In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Debussy and the Fragment
  • Peter Dayan
Cummins, Linda . Debussy and the Fragment. ( Chiasma, 18.) Amsterdam – New York: Rodopi, 2006. Pp. 192. ISBN 90-420-2065-2.

If I may be allowed to get a material gripe out of the way before engaging with the content of this book: its binding is not up to Rodopi's usual high standard. It is perfect bound rather than sewn, and the pages were threatening to separate themselves from the cover by the time I finished reading. Which is a pity.

The arguments in the book generally begin by presenting and reflecting on an aspect of the history of the fragment in Western European art, often running from antiquity to the 19th century. The æsthetic perspective thus constructed is then used to examine specific pieces by Debussy. The aim is to see to what extent the distinctive features of Debussy's musical practice can be understood as a "mise en œuvre" of the æsthetic dynamics of the fragment, as they had been developed over the centuries, in music (by Schumann and Chopin especially) as well as in literature and the visual arts. Chapter 1, for example, is about ruins; both the cult of ruins, and the deliberate construction of works of art (and more particularly of literature) that give the effect of ruins, or of being fragmentary in a way comparable to ruins, from Petrarch to Verlaine. Chapter 2 looks at works that refuse to provide solidly structured beginnings and endings, and [End Page 664] discusses pieces by Debussy in which such a refusal may be read, notably "Canope," which ends in a "lack of resolution." Chapter 3 starts from the reception of ancient literary fragments, real or fabricated, then moves on to Debussy's settings of just such fabricated fragments, Louÿs's Chansons de Bilitis. Chapter 4 opens with a meditation on the sketch, then discusses Debussy's sketch-books, his "sketch-like works," and his use of the word "esquisse." "To what extent Debussy bought into the æsthetic of the sketch is uncertain," we are told; indeed, one of the strengths of this book lies in Cummins's ability to allow such uncertainty, which is, doubtless, itself a feature of the fragmentary. She certainly does not subscribe uncritically to the intentionalist fallacy. Her perspective shifts between historic perceptions, authorial ambitions, and our contemporary attitudes. She conducts a pleasingly open-minded perambulation around the "misplaced 'titles'" which Debussy placed at the end, not at the head, of his Préludes, concluding with a persuasive argument concerning the way that these short pieces might be considered in relation to each other. Cummins proposes a contrast between our attitude to such works, and attitudes in Debussy's time and before. We tend now, she says, to see collections such as Debussy's (or indeed Chopin's) preludes as cycles, as complete whole works in many parts. But in fact, they were conceived, and received at the time, as collections, whose constituent parts were not necessarily related to a wider whole in any fixed way. Cummins thus invites us to reconfigure our own reception of these pieces, to appreciate them as fragments, according to the æsthetic which the book has been establishing, and to read their misplaced titles in that context.

It is doubtless inevitable that in a study which ranges so widely across languages, arts, and genres, the specialist will find something to quibble with. To give some unrelated examples: I couldn't help wondering why Debussy was quoted sometimes in French (with translation), and sometimes only in English; I spotted a few errors in quotations, and some slightly dubious analogies; and it is not correct simply to describe Macpherson's Ossian poetry as a hoax, in the same way that the Chansons de Bilitis are a hoax, since Macpherson always maintained it was not, and a fair amount of genuine source material has been identified, though certainly he took liberties with it. Nor would Nerval scholars generally be happy to see Nerval diagnosed as a schizophrenic. However, such problems need not obscure the enjoyment of reading the book, or its general import. What happens if we try listening to Debussy's...

pdf

Share