Debussy, lecteur de Pelléas

Éric  Lysøe

Titles

Abstract

Debussy, the reader of Pelléas

This is a well-known story: a few days before the first performance, Maeterlinck had no words hard enough to describe the opera that Debussy created from Pelléas et Mélisande, the dramatist’s masterpiece. The critics, however, are too much inclined to reduce the causes of Maeterlinck’s anger to the expulsion of Georgette Leblanc, his mistress, who was to perform the first female role. The text of the play, which the composer almost always followed to the letter, has actually been cut and some amendments made by Maeterlinck to its 1892 text have not been taken into consideration. This paper aims at showing that, despite the apparent fidelity of the musical adaptation, the few variants inserted by Debussy generate a semiotic system and lead us to see the opera as a true translation, that is to say the transformation of a subordinate work into a source context and its adaptation to a target context. All typically “Belgian” aspects are blurred and attempts to make the unconscious emerge, as defined by Eduard von Hartman as early as 1869, are annihilated by the use of the leitmotif.

Debussy, the reader of Pelléas

This is a well-known story: a few days before the first performance, Maeterlinck had no words hard enough to describe the opera that Debussy created from Pelléas et Mélisande, the dramatist’s masterpiece. The critics, however, are too much inclined to reduce the causes of Maeterlinck’s anger to the expulsion of Georgette Leblanc, his mistress, who was to perform the first female role. The text of the play, which the composer almost always followed to the letter, has actually been cut and some amendments made by Maeterlinck to its 1892 text have not been taken into consideration. This paper aims at showing that, despite the apparent fidelity of the musical adaptation, the few variants inserted by Debussy generate a semiotic system and lead us to see the opera as a true translation, that is to say the transformation of a subordinate work into a source context and its adaptation to a target context. All typically “Belgian” aspects are blurred and attempts to make the unconscious emerge, as defined by Eduard von Hartman as early as 1869, are annihilated by the use of the leitmotif.

Keywords

Debussy, Maeterlinck, opera.

References

DebussyClaude, 1907, Pelléas et Mélisande, partition pour piano et chant, Paris : Durand.

DebussyClaude, 2005, Correspondance (1872–1918), édition de François Lesure et Denis Herlin, Paris : Gallimard.

GraysonDavid A., 1985, The Libretto of Debussy’s Pelléas et Melisande, Music and Letters LXVI(1) : 34–50.

LabussièreAnnie, 2001, Du schème au mode, du jeu au silence : le traitement mélodique dans la « Scène des moutons » (Claude Debussy, Pelleas et Mélisande, Acte IV, scène 3), Musurgia VIII(2) : 7–48, ici p. 10.

LysøeÉric, 1996, Pour une approche systémique du symbolisme belge, Littérature et nation. Nouvelle série [Tours] 18 : 19–34.

LysøeÉric, 2004, Le fantastique belge : centralité d’un genre périphérique, Littératures en Belgique / Literaturen in België, Dirck De Gest, Reine Meylaert (dir.), Berne, P. Lang : 195–212.

MaeterlinckMaurice, 1890, Confession de Poète, L’Art moderne, 25 février : 60–61.

MaeterlinckMaurice, 1896, Le Trésor des humbles, édition de référence, Bruxelles : Espace Nord, 107–108.

MaeterlinckMaurice, 1902a, Théâtre, ii, Genève : Slatkine Reprints, 1979.

Maeterlinck Maurice, 1902b, Lettre, 13 avril 1902, (in :) Serge Basset « Courrier des théâtres », Le Figaro, 14 avril : 4.

MockelAlbert, 1899, Stéphane Mallarmé. Un héros, Paris : Mercure de France ; édition de référence : Mockel Albert, 1962, Esthétique du symbolisme, éd. de Michel Otten, Bruxelles : Palais des académies, 177–207.

RenardJules, 1898, 14 janvier 1898, Journal, Paris : Laffont, 1990.

Information

Information: Romanica Cracoviensia, Volume 17 (2017), Volume 17, Issue 2, pp. 137 - 147

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4467/20843917RC.17.012.7694

Article type: Original article

Titles:

Polish:

Debussy, lecteur de Pelléas

English:

Debussy, lecteur de Pelléas

Authors

Éric Lysøe

Published at: 08.11.2017

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Percentage share of authors:

Éric Lysøe (Author) - 100%

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French

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