Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/114

 he gives of these different destinies. "Nothing," he says "loses its freshness so soon as a lyrical effusion, be it the most touching imaginable, for nothing changes so rapidly as our mode of life. It is by abstaining from appearing in his own work that Rameau has assured for himself the greatest chance of immortality." It would seem to result from this theory, which is inspired by certain aesthetic formulae of Flaubert, that Rameau is assured of immortality because his inspiration is cold, and because he has expressed a void. But indeed what can one express by the arts, and especially in music, if one does not express the human heart? And how can man know the human heart but from himself? It would be truer, I think, to say that Rameau has expressed the same sentiments as all musicians and all poets, but that he has expressed them in their permanent and general aspects, and that it is this underlying generality that alone renders possible the perfection of a form capable of defying Time.