And this sets me thinking that one knows very little of any generation
except one's own. True that I know a little more of the symbolists
than Paul. I am the youngest of the naturalists, the eldest of the
symbolists. The naturalists affected the art of painting, the
symbolists the art of music; and since the symbolists there has been
no artistic manifestation--the game is played out. When Huysmans and
Paul and myself are dead, it will be as impossible to write a
naturalistic novel as to revive the megatherium. Where is Hennique?
When Monet is dead it will be as impossible to paint an
impressionistic picture as to revive the ichthyosaurus. A little world
of ideas goes by every five-and-twenty years, and the next that
emerges will be incomprehensible to me, as incomprehensible as Monet
was to Corot.... Was the young generation knocking at the door of the
Opera Comique last night? If the music was the young generation, I am
sorry for it. It was the second time I had gone. I had been to hear
the music, and I left exasperated after the third act. A friend was
with me and he left, but for different reasons; he suffered in his
ears; it was my intelligence that suffered. Why did the flute play the
chromatic scale when the boy said, "Il faut que cela soit un grand
navire," and why were all the cellos in motion when the girl answered,
"Cela ou bien tout autre chose?" I suffered because of the divorce of
the orchestra and singers, uniting perhaps at the end of the scene.
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