The moon – la lune – served as a popular trope in these late

Poetic Origins
Arnold Schoenberg
While influenced by the Symbolists, the Decadents valued artifice and often wrote about morbid subjects.
Like the Parnassians, the Decadents saw themselves
as alienated from a declining civilization, but they embraced sensations over the Parnassians’ cold formalism. The artist’s position as outcast went along with a
rejection of the traditional notion of social progress,
and in this sense the Decadent movement can be
seen as a further projection of Schopenhauerian pessimism. The pioneering work of “decadent” writing is
Joris-Karl Huysmans’s À rebours (“Against the grain”),
in which the protagonist is an “extraordinary” man
who becomes alienated by the mainstream Parisian
literary and cultural spheres of life, eventually retreating to a more rural setting.
praised music above
all other art forms for its abstraction, remarking in a
1912 essay that poetry was “an art still bound to subject-matter.” Nevertheless, by the late 19th century
trends in poetry were beginning to stray from a strict
adherence to “subject-matter.” The text of Pierrot lunaire, a set of poems written in 1884 by Albert Giraud
(Belgian, 1860-1929) and translated into German in
1893 by Otto Erich Hartleben (German, 1864-1905), is
a product of the multitude of poetic trends occurring
in the late 19th century.
Parnassianism, a French literary movement that began in the mid-19th century, celebrated a renewed
Classical appreciation of form. The Parnassian school,
centered around key figures such as Théophile Gautier, Leconte de Lisle, and Théodore de Banville, was
strongly influenced by Gautier’s idea of “art for art’s
sake.” Significantly, this represented a break from Romantic ideals of exaggerated sentiment, emotionalism, and the utilitarian use of art for political and social purposes. No longer dependent on nature for his
subject, and no longer needing to justify his deeds by
referring to his moral utility, the Parnassian valued the
artistic endeavor as fulfilling in and of itself.
Théophile Gautier, the poet and writer who popularized the
phrase “art for art’s sake,” a slogan influential
on the Parnassians. Photo by Nadar, 1856.
From their explorations of Classical and traditional
forms, the Parnassians recovered the rondeau, a poetic and musical form popular in the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance. The strict refrain of the rondeau
provided writers with an occasion to add a self-referential complexity to an otherwise linear narrative; in
Pierrot lunaire, Schoenberg used the structure of the
rondeau as something that could be clarified through
musical repetition, or ignored in an effort to capture
the fickle, unpredictable rush of Pierrot’s emotions.
The Symbolists were, in many ways, an outgrowth
of the Parnassians. Equally unconvinced by Romanticism as an artistic ideology, they instead espoused a Schopenhauerian aesthetic of art as a
sanctuary from the world of struggle and will. The
Symbolists also adopted the ideals of hermeticism,
valuing esotericism and obscurity in the arts. They
tended to present their ideas in a vague, mysterious way, choosing words with reference to light
and sound rather than color or form. These qualities can already be seen in Charles Baudelaire’s
seminal 1857 volume, Les fleurs du mal, a work that
greatly influenced poets such as Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé, the selfproclaimed poètes maudits (“accursed poets”).
The figure of Pierrot could itself be thought of as a
poète maudit, with elements of creative alienation
already seen in the poem with which Schoenberg
opens Pierrot lunaire, “Mondestrunken.”
The moon – la lune – served as a popular trope in
these late-19th-century French poetic movements,
expressing the imaginary and deranged as well
as transgressive acts of love. Examples of poetic
moon imagery include Baudelaire’s “Les bienfaits
de la lune” (“The Benefits of the Moon”) and Verlaine’s “Claire de lune” (“Moonlight”). The poems
Schoenberg chose from Giraud/Hartleben’s cycle
draw on these lunar references, both in the work’s
title and throughout many of its movements, including the first, “Mondestrunken” (“Moondrunk”); seventh, “Der Kranke Mond” (“The Sick Moon”); and
eighteenth, “Der Mondfleck” (“The Moonfleck”).
Moonlight
Clair de lune
Your soul is a select landscape
Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Where charming masqueraders and bergamaskers go
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Playing the lute and dancing and almost
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Sad beneath their fantastic disguises.
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.
All sing in a minor key
Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
Of victorious love and the opportune life,
L’amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
They do not seem to believe in their happiness
Ils n’ont pas l’air de croire à leur bonheur
And their song mingles with the moonlight,
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,
With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful,
Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
That sets the birds dreaming in the trees
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
And the fountains sobbing in ecstasy,
Et sangloter d’extase les jets d’eau,
The tall slender fountains among marble statues.
Les grands jets d’eau sveltes parmi les marbres.
