scene, he uses the excuse of stumbling  this time when he hurts Yniold.

Yniold was already upset (III.1). Sensing Golaud's emotions, he doesn't want to say all that he fears himself. Even so, his answers wouldn't calm a jealous person. Pelléas and Mélisande quarrelling could be interpreted as Yniold overhearing impassioned conversation or even sexual ecstasy. When do they quarrel? When the door is closed (he says they quarrel about the door that won't stay open), when it's dark (he says they quarrel about the light), when Yniold is absent (he says they are afraid when he isn't there).... 

In the last part of the scene Yniold says that Pelléas and Mélisande are standing apart looking at the light and waiting. Whatever this means, and whether or not Yniold is reporting truly, Pelléas is not following Golaud's instruction to avoid Mélisande (III.4). 

Act IV Scene 1. Pelléas asks to meet Mélisande "tonight". 

He reports his father's recovery and the advice to travel; he is leaving. Pelléas appears thrilled. Mélisande remarks "I no longer understand what you say" and she isn't the only one. 

Pelléas mentions that there are now strangers in the castle. Their function is baffling, but it adds to a general sense of alienation: that the time of  Pelléas and Mélisande being mournfully together is now over. And because it's over, it can and must become something else. 

Act IV Scene 2. Arkël and Mélisande, then Golaud.

Arkël quite astray, and feebly replicating his grandsons' possessive attraction to beauty.

Golaud's violent abuse of Mélisande. 

Golaud says he is not a spy (untruly), but his comment about "it is the custom" shows that he has an Othello-like honour killing in mind.

Mélisande begins the scene by saying she has not been unhappy, and ends it by saying she is not happy. 

Act IV Scene 3. Yniold.

Yniold and the boulder, and the flock of sheep. The latter presumably going to slaughter (compare III.4). 

Act IV Scene 4. A spring in the park: the same setting as II.1. Pelléas,  then Mélisande, then Golaud. 

Pelléas continues to show intermittent signs of joy: his jarring laughter. But the lovers' declarations, their passionate embraces, are hedged around with sadness, weeping and the imminence of death. They accept everything. 

Act V Scene 1. The servants talk, and assemble for Mélisande's death.

The fifth servant's wise comment: "You would think they had all done it together". Golaud has tried to kill himself, unsuccessfully. Mélisande has been slightly wounded and three days ago gave premature birth to a tiny daughter. The servants understand that Mélisande will die. 

Act V Scene 2. Mélisande's deathbed. Arkël, Golaud, the Physician, Mélisande, the servants.

Golaud's guilt. Golaud wants a certainty that Mélisande can't give him. He wants to know whether or not he was justified, but who can ever tell you that? 

Mélisande is far away, halfway to another world. She appears not to know that Pelléas is dead.

Arkël says that it isn't Golaud's fault. By any usual assessment it surely is his fault. I can't help thinking that Arkël is mainly concerned with damage limitation. If preserving appearances means the family colluding in a lie, so be it. Make his one remaining grandson an outcast or a suicide, and then they really have nothing left. 

(Golaud tells Mélisande that he's dying, but my impression -- like the Old Servant's in V.1 -- is that he's not in serious danger. Compare II.2: "I am made of iron and blood... These are not the little bones of a child...".)

Mélisande, 1895-98 painting by Marianne Stokes.

[Image source: Wikipedia . The painting is in the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki. Marianne Stokes (1855 - 1927) was an Austrian by birth, married to fellow artist Adrian Scott Stokes. ]

The names are broadly medieval and suggestive of a Franco-German sphere (e.g. Allemonde, the kingdom, which also suggests "the whole world"). When the play was premiered in 1893, Maeterlinck asked for the costumes to be in the style of Memling (German-Flemish painter, c. 1430 - 1494).

Pelléas or Pellès was one of the names of the fisher king (Amfortas in Wagner's Parsival). Another Pellias was a knight of the round table in the post-Vulgate cycle and in Malory. 

Mélisande was an Old French name with Germanic roots (it became Millicent in English). E.g. Melisende the Queen of Jerusalem from 1131 to 1143. In Maeterlinck's 1899 play Ariane and Bluebeard (turned into an opera by Paul Dukas), the names of Bluebeard's other wives are taken from earlier Maeterlinck plays, and they include Mélisande: at the end of the play these wives (unlike Ariane) choose to remain with Bluebeard. (You would have to be extremely literal-minded to describe Ariane and Bluebeard as a "prequel" or to infer that at the start of Pelléas and Mélisande she has just escaped from Bluebeard -- who certainly didn't give his wives crowns to wear!)

