CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY MUSIC ..■ ,^_ .9<"'"*" ''nlveralty Library ML 410.W1C44 1897 .Richard Wagner 3 1924 022 322 212 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022322212 Richard Wagner All Rights Reserved l:\fuLi HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN ^K Richard Wasner TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN By G. AINSLIE HIGHT AND REVISED BY THE AUTHOR WITH PHOTOGRAVURES AND COLLOTYPES, FACSIMILES AND ENGRAVINGS Munich Verlagsanstalt F. Bruckmann A.-G. London Philadelphia J. M. Dent & Company J. B. Lippincott Company 1897 Preface to the German Edition IN my little treatise " Das Drama Richard Wagner s " ^ I announced my intention of writing a larger work on the Bayreuth Meister. Just at the moment when my preliminary studies had advanced so far that I could think of attempting the execution of my plan, the publishers, Messrs Friedrich Bruckmann, proposed that I should write the text for an illustrated Life of Wagner. Honourable as this commission was, it had little attraction for me at first. In Carl Friedrich Glasenapp's Life of Richard Wagner the world possesses a classical biography of the great word-tone-poet ; a voluminous autobiography will moreover some day be published; several excellent little popular accounts of his life have been written by various authors. A new biography therefore seemed to me scarcely calculated to meet any real requirement. The publishers however agreed to my proposal to compose, not a biography in the narrower sense of the word, but so to speak a picture; not a chronological enumeration of all the events of his life in proper order, but rather a sketch of the entire thought and work of the great man, and so I felt it my duty to postpone the execution of my first design, and to carry out the present work to the best of my abilities. A work of this kind about Wagner does not exist up to the present time. Shall I return to my former intention at some future date ? By the publication of this work its centre of gravity must of course be seriously displaced. Here I have been led, from first to last, by the wish to view Wagner from ivithin, to represent him and the world as he saw them both. "This is the only way of knowing a man. Truth is an inward light ; the outer light glances back from the surface and dazzles the spectator ; 1 Breitkopf und Ha'rtel, 1892. The later, revised and improved French edition is entitled Le Drame IVagnerien (Chailley, 1894). vi Preface to the German Edition but if he take up his position in the shade, and content himself with fan- ning this inner light, the whole form will become translucent. The only object of the present work was Wagner's individuality, which therefore had to engage my full, undivided attention ; none the less however is it an interesting exercise to regard Richard Wagner from without, to trace his position in the history of art and in the development of the human mind, to determine the diagonal resulting from the will and the cognition of a rare genius, on the one hand, and the will and cognition of a hundred thousand less gifted men on the other. Perhaps I shall venture upon it some day. The publishers thoroughly understood and at once accepted my proposal with regard to our undertaking; although the initiative came from them the present form of the book is thus our common work. They also acceded to my wish that all superfluous matter in the way of illustrations, such as portraits of singers, caricatures, etc., should be removed; had they wished to speculate on cheap sensation the material would not have been wanting; but on the other hand they spared no pains or sacrifice to procure everything which was really important, and to carry out the pictorial portion of the work technically in such a way as became the dignity of the subject. The obliging spirit in which they were met at Wahnfried, as well as by the Intendants of various court- theatres, and by the Masters' numerous friends both at home and abroad, is evidenced by the list of illustrations. The fact that the " Wagner Museum " bluntly refused all assistance may be mentioned merely for the benefit of collectors of historical material ; not a single item have we lost in consequence of this refusal, and the more laborious search has brought to light many a precious document which might otherwise have remained unknown to us. In H. Hendrich the publishers secured the assistance of one of the very few painters whose imagination is not misled by the picture on the stage, who are able to grasp the central poetic idea, and to reproduce it freely in accordance with the character of their own art. The connection between the thought of the work and the pictures has been supplied by A, Frenz with deep symbolism in his vignettes. As for the text, my thanks are due more particularly to my dear Preface to the German Edition vii and much honoured friend Carl Friedrich Glasenapp for his disinterested help. I also desire here to express publicly my thanks to my former master and friend of many years' standing, Gymnasiallehrer Herr Otto Kuntze in Stettin. To him I owe my command of the German language, and therewith my ability to write the book; besides this he has undertaken the troublesome work of correcting the proofs. And so may this attempt to sketch in a comprehensive form a compre- hensive picture of the great German go forth, and do its part in contribut- ing to a better understanding of one who was a hero both in mind and heart — Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh ; may it find its way to many more hearts. Vienna, November 1895. HOUSTON STEWART CHAMBERLAIN. Abbreviations used in this Translation Roman numerals, i., ii., in., etc., refer — unless some other author is expressly mentioned — to the German edition of Wagner's collected Writings and Poems. The page numbers are those of the large edition, which is always the highest authority. Those who possess the smaller edition will have no difficulty in finding the place with the aid of the comparative tables. E denotes the volume : Entwilrfe, Gedunken, Fragment/-. L the two vols, of Correspondence between Wagner and Liszt. Translated by F. HuefFer. London, 1888. 2 vols. U the vol. of Richard Wagner's Letters to Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, Ferdinand Heine. Translated by J. S. Shelock, etc. London, 1890. R the small collection of Letters to August Roeckel. English translation with Introductory Essay by H. S. Chamberlain (Arrowsmith). The reference in every case is to the original German edition. Table of Contents (Bemraf 3^^^<^^w^^^<^^ General Principles, p. 3 ; Plan of the book, p. 1 1 ; Sources, p. 12; Liszt, p. 15; Nietzsche, p. 15; Glasenapp, p. 16; Wolzogen and Stein, p. 17; The opponents, p. 20; The German Drama, p. 21 ; To the reader, p. 23. RICHARD WAGNER'S LIFE The Scheme, p. 27; General Symmetry of his life, p. 28; Detailed division, p. 30; Limits of the Scheme, p. 30. First Epoch 1. 1813-1833. — Birth, p. 32 ; First impressions, p. 35 j First essays in art, p. 38. 2. 1833-1839. — Wiirzburg, p. 39; Wagner's nearest relations, p. 40; Years of wandering, p. 40; Influence on his future career, p. 43. 3. 1839- 1 842. — Years of distress, p. 44 ; The new path, p. 45 ; Two important results of the years in Paris, p. 46. 4. 1842-1849. — First successes, p. 47; Wagner and the critics, p. 49; Troubles of a conductor, p. 52 ; Wagner as revolutionist, p- 53 ; Speech in the Vaterlandsverein, p. 55 ; The revolt of May in Dresden, p. 55 ; Important results of this period, p. 58. Second Epoch 1. 1 849- 1 859. — Social intercourse in Zurich, p. 61 ; The true friends, p. 62 ; Franz Liszt, p. 63 ; The first helpers in need, p. 65 ; The first disciples, p. 68 ; Uhlig and Biilow, p. 68 ; Creative work in Zurich, p. 69 ; Wagner's writings, p. 71 ; Schopenhauer, p. 72. 2. 1859-1866. — General view of these years, p. 73; Paris and the performance of Tannhauser, p. 76 ; Vienna, p. 81 ; Munich, p. 83 ; King Ludwig II., p. 85 ; The first performance of Tristan und Isolde, p. 89. b ix X Table of Contents 3. 1 866- 1 872. —Wagner's second marriage, p. 92 ; Work, p. 95 ; The war of 1870, p. 95. 4. 1872-1883.— The Bayreuth festival plays, p. 96; The last years of his life, p. 99; Concluding observations, p. 103. Appendix : Chronological Table. First Epoch, p. 106; Second Epoch, p. 108. RICHARD WAGNER'S WRITINGS AND HIS TEACHING Introduction The artist as author, p. 113 ; Richard Wagner, p. 114; The artist's distress, p. 117 ; Arrange- ment of the chapter, p. 120^ Richard Wagner's Politics Richard Wagner in the year 1849, p. 122 ; Wagner and Beust, p. 125 ; Poet and politician, p. 127; The " plastic contradictions " in Wagner's thought, p. 128; Wagner's patriotism, p. 129; Wagner's fundamental political convictions, p. 131; His attitude to religion, p. 132; The monarchy, p. 134 ; The free people, p. 135 ; Wagner as revolutionist, p. 137 ; Schiller and Wagner, p. 138 ; Our Anarchical order, p. 140; Concluding remarks, p. 142. Richard Wagner's Philosophy- Introductory, p. 144; Poet and philosopher, p. 146; Wagner and Feuerbach, p. 147; Wagner and Schopenhauer, p. 151; Kinship with Schopenhauer, p. 152; The Will, p. 152; Pessimism, p. 154; Sympathy, p. 155; Agreement with Schopenhauer, p. 155; Disagreement with Schopenhauer, p. 156; Art and philosophy, p. 158 ; Wagner's philosophy, p. 160. Richard Wagner's Doctrine of Regeneration Simplest form, p. 163 ; The three doctrines of regeneration, p. 163 ; Division of the enquiry, p. 165 ; Sources, p. 165 ; Recognition of the decadence, p. 167 ; Causes of the decadence, p. 169 ; Money and property, p. 169; Deterioration of the blood, p. 1 70 ; Influence of food, p. 1 7 1 ; Inequality of the races, p. 172; The influence of Judaism, p. 173; The belief in regeneration, p. 177; The three doctrines, p. 178; The empirical doctrine of regeneration, p. 178; The philosophical doctrine of regeneration, p. 180 ; The religious doctrine of regeneration, p. 182 ; Art as the uniting element, p. 184 ; Art and life, p. 185 ; Art and philosophy, p. 185 ; Art and religion, p. 185 ; Wagner's religion, p. 187 ; Transition to the doctrine of art, p. 188. Richard Wagner's Art-doctrine Meaningofthe word art-doctrine, p. 189; Art and life, p. 1 9 1 ; Twopartsof the art-doctrine, p. 191; Artistic cognition, p. 192 ; Art as the educator of man, p. 193 ; Art of community, p. 194 ; Art and science, p. 195 ; Art as the saviour in life, p. 196 ; The perfect art-work, p. 199 ; Seer, poet and artist. Table of Contents xi p. 199 ; Controversial digression, p. 201 ; The drama, p. 203 ; The purely human drama, p. 203 ; Historical retrospect, p. 204 ; The relation between drama and music, p. 206 ; The relation between poetry and music, p. 210; Position of the other arts in the word tone-drama, p. 214; The new idea of dramatic action, p. 216; The art-work of the future, p. 217 ; The German drama, p. 218. Appendix and Summary of Wagner's Writings General division, p. 221 ; Enumeration, p. 222. RICHARD WAGNER'S ART-WORKS Introduction The works of genius, p. 229; Musical interpretation, p. 231 ; Object of the chapter, p. 233. Works of the first Epoch 1. Youthful experiments — The old and the new language, p. 234; Wagner's first opera, p. 237. 2. Die Feen and Das Liebes-uerbot — Poetry and music, p. 237 ; Word poets and tone poets, p. 242. 3. Rtenz't and Der Fliegende Hollander — Historical dates, p. 245 ; The quibble, p. 245 ; Rien%i, p. 248 ; Der Fliegende Hollander, p. 251. 4. Tannh'duser and Lohengrin — Historical dates, p. 254; Attitude of the critics, p. 258; Biographical significance of these works, p. 261. The four great Sketches Is the opera possible? p. 270; From unconsciousness to consciousness, p. 273 ; The fundamental law of the new drama, p. 276. Works of the second Epoch Introductory, p. 279. I Die Meistersinger von Nilrnberg — First conception, p. 281 ; Second conception, p. 283 ; Comparison between a work of the first and one of the second period, p. 285 ; Action in the new drama, p. 287. 2. Der Ring des Nibelungen — The sketch of 1848, p. 289 ; The "phase" fallacy, p. 295 ; The trilogy of the year 1852, p. 297 ; The action in the Nibelungen Ring, p. 298. 3 . Tristan und Isolde — The law of simplification, p. 304; The sources of Wagner's Tristan, p. 307 ; The apotheosis of love, p. 310; Thought as artistic material, p. 313 ; Word and tone, p. 320. xii Table of Contents 4. Parsifal — The awakening of sympathy, p. 323 ; The omnipotence of the will, p. 324 ; The methods of genius, p. 326; The hero as victor, p. 328; Wolfram's Parzhal, p. 328; Religious interpretations, p. 329 ; The new concept of dramatic action, p. 3 30 ; The place of Richard Wagner's dramas in the history of German art, p. 334. Appendix: List of Richard Wagner's works Poems, p. 337 ; Musical works, p. 337 ; Dramas, p. 339. The heritage, p. 345. BATREUTH Introduction The Festival Plays 1838, p. 348; 1848, p. 348; 1851, p. 349; 1862, p. 351; 1870, p. 355; 1872, p. 355; 1873, P- 357; 1874. P- 358; Muncker and Feustel, p. 359; Adolf von Gross, p. 359; Grafin Wolkenstein, p. 360; Karl Tausig, p. 361 ; Emil Heckel, p. 361 ; 1875, p. 362 ; 1876, p. 362; The press, p. 363; The artists, p. 364; 1882, p. 366; 1883-94, P- 366; Siegfried Wagner^ p. 368. The Bayreuth Idea The idea in its relation to culture, p. 369; Mythical thought, p. 373 ; The educated barbarian, p. 376 ; The idea in its relation to art, p. 377 ; Bayreuth, p. 379 ; Art and religion, p. 380 ; Art and philosophy, p. 381 ; Art and natural science, p. 383 ; Recapitulation, p. 383 ; Wagner and Schopen- hauer, p. 383 ; Richard Wagner, p. 384. Appendix I Speech in the Vaterlandsverein, p. 388. Appendix II Letter to Herr von Liittichau, p. 393. 3nbe;e List of Illustrations, Facsimiles, etc. I. Plates and Full Page Illustrations, etc. Frontispiece. Portrait of Richard Wagner. From a drawing by Franz von Lenbach. Original in the possession of Frau Cosima Wagner. Reproduction by Bruckmann of Munich. Title Page, " Prometheus." Drawing by Alexander Frenz ... i Franz Liszt. From a pencil sketch by Ingres in the possession of Frau Cosima Wagner in Bayreuth . . . . . . . . ig Richard Wagner. From a gouache by Hubert Herkomer in 1877; in the possession of Frau Cosima Wagner. Photogravure by Bruckmann ... 26 Johanna Wagner-Geyer, Richard Wagner's mother. From a water-colour sketch of 1839 by Auguste Bohm, Leipzig. Original in the possession of Herr Ferdinand Avenarius in Dresden ....... 34 Richard Wagner. From a pencil drawing of 1842 by E. B. Kietz, Paris. Original in the possession of Frau C. Wagner. Reproduction by Bruckmann . . 44 Wilhelmine Schroder-Devrient. From a lithograph by Franz Hanfstaengl . . 52 Facsimile of a letter of Richard Wagner, dated June i8th, 1848, to His Excellency Herr von Liittichau. Original in the Archives of the Dresden Opera . . 54 Richard Wagner, 1853. From a drawing by Clementine Stocker-Escher. Litho- graphed by F. R. Hanfstaengl, with the kind permission of the publishers, Messrs Breitkopf & H artel . . . . . . . . 60 Hans von Biilow. From a gouache by Franz von Lenbach. In the possession of the artist ......... 67 Richard Wagner. From a photograph taken in Paris in 1861, with facsimile of signature. Original in the possession of Frau C. Wagner . . . 79 Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld. From a drawing by F. Gonne ; in the possession of Herr Eduard Schnorr von Carolsfeld in Loschwitz near Dresden . . 90 Richard Wagner and Siegfried Wagner. From a photograph of 1880 in the possession of Frau C. Wagner. Reproduction by Bruckmann .... 94 View of Wagner's house Wahnfried in Bayreuth. From a photograph by Bruckmann 97 Richard Wagner. From an oil-sketch of 1880, by Edmond de Pury, in the posses- sion of Monsieur Alfred Bovet in Valentigney. Photogravure by Bruckmann . 112 King Ludwig II. From a coloured photograph in the possession of Frau C. Wagner. Photogravure by Bruckmann . . . . . . . 122 Arthur Schopenhauer. From a painting by Franz von Lenbach in Richard Wagner's study in Wahnfried. Photogravure by Bruckmann . . . . 1 44 Friedrich von Schiller. FrOm, a painting by Rob. Krausse (after Tischbein). From R. Wagner's study in Wahnfried. Photogravure by Bruckmann . . 163 XIV List of Illustrations, Facsimiles, etc. Lenbach. In the Photogravure by . From the original From the original Reproduction by From the original Ludwig van Beethoven. From a picture after the original of Waldmliller, and the cast of his face. Painted by Rob. Krausse. In R. Wagner's study in Wahnfried. Photogravure by Bruckmann . . • • Richard Wagner. From a painting of 1874 by Franz von possession of Grafin von Wolkenstein-Trostburg in Paris. Bruckmann ...•■• Facsimile of a portion of the score of Die Feen. Act III. Scene ii. MS. in the possession of the King of Bavaria . Das Liehesverbot. Finale of Act I. Arranged by Franz Mikorey. score in the possession of the King of Bavaria . Der Fliegende Hollander. Oil painting by Hermann Hendi'ich. Joseph Albert in Munich . . . • Facsimile of a portion of the sketch of Der Fliegende Hollander, 1 841 MS. in the possession of Herr Alexander Ritter in Munich Tannhauser and Venus. Oil painting by E. Kaempffer .... Siegfried and Fafner. Oil painting by H. Hendrich. Reproduction by Josef Albert in Munich .......•• Facsimile of a portion of the score of /)« Tkfm^f/'j'/nffr. Act III. Last scene. From the original MS. in the possession of the King of Bavaria Briinnhilde's Rock. Oil painting by H. Hendrich. Reproduction by Bruckmann Facsimile of a portion of the first sketch of Siegfried's Tod, 1848. From the original MS. in the possession of A. Ritter in Munich . Siegfried's Death. Oil painting by H. Hendrich . Facsimile of a portion of the score of Die Walkiire. Act II., prelude. From the original MS. in the possession of the King of Bavaria . Funeral procession with Siegfried's body. Oil painting by H. Hendrich. Reproduc- tion by Bruckmann ..... Richard Wagner. Chalk-drawing by Franz von I^enbach. In the possession of the artist ...... Facsimile (reduced) of a page of the score of Tristan und Isolde. Breitkopf & Hartel Leipzig ...... Last portrait of Richard Wagner. Enlargement of an instantaneous photograph taken in 1883 by A. von Gross in Bayreuth. Photogravure by Bruckmann Facsimile of a passage in Wagner's collected works (vi. 388-389) Facsimile of Patronatschein of the first Wagner-Verein, in Mannheim. Original in the possession of Herr Emil Heckel. ..... Siegfried Wagner. From a pastel by R. Gilbert. Photogravure by Bruckmann 228 238 240 244 252 257 270 284 288 290 293 298 302 317 321 344 352 356 368 II. Smaller Illustrations. Head-piece to the Genera llntroduction : " To the Meister." Drawing by A. Frenz Friedrich Nietzsche. From a photograph in the possession of Frau C. Wagner in Bayreuth ........ Group : H. von Stein, C. F. Glasenapp, H. von Wolzogen. From a photograph in the possession of H. von Wolzogen in Bayreuth .... 3 16 17 List of Illustrations, Facsimiles, etc. xv Facsimile of Friedrich Nietzsche's autograph dedication of a photograph to Richard Wagner •■...... Head-piece to the Introduction to Chap. I. : " The Journey of Life," by A. Frenz Head-piece to Chap. I., Section i : " Youth," by A. Frenz The House in which Wagner was born. From a photograph in the possession of Frau C. Wagner ....... Adolf Wagner. From a pencil sketch in the possession of Frau C. Wagner . Ludwig Geyer. From a portrait of himself in the possession of the Avenarius family in Dresden ........ Facsimile of the first programme in which Wagner's name appears. Original in the Archives of the Leipzig Town-Theatre .... Albert Wagner. From a photograph in the possession of A. Ritter in Munich Rosalie Wagner. Oil painting in the possession of Frau Rosalie Frey-Marbach in Charlottenburg ....... Wilhelmine Wagner. From a photograph .... Ernst Kietz. From a photograph in the possession of G. Kietz, Dresden . August Roeckel. From a photograph in the possession of Frau C. Wagner . Reduced facsimile of the Warrant of Arrest issued against Wagner and published in the Dresdner Journal, from the Dresden Municipal Library Head-piece to Chap. I., Section 2 : " Solitude," by A. Frenz Gottfried Semper. Etching by W. Anger .... Gottfried Keller. Etching in the possession of the Besser'sche Buchhandlung in Berlin Georg Herwegh. From an engraving in the Royal Collection in Munich Franz Liszt. From a photograph in the possession of Frau C. Wagner Julie Ritter. From a photograph in the possession of Herr Alexander Ritter, Munich Wilhelm Baumgartner. From a photograph in the possession of Frau C. Wagner Jakob Sulzer. From a photograph in his possession From a photograph in his possession From a lithograph by O. Merseburger. Published by F. C. Kahnt Richard Pohl. Franz Brendel. in Leipzig Franz Miiller. Theodor Uhlig. From a photograph in the possession of Doctor Heydenreich, Weimar Plaster medallion by Professor Gustav Kietz. In the possession of Herr Alexander Ritter in Munich ...... Richard Wagner. From a photograph taken in Brussels, i860, in the possession of Frau C. Wagner ........ Richard Wagner. From a photograph taken in St Petersburg in 1863, in the possession of Frau C. Wagner ...... Charles Baudelaire. From a photograph in the possession of M. A. Lascoux Frederic Villot. From an oil-painting of 1854, by H. Rodakowski, in the Museum at Versailles ......... Dr Standthartner. From a photograph lent by Dr Schonaich in Vienna Facsimile (reduced) of the programme of the first performance of Tristan und Isolde Original in the possession of the Intendant of the Hof-Theater in Munich . Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld as Tristan. (Three pictures.) From photographs in the possession of Frau C. Wagner . View of Hof Triebschen near Lucerne. From a photograph in the possession of Frau C. Wagner. ......... View of the Palazzo Vendramin in Venice. From a photograph Comte de Gobineau. From a photogravure in the possession of Frau C. Wagner Tail-piece for Chap. I., Section 2 : " Not Glory but Love," by A. Frenz . 23 27 32 32 34 37 38 39 40 44 46 54 57 61 62 62 62 63 65 65 65 66 66 66 69 73 75 80 83 89 90 92 99 lOI 105 xvi List of Illustrations, Facsimiles, etc. Richard Wagner. Bronze-relief of 1853 by E. Sayn-Wittgenstein in the possession of Frau C. Wagner . . . • • • ■ .110 Head-piece for the Introduction of Chap. II. : « Genius and the Critics," by A. Frenz 113 Head-piece to Chap. II., Section i : "The Artist's Vow," by A. Frenz . . 122 Facsimile of a passage in Ueber Staat und Religion. From the original MS. in the possession of Frau C. Wagner \ . . . • • 1 3 5 Facsimile of a passage in Die Kunst und die Revolution. From the original MS. in the possession of Frau C. Wagner . . . . . -139 Head-piece to Chap. II., Section 2 : " Seeing alone is Truth," by A. Frenz . 144 Facsimile of a passage from Der Kunsller und die Oeffentlichkeit. From the original MS. in the possession of Frau C. Wagner . . . . .154 Facsimile of a passage from Was niitzt diese Erkenntnis. From the original MS. in the possession of Frau C. Wagner . . . . . . 161 Tail-piece to Chap. II., Section 2 : " Community," by A. Frenz . . . 162 Head-piece to Chap. II., Section 3 : "The Fountain of Youth," by A. Frenz . 163 Facsimile of a passage from i?f//f /on an^ ^anj/ . . . . .186 Tail-piece to Chap. II., Section 3 : " Religion and Art," by A. Frenz . . 188 Head-piece to Chap. II., Section 4 : " Art crowned by Gaia," by A. Frenz . 1 89 Facsimile of a passage from Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft. From the original MS. in the possession of Frau C. Wagner . . . . . . 213 Richard Wagner. From a photograph taken in London in 1877 . . . 219 Tail-piece to Chap. II., Section 4: "The German Drama," by A. Frenz . . 220 Tail-piece to the list of Richard Wagner's writings: "Inspiration," by A. Frenz . 225 Head-piece to the Introduction to Chap. Ill : " The Art- Works," by A. Frenz . 229 Head-piece to Chap III., Section I : " Language and Music," by A. Frenz . 234 The Fairy in the Grotto. Painting by H. Hendrich . . . . 239 Facsimile of a passage in Die Feen, Act II., Scene iii. From the original score in the possession of the King of Bavaria . . . . . . 241 Facsimile (reduced) of the programme of the first performance of Rienzi. Original in the possession of the Intendant of the Z^o/'-7'i6fa/??- in Dresden . . . 246 Facsimile of a passage from Eine Pilgerfahrt zu Beethoven. From the original MS. in the possession of Frau C. Wagner ...... 248 Facsimile (reduced) of the programme of the first performance of Tannhauser. Original in the possession of the Intendant of the ZTo/'-T'/^ffl/fr in Dresden . . 255 Facsimile from the first MS. of the poem to Der Fliegende Hollander. Original in the possession of Herr A. Ritter in Munich . . . . .264 Scene from Tannhauser. Design of Professor M. Briickner in Coburg . . 269 Head-piece to Chap. III., Section 2 : " Sempre Avanti," by A. Frenz . . 270 Facsimile from the MS. of the first sketch for Siegfried's Tod. Original in the posses- sion of Herr A. Ritter in Munich . . . . . . 271 Facsimile of a passage from Oper und Drama. From the original MS. in the possession of Frau C. Wagner ........ 274 Group of the authors of the pianoforte arrangements ; Karl Tausig [Die Meistersinger), Karl Klindworth [Der Ring des Nibelungen), Hans v. Biilow {Tristan und Isolde), with facsimile of Wagner's signature. From a photograph in the possession of Frau C. Wagner ....... Head-piece to Chap. III., Section 3 : " Know Thyself," by A. Frenz Facsimile (reduced) of the programme of the first performance of Die Meistersinger. Original in the possession of the Intendant of the Hof-Theater in Munich The Rhine Daughters. Painting by H. Hendrich .... 27B 279 282 292 List of Illustrations, Facsimiles, etc. xvii PAGET The Ride of the Valkyries. Painting by H. Hendrich .... 300- Design for the closing scene of Gotterdammerung, by Professor Max Briickner in Koburg ......... 303 The Sad Lay. Painting by H. Henrich. Original in the possession of Herr H. Fahrig in Dresden . . . , . . . .311 Design for the Temple of the Grail, by Paul Joukowsky. Original in the possession of Comtesse Gravina in Palermo . . . . . . 323 Design for a scene in Parsifal, by Paul Joukowsky. Original in the possession of the Comtesse Gravina in Palermo . . . . . .329 Richard Wagner. After a photograph taken in 1873 by Herr R. von Gross in Bayreuth . . . . . . . . -33 5 Tail-piece to Chap. III., Section 3 : "At the Goal," by A Frenz . . 