While conceding the impressionistic feel of "The Oceanides", Nils-Eric Ringbom warns that the comparison with Debussy should not be taken too far. Whereas in Debussy's works "there is seldom anything that grows thematically or undergoes development" (instead, Debussy marvels the listener with "his mastery in rendering dreamy, passive moods and fleeting, restrained emotions"), Sibelius places "too much weight on the logical development of his musical ideas to let ... them flicker out in the empty nothingness of thematic instability"; in other words, he insists that "atmospheric background swallow neither action nor structure". Sibelius's impressionism is thus "far more ... active" than Debussy's.