Golaud is Golo in German. Golo was also the name of the villainous majordomo in the legend of Genevieve of Brabant (modern readers will most likely have encountered it via the opening pages of Proust). The (ultimately medieval) legend was apparently a popular subject for performance by puppet companies in the 18th century, which might be relevant to Maeterlink wanting his plays to be performed by marionettes.

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Links to online texts (I can't vouch for their accuracy, but they'll give you an idea) and a simplified account of their relationship. 

Pélléas et Mélisande (1892)

First published edition (1892). 

Mélisande's song at the start of Act III Sc 2  is "Mes longs cheveux". 

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1527481x/f15.item

(Easier to view with a laptop!)

English translation of this version, by Richard Hovey (1896):

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13329/pg13329-images.html

(There had also been an 1894 translation, by Erving Winslow. Laurence Alma-Tadema published a translation in 1914.)

German translation of this version, by George Stockhausen (1897):

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b393111&seq=9

Pelléas et Mélisande (1902)

This was Maeterlinck's second revision since the original 1892 text. 

Most significantly, Mélisande's song at the start of Act III Sc 2  is now "Les trois sœurs aveugles" (as it had been ever since the 1893 stage premier). (This song formed part of the play's English, German, Swedish and Finnish acting texts; hence Fauré's incidental music for an English production in 1898 -- translation by J.W. Mackail --, and Sibelius' incidental music for a Swedish-language production in 1905. -- translation by Bertel Gripenberg.)

Note that the first "e" in "Pelléas" no longer has an accent.

https://libretheatre.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/pelleasetmelisande_Maeterlinck_LT.pdf  [PDF]

Pelléas et Mélisande (1907)

The French text as used in Debussy's opera, drafted in 1893-1895, with full orchestral score in 1898 and first performance on 30 April 1902. 

He basically composed direct from Maeterlinck's 1892 text (no librettist), but he omitted four scenes entirely: As originally numbered, they were Act I Sc 1 (at the castle gate), Act II Sc 4 (Pelléas once more conceding to Arkël's wish for him to stay), Act III Sc 1 (Mélisande spins from her distaff; Pelléas, Yniold, Golaud), and Act V Sc 1 (The servants).  There are also cuts from the other scenes, e.g. from Golaud's letter, Arkël's subsequent dialogue with Pelléas, the brothers' visit to the castle vaults and their emergence, Golaud's scene with his son, Yniold's scene at the rock... 

Mélisande's song is "Mes longs cheveux". (As in the original 1892 edition, but not in any stage performances.) Maeterlinck complained bitterly, though rather unreasonably, about Debussy's failure to incorporate his later revisions. 

The omission of V.1 means that the audience doesn't know about Golaud wounding himself, which must make his subsequent claim to be dying rather mysterious. 

https://fr.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Pell%C3%A9as_et_M%C3%A9lisande

(For more detail on Debussy's libretto see David Grayson's talk: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/debussy-text-ideas-reflections-on-new-edition-pellas .)

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[Image source: https://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/01/31_morelockb_pelleas-melisande/ . From a 1904 French production. Mélisande was played by Mrs Patrick Campbell and Pelléas by Sarah Bernhardt. This is Act III Scene 1, but there's nothing in Maeterlinck's text about Pelléas reading anything.]

Other material I came across:

Maeterlinck's play was very successfully produced by Max Reinhardt in Berlin in 1903-04 (there were 57 performances). The incidental music was by Friedrich Bermann; apparently it does not survive. I can't find out anything about Friedrich Bermann, except that he wrote music for several of Reinhardt's productions. 

Eija Kurki's very informative article on Sibelius's incidental music and on Scandinavian performances of Maeterlinck's play: 

https://sibeliusone.com/music-for-the-theatre/pelleas-et-melisande/

Sibelius' well-known suite contains a few differences from the original music, as well as changing the sequence. 

There is a fine performance of the original version of Sibelius' incidental music by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vänskä:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxzMOaadUrk&t=0s

 "De trenne blinda systrar" (The Three Blind Sisters) was originally a song, sung here by Anna-Lisa Jakobsson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxzMOaadUrk&t=805s

There was also a prelude to Act IV scene 2 (The scene that begins with Arkël sympathising with Mélisande, and ends with Golaud dragging her around by her hair.):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxzMOaadUrk&t=1235s

Maeterlinck's play also made it to Russia, in a translation by Valery Bryusov (1873 - 1924). However the 1907 production in St Petersburg, directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold with Vera Komissarzhevskaya as Mélisande, was considered a disaster.