336 Head-piece to the Introduction of Chap. IV.: "Laying the Foundation," by A. Frenz ......... 345 The Festival Play-house at Bayreuth. From a photograph by Anna Chamberlain . 347 Head-piece to Chap. IV., Section i : "To Bayreuth," by A. Frenz . . 348 Plan of the Bayreuth Orchestra during a performance of Parsifal. From descriptions given by Herr Generaldirector H. Levi . . . . . 351 Section through the Bayreuth Orchestra . . . . . . 353 Facsimile of lines deposited in the foundation-stone of the Festival Play-house. From the original MS. in the possession of Frau C. Wagner . . . .356 Burgermeister Geheimrat Dr von Muncker. From a photograph in his possession . 359 Friedrich Feustel. From a photograph in the possession of Herr A. von Gross, Bayreuth . . . . . . . . -359 Kommerzienrat Adolf von Gross. From a photograph in his possession . . 359 Marie Grafin von Wolkensteio-Trostburg. From a paintmg by F. von Lenbach in her possession ........ 360 Emil Heckel. From a photograph in his possession . . . .361 Richard Wagner at the rehearsal. Caricature by Adolf Menzel in the possession of Frau C. Wagner ........ 362 View of the stage during a rehearsal. Caricature by A. Menzel in the possession of Frau C. Wagner ........ 363 Dr Hans Richter. From a photograph in his possession .... 366 Generaldirector Hermann Levi. From a photograph .... 368 Generalmusikdirector Felix Mottl. From a photograph in his possession . . 368 Musitdirector Julius Kniese. From a photograph in his possession . . . 368 Head-piece to Chap. IV., Section 2 : " The Bayreuth Idea," by A. Frenz . . 369 Facsimile from a passage from Beethoven. From the original MS. in the possession of Frau C. Wagner . . . • . • • .371 Franz Liszt in 1886. The last photograph taken . . . . . 375 Facsimile of a passage from Ein Theater in ZUrich. From the original MS. in the possession of Frau C. Wagner . . . . • • 378 Richard Wagner's dog Marke. From a photograph in the possession of Frau C. Wagner ......... 386 Tail-piece to Chap. IV., Section 2 : "Into Eternity," by A. Frenz . . 387 General Introduction " Not for fulness of knowledge should we strive, but for fulness of understanding." Democritus. AN old proverb says : Speech is silver ; silence is golden. An ideal book General would be one which fulfilled both parts of this wise saying — that is, it principles, would speak in silver and be silent in gold. Voltaire remarks very justly that to tell everything is the secret of being dull. The burden which oppresses our entire intellectual lives and robs us of light and air is excessive talk and the discussion of material stored up in every department of knowledge. Richard Wagner expresses it frankly as his opinion that with the invention of printing — certainly with the rise of journalism — the faculty of healthy judgment has imperceptibly deteriorated amongst mankind. To say everything is as mis- chievous as it is tedious, and one of the first duties of a biographer is to free his subject from the enormous mass of superfluous matter with which he finds it loaded. Especially at the present day, when every trifling circumstance con- nected with a famous man, almost every word which falls from his lips in public is caught up by the press, and so fixed in people's minds ; when casual letters to intimate friends, utterances perhaps due to some momentary feeling of irrita- tion, and only really intelligible to the one friend to whom they were addressed, are handed over without mercy to the highest bidder ; when everything is given indiscriminately to the public, stored up in museums and archives some day to furnish material for endless writings and controversies, the production of a complete and exhaustive biography of a man of the significance of Richard Wagner would be the work of a life-time. Indeed one life-time would scarcely sufiice ; the biographer would be like Tristram Shandy, whose story was thrown back a whole year by every new day, since it is impossible to see how the flood of new publications is ever to be stayed. And the main figure itself would only be confused ; its clear, bold, characteristic outline would be lost in a 3 4 General Introduction cloud of trifling details. Everything human has its proper measure; too much is at least as great an evil as too little. Schopenhauer declares that one ought to be able to construct the entire man from a single action ; and if this is the paradox of a clear thinker, the principle vi^hich it contains is certainly true, that in order to obtain a full understanding of any phenomenon, we must take into account not as many^ but as few of the circumstances as possible, namely, those only which are necessary. What we have to aim at is simplicity. It is a law of our human intellect that the Manifold can only receive life through the One. We cannot indeed construct the whole man out of one action, but we can form no true plastic image of him until we have clearly perceived the unity of his individual nature; until we have realized that the apparent — or real — contradictions noticeable in his actions spring from the selfsame peculiarity of his character ; until our spiritual vision has shown us that the development from youth to old age does not follow the course of a straight line passing through ever new worlds to be lost in infinity, but rather resembles that of a spiral winding upwards round a fixed axis, and that the limitations which are always noticeable — at least in great men — are nothing more than the formal conditions of whatever is complete in itelf Our first aim should therefore be, not to obscure the general view by excess of matter. But if the picture is injured in its totality by superabundance of detail, it is directly falsified when the important and the unimportant are placed on the same footing. Nowhere is critical discrimination more necessary than in comparing the various experiences and utterances of a life in their mutual relations to each other. For here the laws of perspective apply, not only, as in painting, to our organ of perception and its position with regard to the object, but the object itself, as a thinking and acting individual, exhibits a foreground, middle distance, and distance, at one time admitting of expanded and detailed treatment, at another precluding it; here requiring sharp outlines and brightly lighted masses, there only the merest indication. He who fails to bring out the relative value of his facts, and like a Chinese artist draws everything to the same scale, not only spoils his work, but produces a false and distorted picture. In the following pages I have endeavoured to keep both these principles before me ; to select my facts rightly, and to observe true perspective. On the other hand, I have never been tempted to follow the Fata Morgana of sup- posed completeness. Here as elsewhere the words of Democritus apply : " not for fulness of knowledge should we strive, but for fulness of understanding." A nation should understand its great men, should know them and love them, as we know and love a dear friend, but to stuff our brains with dates and names is labour lost, producing but barren knowledge. How does it help me to a deeper understanding of Wagner to know the dates of the first performances of all his works ? or to hear the name or be shown the portrait of the excellent man who first sang Lohengrin .? or to sit for ten months in the Wagner-Museum at Eisenach and read ten thousand newspaper criticisms of his works and writings ? Away ! away with all such irrelevant matter ! The man who thirty years ago General Introduction 5 expressed an unfavourable opinion upon a subject which he was quite unable to grasp, and had it put into type in all haste for the morning paper, was a poor creature. He had to earn his daily bread in this way, but to preserve and study his criticism as a "historical document" is absurd. Specially absurd is it in connection with a man like Richard Wagner, who condemned in such energetic terms all " clinging and hanging to the past," who urged us to " let the past be the past, the future the future, to live for to-day, for the fulness of the present, and to create for it j " who would have preferred to burn his own scores, who time after time exclaimed : " children ! invent something new ! new ! once more, something new ! As long as you hark back to the old the devil of unproductive- ness has hold of you, and you are the most miserable of artists ! " Yes ! let us beware of this guardian deity of archives, "the devil of unproductiveness." The same Wagner warns us that the head which is absorbed in the letter sinks into idiotcy ; on the other hand he speaks of the inheritance which great men have left behind to feed our hearts {cf. the introduction to the fourth chapter). The master-thought which controlled the life of such a man, the longing which was his guiding genius, lighting him onwards through the night of suffering, the work which his will achieved — all that is surely not a thing of the past, a thing of history, a thing to be laid amongst old records ; it is a living seed which looks for fresh nourishment in our hearts that it may spring up again into new life. I conceive the task which I have set myself of portraying the life of Wagner as a living, not a dead subject, it is a living seed to be buried in our hearts. Here I must briefly explain my conception of criticism in such a work as this. In Natural Science, the strict discipline of which I know from personal ex- perience, criticism is never applied to the object of enquiry, but only to the subject-r— the observer — and the instruments which he uses. No naturalist would think of describing any peculiarity which he had found in an animal as 2, fault; with living Nature before him such a proposition would be too obviously absurd. He ascertains how each individual is organized, and then endeavours, as far as he is able, to explain the fitness of the entire structural design. On the other hand the method of observation itself will be subjected to severe and unremitting criticism, because nothing is more difficult than to see even a purely material process correctly. In other branches of study, such as philosophy, literature, or history, a different procedure is undoubtedly necessary, but not here, where one is dealing with a living object. I do not think that those who read this book will say that it has been written without any exercise of criticism. The very arrangement of the material, on an architectonic, rather than a chronological basis, points to critical selection and analysis. Criticism therefore with me has to do with the manner of representation, and has been especially at work, imperceptibly to the reader, in sifting and casting out superfluous matter. I have never offered criticism in the sense in which the word is understood now-a-days — that of passing a judgment upon Wagner, and this rather because it would have been contrary to the intention of the work, which was to bring Wagner nearer to the understand- 6 General Introduction ing^ than because I bore in mind Goethe's advice " to leave it to the common helpless crowd to praise, to accept and to reject " — for I can quite imagine that a critical discussion of Wagner might be made very interesting. A portrait must be painted by means of positive, not negative touches ; the painter must give, not take away. A critical estimate of a great man by another man can never be more than a fragment, and often teaches us more about the critic himself than about his subject. My endeavour has been on the contrary in a certain sense to reflect the image of Wagner j the result is necessarily a reflection such as the limited capacity of my own intellect is able to produce, but it is one thing for a person who cannot possibly compare himself to Wagner in any way to approach him with the intention of measuring him — of taking his height, breadth and depth, as has already been done in more than one stout volume ; quite another to content oneself with faithfully and modestly reproducing the reduced image existing in one's own brain. Wagner praises Liszt because "like a true poet he grasps every phenomenon of Nature in its own being, just as it is, with perfect impartiality "(Letters, L p. 48); it is for us to practise similar impartiality. But this is not all. I have observed that the natural "philosopher does not criticize the individuals which come under his notice ; he does not declare that the neck of the giraffe is too long, or that the dromedary would be better with two humps than he is with one. The example of the art critic has not yet misled him into doing this. But when we have to examine a moral individual, instead of a visible object, such abstention from judgment suffices no longer. So to under- stand a personality as to be able to portray it to others as it really was, pre- supposes a marked degree of sympathy with it. Sympathy is the inward vision, without which we grope in the dark. Great deeds can only spring from inspira- tion ; the man who is not inspired, who coldly examines their relations, is like a blind person trying to explain the warmth of daylight whilst unable to perceive its immediate cause — the sun in Heaven. For this reason Goethe, the typically moderate man, the calm follower of truth and justice, actually insists on the necessity of party enthusiasm in considering works and actions, and in support of his position he adds the following words which I should like to imprint on the soul of every light-hearted critic. "Delight, joy; sympathetic interest in things is the only reality ; it alone calls forth what is real in ourselves. Everything else is vain, and produces but vanity." That is the decisive point ! which method leads to vanity ? which " nourishes the seed buried in our hearts," and thereby "calls forth what is real"? Let us ever choose the way which leads to new life ; the way here indicated by Goethe. But as I know very well how seriously I and my "partisan enthusiasm" are opposed to the superstitions of our time, with its rage for criticism, I will quote one more authority. Carlyle writes at the beginning of his sketch of Mohammed: "I mean to say all the good of him I justly can. It is the way to get at his secret : let us try to understand what he meant with the world; what the world meant and means with him, will then be a more answerable question." In another place he ex- General Introduction 7 presses his conviction that " On the whole we make too much of faults ; the details of the business hide the real centre of it." Not therefore by counting up his supposed faults, but by acquiring an accurate knowledge of his virtues can we study the secret of any person's individuality ; such at least was the opinion of one of the greatest students of history. The same faith has guided me in the following pages. True, one may and must require from any biographer an account rigidly truthful in every particular, but this is something quite different from the superficial sense in which the word " objectivity " is commonly under- stood. For in human deeds the outward act is obviously secondary, being in general only interesting as a symptom of that which is essential — the subjective impressions, moods, passions etc. out of which the action of the hero has pro- ceeded. When we speak of objectivity therefore we must understand that attitude of mind which regards the subjectivity of the agent as itself object. This is impossible as long as we retain any trace of our own subjectivity, and continue to judge the agent from that standpoint, as we should a stranger. True objectivity obviously consists in identifying ourselves — so far as this is possible — with the agent; in construing his words and his actions from the standpoint of his soul, which in this case constitutes the object of percep- tion. The common affectation of " sober objectivity " and the like is at bottom nothing more than a cloak to cover our want of power to hold our own despotic subjectivity in check; an attempt to protect ourselves from the charge by anticipating it. Truly jugt, and in the deepest sense truly independent is only he who can extend his objective perception so as com- pletely to grasp the subjectivity of another. The principles here indicated would be authoritative for me in writing the life of any great man. I have only to add a few words in explanation of the manner in which I have conceived the special task of portraying the life of Richard Wagner. The life of Richard Wagner has often been treated, and from very different standpoints. For this very reason I feel myself at liberty to follow my own bent and suit my own taste. Whoever wishes to study it in greater detail can read Glasenapp ; he who loves conciseness, interspersed with anecdotes, need only turn to Tappert. Muncker has written for the historian ; Richard Pohl for all men of true culture; Ludwig Nohl for those of more sentimental temperament; Bernhard Vogel for the critical musician ; Pater Schmid for the Ultramontane. I need not repeat what has been done already. "Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another?" Such was the lament of Sterne, more than a hundred years ago. Although I have carried out my task of portraying Richard Wagner in quite a different way from my predecessors, I do not in the least wish this to be under- stood in a sense disparaging to them or their methods. My sincere gratitude is due to the men I have named, and to many others ; my departures from them, both in the design of this book and in many facts and inferences, are not due to any vain fancy that I know better than they do, but to a conviction, and, if I may 8 General Introduction so express it, to an inner necessity. Richard Wagner has himself often declared emphatically, that "without a strong inner necessity nothing true or genuine can ever come to pass," and to this necessity I have unhesitatingly resigned myself. May the result bear out the vi^ords of Hans Sachs : " und wie er musst', so konnt' er's " Richard Wagner very often and very decidedly protests against the notion of regarding art as the " special property of a class of professional artists "{cf. for example III., p. 176). Real art will begin according to him, "when every individual is, in some way or other, an artist" (III., 42), whereby however the word "artist" must be understood, not in a technical sense, but in refer- ence to general mental culture; for in another place he says that we shall not have true artists until we have become true men, and he notices with approval Uhlig's interpretation of his words to mean: "not that men are to be made artistic, but that art is to become human" (Letters to Uhlig, p. 80). Art, according to him, should be no mere accessory, but an integral and most important part of our lives "not distinct from life, but with every variety of its utterance fully contained therein" (V. p. 58). It seems to me to follow con- clusively from this that as long as we try to force Richard Wagner into the category of " professional artists " we shall never be able to judge him rightly. What especially distinguishes his dramas from operas is that the music in them is "not an end, but a means," and so too with regard to Wagner himself, artistic creation was not the ultimate aim of his life, but the highest and most effectual means of employing it and of attaining his real purpose. " Art is the highest expression of men's lives which they possess in common " writes the Meister ; and for himself too, as an individual, art was the highest expression of his life. But it was not its only expression, nor is it rightly to be comprehended as art without a knowledge of the purely human foundation from which it sprang. No one for instance will deny that music is by far the most important means of expression in Wagner's art ; the master himself calls his dramas " deeds of music," but none the less does he declare the indispensable /om«J«//o« of complete artistic expression to be language. Similarly too in Wagner himself the musician outweighed the thinker and the social reformer ; that was a thing of course, but he was no more an "absolute artist" than his music is "absolute music"; he could not dispense with an intellectual foundation, and the enthusiasm necessary for the achievement of his unrivalled art work sprang from his profound convic- tion that art possesses a higher "dignity" than merely to entertain and amuse; that its mission is rather to influence mankind and to fashion their hves. If we wish to understand Richard Wagner our first duty will be to consider the entire man, and not obstinately to fix our attention exclusively on the artist. In the man the artist will then appear ever clearer and mightier, as in the artist the dramatist, in the dramatist the musician. How the artist became the "seer" of a new world, how closely his artistic creation was bound up with all human General Introduction 9 interests — religion, society, philosophy — I shall endeavour, without wishing to moralize or become allegorical, to make more and more clear as we go on ; and especially do I hope to show how at the end of his career this purely human element gained definite, visible form in Bayreuth. In the " Bayreuth idea " the artist and the man are united in a way, convincing even to those who stand outside. Another question is, in what way a general biography should treat of the musician in Wagner. My own opinion is that in music, even more than in other arts, the technical element cannot be too distinctly separated from the poetical, though at the present day the boundary is seldom respected on either side. People quite incompetent to follow the complicated technique of a Wagner score in all its details, or to comprehend it as a whole, dabble in it to their heart's content, often with no help but that of a miserable piano arrangement, and " explain " Wagner's music to a believing public of amateurs. That I call simple Vandalism. "Technique can be discussed," Wagner writes to Louis Kohler, "but of course only among artists; the outsider should never hear aught thereof" (cf. the introduction to Sect. 4, Chap. 2). Still more ridiculous was the audacity with which professional musicians and critics believed for half a century that they could judge, or even censure a Richard Wagner from the standpoint of their counterpoint and supposed theory of harmony — uncertain as the laws of harmony still are in many respects. Nowhere has Wagner's music, as music, con- sequently met with such obstinate and hopeless ignorance as among professed musicians. Wagner wrote in 1852, "The non-musician alone has prepared the} way for the understanding of Beethoven's works. ... In a certain very im- portant sense — perhaps in the only true sense, Beethoven has up to the present day never been understood by musicians themselves, but only by non- musicians." He could not say this of himself, since it was just the musicians — I will only instance Liszt — who crowded round him with enthusiasm from the very beginning ; but it must be admitted that musicians too formed the backbone of the opposition against which his will was so often shattered — especially theoretical musicians, such as Hauptmann, Jahn, and Fetis, and the professional critics of almost every newspaper in Europe.