Re: Pelleas Et Melisande - Debussy


In a long post, Solomon makes some interesting points and one rather
dubious one: that the slaughter of the sheep foreshadows Golaud's
murderous attack of Pelleas and Melisande.

The death of the sheep does NOT foreshadow the attack on P & M. It
would take more than the shared fact of death for that . . . unless you
think that "Golaud leads P & M to death like lambs to slaughter" is an
adequate summary of Maeterlinck's play, which it is not. (Golaud
doesn't matter-of-factly lead P & M to slaughter: he attacks them in a
rage.)

Nevertheless, the fact that the sheep are lead to slaughter is a
significant detail within a web of similar details. Sheep are lead to
slaughter. Their death is inevitable. This is a fact of the culture
that Yniold is not resigned to. The sheperd accepts it. It disturbs
Yniold. "I've got to tell somebody," he says to himself. In other
words, somebody ought to know that this monstrous thing has happened in
the world. In his failure to accept the inevitable, Yniold resembles
Golaud. Golaud can no more passively accept what goes on around him
than Yniold can accept the routine slaughter of sheep. Neither is
resigned to the inevitable, which is to say, fate. They fight it, if
only, in Yniold's case, for a brief moment.

Arkel preaches passive acceptance of fate, resignation. Those who
suffer in Allemond are those who rebel against fate or at least the
inevitable, but what is inevitable is fated. The attraction of P and M
has a fated quality. It happens because they find themselves under the
same roof and the attraction is there. They don't go in search of it,
but they do nothing to resist it. They don't will it or move mountains
to enable it to happen, as Romeo and Juliet did. They allow it to
happen. They passively slide into a relationship by degrees regardless
of the consequences, not heroically or defiantly, but because there is
no point in fighting it. If it leads to their death, well, that's
inevitable, too. No use fighting it.

P & M practice what Arkel preaches. Golaud is the one who does not
belong in Allemond. He protests. He doesn't passively accept. He
rages at the way of the world. He rejects the rupture of his
relationship with M and the fated love of P & M. He is also the only
character really to suffer, because he is not resigned. In Allemond,
the more you are resigned, the less you suffer.

-david gable

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