Page:Rolland - A musical tour through the land of the past.djvu/195

Rh because no other nation displays this personal and egoistical character. The Italian does not go to the opera-house to see the heroes of opera, but to see himself, to hear himself, to caress and inflame his passions. All else is indifferent to him.

What intensity must the art possess that is kindled by these burning hearts! But what a danger is here! For everything in art that is not subjected to the imitation or the control of nature, all that depends merely upon inspiration or inward exaltation, all in short that presupposes genius or passion, is essentially unstable, for genius and passion are always exceptional, even in the man of genius, even in the man of passionate feeling. Such a flame is subject to momentary eclipses or to total disappearance; and if, during these phases of spiritual slumber, scrupulous and laborious talent, observation and reason do not take the place of genius the result is absolute nullity. This remark may be only too readily verified among Italians of all ages. Their artists, even their indifferent ones, have often more genius than many famous and generously endowed Northern artists; but this genius is squandered over mere nothings, or drowses, or goes astray; and when it is no longer at home the house is empty. …

The salvation of the Italian music of the eighteenth century should have been found in a style of music which it had just created: the opera buffa, the intermezzo, which, at its point of departure, in Vinci and Pergolesi, is based on the humorous observation of the Italian character. The Italians, who are pre-eminently given to a bantering style of humour, have left veritable masterpieces of this description. President de Brosses was right to