^ At the end of his life the great poet declared that it had been his fate " to see his art and its tendencies judged chiefly by impotent musicians." And at the present day how often do we find more or less "potent " musicians claiming Wagner as their own, as belonging to their "profession," and sometimes attacking us non-musicians pretty roughly for invading their field — with regard to which it is worth re- 1 A few specimens of these criticisms will be quoted when we come to speak of Lohengrin. I need scarcely remind my readers that it was not in the time of Beethoven and Wagner that professed musicians and musical critics first showed their stupidity with regard to all the poetry of their art, but that they have done so from time immemorial. Sarti, for instance, said of Mozart : " Music will perish if barbarians of this kind are to attempt composition." Mozart, who could not distinguish D| from Eb must, he thought, have " ears lined with iron." This is how the most distinguished professionals wrote at a time when outsiders had long ago recognised Mozart's extraordinary genius. B lo General Introduction marking, that with the exception of two or three smaller works (Liszt — Pohl — Tappert) every complete and thoroughly trustworthy treatise on Wagner— from whatever standpoint it may have been written — has been the work of a non- musician, and that musicians themselves have contributed nothing, absolutely nothing at all of any importance in the field which specially belongs to them — that of musical technique. Mayrberger, whose early death we must all deplore, did indeed make a beginning ; a few scattered remarks may be found here and there in books and periodicals, but beyond this, nothing. The technician may analyse both music and instrumentation with undoubted advantage to himself, but to describe the music, to go into ecstasies over it is of no use to anyone — every musician will agree with me about this. Here of course I am only concerned with Wagner's life^ and no good purpose would be served by my attempting to discuss the instrument of his expression. In the chapter on his works my re- marks will be intended to elucidate the poetic action, and I shall consider the instrument of expression only in so far as may appear necessary for the right understanding of the underlying thought. Similar considerations have led me to abstain from any attempt to tell the story of Wagner's dramatic works ; it has been done a hundred times, and always with the same result; a work of art cannot be described; it must be felt. In his report on a "German school of music " to be founded in Munich, Wagner recommends that no academic lectures on the history and aesthetics of music shall be instituted. "True aesthetics, and the only intelligible history of music should be taught by means of correct and beautiful performances of classical works." Just as little can the aesthetics and the history of Wagner's art be taught in books ; they must be studied in " correct and beautiful " performances of the works themselves. What the pen, with its circuitous descriptions, could scarcely have rendered, the engraver's art has been called in to depict. The cooperation of artists has been of invaluable assistance in reheving me of the irksome task of literary anatomy or dissection of the physiognomy of living beings. The reader will learn to know the features of the great master from the portraits which are here presented of him better than from all the descriptions in the world. To his friends — those faithful ones who fought and conquered with him — I have been able to devote but few words, but the portraits will do more to bring them near to us than could the most complete enumeration of their merits. Of what is called " literary criticism " I have little to offer the reader. In this too I have been guided by an earnest desire to make Wagner's way of feeling my own, believing that this was the only way to acquire a real under- standing of his individuality. Again and again he writes such words as these : ^ " A literary man cannot understand me ; only a complete man or a true artist " (L., I. 238). And with regard to the special literary or other preparation which some might think necessary he says: "I require nothing from the public but healthy senses and a human heart ; to attempt to drum artistic intelligence into the public will only make it wholly stupid" (L., I. 87-96). Wagner expressly General Introduction 1 1 says : " My aim was to prove the possibility of an art-form in which the highest and deepest things that the human intellect can grasp should be presented in such a way as to be intelligible to the simple receptive faculty derived from purely human sympathy, and in such a definite and convincing form that critical reflec- tion should be altogether unnecessary for its comprehension " (VII. 1 18). And so too I wish here once for all to refer the reader to the numerous writings of other authors for all information regarding the sources which Wagner is supposed to have used for his works. Such studies are, like everything human, not without interest; I have dabbled in them myself But in helping us to understand Wagner they are not of much use, except perhaps as showing how marvellously little Wagner owes to his sources. A single idea, an action, a word has flashed for a moment like lightning upon the fancy of the poet — there however to call forth quite a new picture, to shed light on some new connection unsuspected before. In general such questions are more of academic than of artistic interest. All interpretations of his works, whether allegorical, symbolical, religious or philosophical, I have preferred to avoid. When Asher communicated to Schopen- hauer his intention of interpreting Goethe's Faust by the light of his philosophy, expecting to meet with his enthusiastic approval, Schopenhauer answered drily : "Regarding your purpose of elucidating Faust with my philosophy I can say nothing, as everything depends upon the way in which it is done. Anything and everything can be illuminated by its light and the view will become clearer. It all depends upon your conception of the subject; you yourself must know whether you have conceived anything clear and true and new." The same is true of all interpretations. In certain cases they may bring out a very striking truth ; but as such things are not really contained in the work itself, but con- strued into it, everything must "depend upon the way in which it is done." An eminent example of successful treatment is Wagner's elucidation of the Oedipus dramas as showing the relation between the state and the individual {cf. IV. 70-80). It must be remarked that instead of bringing the great and eternal social problem to explain the works of the poet Sophocles, he follows the opposite course, and employs the poems to illustrate the fundamental problem of sociology. Wagner's commentators generally do the reverse. Provided that they have conceived something clear and new and true, no fault need be found with them for endeavouring to place their own convictions in a brighter light in this way. What we most earnestly protest against is that Wagner should be sacrificed in favour of an individual interpretation of this kind. Especially in a biography of Wagner such an attempt would be very much out of place. The artist has offered us his work as art, and as such we must accept it. " Oh men ! Feel rightly, act as you feel, be free, then we will have art ! " (U., 176). About the general arrangement of my work little need be said. A single General glance at the table of contents will show the very simple plan on which it is put ^^^^^^^^ together. From the very first, in the sketch of his life, I have endeavoured to observe my principle of utilizing, not as many, but 2&few facts as possible, and in 12 General Introduction this I had the great advantage of being able to transfer many biographical details to the second, third, and fourth chapters. Although the story of his life has by this means been reduced to a mere skeleton, I hope it will be all the more recog- nisable as the skeleton of a living body, warm with the glowing current of life. In the second chapter, that on his literary work and teaching, I have entered more into detail than I should otherwise have done, partly because no connected account of Wagner's teaching has ever yet been attempted, partly because here discussion is admissible. The division into politics, philosophy, regeneration and art is artificial and didactic. It was made for the sake of clearness, and claims no further significance. In the third chapter, on the other hand, that relating to his works, I have endeavoured to say as little as possible so as not to injure the bloom of these glorious productions of the human mind. The attentive reader will remark that I have been guided rather by a desire to bring the character and whole personality of the hero of my book, Richard Wagner, gradually nearer to him, than by any notion of assisting him to understand the dramas, which are much better able to speak for themselves. The earlier works have indeed served me in my endeavour to trace the development of the new dramatic ideal, the word-tone-drama, by living examples, and with the aid of as little theory as possible; the later ones in like manner have been used to explain the fundamental principles of Wagner's dramas. In the fourth chapter, Bayreuth, these three threads — the struggle, the thought, the art — which had been artificially separated for the sake of the exposition, are united together again; the Festival Play House at Bayreuth is at once the outcome and the monument of all three. Sources. , As for my authorities, jn the first place it will be evident from the most cursory glance through the pages of this book that I have always allowed R. Wagner to speak for himself as much as possible. That such a course was necessary in a discussion of his thoughts and his artistic productions need scarcely be pointed out. But with regard to biographical details it has been frequently asserted that Wagner's own account must not be accepted unreservedly. That is altogether untrue. To bring, as has actually been done, Goethe's Wahrheit und Dichtung into the argument can only be regarded as an attempt to mislead the uninstructed public. Goethe was sixty years old when he began his autobiography, and told of events which had occurred more than half a century before. Wagner's first Autobiographical Sketch dates from his thirtieth year, and from that time onwards we meet in his writings with numerous communications and explanations, always relating to events which have recently happened. For example, the most important contributions to our knowledge of Wagner's share in the Dresden insurrection of May 1 849, about which so much controversy has arisen, is to be found in his pamphlet Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde which was finished in August 1851, and appeared in print towards the end of the same year. The correctness of the statements which it contains is vouched for not only by Wagner's own absolute and uncom- General Introduction 13 promising love of truth, but also by a series of letters from his hand in the years 1847, 1848, 1849, 1850. Nobody can doubt the extraordinary tenacity of Wagner's memory; no person competent to form an opinion would question his unswerving integrity, simply for the reason that his whole life was a witness to it, and that he possessed not one particle of the wisdom of the serpent, even there where it is allowable and pardonable. "He who accuses me of insincerity must answer for it to God," the master writes in one of his private letters. I consider it unnecessary to discuss this point. It has been finely said by Carlyle, " Of a great man it is incredible he should have been other than true. . . . Sincerity^ a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic." Common natures cannot understand this, and will always believe the evidence of small men rather than of great ; this is not to be reniedied.^ For us it is of incalculable importance that we possess the most interesting accounts from Wagner himself, not only of his thoughts, but of all the most important events of his life, accounts which bring the external facts before us in two or three characteristic strokes without any ^ dwelling upon superfluous detail, while yet affording a deep insight into the Meister's heart. Wagner's extensive Autobiographical Reminiscences are not yet published, but the numerous notices contained in his works enable us to form a complete and sufficient picture of his life, his thought and his work. Wagner's writings, with his letters and his works, will always be the most important, I might more properly say the only source from which we shall be able to derive a deeper knowledge of this extraordinary man.^ One caution I must add with regard to the letters. When Wagner's friend, Theodor Uhlig died, the Meister wrote to his widow, "May I ask you to keep my letters to my departed friend — unless you wish to destroy them entirely — strictly to yourself? They are for no one else, and are for the most part of a very confidential nature ; much that they contain could only be rightly understood by Theodor."^ At a later date these letters to Uhlig were returned to Wagner, and they appeared in print with those portions omitted which he had personally indicated — those namely which were "for no one else" and which "could only be rightly understood by Uhlig." Such a thing is so self-evident; the right of every man to forbid that every heedless word which he has uttered shall be communicated to a world of strangers, as if it were the expression of his deepest convictions, is so obvious, that one would scarcely think it could be necessary to waste a word on such a matter of elementary justice But a most unfortunate indiscretion was committed with regard to this collection of letters to Uhlig. Copies of the originals were retained, and instead of being treated as strictly confidential, were 1 " Those who are furthest removed from us really believe that we are constituted just like them- selves, for they understand exactly so much of us as we really have in common with them, but do not know how little — how infinitesimally little this is of us." (L., ii. 126.) 2 Further bibliographical particulars will be found in the appendix to chap. ii. 3 "Das Orchester" (Dresden), September loth, 1885. 14 General Introduction sent abroad in every direction, handed over even to public museums, and are now ready to make known to a scandal-loving, half-informed public those very things which were only intelligible to the one friend, and perhaps only justifiable to him by reason of his own peculiar character and his special views. This one case may be taken as an example of many. At the present day a great man is beyond the law ; even people otherwise respectable think that in dealing with him everything is allowed. Besides this, Wagner's letters possess a very considerable pecuniary value, both as manuscripts and especially as material for publication ; now that he is dead the most secret outpourings of his heart are bought and sold as common merchandize. It would scarcely be thought possible for instance — except with Wagner, who has always been considered fair game . . . but "silence is gold." A certain method of studying Wagner's life always brings back to my mind the words of generous indignation with which Vilmar, the historian of German literature, characterizes a siiliilar class of Goethe students, who "pry out with eager inquisitiveness names and circumstances, often in the most childish, or even dishonourable way." To this point the Wagner student has — thank good- ness ! — not yet advanced. But from "childish inquisitiveness" some of them are only separated by a hair's breadth. That nothing can ever result from such a procedure, except scandal and more misunderstanding, is perfectly evident ; on such a soil nothing good can flourish. Vilmar adds, "in idle and unpoetic times idle and unpoetic heads may busy themselves with such frivolous trivialities and perhaps derive some profit." But one who wishes to know Richard Wagner, the poet, whose dream it was to " redeem " all mankind by making them artists, must not allow himself to be misled by the sensational discoveries and long-winded lucubrations of these "idle and unpoetic heads." On the other hand the many hundreds of letters which have been judiciously selected for publication by Wagner himself and by his heirs, as well as many more still awaiting publication, are amongst the most important documents for our knowledge of the master. One other inexhaustible source for Wagner's own words is unfortunately lost to us — his conversations. Wagner's gift of speech can perhaps be best imagined by comparing it to Beethoven's improvisation on the pianoforte; one must despair of ever forming a conception of it in any other way. Brilliancy, wit, fire are possessed by others, and are not so very uncommon; — the boundless fields of human culture, in which his great mind moved as in its proper home, were more remarkable, and could not fail to impress everyone — at first with a sense of awe ; whilst his own specific genius showed itself in the unexpected combinations of thoughts by which the most distant objects were suddenly brought near to us, confused and abstruse relations illuminated and placed in proper order. Of all this one can however obtain at least a notion from Wagner's writings. That which cannot be communicated, which could never even be fixed and reproduced by any who experienced it, is the pecuhar mood into which one was — at times- transported by these living words of his. At such moments the word itself was only the vehicle of a communication, the full import of which was revealed by the General Introduction 15 tone of the voice, the radiant eye, the gesture of the speaker ; there spoke not only a genius, but an artistic genius, and the most successful representations of art were sometimes eclipsed by the magic of his speech. It was for this reason that I compared it to Beethoven's improvisation. No one — not the master him- self — could retain the unique impression of his playing or communicate it to the later world. Even a mighty creator cannot give himself entirely; it is not possible for him to give forth all that is in him ; we are more likely to find this individual side of his being in his art works, and in those of Wagner as in those of Beethoven moments occur where it seems as if he must arise bodily before us . . . yet he does not arise ; something ineffable, unnamable, the secret of his personality, has gone with him for ever to the grave. It behoves the biographer of a great man therefore to observe the strictest modesty. What he was the world will never know. Besides Richard Wagner's writings, letters and works, I have obtained my knowledge of him principally from the works of five men. They are : Franz Liszt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Friedrich Glasenapp, Hans von Wolzogen and Heinrich von Stein. About Franz Liszt I shall have much to say later on. Those who wish to Liszt, know who Wagner was should first enquire of this noble spirit. I am here thinking less of those remarkable writings which laid the foundation of our knowledge of Tannhauser, Lohengrin, etc., than of his own attitude towards Wagner and towards Wagner's cause during forty years. How many fancies of idle heads are refuted by the conduct of this one man ! how much do we learn from it of the genius of whom Liszt wrote, " my joy consists in feeling with him, and following him ! " Liszt's letters to Wagner, as well as many of his other letters, are another indispensable source for the knowledge of Wagner. The so-called Wagner-literature is well-known to be enormous. Its value Nietzsche. however is not at all in proportion to its bulk, and unfortunately corresponds still less to the dignity of the subject. From amidst the sea of mediocrity one small work stands forth conspicuously, and certainly possesses undying classical worth. This is Nietzsche's Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. The pregnant thoughts, the unerring certainty with which everywhere the essential point is brought forward, the epigrammatic conciseness of this little master-work, the noble enthusiasm with which it is pervaded, and the finished beauty of the style, stamp it indisputably as the best that ever came from the pen of this remarkable man. The fact that soon afterwards, when his mind began to be darkened by influences in no way connected with Wagner or Bayreuth, he turned awav from the truth which he had so clearly discerned, to issue silly pamphlets full of nauseous trivialities directed against the man whose greatness he had pro- claimed in such unrivalled language, must not of course mislead us for a moment. Behind the phantasms which appeared before his great mind in its fearful malady the one form still lived on unclouded in his deepest soul, though not perceptible to his shattered intellect; not long before the final catastrophe Nietzsche I General Introduction Friedrich Njetzsche. journeyed to Lucerne, drove out to Triebschen, (where he had known Wagner) and sat there apart by the lake apparently occupied in trac- ing signs in the sand, but when his companion bent down to look into his face, she saw the tears streaming from his eyes.i I shall often have occasion to c]uote Nietzsche's Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. A perusal of this work is indispensable to all who wish to follow the question to its root. Glasenapp. Nothing could show more clearly the un- bounded " subjectivism " that lies at the bottom of the everlasting cry for "objectivism," than the manner in which Glasenapp's Leben Richard Wagner s has been criticized in some quarters. Glasenapp is an enthusiastic disciple and admirer of Wagner; he makes no secret of it, and so people say at once that his work is not "objective."' To me the principal thing in a detailed account of a man's life, that in which its objectiveness consists, appears to be the industry and trustworthiness of the author, and to have nothing to do with the standpoint from which he writes. And in these two respects Glasenapp deserves the highest praise. Those who do not agree with his estimate of Wagner are not obliged to adopt it ; the work will still remain, not only the only detailed account of the Meister's life which we possess, but one of the most trustworthy and minutely accurate biographies which German literature has to show. It relies throughout upon original documents and upon a conscientious critical sifting of all the evidence. The first edition of Glasenapp's book appeared in 1876; this already represented the work of many years. In the twenty years which have elapsed since then, the author — who appears as if predestined to this work both by his comprehensive education and more especially by the peculiar qualities of his character and his mind — has never ceased working, collecting and sifting. A second edition was published in 1882; of the third edition, which is greatly enlarged and re-written, the first volume appeared in 1894, so that I have been able to make use of 'it, and the first half of the second volume in 1896; the rest of the second and the third volumes are to follow soon. To this work of Glasenapp's - I would now refer my readers once for all. It is the only complete scientific biography of Richard Wagner that we have, and all who wish to obtain accurate information about ^ Revue des deux Mondes, 1894, p. 795. - " Das Leben Riclmrd Wagner s" 3"^ Ausgabe. Breitkopf and Hartel. An English translation by William Ashton Ellis is being published by Messrs Kegan Paul & Co. The following valuable works of reference are by the same author. Wagner Lexicon (Fundamental conceptions of Wagner's art and philosophy). Cotta 1S83. Wagner Encyclopadie (a discussion of various subjects by the light of Richard Wagner's philosophy). Fritzsch, 189 1. General Introduction 17 the particulars of his life must turn to it. My own work, the present one, is founded upon Glasenapp, and this in two respects. In the first place all the facts contained in my first chapter have either been taken from Glasenapp or verified by reference to him ; only with material which came from other sources and was not confirmed by him, I have stated my authority. I have not thought it necessary to do this every time that I made use of Glasenapp's bio- graphy. I do it here explicitly once for ah. Secondly the knowledge that everything in Glasenapp's work had been dealt with fully, and was entirely trust- worthy, was of great assistance to me in my endeavours to simplify my own work. Hundreds of facts and especially names have been omitted from my book. No blame can attach to me for this, for they can all be found in Glasenapp. These three, Liszt, Nietzsche, andGlasenapp, I recommend to all my readers to supplement the biographical account which he finds here. What the present work owes to Hans von Wol- zogen and Heinrich von Stein is not so much biographical material in its limited sense, though it is in a wider sense, in so far as it would have been scarcely possible for me to attain to a full compre- hension of Wagner's thoughts and aspirations without the aid of these accom- plished authors. Mirrors they are, in a certain sense, reflecting the light which is radiated from the great man. In saying this I mean nothing disparaging to them; quite the contrary. It is a remarkable fact that all Wagner's warmest adherents — with the exception of those executive artists whose art amply makes up for all that they lack in book-learning — have been men whose educational c Wolzogen and Stein. H. V. Ste]n. C. F. GLAbENAPr. H. Wolzogen. 1 8 General Introduction horizon was of the widest: Liszt, King Ludwig, Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Gobineau, Wolzogen, Stein.^ Each of these names, (and it would be easy to increase the list,) denotes one of those persons who resemble a small microcosm — whether it shows itself in poetic creation, as with Liszt, Baudelaire and Stein, or in any other line of life. Learned, truly learned they all were, filled with that kind of learning which does not consist in the addition of innumerable figures to one another, but in knowledge become flesh and blood, deep conviction and lofty enthusiasm. From them we can learn, if not what genius is, yet what true culture is, for in them "fulness of knowledge" has really become "fulness of understanding." Hans von Wolzogen, who distinguished himself in his earlier life as a student of Germanics and philology, has now for many years devoted himself more and more exclusively to the Wagner cause. It is not necessary to give a list of his numerous writings ; they will often be quoted in the further course of this book, and everyone who occupies himself closely with Wagner is sure to know them sooner or later. Heinrich v. Stein, if we except the share which he had in Glasenapp's Wagner Lexicon, has written nothing about Wagner or his works, but he is after Nietzsche by far the most important of those who have manifested, or rather turned to account, the influence of Richard Wagner's artistic and creative thoughts on various subjects. He died young, at the age of thirty, in 1887 ; had he lived he would have been counted among the very great ones of his people. His name is now beginning gradually to be known in wider circles — his Aesthetics of the German classical authors has been published by the Reclam Bibliothek — his Origin of our modern aestheticism by Cotta. These are accessible to all, and so are his poems, Helden und Welt and Die Heiligen. Many more of his writings — philosophical, philological, and critical — are buried in the collections of the Bayreuther Blatter, and are awaiting the day, not far distant, we may hope, when the collected writings of this genuine disciple of Wagner will be given to the world. Finally I must mention this monthly periodical itself, the Bayreuther Blatter, as a source of no little importance for the knowledge of Wagner. It was founded in 1878 by Wagner as the "monthly magazine of the Bayreuth Patronatverein," and has from the first been under the editorship of Hans V. Wolzogen, who has continued it since Wagner's death as " a German periodical in the spirit of Richard Wagner." It contains letters, sketches, etc. which have not been included in Wagner's collected writings, and numerous essays concerning his life, his thoughts and his work. The magazine is above all a living witness to the continued influence of Wagner's ideas on every subject.^ 1 Grafin Wolkenstein should also be named here. 2 Of the innumerable other writings about Wagner I will only name Tappert's Richard Wagner, sein Lehen und seine IVerke, Pohl's Richard Wagner, ein Vortrag, and Franz Muncker's Richard Wagner, eine Siizze seines Lehens und Wirkens. All three may be recommended as a first general introduction. Tappert's treatise is a marvel of conciseness, and is intellectually stimulating. Pohl's discourse is chiefly concerned with questions of art. Muncker's rather more voluminous work Franz Liszt. 