An excellent production by Benjamin Lazar of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (1902). Malmö Opera Choir and Orchestra, conducted by Maxime Pascal. English subtitles. (Pelléas: Marc Mauillon. Mélisande: Jenny Daviet. Golaud: Laurent Alvaro. 

Arnold Schönberg's symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande (1903), in a thrilling performance by the hr-Sinfonieorchester, conductor David Afkham:

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Golaud and Mélisande

[Image source: https://www.theatre-odeon.eu/en/pelleas-et-melisandre . From a 2020 production of Maeterlink's play by Julie Duclos for the Odéon Théâtre de l'Europe. Golaud was played by Vincent Dissez and Mélisande by Alix Riemer. Photo by Simon Gosselin.]

Fridolin's folly

In 1917 the unsettled state of Finland led to food shortages. In that part of the world, famine was still a living memory. The architect Torkel Nordman of Björneborg (Pori) sent his friend Jean Sibelius, living in Ainola, a present of a shoulder of smoked mutton. To avoid exposing hungry postal workers to temptation, Nordman sent it in an empty violin case.

In response Sibelius composed the song "Fridolins dårskap" (Fridolin's folly) for male voice choir; Nordman was a keen member of the Björneborg choir. Erik Axel Karlfeldt's poem of 1901 was doubly appropriate. It refers to a leg of mutton, evidently meaning a violin!

(Information from Maria Nylund's article.)

This is my free translation:

Fridolin's folly

Only just roach time, salmon jumping,
winter's hardly blown out,
but you're as red as in olden days
eyes gleaming as you look about.
Your ideals are broken crockery,
your feelings the stalest wine,
so what's with your soul's intoxication,
ancient Fridolin?

What's it to you the primrose smiles,
the cranesbill's pink as the dawn?
Have you still got some garland to give,
you all the women scorn?
You who would blend the sighs of your breast
with the rustle of woodlands green,
is there any human voice that replies,
sighing back "Fridolin"?

You stroll in frock-coat to your knees,
with high and gleaming hat,
the scent of balsam in your hair,
and sporting a wild cravat.
To think that on the fragrant paths
of swaggering nineteen
I still should meet you coming along,
oh ancient Fridolin!

Go home, and scrape the leg of mutton
hanging on your wall,
and sing about our empty years,
the dregs of past recall.
Lay strong beer on the splinters
of the mangled violin,
and play the evening songs about
your sadness, Fridolin!



Fridolins dårskap

Knappt leker mört, knappt hoppar lax,
knappt blåses vintern ut,
då står du röd som fordomdags
och glimögd vid din knut.
Vid idealens spruckenhet
och känslans skämda vin,
hvar får din själ dess druckenhet,
du gamle Fridolin?

Hvad bryr det dig att vivor le,
att nävans kind är täck?
Har du ännu en krans att ge,
du många kvinnors gäck?
Hvad suckan blandas av ditt bröst
med djupa skogars hvin?
Finnes än, till svar, en mänsklig röst,
som suckar: Fridolin?

Du går med knäsid gångjärnsrock
och hög och fejad hatt,
du dragen balsam i din lock
och bär en skön kravatt.
Ack, på de unga narrars stig,
där vällukt svävar fin,
att jag ännu skall möta dig,
du gamle Fridolin!

Gå hem och gnid det fåralår,
som hänger på din vägg,
och sjung om våra tomma år
och sälla dryckers drägg.
Gjut dubbelt öl på flisorna
av sargad violin,
och gjut o aftonvisorna
ditt svårmod, Fridolin!


Fridolins dårskap (Sibelius), sung by the Gothenburg Academic Choir:



Erik Axel Karlfeldt refused the Nobel Prize for Literature during his lifetime (he headed the committee), but was awarded it posthumously.

He was the son of a farmer in Dalarna. He changed his name from Eriksson to Karlfeldt when his father, who had got into financial difficulties, was convicted of forging the signatures of relatives and was jailed for two years. (The young Beethoven had a similar experience; so did Elvis Presley.)

