[Claude DEBUSSY]. Camille BELLAIGUE (1858-1930). Autograph manuscript signed, Revue musicale, May 15, 1918; 4 pages in-4, with erasures and corrections. Pages from his Revue musicale in the Revue des Deux Mondes of May 15, 1918, concerning Claude Debussy, who died on March 25. "Claude Debussy died a few weeks ago, aged fifty-six. He had given his all, which the future will perhaps say was original, and small. More than any other musician of his time, he drank from his glass, which, once again, was not large, but of a thin crystal, where uncertain and changing colors played out in iridescent reflections. It's impossible not to recognize it, and it's easy to point out its benefits and ills. We know that a wreath was placed on Richard Wagner's coffin, bearing this inscription: "Erlösung dem Erlöser. Redemption to the redeemer. Taken another way, in a narrower sense, the epitaph would not go amiss with Claude Debussy. The author of La Demoiselle élue, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and Pelléas et Mélisande made no small contribution to delivering us, the French, from the Redeemer himself, the one who, far from liberating us, ended up oppressing and enslaving us"... Etc. And Bellaigue concludes: "Ingenious and subtle, weak and finding a charm in its very weakness, Debussy's art makes more room for, attaches more value to the fleeting impression, to the somewhat sickly sensation, than to healthy sensibility, to clear and strong thought. [...] Today more than yesterday, tomorrow more than today, we ask and will ask our music, ours, to put and leave something else, something more solid and salubrious, in our minds and souls." Enclosed: - a carte de visite with 3 autogr. lines from Bellaigue; - 2 lines a.s. from Mary Garden; - a portrait (impr.) of Debussy by Georges Villa; - a l.s. from Pasteur Vallery-Radot to G. Samazeuilh. Plus a 20F bill bearing Debussy's effigy (with Claude Seignolle's comment: "La gloire en... menue monnaie!"), and press clippings.