20 General Introduction The As for the countless multitude of criticisms against Wagner scattered in opponents, various newspapers, magazines and pamphlets, I have been condemned to read a great many of them, and can testify that it is impossible to conceive a greater waste of time. Nothing is to be learned from them in respect of Wagner. ^ That ephemeral newspaper criticisms, even when collected into a book and strivmg to continue an existence which is both superfluous and illusory, are quite valueless, is obvious. But even the more serious work of such men as Felix Calm, Kostlin, etc., are a desert region. A strange curse of sterility has always rested upon all attempts, even the most meritorious, to write in opposition to Wagner. This is to a great extent due to the prevailing ignorance concerning Wagner's aims and intentions. What Wagner aimed at, what has been called the "Bayreuth idea" is so great and so far removed from the opinions and principles with which we are imbued by our education that it is really not easy to comprehend all at once. In a hundred years perhaps we shall be able to criticize it ; in the meantime we ought above all things to learn to understand it. There exists however another class of writers on Wagner, those whose criticism has consisted for the last fifty years in low abuse of the illustrious artist and his endeavours. With regard to them I need only quote the proverb of the ancient sages of India. "The malicious man sees in the possessor of a hundred virtues only his one fault ; the hog finds only mud in the pond of lotuses." Would but the world take Goethe's words to heart concerning- this question of criticism: "Before a work comes into existence nobody has any conception of its possibility; once it is there, praise and blame can only be subjective." The same is true of an extraordinary man. Who could have foreseen the possibility of such a man as Richard Wagner in our sober, industrial, scientific century, in our century of great armies of railways and newspapers .'' Who had any "conception of the possibility" of his new drama, the Word-Tone- Drama? Nobody. Tannhdmer, Lohengrin, Tristan und Isolde, die Meister- singer, Der Ring des Nibelungen, have all, one after the other, been declared impossible in the greatest theatres of Germany and by the Areopagus of experts. Who had any " conception of the possibility " of festival performances taking the place of the ordinary happy-go-lucky productions of our usual town repertoire ? Nobody! When Wagner tried to institute them in Munich in 1865 the whole country rose against an idea which seemed so insane. Who had a " conception of the possibility " of building a German festival play-house, to which lovers of art should flock in thousands from all ends of the world, in an out-of-the-way pro- vincial town ? No one ! Who would have believed that at the present time, when money counts for everything, an artist could refuse millions that he might provide his people and the world at large with a home of art, on a foundation of the purest idealism, to the absolute exclusion, on principle, of all idea of pecuniary is perhaps the most suitable for many, since it treats of the historical and literary part of the subject, from which, without being able to acquire a deep knowledge of Richard Wagner, one may yet form a fair external picture of him. General Introduction 21 gain.i No one ! This is now incontestible ; all the others were wrong. Even a Liszt at first doubted the possibility of Lohengrin; even a mighty and vic- torious emperor could not bring himself to believe in the possibility of a festival play-house at Bayreuth. ^ Wagner has proved right ; that of which others could form no " conception," he had long ago seen as a living fact within himself Many of the objects for which he strove extended far beyond the term of his own life, away into the distant future. Is it not for us to reflect over many things which he taught, for which he struggled, and for which he intended that his Bayreuth should be merely the first stone, the foundation ? And will it not be well for us to consider, whether what seems impossible may not yet be possible ? We can form no " conception," for instance, of the leading part which, according to Wagner's conviction, will belong to pure, genuine, uncommercial art in benefitting human society, but the recognition of our own incapacity in this respect does not help us much. With Wagner, as with Goethe, we learn of what very secondary importance is "conceptual" thinking. The conception is, and always must be, traceable back to an experience, to something which has once been seen; but what Wagner aims at, the great idea of "regeneration" which runs through his whole life, he sees as the artist sees his unfinished work, of which before it is actually there, "no one has any conception" that it is possible. Like his own Wotan he can say of himself : " Doch was noch nie sich traf Danach trachtet mein Sinn ! " And just as little does it follow that, because we can often form no distinct logical conception of Wagner's teachings, of which I have given a short resume in the last section of this book, under the heading " the Bayreuth idea," they may not still express a truth. That would be to deny the possibility of all new life. On the contrary, I believe that many who trust themselves unreservedly to the leading of his great and lofty mind, who follow the course of Wagner's thought to its deepest depths, where it most diverges from the trodden path, and have consequently received the mighty impression of his art in all its fulness, will in time become convinced of the truth of Nietzsche's words when he says, that Wagner is not only a great artist, but that "he is one of the very great powers of civilization." But to manifest itself as a power, the thought must first establish itself in the hearts of others. This remark of Nietzsche's, however, has in it something one-sided, and The already betrays the morbid tendency of his penetrating mind. He could see in ^^^^ the brightest light what was hidden from others, but he was himself dazzled by the light. He would have been nearer to the truth, and would have expressed a far grander thought, if he had written: Wagner serves a great power of civilization. Wagner has often been compared to a meteor; there is not an 1 Cf. chap, iv., the section on the festival plays. 2 Cf. p. 65 and the Index. 22 General Introduction atom of truth in this simile. In the course of the last few centuries a "great power of civilization" has arisen— along a very different path to the bloody one of political history— that is German art. The soul of this art is music ; its necessary, most perfect form, the drama. The Germans have, partly owing to the geographical position of their country, partly, and more especially, to their own powers of assimilation, received artistic impressions from every side, which they have industriously worked up; but a race so peculiarly constituted, and so unrivalled in its own special domain, was never intended merely to copy the Greeks, the Italians, the French and the English. The German had to find his own special art, one which had never been known before, born of an inner necessity, and of his own special capabilities, an art which should truly and perfectly reflect his soul. But the highest art is not conceivable without the word ; the poet is prince amongst the artists ; the others only obey him, even where they seem to create independently. This was true even with the Greeks, who lived almost entirely through the eye; how much more is it true of the ^ Germans, for whom the thought denotes just what the sight denoted for the Hellenes ! Would it be possible that the longings of the Germans for an art of their own should be satisfied only by music ? That would be much the same as if the Greeks had tried to make works or plastic art — graceful, grand, monstrous forms of every kind — out of their own consciousness, without their foundation, without the all-powerful co-operation of the only creative force in art — namely poetry. The German people has long ago acknowledged that its greatest poets are its musicians ; they alone have something quite of their own, incomparable, exclusively German ; — no other productions come up to those of a Bach or of a Beethoven. With the poets of German literature, on the other hand, what attracts us most has always been their personality. A Sophocles, a Shakespeare found a form ready to hand, in which they could at once produce the most perfect creations possible to the genius of their people. It was not so with Goethe and Schiller. They had to try every kind of form — antique and modern — and in their daily lives we find them continually busied in seeking for an art, which they long for, and are every moment hoping to grasp. This is the new, distinctive, incomparable German Drama. This drama could only be achieved by the musician, for only in music does the soul of the German attain its fullest ex- pression. Not only could a German musician do this, but he had to do it ; for just as the poet was despairing because he could not find the proper "expression," so the musician too was despairing, because after he had brought this " expres- sion" to its highest perfection, he was unable to use it in fashioning a poem which should be thinkable, visible, and unmistakably intelligible. This problem was solved, and with it the problem of the German Drama, directly me musician realized that music can assume bodily form only in the Drama; In the section on Wagner's art teaching, I have tried to show how the poets and the musicians of Germany were equally in search of a new, all-embracing art form, and how the new drama grew out of the inner necessity, and the richest capabilities of all these General Introduction 23 great men, not out of the arbitrary yf«/ of a single individual. Both, the necessity and the capability, were united in the heart and the head of the poet-musician Richard Wagner. One of the greatest things in Wagner appears to me to be the absence of everything fortuitous and arbitrary about him. He could not have been other than he was ; his dramatic ideal was the logical outcome of the whole past. We shall see in the course of this book that logical development is besides highly characteristic of Wagner's own artistic productivity. This fact again is one which should confirm our faith in Wagner. His own strong individuality is controlled and dominated by something unindividual^ historical. That power of civilization of which Nietzsche speaks, has been the slow growth of centuries ; it has been nourished from a hundred roots and is in a certain sense embodied in this man. A close study of Wagner's art and of his philosophy is therefore of far-reaching interest. I would now ask the earnest reader of my book to follow the life work of To the Wagner and to listen to his words with frank and sincere sympathy. Carlyle has reader, already taught us that this is the only way to learn his secret, and to learn the secret of a Richard Wagner is to enrich one's own life. Even though we may think that here or there he has erred, though we seem to have discovered that even his wide intellect was subject to those limitations which hedge in every individuality, thus giving it its own peculiar physiognomy, but which still cannot be regarded as limitations, is that a reason for us to remain blind to the fact that we can also learn from a man of such pre-eminent intellectual greatness, even when he errs ? And who is the man who asserts that Richard Wagner erred ? What Wagner has done we know ; his work testifies for him, and inspires confidence in his judgment ; let his opponent show his deeds ; then will we gladly listen to him. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Richard Wagner once wrote to Liszt, " When one sees how few things can hold their ground ; when we meet again and again with the same craze for super- ficiality, the same incredible frivolity and morbid love of pleasure, one's own earnestness often appears in a very comical light." And yet it is in this spirit of earnestness that the present book has been written and is now offered to those who are desirous to strive with the author after " fulness of understanding." <^, r/>J ■77«»/ 59 / / First Chapter Richard Wagner's Life Full measure and full scope His, life twofold did bless : In suffering, in success. Gottfried von Strassburg. Photogravure Bruc"kxn.anrL al ira Hause ■V^''a"lmfrie d , Bayreii-tln. Introduction Not to discover what is new, but to see what has been discoyered with my own eyes. Goethe. Richard Wagner's excellent biographer, Karl Friedrich Glasenapp, requires The no less than four octavo volumes, each containing four or five hundred pages of Scheme. pretty close print, to relate the events of Wagner's life, and has certainly not gone too much into detail. Few artists have had such an eventful life, and in this, as in many other points, Wagner resembles the Italian painters of the best period. Through his veins flows a blood hot and impetuous, such as is seldom to be found in a Northerner. He pursued his end from town to town and from country to country. To-day a conductor in a German " provincial slough " — to-morrow at the point of destitution in the great city of Paris. To-day a court- oflScial of the King of Saxony — to-morrow a fugitive in a strange country with a warrant of arrest against him ; to-day without a single ray of hope, but one step removed from death in sheer despair — to-morrow the declared friend and protege of a mighty monarch ; to-day buried in the deepest solitude of the Alps, fleeing from the world, and living for his art alone — to-morrow the builder of the Bayreuth festival-house, receiving emperors and kings as his guests, and surrounded by enthusiastic multitudes assembled from every part of the world. Wagner's life is itself an exciting drama ; not a year passes that is not full of interesting events. The limits, as well as the whole plan, of the present work prevent me from giving a detailed account of all those events ; I intend therefore to give something 28 First Chapter quite different, namely a sketch, a drawing in outline. That can only be done by following a course essentially different to that of chronology.^ In a short and concise chronological account there would remain nothing but names and dates ; it would be a mere skeleton. An outline' drawing, however, may indicate the characteristic features of a strongly marked individuality in a few strokes — as is proved by the sketches of all great painters. Perhaps it will be found that the sketch, just because it has to neglect so many external details, is able to present the inner life, the essential part (as Schopenhauer expresses it) with all the more force. ^ But here we have to do, not with the eye, not with an organ which is able to perceive the complex lines of a drawing as a united whole, but with the reason. We must therefore start with unity as a form, that is, as 2i formula ; for reason has something geometrical, a tendency to regularity in its way of constructing. Any variations which we may discover later on will still be intelligible, if they are only reducible to an original "scheme," which is fixed, once for all. Is not actual life, in its purely external course, in a certain sense a scheme, in which the individuality utters itself, not in its own unclouded nature, but in accordance with the type which surrounding circumstances have impressed upon it.? The schematic method of treatment is therefore not without a certain inner justification. I intend in this Introduction to offer a very simple scheme by which the reader may obtain a convenient preliminary survey of Wagner's life. I purposely call it a scheme, in order to emphasize the fact that such a reduction of the end- lessly complex threads of life to a few simple lines is a more or less arbitrary operation of the reason. In the succeeding sections of the chapter I shall enter more into particulars, whereby the scheme will lose its sharp corners and become recognizable in its real nature, as a mere instrument for the construction of the image. General The less we load our memories with dates and names, the more vividly will symmetry the picture form itself in our minds. A single date, and a single number will for ner's hfe. ^^^ present sufHce to give a preliminary view of Wagner's life. Both the number and the date happen to be such that they impress themselves easily upon the memory at once, without any particular mnemotechnical artifice. In the year of Germany's liberation from a foreign yoke, the year of the great '■'■Vdlkerschlacht^' the battle of Leipzig, 1813, Wagner, the most German of all artists was born. At that time the foreign enemy was driven from the soil of the fatherland, but his spirit still continued to rule mightily in Germany. 1 A chronological table of the principal events of Wagner's life will be found in the appendix to this chapter. 2 " To the inessential part of life belongs the exact determination of the events and actions, the material in which the empirical character shows itself. ... So for example it is inessential whether a man plays for nuts or for crowns ; whether he cheats or plays honestly, that is essential." (Schopenhauer.) Richard Wagner's Life 29 No one has struggled more resolutely than Wagner against the spell, which was not to be broken by cannons, and which rested as a curse especially upon the German theatre. Now-a-days German art — German poetry, German music, and above all, the German drama — are pre-eminent in the whole world j every year countless thousands make their way from every corner of the world to Germany for the sake of its art, and the French themselves are the most ardent enthusiasts for Bayreuth. Leader and conqueror in this second Volkerschlacht, or battle of nations, is Richard Wagner. To forget the year of Wagner's birth — 1813 — is therefore impossible; one has only to remember that he, the one who was destined to lead German art to victory, was born in the year in which the enemy was vanquished by German arms, and herewith the foundation laid of Germany's future greatness. The Psalmist says in a well-known verse : " the days of our years are threescore years and ten," and Wagner's life lasted exactly seventy years. \ The year 1813 ^""^ the number 70 therefore give the abstract form of " Wagner in time," if I may so speak. Not only do they give us the initial and final points — 18 13 and 1883 — but we obtain from both a third decisive date. For it so happened that Wagner's life consisted of two symmetrical, and exactly equal parts. Just thirty-five years after his birth, and thirty-five years before his death, an incisive and decisive change took place in his circum- stances, permanently affecting both the external features of his future destiny and the utterances of his inner being in many essential respects ; the division of Wagner's life into two equal epochs can scarcely be called artificial, so exactly does it answer to the outward events and inner course of his development. The change occurred, as has been said, precisely at the middle of his life — in his six- and-thirtieth year therefore. On May 9th, 1 849, Wagner had to flee from Dresden, where he was Hof- Kapellmeister, and shortly afterwards from Germany, to live for many years in a strange country, with a warrant against him as a "politically dangerous indi- vidual." His banishment from Germany is the visible line dividing the two halves of his life. In this scheme I must leave all inner processes of developmenlj out of account; they would only be misleading: external, visible facts suffifce to divide the two halves of Wagner's life from each other, and in this respect we shall find that one point possesses special importance. Up to that date, May 9th 1 849, Wagner had lived, as we all do, accepting society as he found it, and had at twenty years of age chosen as his profession that of a musical conductor, in which he attained the honourable position of a Hof-Kapellmeister. After that 9th of May 1849, Wagner never occupied any official post, and this on principle. He himself writes : "I turned my back decisively on a world to which in my inmost being I had long ceased to belong " (iv. 406). In what sense these words are to be understood will come to light gradually in the course of our story. For the present they suffice to show that he withdrew from public official life of set purpose, and not from any freak of First Chapter 30 destiny, or caprice of his own. It was with full consciousness of his act that Wagner turned his back upon society, especially upon our modern pubhc art; if he would preserve his own independence he could no longer eat its salt. To influence it as he wished, it was necessary to be outside it; he recognized that only by ceasing to use his musical abilities as a handicraft could he hope to devote them to the service of his poetic invention ;— in short, his retirement from public life as a professional musician expresses a decisive moment, and we are distinctly justified in retaining, as a part of our scheme, an external fact, in which an inner process of his development is so clearly reflected. Wagner's life begins then in the year 1813, it lasts seventy years, and is made up of two equal epochs, externally and internally differing from each other in essential respects. Detailed Besides the division into two parts, his life shows a further very curious division, symmetry in its details. Now that we have a clear perception of its course in time^ we are able, without going far out of our way, to bring it before us and impress it upon our minds in space. Each half of his life can be divided into four periods, according to the places in which he successively lived. The periods are not of equal length, but they have the advantage for the imagination and for the memory, that each single period of the second epoch runs parallel to the corresponding one in the first, and contrasts with it. In the first half we may distinguish the following four periods: I. 1813-1833. Residence in his narrower Saxon home (Dresden and Leipzig) ; it is the period of early youth, during which the elements of artistic utterance are acquired and the first attempts in poetry and music are made — choice of opera as a profession. II. 1833-1839. First wanderings — entry into public life — acts as a conductor in several provincial theatres in Germany '(Wiirzburg, Magdeburg, Konigsberg, Riga) — learns the practical technique of the theatre. III. 1839- 1842. First voluntary residence in a foreign country (Paris) — vain struggles to make his way in the great city. IV. 1842- 1849. Dresden — engaged as Hof-Kapellmeister (i.e. con- ductor at a court theatre) at one of the first theatres of Germany. In the second half we may distinguish the following four periods : I. 1 849- 1 859. Banished from his native country — resident in Zurich — commence- ment of his full, conscious maturity as a man — writes the books which are the foundation of his art-doctrine (Oper und Drama, etc.) — final retirement from the operatic stage. II. [859-1866. Second wanderings — performance of his works on the stages of several large towns (Paris, Vienna, Munich) — driven by necessity to make endeavours to resume his connection with the modern stage. III. 1866-1872. Second voluntary residence in a foreign country (Triebschen, near Lucerne) — entire seclusion from the world. IV. 1872-1883. Bayreuth — build- ing of the festival play-house — founding of the German festival plays. Limits of I think this division speaks for itself, and scarcely requires a commentary. It the scheme, only remains for me to repeat that the scheme is expressly intended to relate Richard Wagner's Life 31 exclusively to external facts. The dates and the places of residence form, so to speak, the abscissae and the ordinates of the complex curve of life. But the most superficial consideration of the question will show how closely these external divisions correspond to inner processes, inasmuch as each change is the result of an act of Wagner's own free will. But it must not be overlooked that these acts of the will are mere symptoms, and that there could be nothing more preposterous than to separate the act from its slowly-matured motives. To attempt to give a schematic view of a man's intellectual development would be simple madness. It would, for instance, be wrong to lay special stress upon the fact that in each period of Wagner's early life two works were composed for the stage ; in the first a great tragedy and a pastoral play, in the second Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot, in the thir/i Rienzi and Der Fliegende Hollander, in the fourth Tannhduser and Lohengrin. It is interesting for mnemotechnical reasons to know this, but many of the works — e.g. Lohengrin — had lived in the imagination of the author for years before he wrote them. Amidst the in- extricable tangle of influences at work no one could find out the cause which most contributed to its appearing in the particular year 1847. It is not even always possible to distinguish cause and effect from one another. Rienzi for instance one might suppose to have been influenced directly by his experiences at the Paris Grand OpSra, but in fact Rienzi was half finished when he first went to Paris. In the second half of his life such unauthorized attempts would lead still more astray. For example, if one tried to connect Tristan with the first. Die Meistersinger with the second, Der Ring des Nibelungen with the third, Parsifal with the fourth period, it is true that the dates of completion of these works would afford some justification to such a view. But in reality the composition of each of them was spread over a number of years : Die Meistersinger from 1845-1867, Der Nibelungenring from 1848-1874, Parsifal from 1854-1882. Only Tristan was written within one period, 1 854-1 859. Let the scheme therefore be taken for what it is — a convenient means of obtaining a preliminary survey of Wagner's life and of fixing it in the memory. 