Fridolin, as you may have guessed, is an alter ego of the poet himself. Two of his collections were titled Fridolin's Songs (Fridolins visor, 1898) and Fridolin's Pleasure Garden (Fridolins lustgård, 1901).

I didn't have time to learn Sibelius' melody, so I made up my own...

charity-shop chuckouts

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, later HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother

[Image source:  Daily Express]










I'm still waiting for the new smartphone to arrive. As a stopgap post, here's another particularly miscellaneous scrap of brief history that I wrote in 2005.

 

I’m clearing out, the way you want to sometimes, things that can go to Barnardos. Books, tapes and bric-a-brac.

 

Let’s start with the books. The first one is a Ladybird book with a smiling old lady on the front-cover. The lady is wearing a triple rope of pearls and she has pearl ear-rings to match; a floral dress. The eyes are kind, the smile perky, posed, and with a touch of authority, as if the photographer ought to feel lucky to get it. It is H M Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and the author is Ian A Morrison MA Ph D. In sepia at the age of seven, looking out winsomely from a cosy wrap, she was Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. Robert the Bruce and Owen Glendwr were ancestors, the family had owned Glamis Castle since the 14th Century. They also owned coal-mines in the North-East of England, but that’s not in the book.** The book was published in 1982, so it precedes the marital troubles of the Windsors. Her daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret

 

were eleven and six years old before their father and mother were unexpectedly made King and Queen. Instead of taking Court life as their model, their parents looked on family life as a sanctuary in which people could develop despite the pressures on them in the outside world. The happiness of her own early days seems to have guided the way she and her husband decided to bring up their own family. This is important, because the pattern of family life that she set with Albert then... has been continued through to her grandchildren’s generation. Many people feel that this feeling of the Royal Family being a real family has contributed a lot their continuing popularity in the last part of the 20th century.

 

As more recent commentators have pointed out, this investment in the idea of a nuclear family has in the end risen up to bite her successors. If you want to maintain that vision it’s best to lose your husband early and become famous for your madeira at Clarence House.


** Like the Rees-Moggs, who were mineowners in Somerset.

 

Next book: Beer and Skittles by Richard Boston (1976). This is a document in the early days of campaigns for “real” beer. I suppose it was bound to start with alcohol; subsequently the same powerful feelings, of nostalgia for what has been lost and suspicion of profiteering technology that seems outside our control, has extended to food. Draught beer was rescued for CAMRA, the nurturers of heritage, and all the other complainers, mostly old or educated; while the youthful mass were easily diverted into valuing lagers and other well-advertised concoctions. The same pattern seems likely to keep organic food afloat as a minority option, harmlessly absorbing the shock of dissent, though in the latter case it is about much more than “the spreading curse of blandness”.   

 

Famous Reporter 24 (December 2001) – an Australian “literary biannual”. I’m in this one. The editor, Ralph Wessman, used to trawl the emails of the BritPo forum looking for likely candidates. But the best outcome of that sensible approach is the presence of Geraldine Monk’s defence of the author as individual, which I’ve read many times. “Once you do commit yourself to the public arena (small as it may be in our case) then you cannot seriously be striving for anonymity or an ego-less state.... Seems to me that the ultimate ego-less state is death which probably lasts a long time (hopefully) so why on earth anyone on earth should want to achieve it while on earth has always puzzled me – it seems a bit anti-life and definitely against the individual.” Go Geraldine!

 

The History Man (1975) and To the Hermitage (2000) by Malcolm Bradbury. Summary of the The History Man could easily make it seem a straightforward conservative satire; summary of To the Hermitage could easily make it seem a nostalgic adieu to the life of academic talk. Both conceptions do less than justice to an author whose comic vim insinuates a broad and complex vision, almost effortlessly making us feel that we haven’t done any thinking while we read. In fact, I admit it, I meant to write properly about these books but I’ve given up – it would just take too much thinking. Bradbury’s garrulous society is something I don’t feel up to adding to. Many others have read these books, and everyone seems to think well of them. The health goes deeper than being healthy diversions.

 

Discover Britain, the illustrated walking and exploring guide (AA, 2001). Something paradoxical in a motorist’s “walking” guide? – Well, you drive somewhere, then you have a walk. The walks in fact seem rather random, avoiding the obvious. This is a heritage coffee-table thing, surely too bulky for practical use. The titles of the walks are what chiefly take the attention: “Dorset Heaths of Thomas Hardy”, “Castles and Mansions in Peaceful Seclusion”, “The Heart of the Capital”, “Constable’s Suffolk Landscapes”, “Land of Legend, Lair of Outlaws”, “A Fairy Lake and the Black Mountain”, “On Elgar’s Malverns”, etc. This monument depends on a heady assemblage of tributes, e.g.  of Gordale Scar, “Wordsworth’s friend, the artist George Beaumont, rightly described it as ‘beyond the range of art’.”