—Paul Verlaine, trans. Chris Routledge
Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)
The Moon’s Favors
Les Bienfaits de la Lune
The moon, which is caprice itself, looked in the window while you were sleeping in
La Lune,
quitoest
le caprice
même,
regarda me.”
par la fenêtre pendant que tu dormais
your crib,
and said
herself:
“That
child pleases
dans ton berceau, et se dit: «Cette enfant me plaît.»
And then she mellowly descended her staircase of clouds and passed noiselessly
Et elle
sonherself
escalier
de nuages
et the
passa
sans tenderness
bruit à travers
through
the descendit
windows.moelleusement
Then she spread
over
you with
supple
of les
vitres. Puis
elleleft
s’étendit
sur on
toi your
avec face.
la tendresse
souple
d’une mère,
et and
elle déposa
a mother,
and she
her colors
Your eyes
remained
green,
your ses
couleurs
sur ta face. pale.
Tes prunelles
en sont
restées vertes,that
et tesvisitor
jouesthat
extraordinairement
cheeks
extraordinarily
It was while
contemplating
your eyes
pâles.
C’est
en
contemplant
cette
visiteuse
que
tes
yeux
se
sont
si
bizarrement
agranbecame so bizarrely large; and she so tenderly crushed your throat that you have
dis; et forever
elle t’a the
si tendrement
serrée à la gorge que tu en as gardé pour toujours l’envie de
retained
desire to cry.
pleurer.
Meanwhile, in the expansiveness of her joy, the Moon filled all of the room like a
Cependant,
dans l’expansion
de sa joie,
la Lune
remplissait
toute
chambre comme
phosphoric
atmosphere,
like a luminous
poison;
and all
of that living
lightlathought
une
atmosphère
comme
lumineux;
toute
and
said:
“You will phosphorique,
be eternally subject
to un
the poison
influence
of my kiss.etYou
willcette
be lumière
beau- vivante
pensait
et disait:
de mon
tiful
in my
manner.
You will«Tu
lovesubiras
what I éternellement
love and whol’influence
loves me: water,
thebaiser.
clouds,Tu seras
belle àand
mathe
manière.
Tuimmense,
aimeras cegreen
que j’aime
et ce qui
m’aime:
nuages, le
silence,
night; the
sea; formless
and
multiforml’eau,
water;lesthe
silence
et layou
nuit;
mer
et verte;
l’eau
informe
et multiforme;
le lieu où
place
where
willla
not
be;immense
the lover you
will not
know;
monstrous
flowers; perfumes
tu make
ne seras
pas;
l’amant
tuswoon
ne connaîtras
pas;
les who
fleurs
monstrueuses;
leswith
parfums
that
you
delirious;
catsque
who
on pianos,
and
moan
like women,
qui fontgentle
délirer;
les chats qui se pâment sur les pianos, et qui gémissent comme les
a hoarse,
voice!
femmes, d’une voix rauque et douce!
“And you will be loved by my lovers, courted by my courtiers. You will be the
«Et
aimée demen
mes whose
amants,
courtisée
paralso
mespressed
courtisans.
Tu nocturseras la reine
queen
of tu
theseras
green-eyed
throats
I have
with my
hommesofaux
yeux
verts
aussi la gorge
dans mes caresses
nocturnes; de
naldes
caresses;
those
who
lovedont
the j’ai
sea, serré
the immense
sea, tumultuous
and green,
ceux-làand
quimultiform
aiment la
mer,the
la mer
immense,
tumultueuse
verte, l’eau
et
formless
water,
place
where they
are not, theetwoman
theyinforme
do
multiforme,
lieu oùthat
ils resemble
ne sont pas,
femmeburners
qu’ilsof
nean
connaissent
les fleurs
not
know, sinisterleflowers
thela
incense
unknown pas,
religion,
sinistresthat
qui trouble
ressemblent
auxand
encensoirs
religion inconnue,
parfums
qui trouperfumes
the will,
savaged’une
and voluptuous
animals les
that
are the emblentoflatheir
volonté,
blems
folly.”et les animaux sauvages et voluptueux qui sont les emblèmes de leur
folie.»
Portrait of Baudelaire by Gustave Courbet (1848)
And it is for that reason, cursed, spoiled, beloved child, that I am now laying at
Et c’est
pour in
cela,
maudite
chère enfant
gâtée, que
je suis
maintenant
couché
à tes
your feet,
seeking
all of
your person
the reflection
of the
formidable
Divinity,
of the
pieds, cherchant
dans of
toute
personnewho
le reflet
de la redoutable
Divinité, de la fatidique
prophetic
god-mother,
theta
wet-nurse
empoisons
all lunatics.
marraine, de la nourrice empoisonneuse de tous les lunatiques.
—Charles Baudelaire, trans. Cat Nilan