34 First Chapter is restored ; when we see a man, gifted with the keenest intuition for the souls of the most distant peoples, yet often remaining blind to the intellectual greatness of those around him, it is evident that we behold the drawbacks of a remarkable indi- viduality, conscious of its own value. Adolf Wagner lacked this strong backbone ; he mistook nothing ; he understood everything, from the ancient Greek tragedy to Burns and Byron, from the abstract metaphysics of Giordano Bruno to the history of painting. The infinite capacity of his artistic heart, the wide range of his intellect, included everything in its sympathetic embrace. His own per- .^™ k ■» i* ^^ i'v»i'ir'"itiiSIS&i8™ ■'M^^BBSSm ^^^^^H^^' HKiHHHK ^^«^^^^H ^^^HnP'' vflf^l :-;^aHHp)| ^m - f ^^*. ■57,..-.r„^.C:,^.. - 7 ^ ..4, .'.;_„,,'.. ./^iy'.,' ,-y%'>', y ■... r'>';,, .. ' -.\.- .-.''.'.■. ■ /'....,... //Z. ..,f,-.y.. ,.'<:■>. ■■•■•'•-,■ ^^■' <■' .'.■j- ,;. »--,../ ^^3^. .,?,'-,-_;, ;. ., ,'.,..- ^f^. ' - \.__^ Adolf Wagner. sonality was obscured by this process, and thus we see him employed chiefly in work for its own sake, in erudite editions, commentaries and translations. ^ 1 Of his own numerous writings, which extend over the most various fields, from essays on the Greek poets down to novels and comedies, the most important seem to be his Biograph'ien der Reformatoren and his study Zivei Epochen der Modernen Poesie (a parallel between Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio on the one hand, and Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland on the other). He was also an industrious contributor to the first edition of Brockhaus' Encyclopedia. His translations extend from Sophocles and Caesar to Lange's History of Painting. His complete edition of the works of Giordano Bruno in the original languages (Latin and Italian) is celebrated. The Italian classics he has edited under the title Parnasso Italiano. To him too we owe the first complete edition of the poems of Robert Burns in English. RICHARD Wagner's mother. Richard Wagner's Life 35 Nevertheless he is an interesting person, especially because of his near relation- ship to thje man who possessed an equally universal intellect united to a creative gift such as is possessed only by the few greatest men of all times. It is remarkable too that (according to the literary historian Kurz) the best of Adolf Wagner's own works are his comedies, so that his talent too lies in the direction of the stage. Possibly Richard Wagner's attitude of protest against the disgraceful state of modern art had its first origin in his old uncle's Theater und Publikum. Of Wagner's mother I have little to relate. She was an excellent woman and an excellent mother, and was idolized by her son Richard ; ^ the memory of her and of her motherly affection strengthened him in all the storms of his life ; on the very evening before his death he was speaking of her. All who knew her mention her in sympathetic words. After the death of her second husband, Ludwig Geyer, her house still remained the centre of a little circle of artists and lovers of art. We may well suppose that the simple woman possessed a charm that was all her own. Her portrait expresses grace, wit, and good judgment. Ludwig Geyer married the widowed mother in 1814, and thenceforward supplied the place of httle Richard's father. He was in every respect worthy of the warm friendship which Friedrich Wagner had felt for him. In obedience to the wish of his father, Geyer had studied law, but after that he followed his own bent and became a painter and an actor. As a portrait painter he acquired such fame that he was engaged to paint the royal families in Munich and in Dresden. As an actor he was especially remarkable for the versatility of his talent; on every German stage he was a welcome guest. Eventually Geyer's talent for singing was discovered by Carl Maria v. Weber, who liked him to sing in his operas. He also wrote comedies with some success.^ For us the interest of this amiable and accomplished man lies chieHy in the fact of his marriage with Richard Wagner's mother, in consequence of which the future Meister was from the first surrounded by theatrical life. It will be remembered that Friedrich Wagner, Richard Wagner's father. First im- had grown up amongst Government officials. His passion for the stage pressions. had come to show itself by degrees; the son, on the other hand, owing to his relationship with the actor Geyer, almost literally grew up on the stage. At an age when other children scarcely know what a theatre is, Richard Wagner frequented it regularly. If his mother wanted to keep him at home in the evening to do his lessons, he wept until he had got leave to run off to the theatre. Geyer in fact was so pleased with the little art-enthusiast that he liked to take him to the rehearsals. His parents' house too was mostly frequented by actors, and the stage was a constant subject of conversation. Practical experience is said to be the most indispensable thing for a theatrical 1 See the beautiful letter to his mother in Tappert, p. 72. 2 His Bethlehemitischer Kindermord has lately been published in Reclam's Universalbibliothek. 38 First Chapter etnntig. ttn 23. aprir, 1831 C t ft t t 2 M i I. DmtttnttvaOvtt: Slurmo^oli t)0Il6pl^nIil1{■ !Or^ ffllcrftngufi ju BrrElaiw ton aOildtlm ^nulltt » ff ©Cfltc 11116 arir, ooh Sidjart aBdgmr, gifungm pom DHt. aBuflb./. JBilb; i)tfrov'flSlbr«l)it5, eon anOrto* foni • o « CtnSitiffbraiiti, eon ContfUa * » -. « •. fllKitariDtinbark, anSbaOpfr: 3au|l, eon Spoftr, torflrtrafldi Don ^nm 3,511. bcT, Opnufaitqcr oud^ioi. SUt: jJUiSraur, na(t Scnif rd jun. o « ♦ 3 ID e i t t r S M i !• ffonjfrt Outirrnirr, dch ^I'l^img Hcmffl in firr auction, oom MidjatO 31d6« «■ » SBflO; 5)tr Wf n^lIn^f » Olftjitr, nod) $. Hoam * * • 2)ftSIiiiflcIftf)mirf- ^aroBifouf ©djillftSffllDrffoon ©tmlff, o » fflemanjc, auflUftOpn: eurpombf, do" SQt&tr, gcfuiigm Mn $(rrn ei^tabff. Pifll rin (infulbijrr Woman, ton ©opSof, (ouf 3nIoi'a(ii) «■ » Bllb: ©a6 3nn(r(finfraau(rn(hib(, eon CDinfliuJ »t«o. • • » SadCmprr^lunadrf^rttbrn, pong. Jfino o tt On Cf)cflan6 a « Omrrturr jn 3ii[iuS f 4r'"" * »iie: $f)iltmDn unbiBaudd, iwA 3otob 3ort(ui« » « • Btirvon^dcciiii, gtruiigni Don SUt. ^i()oT. JBtU: Cftnblt^tUmtT^altung, oon siDtlan OMt * • • gteSto anttiiotrn • » , , ^, 1)CI, »fl« mii6 gelttarft mtrOfit. 3) AiiiWcRriimpfc imB Siiil>ci<^(nHifisu5(. 3)0Ie Wrtem aUntt. 4) Btr wtrocitlfcltt SiicljMc. 5) Sia ©ditrot unB Bcr fflarbltr. 6) !Dd« SScrtiT. 7)5)rr5Giirm.fflottor. S) iDi( iDidj'istn ©ruiiN. 9) Sllon muB fii^ju ^c:fm ls^< m. lOjSifriulKttacltSliinl'ill. ll)StiJi'3)"Mn. 12) Oil fofoitc JlaBOit. abr^ltttnocir. « « tmitttam wm $nrn SXclamatOt @OltlVig. • • « Sll IttmCniSilMr KM wm $(fttcotnnuIc[ ficrrn Sitmta tcllilc First essays in art. antiquity will be felt when we regard it in the light of the other determining influence of his life — his early familiarity with the IDCCldntdfDl^tUin*. theatre. It was the dramatic authors— *-. Aeschylos and Sophocles — who engaged the boy's attention, and at thirteen Wagner learned English on his own account, in order to read Shakespeare in the original. The child who had grown up on the stage at once comprehended a Sophocles and a Shakespeare, if not in their deepest, yet in their truest meaning; not as ornaments of literature, but as stage poets, as artistic creators, who could only be fully under- stood from the standpoint of the stage. For him these men were not distant objects, to be wondered at and philologically com- mented upon ; rather what they said was for him the nearest, the most intelligible thing in the world. Another result of his early and intimate acquaintance with the greatest of dramatists was the habit of idealizing his own childish impressions of the theatre; they showed him dimly that the stage was a measureless artistic force, and contained the possibility of the very highest within itself. Looking back at these first twenty years, which were of such decisive im- portance, we shall see that his own brilliant gifts were seconded in the most remarkable way by external circumstances ; his early acquaintance with the theatre, the intercourse with theatrical artists, the enduring impression of Carl Maria v. Weber's conducting, the singing lessons of his sisters, the daily visits to his stepfather's studio, the constant alternation between reading dramatic masterpieces and the very good representations of the works of Shakespeare, Schiller and Goethe, as well as those of Iffland, Kotzebue and other less important authors ; later too the frequent and excellent musical performances in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, and the stimulating society of his learned uncle, Adolf Wagner, who had mastered nearly the whole literature of the world, who was himself a theatrical poet, and held very strong views about the reform of our theatres — all this combined to form and stimulate his mind with impressions purely and entirely artistic. 1 shall speak more fully of his artistic development during this youthful period in my third chapter. Here it is suflScient to note that Wagner was a 9. SScrfffaung im fe*8ien gRonat • abonnf nitnt. 2)ie !pte(ft finb n)l( g troJM'lii. Sfnfans un (> U(r. ente (in 3Sintd auf 9 U6r. itttAii urn $ Ubr. SRontaj, »(ii 23. aptil: Sc« g4lfntt« SStlUt/ Opre fa ttti Slufjfistn, ton !!lirilif. 3liu|i( son naW«'- Richard Wagner's Life 39 poet from the beginning, a poet in words and in tones ; that he regarded him- self from the very first as, beyond all doubt, destined solely and entirely for an artistic career, that of the stage, and that from this belief he never swerved either to the right or to the left, nor ever took any other possibility into account. When only twelve years old he composed a prize poem which was printed at the instance of his teachers at the Kreuzschule. At this time he began to write tragedies. His musical gift too was awakened under the impression of Weber's music, and soon afterwards by the mightier influence of Beethoven. At sixteen he tried his hand in a "pastoral play," in which he wrote words and music together. This led to more serious studies, specially musical, which he underwent with Weinlig the Cantor of the Thomas-schule during his student-time. As exercises in the handhng of the musical apparatus he composed quite a number of compositions, mostly for full orchestra (a symphony, overtures, &c.). Several of these were performed in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, not without success. These compositions and performances belong to the years between 1830 and 1832. In the beginning of 1832 we see our artist, now aged nineteen, already returning to his own proper field, the stage, with a Scena and Aria; it was performed in the Leipzig Court theatre, and in the summer of 1832 he made the sketch of an opera, Die Hochzeit^ which was never completed. Soon afterwards he entered upon his practical theatrical career as chorus director, and wrote his first work for the stage, Die Feen. 2- 1833-1839. It was a fortunate circumstance for Richard Wagner, that when he attained an age at which he could commence his practical career, his brother Albert held a post as actor, singer, and stage-manager at the Wiirz- burg theatre. Richard went there on his brother's invitation in January 1833 to earn his first experience as director of choruses. Here, at the very outset of his career, he displayed that restless activity which dis- tinguished him until his death ; he is an example of Hobbes' assertion that three quarters of genius is industry. Besides his duties on the stage, we hear of his compos- ing additional pieces for his brother to insert in his parts, and assisting at the Mtisik- verein ; above all the words and the music ^A^ WUrzburg. Albert Wagner. 4° First Chapter Wagner's nearest relations. of his first great opera, Die Fcen^ were composed during these few months at Wiirzburg. This occasion of his brother Albert doing him a real service in inviting him to Wurzburg affords me an opportunity of saying a few words regarding Richard Wagner's relations to his brothers and sisters and the other members of his family. In reality none of his immediate kinsfolk play any real part in his life, or at least none that is sufficient to entitle them to special consideration on the part of the world in general. They never showed any true appreciation of his genius, and Rosalie Wagner. it is probably for this reason that in the many hours of bitter want which Wagner endured in later years, they never accorded him that active assistance which might haA^e entitled them to a share in his glory. A single bright exception is his eldest sister, Rosalie Wagner. In the story of Richard Wagner her name deserves to be written in golden letters. A highly gifted actress, and a lovable woman, she was perhaps the first of all human beings to whom the greatness of Richard Wagner was revealed ; be this as it may, she used the privilege of a sister ; she loved her brother, she supported him, she inspired him with courage, Richard Wagner's Life 41 and when others laughed sceptically, her faith remained unshaken. But this generous friend died in 1837. Wagner was connected with the Brockhaus family of publishers through two of his sisters ; they were often in a position to render him real service, but unfortunately the great firm neglected the oppor- tunity of earning undying fame ; at a later date it even allowed the pages of its celebrated Konversations Lexikon to be employed in spreading untrue reports, against which Wagner had to enter public protest. In spite of this he remained firmly attached to his sisters, especially to Ottilie Brockhaus. To his half-sister Cacilie Geyer — afterwards married to the publisher Avenarius — he was bound by pleasant recollections of early childhood and of Paris, but in no case do we find a closer community of feeling, at least with reference to the great works of his life. Only with his nieces, Johanna and Franziska Wagner — the daughters of his brother Albert — does Wagner seem to have felt any real bond of unity ; but even the celebrated singer, Johanna Jachmann- Wagner had but a very superficial feeling for her great uncle ; the true blood of an artist flowed in her veins ; in Elisabeth, and in other parts her performance was un- rivalled, but the great poet was and remained a stranger to her. We can under- stand Wagner's admission in the fifties that he was indifferent to the whole family. "Almost the only exception is Franziska," he says himself This excellent actress, Franziska Wagner, later the wife of the composer Alexander Ritter, is perhaps the only member of the family who followed the career of her great kinsman with real intelligence and sympathy ; but circumstances did not allow her to play any part in his life. In. January 1834 Wagner returned from Wurzburg to Leipzig. He had Years of finished Die Feen on the first day of the new year. In his native town, where his wandering, first attempts had been received in such a friendly spirit, he hoped to get this, his first opera, accepted. Fortune seemed to smile on him ; not only did his sister Rosalie, who was then engaged at the Stadttheater, along with many other friends, speak in his behalf, but the attentipn of several influential literary men, among them Heinrich Laube, was attracted to his extraordinary talent, and they supported him in the papers. The director of the theatre was himself not unwilling to accept the work for representation. But here, with his very first work for the stage, his path was beset with the inexorable fate which pursued him throughout his life. It at once took a form characteristic of his entire career : the stage manager, Franz Hauser, a friend of Mendelssohn's, con- demned the work, because "the whole tendency was distasteful to him," and declared as a reason for this opinion of his, which was decisive, that Wagner displayed "complete ignorance of the way to handle his resources," and that with him "nothing was to be found which was wrung from the heart." Literally the same objections which at that time were still made in those very circles against Wagner's great prototype Beethoven! Hauser's opmion of Wagner's objectionable tendency reminds us of Mendelssohn's remark 1 1 Cf. the work of Mendelssohn's bosom friend A. B. Marx : Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben, ii. 135. F 42 First Chapter about the ninth symphony : " Sie macht mir kein Plaisir." ^ Die Feen, a work full of deep poetic and musical beauties, warmed with the life-blood of this youth of twenty years, was not performed. Under the impression of this first bitter disappointment Wagner journeyed (end of July 1834) to Magdeburg, where he had been engaged as Conductor. There he remained till the spring of 1836, when the theatre became insolvent. Here, in this extraordinary theatre, the director of which was " in a state of perennial bankruptcy", Wagner first had an opportunity of exercising his unusual talent for conducting on a more extended scale, and he was also able to exert an influence on the mise-en-scene of the numerous operas which were put upon the stage; his success is attested by the newspapers of those days. A single performance of a second work which he had composed in the mean- time — Das Liebesverbot — was less successful ; the company was just in process of being dissolved. In their love for the Kapellmeister^ the singers remained a few days longer in Magdeburg without pay, and studied the opera with all their might and main. "Still," Wagner writes, "notwithstanding all my exertions, the singers only half knew their parts by heart. The performance was like a dream to everybody; not a soul could get any idea of the thing." At the second performance everything was to go better, but just before it began a quarrel arose between two of the singers ; it came to blows ; the prima donna went into hysterics, and the performance had to be put oif; on the next day the company was broken up. Wagner now turned to Berlin, where the director of the Konigstadt theatre had promised him a performance of Das Liebesverbot. But nothing came of the promise, and in 1836 Wagner moved on to Konigsberg, where he began by con- ducting orchestral concerts, and eventually was made conductor at the theatre. Here too the Director soon became bankrupt, and in the summer of 1837 our young Meister, who had in the meantime married the actress Wilhelmine Planer, once more resumed his wanderer's staff. He was appointed Kapellmeister in the Stadttheater at Riga, then under the directorship of Karl von Holtei. Here he remained from August 1837 till the end of June 1839, when a change of directors led to his departure. In Riga Wagner found for the first time prolonged permanent employ- ment in a well-regulated theatre. His guiding motive was here the same as that which forty years later became his first principle at Bayreuth; instead of the slovenly indifference usually found at theatres, he aimed at the utmost possible perfection of performance, even in the smallest works. "Wagner tormented my people," says Holtei, "with hours of interminable rehearsing; nothing pleased him ; nothing was good enough ; no nuance fine enough for him." It is interesting to note that under Wagner's direction Mozart 1 Literally : " it gives me no pleasure," but I find it impossible to render the meaning of the German word Plaisir exactly in English. Perhaps the nearest equivalent of the sentence would be : "it does not amuse me" (G. A. H.). Richard Wagner's Life 43 took the lead in the number of performances. Mehul's Joseph was studied with great enthusiasm, and achieved an extraordinary success; so did Cheru- bim's Les deux journies. Wagner afterwards spoke of these masters of the French school — Mehul, Cherubini, and Spontini, as, after Gluck and Mozart, the "solitary lodestars on the deserted sea of opera music." Those who only know Wagner from the usual caricatures of him will be astonished to learn that he personally stood up for Bellini's Norma in the Riga newspapers against the attacks of pseudo-German detractors. " Perhaps it is not a sin," he wrote, " if before retiring to rest one offers a prayer to Heaven that it may some day occur to German composers to write such melodies, to acquire such treatment of song. Song ! song ! and once more song ! ye Germans ! " It is evident that conducting of this kind was bound in the long run to become intolerable to such a man as Wagner. "The typical spirit of our operatic performances filled me with disgust. . . . When conducting our ordinary operas I experienced a gnawing feeling of pain," he writes in reference to the Riga time. His own productive work alone gave him strength to endure; in this he was gradually attaining maturity and mastership. The dark, narrow, misty horizon of his present life was beginning to light up with the dawn of a glorious future. In Riga Wagner had written the words of Rienzi, and the first two acts of the music. This work was not designed for a provincial stage ; he had long been in communication with Scribe, and although the negotiations had come to nothing — as was natural — he did not lose heart. In a letter from Riga, he writes: "I am simply not to be killed with my plans and aspirations." Suddenly making up his mind, he travelled with his wife via London to Paris, with the intention of himself trying to get one of his works accepted at the Grand Opera. The period of his wanderings among small provincial theatres is herewith Influence on closed. It is not without importance for his future career ; he had gained ex- "^^ future perience in theatrical matters; he had become acquainted with the world of the stage in Germany In those places where talents grow up and are formed; he had seen what tends to further an artist in his development, and what to hinder him ; he had thoroughly studied the material at the disposal of a German dramatist. Besides this he had learned to know his German Fatherland and his German countrymen in the most various regions, from the Main to the Dwina, and therewith laid the foundation of his exact knowledge of the German genius. y 44 First Chapter 3. 1839-1842. Years of Wagner's residence in Paris lasted from September 1839 to April 1842. _ distress. One hope after another was here disappointed. The introductions which he received from Meyerbeer 1 to the Director of the Grand Opera and other personages, the visits to Scribe, the acquaintance with Halevy, Berhoz, Habeneck, Vieuxtemps etc the ostensible protection of the pubhshing firm Schlesinger, were all insufficient to open the doors of the Grand Opera to him. The only outcome of these most unpleasant negotiations, which lasted almost for two years, was that the director of the opera gave the sketch of Der Fliegende Hollander behind Wagner's back to an obscure musician to com- pose, offering the German master 500 francs as compensation ! It seemed as if he would have better luck with Das Liebesverbot^ which had been accepted for performance at the Re- naissance Theatre, but here it fared just as it had done at Magde- burg ; directly the translation was finished, and the rehearsals were to begin, the theatre became bankrupt. Wagner now had the greatest diffi- culty in earning bread for himself and his wife ; he composed songs, he wrote a large number of essays in French and German papers, but the work which paid him best was setting airs from operas by Halevy and Donizetti for all sorts of instru- ments, and arranging the operas them- selves for the pianoforte. During the years of hardship in Paris, Wagner's young wife, Wilhelmine, showed to the greatest advantage. It eventually became evident that she had but little sympathy with her husband's art, and Httle understanding for his whole 1 At that time Wagner was convinced that Meyerbeer meant to deal fairly with him ; this is testified to by letters flowing over with gratitude. It was not till later that he discovered these civilities to have been " artificial, paltry, and absolutely without any result." Now it is becoming clear that even these words do not express the whole truth. Glasenapp says (i. 416), "It is beyond all dispute that Meyerbeer in fact only introduced Wagner to places when he could certainly foresee that, either for internal or for external reasons, his introduction would lead to nothing." % ■^ '!