 

Haynes Manual – Citroën 2CV, Ami & Dyane. I owned two 2CVs, and I did read about how to reverse the windscreen-wipers which are set up for left-hand drive, but I never got round to it, an expression which I am discovering could be the motto for most of the cultural residue that passes through households like this. The text is beguiling if you don’t understand it: “Lubricate the shaft splines.... Chock the axle arm to support it and drive the hub from the pivot to separate. Use a wooden block or soft drift.” Depressing, too. I want to “live” but do the same as yesterday – the less I accept it, the bigger the barriers seem.

 

Now for the cassette tapes. After selling the last 2CV I finally had a car whose engine was quiet enough for it to be worth putting in a music system, and I chose a tape player, which turned out be naive because I had not realized that tapes had just been phased out and you couldn’t buy any new ones. This was about three years ago. My only source of tapes was charity shops, and tapes have proved even less resilient than vinyl or CDs to the passing of time; most of the ones that still circulate and re-circulate were budget productions and don’t really work properly.

 

Beethoven, Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125 (LSO, Wyn Morris) is a case in point. Besides, the flying-saucer theme in the first movement is inaudible over a car-engine, which spoils the drama. It was composed 1822-23, a fair while after the other eight. I’ve long wished to say that I don’t rate it compared to those other symphonies, but this isn’t true. I even like the choral finale (which I wished to say was just not symphonic). It’s an enormously brilliant work; every time new vistas open. The first movement, for example, passes way beyond the cavernous ice and hammer-blows with which it begins; much of it is, if not exactly friendly, certainly full and chequered like a river teeming with fish. All Beethoven’s scherzi are terrific, but the second movement here is like a gigantic, burly sort of gift, bearing its sumptuous trio with soft hands. And then there’s the slow, slow movement, the Beethoven we all like best. To finish, we begin as it were all over again, with a vast celebration.     

 

Liszt, Symphonic Poems. I have plenty of cheap taste when I want it, and I think these are great, but the recording level is desperately low. Les Preludes is possibly the best of them. Tasso is like a Scott romance in music, but better, and I know every note of it by heart. This poem is subtitled Lamento e Trionfo which is rather misleading. It begins with a fight, and then with an uneasy, melancholy series of scenes around the castle, including a nocturnal passage where a young girl is alone with her thoughts in a high turret. This music is briefly interrupted by some sort of royal fanfare, then there is a morning busyness including the preparations of musicians for a dance. These preparations gather momentum but suddenly fighting breaks out again. It’s good fighting, but much less cruel and bloody than the gladiators in Respighi’s Feste Romane. Up to this point the drama is entirely gripping and convincing, but now there’s a slightly awkward, too-sudden transition to the triumphant celebrations and triumphant blaze of brass at the end; Liszt gets the pacing wrong. It sounds as if the complexities of the earlier narrative have been merely cancelled. The whole piece is built with surprising consistency around Liszt’s method of “theme transformation”. In this case even a non-musician can hear that the motif of an ornamentally descending grace-note.      

 

Saint-Saëns, Piano Concertos 1-3 (Ciccolini). This, on the other hand, has never done it for me: garish, tasteless and supremely lacking in melodic invention. That ought to be a recipe for interest, and I’ve sometimes thought I found it by focussing on the dynamics, but I felt from the effort I was just working this up artificially. Probably this is a case where having the concertos one after another (inevitably playing the whole tape through) does a disservice to the music. I would feel quite excited about hearing one of them at a concert.

 
[Image source: https://www.ebay.com/itm/JONI-MITCHELL-FOR-THE-ROSES-CASSETTE-TAPE-ASYLUM-/221940846540]

Joni Mitchell, For the Roses (1972) and The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975). And I’d have chucked Court and Spark, too, if I could have found it. But I’m keeping the earlier albums, Clouds and Blue. In those earlier records you can hear what I really care for, her voice and her expression of a generation’s feelings. These later albums strive to be brilliant, detached and critical, and I don’t think even she with all her talent can do any of that within the parameters of rock. You end up admiring her desire to make an adult music, at the same time that you feel her incapacity to realize the issues at a musical level.

