Dieu là-haut, l’espoir ici-bas!”[201]
Alas! Schumann also knew the evil of our time. Was it not doubt which made him lose his way in the search after some impossible and anti-artistic ideal? Was it not doubt which, by day and night, tortured his sick soul and urged him on to commit suicide? Doubt, in his impassioned mind, engendered madness; need we, after this, wonder
that his artistic ideas were confused, his tone unhealthy, and that his music oftener makes us think of death than life, darkness than light? But when Schumann succeeds in tearing himself from the fatal embrace of scepticism, his musical inspirations take sublime flights. When he sang of love he was truly great, because he believed in love.
While Schubert was content to throw off, one by one, without apparent connection, his admirable Lieder,[202] Schumann gathered all the shades of tenderness into a marvellous unity—as, for instance, in the “Loves of a Poet” and “Woman’s Love,” in which we are made to traverse all its phases.
Before saying any more about these two important works, we would name several detached Lieder of singular gracefulness: “Désir,” or “Chanson du Matin” (A Morning Song), and “O ma Fiancée.” Nor must we forget a reverie, “Au Loin” (Far Away), on which is the impress of an infinite sadness. We seem in it to be listening, at the dead of night, to the lament of an exile weeping at the thought of his country and all whom he loves. It reminds us of a Daniel singing, on the banks of the Euphrates, the divine plaint of captivity: Super flumina Babylonis, illic sedimus et flevimus.
The “Loves of a Poet” open with a series of little melodies full of poesy—a little nosegay of fragrant flowers which the poet offers to his beloved. It is when, alas! he has been betrayed by the faithless one that he sings his sublime song “J’ai pardonné”—a pardon which is, nevertheless, worse than a malediction.
If only the “Loves of a Poet” ended with this admirable melody, the work would be complete; and the effect marvellous. But no; Henri Heine, the author of the poem, prolonged in an inexplicable fashion the situation, henceforth without interest, and the betrayed poet comes back to tell us that he is—unfortunate! Did we not know it already? He repeats this stale bit of information nine times over consecutively, in nine “Lieder,” and under nine different forms!—a literary impossibility which inevitably reminds us of the despair of the Cid, persistently offering his head to Chimenes.
At the fourth reapparition Heine seems at last to begin to suspect that the plaintive tone is wearisome; but he finds nothing better, by way of a change, than to throw his hero into the humoristic style—we had almost said the grotesque. Our readers shall judge:
“A man loves a woman,
Of whom one, more fortunate, has the love.”