^KH \ 1 1%- f % V (Sr • -K Wilhelmine Wagner. Richard Wagner's Life 45 nature, so that the marriage, which was not blessed with children, became for her an unhappy one, whilst for her husband it was positively tragic. Without the Paris episode we should scarcely understand why Wagner should have loved her so tenderly until her death in 1866, but his gratitude to her for the courage and devotion, as well as practical sense which she showed on this occasion was inextinguishable. Nor must we forget the little circle of German friends which collected round Wagner; the nearest to him were a philologist named Lehr, Anders, hbrarian and student of Beethoven, and Ernst Kietz, a painter — all young, and as poor as church mice. In their cheerful society the young Meister often forgot his troubles, and gave the rein to his wild spirits. How often in the course of his life was he preserved by his inexhaustible fund of gaiety ! These three years were an eternity. At night sleep was banished by care; not unfrequently the only guest at their table was hunger. The want and the misery of such a time are not to be described in a few sentences. A true picture can only be given by a patient enumeration of comfortless, every-day particulars. Even Glasenapp's detailed account is insufficient to convey the full extent of his misery, since the greater part of his material is obtained from the accounts of acquaintances of that time, who only saw Wagner's outer side. Whoever wishes to see his inner soul during this time, when the poverty of his outer circumstances was but a small thing compared with his despair at the destruction of all his hopes, should read the little stories entitled Ein deutscher Musiker in Paris, in the first volume of his collected works. " In them," he says, " I related, in the form of stories, and not without humour, my own fortunes, especially in Paris, up to actual death by starvatiop,^ which I had indeed luckily escaped. Every sentence of what I wrote was a cry of revolt against the modern condition of art" (iv. 324). From these last words we learn that the residence in Paris led to the first The new determining crisis in Wagner's life. " I entered a new path," he says, " that of re- P^*^ volt against the public art of our time" (iv. 323). It is of the \itmost importance to note that this revolt of Wagner's took place in the year 1840. For the revolt against public art was bound with mathematical certainty to lead to a revolt against the social conditions which had led to such a state of public art, and the fact of his views having originated in this way shows that Wagner's so-called revolutionary tendencies rest upon an artistic, not upon a political foundation; he himself says "the motive of my revolt was. love, not envy or vexation." So Wagner did not become a revolutionist in 1848, but in 1840. At a later date he was carried away by the waves of a political revolution, not because he really belonged to it, but because both he and his adversaries were temporarily deceived by a semblance. It was the artist who revolted, the dramatic poet. He had made acquaintance with the theatres of his fatherland both in large towns and in small, and had witnessed their miserable condi- tion; he had hurried to Paris, then the artistic centre from which all Germany was ruled, and had found there nothing but a moral slough ; every- 46 First Chapter Two im- portant results. thing which he held sacred was an article of traffic, and he had to admit to himself that " all these artistic eleinents which made up the world filled him with disgust and contempt" (iv. 322). Now Wagner knew how he stood towards the modern theatre. Yielding to the pressure of circumstances, he was induced to continue working for the theatre for some years longer. He attempted to influence it in the direction of reform. At last, however, in 1849, "^hien ^^ finally turned his back upon our corrupt public art, and not on art only, but on our whole society, he simply acted in accordance with the inner con- victions he had held ever since 1840. This was undoubtedly the most important result of Wagner's residence in Paris for the inner course of his Ufe. Two other points have to be noted among his numerous experiences. In Paris, Wagner discovered the enormous effect produced by correctness and technical perfection in musical and dramatic representations — the things, as we have seen, for which he himself had striven ; in Paris Wagner learnt to distinguish quite clearly what was essentially characteristic of the German mind by his experience of what was 7iot German. "The French public has a much greater long- ing for technical perfection than the German ; it possesses infinite refinement of feeling for every nuance. The performance of the Ninth Symphony in the Conservatoire after three years' study, the finished performance of Beethoven's quartets, the endless care, the great and well-directed labour bestowed upon the rehearsals at the Grand Opera — these are some of Wagner's Paris experiences, the last eff'ects of which we find in Bayreuth, where the realism of the French first gains a meaning by entering the service of German idealism. That was a posi- tive experience of the highest value ; no less important for his whole career was the negative experience. When Wagner came to Paris, he really imagined that he would be able to compose music to French libretti. Mozart had however already been obliged to give up the attempt. "This language," he cried in despair, "the devil has made ! " That testifies to the depth of his dramatic instinct. Wagner, with whom the poem in tones is inseparable from the poem in words, could only speak in one language — the German ; he himself found this out in Paris. If Mozart in Paris " could find no great pleasure in anything " except in feeling " that he was an honest German," ^ Wagner felt in a very similar way; his own heart was German ; he had made acquaintance with the most different races of 1 Cf. the letter to his father of May 29th 1778. Ernst Kietz. Richard Wagner's Life 47 Germans; but the distinctive character of the German only became clear to him through his intimacy with the very different character of the French. Now there awoke a burning love for his German fatherland; now he first swore " eternal fidelity " to it (i. 24) ; now arose his first longing for everything which had grown up on the soil of his home, and his first conviction that his art could only strike root in that soil. Die Feen had been sketched from a dramatic tale of Gozzi ; Das Liebesverbot from a comedy by Shakespeare ; Rienzi from a novel of Bulwer Lytton. But in his Paris misery the first figure — ^after Beethoven — which appeared to comfort him was Goethe,'^ and Faust led the Meister — whose German consciousness was now awakened — back to the German legend. In Paris the first germs of Tannhauser and Lohengrin were conceived; in Paris he laid the foundation of his extensive knowledge of the German legend and the Teutonic myth ; in Paris Wagner wrote the Fliegender Hollander, a work which touches " strings that can only vibrate in German hearts " (i. 24.) 4. 1 842-1 849. When Wagner went abroad, it was in the hope that he would be able First thence to exert an influence upon Germany ; he was not deceived ; this one successes. hope of his was fulfilled, but not in the way he had imagined. His Rienzi was sent in from Paris and was accepted for performance at the Hoftheater in Dresden, which would certainly not have been the case if the score had been received from Magdeburg or Riga. Even the absurd rumour that Wagner was "a pupil of Meyerbeer," was of use to him. At this moment one simple and capable man spoke a decisive word for the acceptance of Rienzi ; this was the excellent director of the chorus, Fischer, one of the first who recognised Wagner's importance.^ In April 1842 Wagner left Paris and migrated to Dresden, to prepare the performance of his work. For all sorts of reasons however it was delayed untiji October. Without Wagner's inflexible energy it would scarcely have been performed even then. At last the day arrived. On October 20th 1842 the first performance of an Opera by Richard Wagner took place — for that of Das Liebesverbot in Magdeburg cannot be counted as one. The Meister was in his thirtieth year. The success was immense; the enthusiasm in Dresden un- paralleled; from Leipzig too, the art connoisseurs flocked to the performances. With one step Wagner became famouS. ' Der Fliegende Hollander was now also put into rfehearsal, and performed on January 3rd 1843. Once more the immediate result was such that it' could be 1 Wagner's Faust Overture belongs to- the year 1840. 2 Regarding Fischer's remarkable achievements Wagner writes : " They entitle Fischer's name to a place amongst those of the men who have furthered the right understanding of great masterworks " (v. 138). 48 First Chapter called a triumph. Wagner, who had ifi consequence of the death of two conductors been provisionally entrusted with the conducting of his own works, and had thus found an opportunity of exercising his eminent talent in this branch, was appointed Koniglicher Kapellmeister on February ist 1843. ^e held this post until May 9th 1 849, when he was accused of being involved in the Dresden insurrection of May and had to flee from Germany. Even before his rapid advance to the post of Kapellmeister the first signs of a change in public opinion had began to show themselves. The newspaper critics were not at all pleased with fame so suddenly acquired without their aid or sanction ; the success of Rienzi had taken them aback, but they soon collected their senses again and found so many faults in D^r Fliegende Hollander that the Intendant was scared, and withdrew the beautiful work, in spite of its great success, after the fourth performance. It was not revived at Dresden for two and twenty years. And now, when Wagner entered upon his duties with fiery zeal ; when he performed Mozart with the delicate nuances of life in the place of rigid classicism ; when he made a new translation of Gluck's Iphlginie en Aulide^ retaining the accents of the original, and re-wrote the close as Schiller had wished it to be ; when he performed Weber's works in such a manner that his widow exclaimed she now heard them rightly given for the first time since her husband's death (but in a different way to the tradition which had crept in meanwhile !) ; when in 1 845, with his Tannhduser^ he almost entirely deserted the trodden path of the opera, and required from the singers that they should in the first place be actors; when in 1846 he undertook to prove that the ninth symphony of Beethoven was "a human gospel," and not as was supposed in Dresden " the abortive work of a deaf musician," etc., etc. — then the critics rose up in all their hatred against the disturber of the peace, and "worked with malignant rancour systematically to confuse the mind of the public" (L. i. no). In a now forgotten work published in 1843, entitled Kaleidoskop von Dresden,^ one could still read unbiassed judgments such as the following : " Wagner's works are the creation of mighty and unbridled imagination, of rich, almost too rich genius; he entirely forsakes the beaten track of all other composers, old and new. His works are a chaos of tones " (n. b. only Rienzi and Der Hollander had then appeared !), " a sea of harmony more likely to overpower the listener at first than to be understood. The man is still young ; a world is open to him, and many a laurel grows therein which may yet afford him a wreath. In Dresden Wagner enjoys the undivided respect and love of the public." That is the testimony of an impartial man, and is all the more valuable from the fact that Wagner shortly afterwards protested publicly in the newspapers against the " aspersions deliberately cast upon his artistic intentions " and against the im- pudence of the critics who always observed " considerate moderation " towards other people, even when blaming them, whilst with him they invariably assumed " a tone of carping disparagement." 1 By C, P. Sternau. Magdeburg (Inkerraann). Richard Wagner's Life 49 This attitude of the critics towards Wagner must detain us for a moment ; Wagner it is just as characteristic as the attitude of the Regisseur Hauser with regard to and the Die Feen ; a man may be known not only by his friends, but by his enemies. critics. Everywhere, and at every time, Wagner's works have produced an over- powering effect upon the public, provided that it was naive and unprejudiced; only an open heart was required to accept their beauties, without any effort whatever. But then came the critic — the newspaper critic — usually a decayed musician, who had failed in his own art and taken refuge in criticism, or more rarely a professed sesthetician, whose principle was. " the justification of every feeling to the reason " ; he croaked, and grumbled, and scolded, till he had succeeded in spoiling the pleasure of the public and clouding its healthy natural judgment. What the Dresdener had loudly applauded on the night before, he turned against, directly the reviewer of the Dresdener Journal or the Abend- zeitung had pronounced his oracular judgment, and proved conclusively that it could not be beautiful. It is quite sufficient to name the persons with whom these Beckmesser critics contrasted Wagner, in order to show their incompetence. Just as the Vienna critics once preferred a Gyrowetz and a Boccherini to Mozart, so did the Dresden critics point to Hiller and Reissiger ^ to prove the worthless- ness of Wagner. It would scarcely be worth while to draw attention to these effusions of unspeakable folly, were it not that the attitude of the critics plays a very great part in Wagner's life. Later there may have existed for a time a real organized party against him, because so many of these gentlemen of the press thought fit to consider themselves personally aggrieved by his yudenthum in der Musik ; but too much weight must not be attached to this ; the most that Wagner's essay did was to add fuel to the flame which was already burning; the attitude of the press did not require any special stimulus. An upright, noble-minded, absolutely unselfish man like Wagner, a man burning with passion for pure and holy art, a man who throughout the whole course of his life trod his own interests under foot, who, without ever being for a moment deterred - by any considerations either for himself or for others, amidst " the wild play for profit or for peril " around him, steered straight for his end, that of employing the rare sifts which God had confided to him, for the welfare of art and of his fatherland: — such a man was bound by the laws of nature to call forth, wherever he appeared, the ready and bitter opposition of all the mean-thinking, of all who chaffer with art and with artists, of all the disciples of mediocrity. The entire army of spiteful malice and the army of sexless impotence were his born enemies ; he had only to appear, and they were at once in arms. Never did an artist awaken such irreconcilable hatred against himself, or resentment which rose to such a pitch of frenzy. When the aesthetical writer F. T. Vischer says of the second part of Goethe's Faust that it is "a cobbled production," ^ every person of good feeling revolts against the bad taste of his expression ; the 1 Reissiger's name is now only known as that of the composer of the Derniere Peniee de Weber. 2 Krttische Gdnge, ii. 60. G 50 First Chapter choice of such a word as "cobbled" {geschustert)^ with reference to a Goethe, indicates the offensive coarseness of a mind which, though educated indeed, is quite without refinement, which lacks even the instinctive discrimination of the peasant, who took off his hat, without knowing that it was " Herr Geheimrat" at the mere sight of the poet's radiant eye. What then shall we say to the tone which has been adopted by almost the entire press of Europe with regard to Richard Wagner ? I will not defile the pages of this book with extracts ^ from this scurrilous literature; it is sufficient to observe that compared with them Herr Vischer's criticisms of Goethe appear quite choice and respectable. It is remarkable, too, that Wagner's person was the object of these attacks even in almost a greater degree than his art. Every malicious piece of gossip, every low slander was employed against him; attempts were made to bring him into contempt by means of infamous accusations regarding his private life ; to make him ridiculous by lying accounts of his unbounded vanity, and his "Sybaritic" habits; to make him hated by accusing him of jealous ambition, unscrupulous ingratitude, &c. To refute these charges is unnecessary, but it would not be right to pass over in silence such a remarkable fact as this of the hatred which he awakened. When we set it against the love of such men as Franz Liszt and King Ludwig, and many another noble spirit, or the devoted and enthusiastic love of the musicians who played under his direction, his '•'•theure Musikusse^' as he called them, and of his singers, in every place and at every time, some light will be thrown upon Wagner's deepest nature. Richard Wagner is the artist whom Schiller sighed for: "a strange figure in his century," come, "fearful as Agamemnon's son, to purify it." Wagner's heart too knew hatred, hatred for art prostituted, art which had become an industry ; hatred for hypocrisy ; ^ hatred for a world of pretended sanctity. But this hatred sprang from love ; Wagner " revolted out of love, and not out of hatred or envy." All those who opposed him revolted against him out of hatred ; and the intensity of their hatred is the measure of the intensity of his love. It has been supposed that the most striking element in Wagner's character was the immense energy of his will. This is not quite accurate, inasmuch as the will per se resembles a blind impulse, and conveys no intimation of the essential characteristics of the individual. Napoleon possessed a similar energy of the will. What distinguished Wagner, next to his uncompromising truthful- ness, was his selflessness. To the superficial observer Wagner appeared a complete egoist, because he saw the Meister unflinchingly working for " his cause " regardless of everything else. But his cause was the cause of all, the holy cause of art and of all mankind. Such disdainful neglect of his own interests, such want of submissiveness, of so-called worldly wisdom, is without a parallel ; true, he required from others almost unlimited self-sacrifice, but ^ A few specimens relating to Wagner's art, and not to his person, have been given in chap. iii. ^ See the Section on Wagner's politics. Richard Wagner's Life 51 every breath of his own life was devoted to an ideal purpose. Again I must quote Schiller to depict Wagner: "How shall the artist preserve himself from the corrupting influences of his time, those influences which are around him on every side ? By despising their verdict. Let him look upwards to his honour and to the law, not downwards to happiness and his own needs." Wagner never looked downwards, either to happiness or to his own needs, and therefore his entire life, from the Rienzi triumph until the end, was one long martyrdom. For others the fame, the honours, the outward success, of his last years would have been a rich reward, complete happiness ; not so for him ; he had never coveted honours or fame. " I do not wish to be famous," he writes in 1 85 1 to his friend Uhlig, and later to Liszt: "away with fame and all such nonsense ; we do not live in a time when fame can bring joy or give honour." Wagner's purpose was impersonal ; this cannot be repeated too often ; it was to raise art to its true dignity. And if he ever desired a cheering stimulus in the course of his life, if he ever coveted a reward, it was not fame nor gold, but love that he longed for. "This man will never be quite happy," a Frenchman said of Wagner, " for he will always discover the suffering, and share their sorrows through sympathy." So did Wagner love. Hear him speak of his mother; consider his touching affection for his wife Wilhelraina, who — un- knowingly — brought so much bitterness even into his quiet home; think of his glowing love for his fatherland ; of his passionate fondness for animals,^ of the many passages in his writings where he speaks of love and sympathy, and the tones which he has found in his works to express those feehngs ; and then take up the letters to his closest friends, and see how he again and again cries for love, out of the fearful solitude of genius, "like as the hart desireth the water-brooks." In a letter to Roeckel he speaks of his own increasing fame, and declares that it gives him no satisfaction. " Could I be vain and proud," he says, " how happy might I now be " ; one thing alone can comfort him : " that I should be not only admired, but loved as well ; when criticism ceases, love begins, and it has brought many hearts near to me." -^ One more remark before I close the observations to which I have been led by the critics. The common principle of separating the artist from the man has very often been applied to Wagner. I will admit the distinction, without enquiring whether it has any deeper justification. If we are to sever the artist and his works from the man, differences of opinion are in this case admissible regarding the artist, but not regarding the man. To attempt to compel admiration of Wagner's works would be a ridiculous proceeding. Many a man may be so organized that they must remain eternally unintelligible to him, or he may condemn them on account of some principle deserving of all respect. What is not allowable is that credence should be given to every miserable lie, slander and misrepresentation, and to every stupid misunderstanding about a man like Richard Wagner. Whoever will observe this, and will learn to know the 1 See Wolzogen's Richard Wagner und die Tierivelt. 52 First Chapter Troubles of a conductor. true Wagner, must love him, and must— even if he cares nothing for Wagner's art, and discovers all kinds of human weaknesses in him — look up with reverence to his pure, strong, lofty character. What I have said concerning the attitude of the critics towards Wagner will explain the fruitlessness of his endeavours to exert a permanent and ennobling influence upon the Dresden Opera. The material was here the best in Germany ; the orchestra, according to Wagner's testimony, " in its kind the most perfect and exquisite in the fatherland " ; the performances of the chorus under Fischer "quite unrivalled"; Tichatschek, the Heldenienor, possessed "a voice which was a marvel of masculine beauty," and above all there was Wilhelmine Schroder-Devrient, the greatest female singer that has ever arisen in Germany ; at the head of such an institution a Richard Wagner ! And yet this combination of rare excellences was unable to make head against the prevailing indolence and habits of routine, against the press and the demoralisation of the artists which it had intimidated, against the " despotism of spiteful ignorance," against the "courtly narrowness" and arrogance of an Intendant who bullied his subordinates the Kapellmeisters^ and trembled before the press. Wagner's own account (vii. 135) describes the situation perfectly in two sentences: "All my attempts to introduce reforms into the opera; my proposals, by means of persistent effort, to direct the institution itself into the^way which would lead to the realiza- tion of my ideal wishes, by taking the excellence which was attained on rare occasions as the measure for every performance — all failed. I learnt at last to see very clearly what were the real objects of the modern theatre, and more especially of the Opera ; this irresistible conviction it was which filled me with disgust and despair in such a degree that I gave up all attempt at reform, and withdrew entirely from interference with such a frivolous institution." ^ Wagner had not sought the Dresden appointment ; it had been pressed upon him. Care for his material existence, and especially his obligations to his creditors, who had been waiting for years for their money, decided him. Yet Wagner declares (iv. 338) : "To my few nearer friends I made no secret of my inherent dislike of the appointment of Ho/kapellmeister^ and my scruples about accepting it when it seemed likely to be offered to me." This is expressly con- firmed by the official historian of the Dresden theatre Prolss.^ The situation became more and more intolerable to Wagner. In the protocol of a con- ference between the Intendant and Wagner towards the end of his tenure of office we read: "Wagner declared however that he himself felt that he was unsuited to his official position, and would gladly retire from it, but for the anxiety which he was under for his wife and his domestic aflfairs." The protocol continues in delightful official style: "it was conceded that he was unsuited to his official position, and a humble report will eventually be submitted to His 1 Wagner's last attempt in Dresden was his detailed Plan for the organization of a German National Theatre for the Kingdom of Saxony, (1848). 2 Beitrage zur Geschichte des Hoftheaters zu Dresden. 1878. WILHELMINE SCHRODER-DEVRIENT tionist. Richard Wagner's Life 53 Majesty to that efFect" (loc. cit. p. 141). It has often been asserted that Wagner was guilty of ingratitude in Dresden ; in view of such an accusation it is as well to state the real circumstances once for all : the Intendant was, as we see, merely waiting for the first opportunity which offered of dismissing his troublesome Kapellmeister. It would therefore be quite wrong to suppose that the revolution which broke out in May 1849, ^"^^ which led to Wagner's compulsory retirement from office, was really of decisive importance in the matter. External events contributed only in so far that they finally severed the tie which had virtually been relinquished, on both sides, long before. At last, when a warrant of arrest was issued against Wagner, and he had to flee, he blessed the fate which had broken his bonds : "This Dresden, if I had remained there, would have been the grave of my art" (U. 247). ^We saw that Wagner had already "revolted" in Paris, in 1840, and had "Wagner as then " entered upon a new path." His Dresden experiences could only confirm revolu him in this. He was filled with "disgust and despair." The frivolity which he observed in the theatre led him to realize the frivolity of society in general, of this " world with its sanctimonious affectation of concern for art and culture." " In meditating on the possibility of altering the conditions of the theatre I was driven quite naturally to the full recognition of the worthlessness of our political and social conditions, which were absolutely incapable of producing, out of them- selves, any other public art than that which I had attacked. This recognition was decisive for the whole subsequent course of my life'' (iv. 377). Wagner was therefore quite decidedly a revolutionist; he was one long before 1848, and he remained one until his death. In what sense he was a revolutionist I will explain in detail in my second chapter, in the sections on politics and regeneration. For the present it is sufficient to say that he had very few, and only very superficial points in common with the political leaders of the revolutionary movement of '48; in everything essential they were strangers to him, and he still more a stranger to them. Bakunin's remark before the Court, "that he knew Wagner at once for a visionary," ^ is charac- teristic; these sober poHticians had a right perception; Wagner did not belong to them. Wagner himself however was deceived by the incontrollable might of his longing. Here, as so often in his firiendships and his hopes, the depth of his need, together with the never-resting creative fancy of his genius, • led him astray. Similar fatal illusions are to be found even in political geniuses, in Alexander and Napoleon. It is certain that Wagner failed at first to see that those who wished for a revolution in 1848 were precisely the same people as those who strove for reaction, by which I mean to convey that both were equally politicians, men quite satisfied with modern society, only one party wanted rather more political freedom conceded, the other rather less. Any real difference of principle between them did not exist. Wagner, the 1 From the judicial records, quoted in Dinger's Richard Wagners geistige Entivkkelung, i. 179. 