 

Mahler, Symphony No. 1 in D. I do like this, principally the first and last movements, but I’m a mere visitor to Mahler’s oeuvre and his preoccupations; and since I’m 46 already, I perhaps always will be. It’s time to put it aside and wait for another space; if there is one, so much the better, but I hardly expect it.

 

Brahms, Sonatas for Cello and Piano. These are not Brahms’ most persuasive works, especially the first of them; its first movement has too much of the same expansive melody. It seems to think it’s very fine. The second is better, the first movement heroic and the finale one of those Brahmsian constructions that is faceted; it seems too short and you never want it to end. But here Brahms seems to have solved his problem of balance rather drastically, by reducing the cello-part to a source of bold pizzicati and zooshing sound-effects; he seems to have written it right through on the piano and doesn’t want to leave any space. I’ve heard these sonatas a hundred times, always one after another in this murky, greyish recording.

 

Sibelius, Symphony No 2 in D. My least favourite Sibelius symphony, though I have come to admire that gigantic second movement more with the passing of time. The finale is admittedly his worst, the kitchen-sink failing to disguise the lack of crucial ideas.   

 

Lawrence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey – abridgment read by Donald Sinden. This was mildly entertaining, once, and less so, twice. I haven’t read the book, but it seems to be the same joke over and over. Very disappointing, remembering the vast wonderments of Tristram Shandy.

 

The bric-a-brac: a two-level lunch box that splits apart when you don’t want it to, with the Chino-English motto, “food is suel of human body”. A vase for a single stem (this should be called a solitaire) that could conceivably be just the thing, but somehow never is. A shower-radio, still in its packaging because I’ve already got one. I must admit that it’s become an indispensable part of the routine of waking up. In this fragile part of the day I am briefly immersed in Chris Moyles, Comedy Dave, Rachel, Dominic and Carrie. I am as uncritical and ego-less as an animal, except I also laugh. 


By 2005, Moyles and his team had succeeded in increasing the morning audience, with his programme's audience swelling to 6.5 million. (Wikipedia)

 

Some of these things I feel sorry to part with, especially the vase. It seems important to get rid of at least one thing that I think I’ll miss. What lies behind this belief is the feeling, as Gösta Ågren puts it, that “your life slowly becomes more important than you”. As he also probably says, to possess something is no longer to have it. Only now, while writing these two pages, have I briefly had my things again.

 
*




Note (2018) :  I feel anxious to state that I no longer hold the negative opinions I expressed about, e.g Brahms' 1st Cello Sonata or Sibelius 2. Of Saint-Saëns's piano concertos or those Joni albums I can't speak so securely, not having encountered them since, but I still feel an impulse to distance myself from those blanket dismissals.


This deprecation of former critical opinions has been my common experience when re-posting older pieces from my defunct website.


Does this change in my views reflect a growth of critical timidity, or grandfatherly sentimentality perhaps? I don't think so. I've learnt over and again, how most of my former critical dismissals arose from lack of understanding. I believe other people's critical dismissals, likewise, are mainly down to ignorance.


Though I was already 46 when I wrote this piece,  I still shared in some degree the deficiencies of the teenage Miss Bertrams: of "self-knowledge, generosity, and humility"*. It is, of course, a larger issue of our times than just talking about books or music.


Pankaj Mishra; Against the Culture of Cruelty (in the NYRB)








(* A little trailer for Mansfield Park, which I'll be blogging about soon ...)    

 

Lemminkäinen

I've been listening to Sibelius' Lemminkäinen Suite, in the 1999 Naxos recording with Petri Sakari conducting the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. One of the notable things about this is that they revert to the original sequence of the four pieces, i.e.

Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of the Island
Lemminkäinen in Tuonela
The Swan of Tuonela
Lemminkäinen's Return

The best information I can find about the work is by Richard A. Kaplan. Its first performance was in  April 1896. It was strongly criticized by Karl Flodin (generally an admirer of Sibelius' music),  and again when it was performed in revised form in November 1897; Flodin considered it "downright pathological". Sibelius subsequently banned performance of the first two pieces for many years. The entire suite was not peformed again until 1935.  Sibelius made substantial revisions to the first two pieces in 1939 and it was also at this time that he changed the running order, placing The Swan of Tuonela second and Lemminkäinen in Tuonela third. Most recordings (though not this one) have gone with Sibelius' final ideas.

