Chapter 52

Delsarte's Inventions.

Delsarte always had his father's propensity to devote himself to mechanics that he might apply his knowledge of them to new things. When he felt his artistic abilities, not growing less, but their plastic expression becoming more difficult, owing to the cruel warnings of his departing youth, this tendency toward occupations more especially intellectual, became more marked.

It may be helpful here to note that a _machine_--that positive and most material of all things--is the thing whose creation requires force of understanding in the highest degree.

The brain, that living machine, lends its aid to the intellect; it represents the physical side; it is the spot where the work is carried on. Feeling has no part in the intellectual acts which work together in mechanical production,--mathematics playing the principal part,--it has no other share, I say, but to inspire certain persons with a passionate taste for abstract studies, which leads them toward useful and glorious discoveries.

Thus, this thought of Delsarte and Pierre Leroux seems to be justified: that, in no case, can man break his essential triplicity.

Delsarte, moreover, by changing the direction of his faculties, or rather by displacing the dominant, affirmed his freedom of will. If he did not always class himself with the strong, he still loved to reign over himself in the omnipotence of his will.

The artist became an inventor; he took out letters-patent for various discoveries, among others for an instrument of precision applicable to astronomical observations. Competent persons have recognized the great value of this invention, conceived without previous study, and which remains hidden among the papers of some official.

Only one of his mechanical conceptions was ever really put to practical use, that of the _Guide-accord_; it gained him a gold medal at the Exhibition of 1855; Dublin awarded it the same praise.

Berlioz wrote of this invention, in his book entitled, "_A Travers Chants_:"

"M. Delsarte has made piano tuning easier by means of an instrument which he calls the _phonopticon_. Any one who will take the trouble to use it will find that it produces such absolute correctness, that the most practiced ear could not attain to similar perfection. This _Guide-accord_ cannot fail to gain speedy popularity."

On reading these lines, one is tempted to say: Here is an open-hearted writer; one likes this outburst in regard to a man who was in some sense his brother-artist. But what are we to think of this critic, when we reflect that in this same book, where he exalts the inventor, he never seems to remember Delsarte the revealer of a law, the creator of a science, the distinguished teacher, the famous artist. "He has rendered all pianists a great service by inventing this instrument," says the author of "_A Travers Chants_," and that is all. And he calls him _Monsieur_ Delsarte, as if he were some unknown musical instrument maker or dealer! Had the author of "William Tell" or "Aida" vexed him, he would have spoken of them as M. Rossini, M. Verdi!

And yet he knew all about the man whom he seemed anxious to extinguish, for it was he who, in a musical criticism, wrote, among other praises: "It is impossible to imagine superior execution;" and elsewhere: "He renders the thoughts of the great masters with such brilliancy and strength, that their masterpieces are made accessible to the most stubborn intellect and the most hardened sensibilities are roused by his tones."

What had happened to make the author of the "Pilgrims' March" so oblivious of his own admiration? I have heard that the two musicians quarreled as to the interpretation of a passage by Gluck, and that a correspondence much resembling a literary warfare, followed. Could this justify defection? Perhaps a desire to stifle this glory, thereby to lend more lustre to some _meteor_ or _star_, had some share in this supposed motive.

At any rate, the affair is not to the honor of Berlioz. We should never deny, whatever may happen, the just judgment which we have uttered. Direct or indirect, the rivalries of artists are to be regretted for the sake of art itself, which lives on noble sentiments and high thoughts. Although we may laugh at the inconsequence of a critic who extinguishes with one hand that which the other hand brought to light, we cannot repress a deep feeling of sadness when we see upon what reputation too often depends, and when we ask ourselves how much we are to believe of the opinions of certain chroniclers.

The fact which I have just quoted is the more surprising, inasmuch as Berlioz often drew his inspiration from the method of, and from certain modes of expression peculiar to Delsarte.