54 First Chapter poet, on the contrary, stood on exactly the same ground as Schiller; he was " drawn away from the evil sensible form of the present to find a new sensible body" {i.e. a new social ideal), "which should correspond to the true being of mankind" (iv. 378). The revolution which he dreamed of would have had therefore to go much deeper than that of the most extreme radical of 1848. In the same place he speaks of it as: "the destruction of the sensible form of the present time." The misunder- standing in which he was entangled is like that which would most probably have arisen if Schiller, instead of enthusiastically watching the outbreak of a revolution from a dis- tance, had experienced it in his own immediate neighbourhood. Wagner's part in the revolutionary move- ment of the years 1848-49 can be best illus- trated by describing the relations in which he stood to August Roeckel, one of his best friends in Dresden, and a true child of 1848. Born of a musical family, and himself educated as an artist, Roeckel occupied in the Dresden Court opera the post of Musikdirektor., that is to say, he was Wagner's immediate subordinate; at bottom however his nature was not artistic, but entirely political. Violent, energetic, deeply con- vinced, actuated by the most generous feelings,^ and capable of every sacrifice, he took a leading part in the May insurrection, and was punished for his intrepidity with twelve years' imprisonment. None of the poHtical revolutionists stood so near to Wagner as he did; until his death in 1876 the Meister was true to him. Yet Roeckel was certainly not capable of comprehending Wagner's views, in their deeper purport ; this became very evident in the sequel. Wagner's mistake was due to the wave of enthusiasm which passed over Germany at the time of the revolution, and which transported even the more sober spirits into a state of exaltation, and for the time lifted them out of themselves. Besides, the earnest idealism of such men as Roeckel, fanned to white heat, led Wagner to over-estimate their intellectual capacity, small as it was in comparison with his own. Later, as his correspondence shows, Wagner saw his error very clearly; his affection for the true, generous heart of his friend remained; for the rest he knew that he could not hope for a deeper under- standing. In this friendship Wagner's relation to the movement of 1848 is mirrored. 1 Liszt, who is not likely to be suspected of sympathy with revolutionists, says of Roeckel, " he is a gentle, educated, humane, excellent man" (Letters, ii. io6). It is well to remember this estimate of him just now when his memory is being defamed by so many Wagner authors. August Roeckel. Richard Wagner's Life 55 Only once did Wagner descend into the arena of politics. On June 14th Speech in 1 848 he held a speech in the Vaterlandsverein in Dresden. He had it published 'he Vater- with the heading: "What is the attitude of republican aspirations towards the landsverein. monarchy ? " 1 This speech proves Wagner to have been, even then, an ardent upholder of monarchy, an uncompromising enemy of constitutionalism,^ and further that he considered the welfare of Germany to consist in the repudiation of "foreign, un-German -ideas," in the "emancipation of the monarchy" from democratic heresies, and in the restoration of the ancient German relation between the prince and a free people. "The hereditary king at the head of this free state would be just what a king,- in the highest sense, should be : the first of the people, the freest of the free ! And would not this be at the same time for Germany the most beautiful application of the words of Christ ; whosoever will be chief among you^ let him be your servant. \ For, in serving the freedom of all, he makes humanity become conscious of the incomparable, divine import of the conception of Freedom." Naturally such a speech as this could please neither repubhcans nor democrats nor constitutionalist liberals ; and, as Wagner sought to effect the emancipation of the King and of the people by abolishing the nobility, neither did it please the conservatives. ^It was at once made use of against him by his many enemies ; the same thing is done to this day. Wagner's beauti- ful letter to the Intendant v. Liittichau, which is here given in facsimile, is the best answer. He repeats his fundamental proposition: "that the King could always remain the sacred centre round which every conceivable kind of popular institution might be established." ^ In May 1 849 the insurrection broke out in Dresden. Whether one would The revolt be justified in calling it a revolution is very doubtful, for there were at that time °^ ^^y- two Governments in Germany, that of the single states, and the Frankfort parlia- ment, which included all Germany, and which might be regarded as equally legitimate. "Although a certain party which took part in the Dresden insurrec- tion may not have been free from republican and communistic tendencies, the real struggle was to carry through the Imperial Constitution — by no means a bad object in itself. The vacillation of the Government appeared to the masses as selfish and faithless; to rise against it was in their eyes a praiseworthy action." This is how it is represented by an impartial historian^ All the more important municipal corporations of Saxony, the Leipzig university, and all men of enlightened and independent thought, were for the adoption of the constitution ; ^ See Appendix I. at the end of the book. The reader will find a detailed examination of its contents and its meaning in my article, Richard Wagner und die Politik, in the Bayreuther Blatter, 1893, p. 137. 2 In this speech Wagner's view agrees exactly with that of Friedrich Wilhelm IV., who had declared on April 17,1 847 " that no power in the world should compel him to exchange the natural and direct relation subsisting between himself and his people for a conventional and constitutional* relation." 3 I shall return to this letter in the next chapter. See the translation in Appendix II. at the end of the book. * Arnd, Geschichte der neuesten Zeit, v. 438. 5 6 First Chapter so was a section of the king's own ministry ; in many places the militia refused to serve against the rebels, because the champions of the constitution seemed to them to be in the right. — Now the Prussian troops came up — an act which was branded by the Frankfort parliament as " serious breach of the peace of the empire," but which in reality was only incidentally concerned with the rebellion, being in feet the first step in a policy intended eventually to lead to the humiliation of Saxony before Prussia. After a fight which continued in the • streets for several days, the rebellion was suppressed; a frightful and unjust retribution then fell upon the unfortunate country. The official reporters have much to tell of the "heroism" of the Prussian troops; but as their entire loss was thirty-one men, and their opponents, though fighting in a more sheltered position, and with their line of retreat open, lost exactly six times as many, it is fair to suppose that the latter fought with at least equal heroism. That Wagner's sympathies were with the rebels cannot be questioned. It seems too that an occasional opportunity occurred to him of rendering them certain civilian's services; in a letter of 185 1 he says: "I assisted in bringing up supplies," and according to some accounts, (which however are contradicted by others,) he is said to have superintended the ringing of the storm bell in the tower of the Kreuzkirche.'^ To piece history together out of hundreds of con- flicting and quite unverifiable accounts, (the only evidence which we possess of this stirring period,) is quite impossible ; but we may trust the man whose whole life bore out his words to Liszt : " I cannot he ; it is in fact the only sin that I know." (L., ii. 23). For the extent to which Wagner was implicated, his own evidence is decisive ; i.e. not only his words but also his actions. And what do these latter show, first of all? When Dresden was taken by the Prussians, Wagner went to Chemnitz to his brother-in-law Wolfram, not with any purpose of flight, but with the firm intention of returning to Dresden as soon as the excitement had subsided. His brother-in-law persuaded him with some difficulty to leave Saxony, and brought him to Weimar. Here too Wagner remained quite unconcerned ; he walked about in the town, went to the theatre, and never doubted but that the misunderstanding would soon be cleared up. Then came the news that a warrant had been issued against him. To be accused and to be condemned were at that time very much the same thing ; as Roeckel remarks, also with reference to Wagner : " whatever evidence was required, the judges always found it."^ The endeavours of his great friend Franz Liszt, who now first begins to influence his life, and enters at once in a decisive way, were successful in obtaining a passport for Wagner under another name, and in trans- 1 Professor Dr Thum (of Reichenbach i. V.) met Wagner on the tower during the fighting,- and writes that the master had a lively conversation with him about the Leipzig Getvandhaus Concerts, Berlioz, Beethoven, absolute and dramatic music, antique and christian philosophy, etc. ! {^Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung, Sept. T, 1893). Professor Dr Gustav Kietz, the well-known Dresden sculptor, told me that Wagner had tried to induce him to go up onto the tower, saying that the view was so splendid, and the sound of the cannon-thunder and of the bells together, so intoxicating ! 2 Roeckel Sachsens Erhebung und das Zuchthaus zu Waldheim, 2nd edition, p. 59. Richard Wagner's Life 57 porting him across the frontier into Switzerland. These are his actions ; they do not point to any consciousness of guilt. His words leave still less doubt. In 1856, when he wished a request for amnesty to be presented to the King of Saxony, to allow him to return to German soil, a difficulty arose in the fact that " he was conscious of not having committed any actual crime cognizable by a Court of law, so that it would be difficult for him to admit any such act." (L., ii. 122). Still more decidedly does Wagner express himself in Ueber Staat und Religion. " Anyone who assigns to me the role of a political revolutionist, that is who supposes that I really belonged to any faction of such a kind, must know very little of me ; he would be judging by a semblance which might deceive a police official, but never a statesman " (viii. 8). This decides the matter for every person competent to judge. And yet one impudent lie has been told, and is so tenacious of life that it cannot be often enough refuted. During the revolt the old opera house had been burnt to the ground; in the summer of 1 849 the rumour got abroad that it was Wagner who had set fire to it ! At once he entered protest against this cowardly slander, which, as he said, had arisen in the " mud pool of civic rectitude and generosity " (letter to Liszt of July 9, 1849), but the story was too good, and for many years it engaged the attention of the press, until at last, when conclusive proof was brought of the impossibility of Wagner having been in any way connected with the affair, the truth became generally known and this particular lie died out. ^Subsequently Graf Beust revived the old slander, with a slight variation, in his Memoirs Aus Dreivierteljahrhunderten^ and invented the story that Wagner had attempted to set fire to the Prinzenpalais ! To support the authority of his own word he adds, as convincing evidence of the truth of the accusation, that Wagner had been condemned to death in contumaciam for this offence. Fortunately there bavon und fifeleunigfi Sladbcii^t ju ect^eilen. lSt;ed»eit, bm 16. !!Rat 1849. Ste ®tabt°^oIt}ei-®e))tttatton. son Oppell. SEBagncT ifl 37 \\i 38 ^(i^k att, mittUc etatuc, {)at itaune^ ^MX unb ttagt (in( StiK;, Facsimile Warrant of Arrest. exists an authority higher than that of the Graf's word, the Konigliches Jmts- gericht ^ in Dresden, which has certified officially that both the statements of the former Premier are untrue. The first may possibly be due to a confusion with the confectioner Woldemar Wagner, 2 who was suspected of having caused the 1 The Criminal Court of Justice in Dresden. 2 This seems, however, to me very improbable, as in the various official publications concerning the revolt of 1849, ^^^^ "confectioner's assistant "Wagner" is specially named; Richard Wagner not at all. H 58 First Chapter fire. The other statement is simply a malicious invention.^ That it originated with Graf Beust is certainly not to be supposed ; but his blind hatred misled him into believing everything which was said against Wagner without first testing the truth of the accusations. Important Such were shortly the events of the Dresden years which led to the results of crisis in Wagner's life. With a creative genius like Wagner their import- t IS peno . ^^^^ .^ comparatively small. Whilst his fortunes now rose and now fell, whilst he strove and battled without resting, and himself was battled against and misjudged, there arose, as out of another world, his immortal works : Tannhduser and Lohengrin^ the first sketch of Die Meistersinger. the first draft of Der Nibelungenring, the draft of y^esus von Nazareth and others. These are the deeds of genius, these are his Hfe, and these deeds will live and will bring forth life when the pitiable events of the movement of '48 have been long forgotten. These seven years, so rich in external and internal events, were full of results for Wagner's inner life, in forming his views on art and on humanity; they may be summed up thus : In art they led to his final breach with the operatic stage and with the opera itself as a dramatic form, and at the same time to the full, conscious realization of what had long been unconsciously before him, namely the new drama and the plans for a new stage. Humanly, the events in Dresden led him to the mature conviction that society was standing on the verge of a mighty crisis, and that effective and thoroughgoing aid must be sought, not in politics, but in Regeneration. It must be noted that in each case the negation goes hand in hand with an equally emphatic affirmation. Wagner is incapable of serving two masters ; his uncompromising condemnation of what is bad is the necessary correlative of his unconditional desire for what is good. The Dresden catastrophe came as a true release. " Outlawed and persecuted, I was now bound by no ties to any sort of lie" (iv. 406). He could now proclaim the things which had become his sacred convictions freely to the whole world, and he did so in words of fire. This release from all restraint took place exactly at the moment when he was quite worthy of it, when the last illusion had been swept away. And this moment was not only figuratively but literally the central point of his life. 1 For the rest see W. A. Ellis, 1849. ^ Vindication (Kegan Paul), 1892, a small treatise in which everything essential is collected from the official documents. Cyl^'-^^.^J ^^ 185; For thee there is no more happiness except in thyself, in thy art. O God ! give me strength to conquer myself; nothing must bind me to life. Beethoven. I. 1 849-1 859. After a short stay in Paris, where Liszt would have Social in- liked to help his friend to a position of financial /ercourse security by a success at the opera, Wagner settled down in Zurich in the summer of 1849. Till the autumn of 1859 Switzerland, and, with the exception of the last year, Zurich was his home. Why nothing came or could come of the " universal Parisian succes " (as Wagner sarcastically called it himself) will be seen in the sequel. Many other projects arose from time to time — one would have taken him to Rio de Janeiro — but they came to nothing. An inner necessity com- pelled him to devote the next years entirely to creative work, and he lived in retirement ; we may say entirely, for no importance attaches to the various episodes which from time to time broke the monotony of the exile's life. The summer holidays took him through various parts of Switzer- land, and even to Italy ; several visits were made to Paris, and in the spring of 6: The true friends. First Chapter 1855 he spent three months in London, where want of means had compelled him to undertake the conductorship of the Philharmonic concerts. But the general physiognomy of his life remained the same. The temporary assistance which he gave at the Zurich theatre in the performances of some of the better operas (especially Don Giovanni and Der Fliegende Hollander)^ and the concerts which he occasionally undertook that he might perform music for himself (Haydn, Mozart, Gluck, Beethoven, Weber and his own), are also matters of minor f 1 * r-^r^^^^M. 'my 'f m£ ^ 1 m Gottfried Semper. Gottfried Keller. Geokg HER^^■EGH. importance. His social intercourse in Zurich was slight, if we except Gottfried Semper, Georg Herwegh, and Gottfried Keller. Hans von Billow and Karl Ritter were amongst his friends at this time, but they were only temporarily resident in Zurich. To Musikdirector Heim and his gifted wife Wagner was specially attached, and he recited his Nibelu?igenring with them ; pleasant hours were spent with Wille, the philosopher, and a merchant named Wesendonck, but on the whole he rather avoided a society which showed no deep understanding for his aims ; especially he shunned " those devils of professors." He writes to Liszt : " the torments of society have become positively the most painful for me now, and I am always manoeuvering to isolate myself." The reason is obvious ; Wagner had now just entered upon the " period of conscious artistic volition " ; in his second epoch all outer things lose importance ; external circumstances may help or may hinder, but cannot determine ; in Zurich they neither helped nor hindered him, and there Wagner exhibited no decisive activity with regard to the outer world, as he did later in Paris, Munich and Bayreuth. Here in Zurich his life was that of his own creative soul ; the things he brought forth were, in the first place, his theoretical writings on art and the drama, and then his art-works. " You can believe me absolutely when I tell you that the sole reason of my continuing to five lies in my irresistible longing to complete a number of works of art which still possess vitality within me. I have clearly recognized the fact that Richard Wagner's Life 63 this creating and completing alone are able to satisfy me, and fill me with a desire for life which I often find inexplicable. ... 1 cannot accept any office, nor any- thing which is its equivalent, and shall never do so ; what I do require is a rich and honourable annuity, solely that I may be able to continue composing my works undisturbed, and quite regardless of worldly success. . . . Anyone who has the slightest real knowledge of the nature of my works, who knows and admires their special distinctive character, must see that a man of my sort, and more especially when dealing with such an institution as the theatre, can never on any terms consent to treat them as merchandise " (L., ii. 229). These words, which Wagner addressed to his friend Franz Liszt sometime in the fifties, are an epitome of the entire second half of his life. From this time onwards he lived solely and entirely for his art ; for himself he sought nothing and aspired after nothing ; just as little did he serve others ; he lived for the world, but in one sense no longer in the world ; he could say with Byron : " I stood Among them, but not of them, in a shroud Of thoughts which were not their thoughts." Now he knew for certain what he w^as called to be in the world, and knowing this, he required of the world "room to live," without making his talents and his works into merchandise. The first person who fully understood him was King Ludwig of Bavaria; until 1864, when this exalted monarch entered with such decisive influence upon his life, Wagner had to pass through much adversity. His art had however produced a mighty effect ; few had heard its voice ; but those few, who made it possible for him to live without an official post, entirely for his art, at a time when the receipts from his operas were still exces- sively small, deserve to be mentioned with honour. First in order, and intellectually far above all the others, is Franz Liszt. In a letter of 1856 Wagner describes his friendship with Liszt as "the most important and significant event of his Hfe " (L., ii. 146); for not only did Liszt do more than anyone else to afford material aid to Wagner, but he alone was able, owing to his own personal eminence, to afford him artistic and moral support. Liszt per- formed the orphaned works of the exile, and was positively the only man living at the beginning of the fifties who was capable of doing this with intelligence, so that the little Grand Ducal theatre in Weimar formed at that time a centre from which Wagner's works— especially Der Fliegende Franz Liszt. Franz Liszt. 64 First Chapter Hollander^ Tannhduser, and Lohengrin — radiated into all Germany. At the same time Liszt prepared the way for a deeper understanding of the new art by his articles on these three works. Not only are they the first writings which ever appeared on Wagner, but as a profound and thoughtful introduction to the poems and the music they are to this day without a rival.i He was indefatigable in bringing forward Wagner's interests with the German Princes, with theatrical authorities, in the press, etc. Towards the end of 1851 Wagner writes to him: "In a word I may call you the creator of my present position, which is perhaps not without hope for the future " (L., i. 150). All this together however is but a small thing compared to what his love, his readiness of comprehension and his steadfast faith meant for the artist languishing in solitude. Liszt was the first person who recognized Wagner's immense importance — his "divine genius" (see his letter of October 7th, 1852); he regarded it as the object of his life, "to be worthy of Wagner's friendship." Wagner on his part writes to him out of an overflowing and grateful heart. " You have made me feel for the first and only time the rapture of being fully and perfectly understood ; see, you have received me as I am, entirely ; not one fibre, not one tiny throb of my heart that you have not felt with me " (L., ii. 42). The friend- ship between these two great men, and especially their correspondence, has often given occasion to a comparison with the relations between Schiller and Goethe. The comparison halts on both feet. The friendship between Goethe and Schiller is purely intellectual. In reading their letters, one thinks of them as already wandering in the Elysian fields, and there, in the full enjoyment of an eternal future, conversing about art and their works. Here on the contrary every- thing is dramatic, tragic, daemonic. The first thing which Liszt does for Wagner is to save his life — ^for in prison he would have died ; then he saves his works. Liszt's letters and his visits to Zurich were for years the real elements in which Wagner lived and created. This " giant heart that meets his own " is his comfort and his hope. "You, my only one, the dearest that I have ; you who are Prince and World and everything to me ! Truly, as far as I can see around me and into my future, I find nothing which can raise me up, sustain me, comfort me, strengthen me, and arm me for renewed struggles, but the sight of you once more, and the few weeks which you will devote to me." On the other hand it must not be overlooked that although Liszt could and did indeed give to Wagner a giant heart, and the abilities of a .giant artist, there could be no talk of an interchange of definite critical ideas, such as there was between Goethe and Schiller. Richard Wagner created as we may imagine a Shakespeare to have created; his gift was like a force of nature, which acts in a special way and cannot act differently, a force ruled by necessity as by a divine command. Even Liszt had doubts about Lohengrin at first; he was afraid of the "high ideal colouring," he had doubts about the poem of Tristan, etc. It was the first 1 These articles, which cannot be recommended too strongly, have been collected and published by Breitkopf & Hartel, 1881. Richard Wagner's Life 65 performance of Lohengrin — conducted by himself — that brought the conviction that "this lovely work" was "the height and perfection of art"; it was the performance of Tristan which showed him that he had not understood it before and caused him to bend in silent admiration before the " heavenly miracle." Wagner never answered cisms ; he composed his must compose them. As not be otherwise than or a Schiller could have anything but admire the But what could be given home of his art " as he gave him.i The names of the that of Liszt, but the remains. When Wagner were two excellent men, a teacher of the piano- first Staatschreiber^ who first weeks. A lady Julie Ritter. these doubts and criti- works as he felt that he a creative artist he could alone ; not even a Goethe advised him, or have done work when complete, to him was love, " the calls it, and that Liszt other friends pale before The first merit of their faithfulness helpers in arrived at Zurich, there Wilhelm Baumgartner," forte, and Jakob Sulzer assisted him during the personally unknown to Wagner, Madame Laussot, the wife of a French merchant, possessed the means of rendering him more substantial assistance. She was English born (Miss Taylor), and during a long stay in Dresden she had acquired an enthusiastic admiration for Wagner's works. ^ More important than this temporary assistance was the small yearly allowance which Wagner received regularly from the end of 1851 to the end of 1856 from Frau Julie Ritter, a friend who had sometimes helped him before, and who employed a considerable legacy to convert her oc- casional support into a safe and permanent fund. Her son Karl was a talented WiLHEEM Baumgartner. ^^^^^ musiciau, and lived a good deal in Wagner's neighbourhood in Zurich. 