It's interesting to listen to the suite in its original sequence, even though the pieces are in their final versions, so it is not the same suite that had upset Karl Flodin.  For example, in 1896/97 Lemminkäinen in Tuonela had a different beginning; Lemminkäinen's Return had additional material and was twice as long as in its final version.

Lemminkäinen and the Maidens, above all, was extensively rewritten (bars 155-402). Arguably this was Sibelius' last major piece of composition. I have a personal theory that it was his re-acquaintance with this jubilant and inventive music from his early years that persuaded him, once and for all,  that his creative fires were no longer, er...  burning.

Sibelius said that he had always planned  Lemminkäinen as a programme symphony, and the revised order feels more acceptable -- perhaps more conventional -- symphonically. But what about the programme aspect?

This gets complicated. In the Kalevala there are two  main sections centred on Lemminkäinen, XI-XV and XXVI-XXX. Elias Lönnrot's Lemminkäinen aggregates features of different characters from his Karelian hoard -- sources that he had collected from several different Karelian regions -- ; moreover these two sequences in Kalevala to some extent run parallel with each other. Sibelius in his Suite quite reasonably conflated the two.

In particular,  Lemminkäinen's stay with the maidens on the island (Runo XXIX) has quite a lot in common with the earlier episode at Saari (Runo XI). In fact "saari" is simply the Finnish word for "island". Nevertheless, in Runo XI (but not XXIX) "Saari" is capitalized and treated as a place-name, though it clearly is an island too. This is why, though Sibelius referred to Runo XXIX when he described the theme of his first piece, its title has often been translated as "Lemminkäinen and the Maidens of Saari".

The two inner pieces both refer to the action in Runos XIV-XV. Lemminkäinen is sent on a mission by the mistress of Pohjola to shoot the Swan of Tuonela, but instead he is ambushed and killed; his beloved mother magically restores him. The revised running order seems to make more narrative sense than the original -- first we are introduced to the Swan, in a wonderful still piece of scene-setting. Then the sombre and violent Lemminkäinen in Tuonela describes the hero's grisly death and, towards the end, with a hint of a lullaby, his mother's recovery of his remains (Sibelius confirmed this aspect of the "programme" in 1948).

Why would you choose to place the Swan AFTER Lemminkäinen in Tuonela, as Sibelius did in his original running order? Maybe to provide a lapse of time, parallelling the long process of cure (in Runo XV) before Lemminkäinen makes a full recovery? Or perhaps, as many feel, Sibelius was not really intending to programme a continuous narrative, but just to provide a musical contemplation of four separate "legends".

Lemminkäinen's Return does not refer to any particular return. None of Lemminkäinen's various returns in the Kalevala is triumphant, but Sibelius wanted to celebrate him as a character (and imply a Finnish nationalist subtext);

I think that we Finns should really show more pride.‘Let us not bear our helmet crooked,’ a quotation from the Kalevala. What do we have to be ashamed of? This is the idea running through ‘Lemminkäinen’s Return.’ He is as good as the finest count.”

To my mind there is a musical dash of that other anti-hero, Grieg's Peer Gynt (specifically, "Peer Gynt's Homecoming").

I can't find an actual transcript of the 1896 program booklet on the internet. Apparently what it quoted was this (using the 1907 W.F. Kirby translation):

Then the lively Lemminkäinen,
He the handsome Kaukomieli
From his care constructed horses,
Coursers black composed from trouble.
+Then the lively Lemminkäinen
+Started on his homeward journey,
Saw the lands and saw the beaches,
Here the islands, there the channels,
Saw the ancient landing-stages,
Saw the former dwelling places.

Of course in the original booklet it would have been in Finnish (and also, I think I've read, Swedish).

The first four lines come from Runo XXX, when Lemminkäinen, in a relieved rather than a triumphal state, returns with his comrade Tiera from an abortive and nearly disastrous attempt to wreak vengeance on Pohjola.

The next six lines are from Runo XXIX. Here Lemminkäinen returns in a carefree way from a pleasant stay with the maidens on the island, only to find that the men of Pohjola have burnt his home to the ground (which is what leads to the revenge mission).

The most detailed account in Finnish quotes the lines

Siitä lieto Lemminkäinen, itse kaunis Kaukomieli,
laati huolista hevoset, murehista mustat ruunat,
(from XXX - the first four lines above)

and

tunsi maat on, tunsi rannat, sekä saaret jotta salmet,
tunsi vanhat valkamansa, entiset elosijansa
(from XXIX - the last four lines above)

but it misses out the two lines that I've marked with a "+", so I'm not sure if they really did appear in the program booklet or not.

