Harmony

You have often seen, in certain regions, particularly in Provence, the ruins of great castles; a tower that sometimes rises in the midst of immense solitude, with its lugubrious and somber wreckage, transports us to an epoch in which faith was perhaps ignorant, but in which art and poetry had risen with that same faith so innocent and so pure. You see that we are in the full Middle Ages. Have you not often thought that around those dismantled walls the elegant caprice of a chatelaine made harmonious strings vibrate, then called the harp of Aeolus? n Ah, what a pity! As swift as the wind that made them vibrate, towers, chatelaines, and harmonies have disappeared! That harp of Aeolus cradled the thought of the troubadours and the ladies. They were heard with religious recollection. Everything ends upon your Earth. There the poetry of Heaven rarely descends, only to take flight again at once. In other worlds, on the contrary, harmony is eternal, and what the human imagination can invent does not equal that constant poetry, which is not only in the heart of pure Spirits, but also in all of Nature.

René de Provence. n Paris. — Typ. H. CARION, rue Bonaparte, 64.

[1] The Aeolian harp or aeolian harp is a musical instrument, more precisely a wind-blown chordophone. Although it is considered a musical instrument, the Aeolian harp is not “played” in the traditional sense of the word. It is generally placed in a spot exposed to the wind, “playing by itself.”

[2] [see René de Provence.]