In the edition of 1943 published by the British & Continental Music Agencies Ltd, the following quotation from Kirby's translation appears instead:

Then the lively Lemminkäinen,
He the handsome Kaukomieli,
From his care constructed horses,
Coursers black composed from trouble,
Reins from evil days he fashioned,
Saddles from his secret sorrows,
Then his horse's back he mounted,
And he rode upon his journey,
At his side his faithful Tiera,
And along the shores he journeyed,
On the sandy shores proceeded,
Till he reached his tender mother,
Reached the very aged woman.

This is an extended quotation of the passage in Runo XXX - there's nothing here from XXIX. I don't know whether this slightly different quotation was in any way authorized by the composer himself.

*

For me W[illiam] F[orsell] Kirby's translation of Kalevala is still the one to choose. He was an entomologist at the Natural History Museum. His middle name suggests some Swedish or Finnish ancestry, but he did not know Finnish and his original plan (announced in 1888) was to re-translate the Kalevala from the German of Franz Anton Schiefner (1852), the influential version that had also given Longfellow the idea for his Hiawatha-meter. John Martin Crawford (1888) had already taken the Schiefner route. Kirby, however, was subsequently persuaded (by Edmund Gosse, Andrew Lang and others) to learn Finnish and to translate directly from Lönnrot's original text. He also learnt Estonian and in 1895 published The hero of Estonia and other studies in the literature of that country - its centre-piece was a translation of the Kalevipoeg .

Keith Bosley's recent translation of Kalevala looks fascinating and skilful, but (unlike Crawford and Kirby) he chose not to use the Hiawatha-meter. Losing the constant flow of that drum-rhythm is too great a sacrifice, in my opinion.

"I was immensely attracted by something in the air of the Kalevala, even in Kirby's poor translation," J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to W.H. Auden in 1955.  Exactly what Tolkien supposed was poor about it I don't know. Today, certainly, we have to make some allowances for the style of 1907, but that can hardly have been Tolkien's problem, because his own verse is just as old-fashioned . Nor can I believe he knew enough Finnish to criticize the accuracy of Kirby's translation. So it sounds as if his issue was aesthetic.

There was evidently some snobbery around about Kirby not being a professional academic, and perhaps about the Hiawatha-meter (acceptable in Finnish but not in English). This is one of those irritatingly unargued value judgments that people make to each other when they're cosying up; and Tolkien may just as likely have been deferring to Auden's opinions as expressing his own. (The unholy alliance of progressive poets and stuffy academics created a fertile habitat for the coded transfer of age-old class exclusivities, as it still does today.)

As judges of poetry, I haven't the least confidence in either of them, but I do trust Tolkien's feeling of being immensely attracted in spite of his judgment.

Lemminkäinen, watercolour by Karin Boye*

[* Image found on this site: http://www.karinboye.se/verk/akvareller/index-en.shtml ]

popular Swedish poem

   A lone ski-track


   A lone ski-track that wends
   its way into woodlands deep,
   a lone ski-track that bends
   away via ridge & steep,
   via moors where blizzards rip,
   and the pines are sparse and short;
   such are my thoughts, as they slip
   further & further apart.

   An icy ski-track that slows
   in the woodlands’ solitude,
   a human life that flows
   by ways not understood.
   Far off as ever, the answers
   to my oldest questions;
   a dithering line on snowcrust,
   my travels, my investigations.

   A lone ski-track that ends
   at a sudden precipice
   where only a wind-worn pine
   reaches out beyond the cliff.
   How coldly the stars twinkle,
   the wood so huddled and black,
   how gently snowflakes sprinkle
   the snow-extinguished track!



(translation of Ett ensamt skidspår by the Finland-Swedish poet Bertel Gripenberg (1878-1947))

 I'm adding this to my category "specimens of the literature of Sweden". Literally, it's untrue, this is a specimen of the literature of Finland; and I hope I shan't offend anyone. But Finland-Swedish poets have always been widely read in Sweden, and some of their poems (like this one) are very well-known.

Jean Sibelius wrote a musical backing for the recited poem (apparently this is known as a "melodrama").  Here it is, with Riko Eklundh narrating, and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leif Segerstam.