1 See especially iv. 409, etc. 2 Wagner wrote an essay in 1852 on Baumgartner's songs ; it is of enduring value, inasmuch as it refers rather to the entire tribe than to this species, which in itself is more harmless than noticeable. (Printed in the letters to Uhlig. ) 8 She afterwards married the well-known author Karl Hillebrand. I Jakob Sulzer. In the correspondence 66 First Chapter with Liszt and with Uhlig he is frequently named.i This friendship was also a direct outcome of Wagner's art; it had been inspired by the per- formances of Tannhaitser in Dresden. Karl's brother, Alexander Ritter, the well-known com- poser, was at that time a member of the orchestra. As one of the first and most active disciples of the Meister he deserves praise ; through his marriage with Wagner's niece, Franziska, a closer connection ensued. In the year 1856 Frau Ritter was re- placed by a rich merchant, Herr Wesendonck and his wife. They placed a charming chalet on their estate near Zurich at his disposal, and helped him in other ways to secure his inde- pendence. Frau Wesendonck was no common woman. Before she had met Wagner, his works had inspired her with enthusiasm, and her warm interest in his creations was one of the few rays of sunshine during the years in Zurich. That all these friendships yet had something unsatisfactory in them is explained by the very natural circumstance that these excellent helpers in need could not possibly at that time have a clear per- ception of whom they were helping. They could not guess that their kind sympathy for a musician in distress was an action of historical importance, and thus were naturally disposed to make use of their influence with the best intentions. This, genius, who alone knows what course he must follow, never can brook, and thus these various relations were, one after the other, gradually dissolved by the master himself, who preferred to plunge into the unknown, into such destitution that he had to carry ^^^^^^^^^ his watch to the pawnbroker,- rather than resign fe ^^^^^^^^ one iota of his self-determining independence. To Franz muiler. make him independent of external success he needed c^ O-rr^w*^^'-*'^-^ ' Schopenhauer, too, whom Karl Ritter visited in 1855, remarks, " I was much pleased with him." ' During the composition of the second act of Tristan ! HANS VON BULOW. 68 First Chapter a royal friend, not so much to provide the funds, as for the sake of the proud independence a benefactor confers where generosity is not a sacrifice, but simply a token of good will. In the absence of such a friend he was compelled at the close of this period, i.e. towards the end of 1859, to renew his connection with the theatres, in order to provide himself with the means of subsistence. The first In the meantime, however, other friendships had sprung up ; by degrees disciples. ^ ijf^jg ^^^^ of enthusiastic disciples was formed, mostly musicians, whom Liszt had led to a deeper understanding of Wagner's art: Klindworth, Alexander Ritter, Peter Cornelius, Draeseke and others. They were joined by such men as Brendel, the well-known historian of music, Regierungsrat MuUer, a man thoroughly conversant with German literature and mythology, and a clever writer.^ Half musician, half author, and excellent as both, was Richard Pohl. We first meet him in 1852, and now in 1895 he is still in armour; 2 in 1855 he published the first biography of Wagner. Another friend, Louis Kohler, must not be forgotten. These able men formed the first nucleus of the Wagner party, over which the newspapers excited themselves for so long. That it should ever have come to the formation of a " party " for Wagner, was simply a consequence of the intemperate attacks made upon him, and the systematic scoffing at his doctrines and his aims. Wagner himself detested all party spirit, and could be very angry at the absurdities committed by well-meaning but foolish partisans of his own. In 1857 he writes to Liszt: "An unhappy being has sent me another packet of nonsense and folly about my Nibelungen., and I suppose he expects me to answer and praise it ! I always find that I have to do with apes of this kind when I look for men ! " And in another place he cautions Liszt to throw over " the coterie., the alliance with idiots, who have none of them a notion what our real objects are." Even about Brendel's Die Musik der Gegenwart und die Gesamtkunst der Zukunft (The music of to-day, and the synthetic Art of the future) he expresses himself thus: "It is all very well, and those who can do nothing better may do this sort of thing ; but I take no interest in it " (L., ii. 24). Uhlig and Two friends deserve special mention. Through the quality of their talents Bulow. ^nj their personal relations to Wagner they are raised not only away from cliquism, but high above all parties; these are Theodor Uhlig and Hans von Bulow. Uhlig was a violinist in the royal orchestra, afterwards conductor in Dresden. He is the author of the pianoforte arrangement of Lohengrin, and of a large number of valuable articles in different periodicals, relating especially to Wagner's earlier Zurich writings, to Beethoven's symphonies etc. : — His was a remarkably fine intellect, not so much powerfully original, as receptive, and capable of assimilating impressions from without, and working them up into 1 His treatise Richard Wagner und das Mus'ti- Drama, although written in 1861, when no work of Wagner's second epoch had appeared on the stage, is of enduring value ; his writings on Tannhauser, Tristan, Die Meistersinger, etc., are all very instructive. 2 Richard Pohl died on December 17th, 1896, while this translation was in the press. G. A. H. Richard Wagner's Life 69 something which, if not new, was at least original. At the same time he possessed sound critical judgment and artistic good-feeling. His character was on a level with his intelligence ; his own interests were set aside that he might serve Wagner. After his early death in 1853 Wagner wrote to his widow: " the loss of just this friend is irreparable for my entire life. How orphaned I seem to myself! to whom shall I now tell those things for which I always found such a sympathetic refuge in the heart of my friend ? " The best and most enduring monument has been raised to Uhlig, by the publication of Wagner's letters to him. Hans von Blilovv presents the greatest contrast to Uhlig, but more in consequence of his character than of his gifts ; in him we observe a similar intuitive receptiveness, combined with a choleric-sanguine temperament and rest- less aggressive energy. Hereby too his talents, which were greater in themselves, and were emphasised by his phenomenal musical capacity, came more to the front. Billow was one of those rare men who give out every atom of what is in them, leaving no sedi- in this way related to came to Zurich, at the the contact with such could not fail to cheer Billow is probably the right to bear the proud Wagner ; " his emi- was developed under Stadttheater at Zurich, employed his talent in addition to this he with word, with pen It was necessary ships, for the magical ment behind, and are genius. When Biilow beginning of the fifties, an extraordinary man and encourage Wagner, only man who had a titleof "pupil of Richard nent talent as conductor Wagner's tuition at the Later in Munich he Wagner's service; in worked unremittingly and with artistic deed.^ to mention these friend- Theodor Ullug. power of the great man is fully reflected in the devotion of his friends ; it brings his personality nearer to us than could any attempt at description. In the drama, the author does not describe his hero ; he places him before us, makes him speak and act, and supplies the many things which can never be expressed thus, by showing his individuality as it is seen reflected in the eyes of others. Just so it is with life. The love of a Franz Liszt, the faithfulness of a Frau Ritter, the devotion of a Theodor Uhlig, the stormy zeal of a Hans von Billow supplement all that we learn from Wagner himself; these are "documents" for the clear understanding of his whole life, and as such deserve a place with his writings, his works of art, and his actions. With the comparative rest of the Zurich years it is very easy to obtain a view of his creative work. When the Dresden May insurrection had cut the 1 Far the best notice of Hans v. Bulow is that of Richard Sternfeld. Fritzch, 1894. See also BLilow's letters and writings, now in course of publication. Work in Zurich. 70 First Chapter Gordian knot and Wagner was no longer bound to a world wiich he could only- serve by enforced self-deception, the artistic fermentation within him reached its height. A closer examination of the course of his artistic development must be reserved for the chapter on his art-works. However tempting it may be, it is a dangerous thing to endeavour to bring the growth of an artist's works into genetic connection with the historical events of his life ; the sources of artistic inspiration are for ever hidden from us, and although what we see of it upon the surface naturally manifests progress, like everything else that is living, this course of an artist's development is like life within a life. Points of contact there are enough between the two, but it is wonderful to see how the inner waves constantly break through the outer ones, in defiance of natural laws. Logic here fails; genius may be bound to the universal law of necessity, of cause and effect, but in what way this law here acts must be deduced from itself, not from its surroundings. Still we may perceive a symptom of this artistic fermentation in the fact that Wagner in the years 1 848-49 carried a number of dramatic sketches within him, all of which remained unexecuted : Friedrich der Rotbart (a spoken drama), Siegfried's Tod, Wieland der Schmied, Jesus von Nazareth (word-tone-dramas), as well as other less matured dramatic ideas, such as Achilleus. The creative artist was just about to take a great decisive step — as Wagner says himself (iv. 261) : "to pass from unconsciousness to conscious- ness ; " there was dawning for him " the period of conscious artistic volition along an entirely new path," which he had entered upon "of unconscious necessity" (iv. 390). The period of conscious artistic volition is the second epoch. Of course a perfectly clear and complete view of his entirely new path could not be gained in a day; for this he required rest, retirement, concentra- tion; the artist had to "think himself out." "I had to clear up a whole life which was behind me," Wagner writes to Liszt in 1 850, " to bring before myself everything which had then dawned within me, to overcome the reflection which forced itself on me, by itself, by means of a close examination of its object, before I could clearly, cheerfully, and consciously throw myself again into the beautiful unconsciousness of creative art." Wagner therefore did not strike out any new line ; the new path merely indicates that his former unconscious endeavours be- came conscious. "My latest views," he writes to Heine (U. 382), "are exactly the same as the old ones, only clearer, less chaotic, and therefore more human." He attained perfect clearness and freedom by a number of treatises which he wrote between the summer of 1849 and the summer of 1851, and in which he came to a thorough understanding with himself about art and the world : Die Kunst und die Revolution (Art and Revolution, 1849), Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (The Artistic-work of the Future), Kunst und Klima (Art and Climate, 1850), Oper und Drama (Opera and Drama), Eine Mitteilung an meine Freunde (A Communication to my Friends, 1851). He persistently set aside his longing for artistic production, as well as the admonitions of well-meaning friends, until he had quit^ "cleared up" his mind. At last he was able to speak the proud Richard Wagners Life 71 words of his consciousness achieved : " as artist and man I now step forth to a new world " (iv. 390) ; and then at once the happy unconsciousness of artistic creation re-asserted itself; barely two months after the despatch of the MS. of the Mitteilung appears the first germ of the great world-embracing drama, of the Nibelungen Ring. "Great plans with Siegfried; three dramas and a three- act prelude" (Letter to Uhlig of October 12th, 1851). And now we see Wagner, in spite of his weak health, which from this time became permanent,^ displaying a creative activity which is quite astonishing. He worked without interruption from the autumn of 1851 to the autumn of 1859; the plan of the tetralogy was already completely sketched by November 1851 ; in December 1852 the poem was finished; one year later the score of Rheingold -was nearly complete ; Die WalkUre took two years, the last strokes being added to the score in the spring of 1856; he then passed straight on to Siegfried; in June 1857 the entire first and second acts were ready in the sketch. Here there was an interruption, not in his work itself, but only in its object. From the summer of 1857 until the summer of 1859 Wagner composed the poem and the music of Tristan und Isolde; this is the first work which was completed during the "period of conscious artistic volition." Wagner himself did not feel that in Tristan he was leaving the region included in his great work the Nibelungen; on the contrary he regarded it " as supplementary to the great world-embracing • Nibelungen Myth." At this time another figure arose before his mental vision, a figure which, through the " grand inter-connection of all true myths " was related by a thousand ties both to the Nibelungen drama and to Tristan — the figure of Parsifal. Not until a few years later was the preliminary sketch of the poem further developed, and not till twenty years had elapsed was the drama composed ; Parsifal belongs nevertheless to the Ring and to Tristan ; it also is in a certain sense supplementary, and we know that as early as the spring of 1857 this figure, both in the words and in the music, acquired a firm outline in the imagination of the poet (cf. Chap. iii.). That is Wagner's life from 1849 to 1859. All so-called events are unworthy of mention in the presence of such deeds. About the purport of his writings I shall have much to bring forward in my second chapter, and a few things about his art-work in my third. It remains for me to make one remark with regard to his writings, and to mention one single event, which had a forming influence on Wagner's whole life, before I close this section. I would like to bring home to the reader, how closely Wagner's writings Wagner's belong to his life and his art ; for herein lies not only their rare value, but more writings, especially their biographical significance. The desire to explain himself to others was quite secondary in his mind, nor had he the slightest wish to build up a theoretical aesthetic system. His writings sprang from a subjective necessity, from his impulse " to bring forward everything which was dawning into full 1 "When the mind's free, the body's delicate" [K. Lear). 72 First Chapter consciousness." In May 1852 he writes to Uhlig: "I can only look back with any satisfaction upon the r6le which I have played in literature during the last few years in so far as 1 feel that I have by its means become quite clear X.0 'myself (U. 187). For this reason, Wagner's Zurich writings have rather the character of soliloquies, and herein again lies the peculiar difficulty of under- standing them fully. Once this is known, once it is realized that these literary works have not only an outward connection {i.e. as controversial writings), but also an inner relationship with his artistic creations ; that so far from presenting an abstract system, they are the expression of a living organic process; that particularly in them the genesis of the artist is carried on and completed, the first step has been taken towards the full understanding of the writings, and at the same time a very important step towards the understanding of Wagner's per- sonality. In saying this, however, we have not nearly exhausted the peculiar character of these writings, which are unlike any other productions of literature. They are at the same time controversial writings of great efiect, a true challenge to battle, and besides this they are constructive works of such far-reaching import, that it will be long before the world has sounded their full depth. I may be allowed to quote the opinion of one of the most competent minds of our century, Friedrich Nietzsche, regarding these remarkable products of Richard Wagner's genius : " they excite, produce unrest ; there is an irregularity of rhythm in them, which makes them, as prose, confusing. The discourse is frequently broken; its flow rather impeded than hastened by sudden starts of feeling; a sort of aversion on the part of the writer lies like a shadow over them, as if the artist were ashamed of the process of conceptual demonstration. What perhaps most offends those who are not quite at home in them, is an expression of authoritative dignity, which is quite peculiar to them, and difficult to describe. It seems to me as if Wagner often felt he was talking before enemies— for all these writings are composed in a talking, not a writing style, and they will be found to be much clearer when they are well spoken aloud — before enemies to whom he refuses all familiarity, and for this reason he shows himself reserved and supercilious. But not unfrequently the violent passion of his feelings breaks through the assumed impassibility ; then the heavy artificial periods, loaded with qualifying words, disappear, and sentences and whole pages escape him which are amongst the most beautiful that German prose possesses." ^ Schopen- Not long after the completion of these writings the event which I mentioned ' took place. Wagner became acquainted with the philosophy of Arthur Schopen- hauer. Perhaps we may call this the most important event of his whole life. The words which he wrote many years afterwards in a general sense are like the echo of his own personal experience: "The bewildered thinker can 1 Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, p. 89. This work has already been mentioned in the general introduction as unquestionably the most beautiful which we possess about Wagner; it was written shortly before the first signs appeared of the fearful malady which shattered this splendid intellect, and made him the court-fool of a frivolous, scandal-loving yfn-^^-ji^c/f. hauer. Richard Wagner's Life 73 at last stand erect and firm, upon the soil of true ethics ; this we owe to the completer of Kant, the wide-hearted Arthur Schopenhauer." Wagner had sufliered seriously from the want of a real philosophy ; his poetic insight indeed alForded him a perception of the world deeper than that of any system, but he lacked " the concepts fully corresponding to his intuition." These Schopenhauer supplied (R., 66). In his need, in his inability to find satisfaction in an abstract word-philosophy, Wagner had already tried, with Feuerbach, " to seek the essence of philosophy in the negation of philosophy " ; but here his feet lacked the firm soil of true metaphysics, and his uplifted eyes no longer discovered the mystic heaven of religion. Schopenhauer gave him both. " He has come to me in my sohtude like a gift from Heaven," Wagner writes to Liszt. Now truly — in the happy year 1S54 — did full daylight shine in upon his soul; now, sup- ported by this "wide heart," Wagner took his last step from unconsciousness to consciousness ; complete rest, the unclouded pleasure of creating returned to Wagner's much-tried heart. He had attained the certainty of a fully mature character, and of a mind in perfect harmony with itself. 2. 1859-1866. In the last section I explained how Wagner was driven by circumstances gradually to dissolve his relations with the friends who were supporting him. His course was determined by his own genius ; help he would accept, but he would not wear chains. Another circumstance now weighed with him : after so many years of silent uninter- rupted work, he longed to hear some music, to experience the effect of his own works upon the stage. In 1 8 5 7 he writes that in the absence of the freshening stimulus of a good performance of one of his works, his condition will in the end become unbearable {cf. L., ii. 174); in 1859 he exclaims in despair: "Art, art to drown myself in and forget the world, this alone could help me. . . . Children! I fear I shall be left too long in the lurch; the words 'too late' will come home to you some day in reference to me" (L., li. 248). And he was left ; his friends understood him no longer ; just at this time he received the news that the King of Saxony had refused his application for pardon. And so, in the autumn of 1859, he forsook his "dumb, tone- less asylum" in Switzerland, and threw himself once more into the waves of that world to which "in his inmost being he had long ceased to belong. The following years in Paris, Vienna and Munich brought twofold distress- artistic and material. The poet had longed for " art to forget the world " ; but General view. y^ First Chapter he must conquer the art from that world which he would so gladly have for- gotten ; the world must provide the means, must itself be won for his cause. His early works indeed began to command the German stages; but to provide himself with the means of subsistence he was compelled to turn these very works into "merchandise," by consenting to miserable; unintelligent perform- ances, through which the public too could only gain false impressions of his art and his artistic ideals. Or else he had with his own hands to mutilate the mature productions of his highest poetic capacity, by giving concert performances of frag- ments of the music of Tristan and the Ring, torn from the living dramatic organism to which it belonged — whereby friend and enemy alike reproached him with " want of principle " ! That is to say, he was forced at every step to cut into his own flesh, to act contrary to his own unshaken convictions, merely that he might live and continue to compose, merely that now and again his own art might speak and infuse courage into him from the "dumb scores." Wagner complains of this terrible situation in the affecting letters which he wrote from Paris in i860: '.'The tragedy for me lies in the fact that my most daring enterprises have to serve the purpose of providing me with the means of living. On this point all my friends, protectors and admirers still suffer from a blindness which fills me with despair and bitterness . . . how do you suppose that I feel when I look at a world to which I could be so much, and then at myself, and see how existence is made simply impossible to me ? Believe me that no one can penetrate the depths of bitterness which a man like myself feels ; that there is no help possible for the world in its stupid blindness — this world which only opens its eyes when the treasure is lost — believe me that I know, it." 1 That is the tone of these restless, stormy years. Towards the close how- ever the dawn of a new day broke in the sky of Wagner's life. Ludwig II. had ascended the Bavarian throne, and had stretched out his royal hand to protect the much- tried artist : " Es war Dein Ruf, der mich der Nacht entriickte " the Meister cried in the beautiful poem, Dem Koniglichen Freunde, in which the past years of his deepest misery are described in such pathetic words. "Was Du mir bist, kann staunend ich nur fassen, Wenn sich mir zeigt, was ohne Dich ich war. Mir schien kein Stern, den ich nicht sah erblassen, Kein letztes HofFen, dessen ich nicht bar : Auf gutes GlUck der Weltgunst iiberlassen, Dem wiisten Spiel auf Vortheil und Gefahr ; "Was in mir rang nach freien KUnstlerthaten, Sah der Gemeinhat Lose sich verraten." ^ 1 Unpublished letters to S. K. in the possession of M. Alfred Bovet. 2 The following translation is given, not as a specimen of English verse, but merely to enable the reader to understand the meaning : " What without thee, my friend, I question fate. Forlorn I wandered through the callous world What, when I lacked thee, was my poor estate ? To gamble on for profit or for loss ! No star shone forth that clouds did not obscure ; What swelled the poet's breast was rudely hurled No ling'ring hope but proved a mocking lure. Among the common herd as worthless dross ! " Richard Wagner's Life 75 In the autumn of 1859 Wagner moved from Switzerland to Paris, where he resided until the summer of 1862. In 1861 he had been twice in Vienna, and had established a connection there with the Court Opera, which led him to change his residence to that town in the autumn of 1862. With the exception of the time occupied by concert journeys, which took him as far as St Petersburg, and by performances of his works in Pesth, Prague and other Wagnek, St Petersburcj, 1863. towns, Wagner remained in the Imperial city until the spring of 1864. ^ As regards art, one hope after the other was here blasted ; his pecuniary position was desperate; every attempt to rebuild his shattered fortunes failed. He soon forsook his newly founded home in Vienna; for a few weeks he wandered aimlessly about ; he took refuge with old Zurich acquaintances (Herr und Frau Wille) ; then he travelled to Stuttgart ; often he longed to retire from the world 76 First Chapter altogether, but the duty of providing for his wife left no room for such a thought; "in helpless despair" — as he himself writes — he looked forward to the future. At this precise moment King Ludwig's message reached him. In the first days of May 1864 Wagner arrived at Munich; one stroke of the pen, and his worldly cares were ended ; for his artistic future there opened out to him the prospect of a glorious day, free of all cares, radiant with pure joy. "I am to be my own uncontrolled master — not Kapellmeister — nothing but myself, and his friend. . . All cares are to be taken from me; I am to have what I require." This is how Wagner writes on May 4th, 1864. And yet how quickly did his cares return ! The Munich episode did not even last so long as the Paris and Vienna episodes. In December 1865 the mighty monarch was compelled to banish his friend, not indeed from his heart, but from his vicinity. The cabals had again prevailed. But as usual they were managed very stupidly, and no one profited by their victory except Wagner ; by his dismissal from Munich this distressing chapter of his life, which may be viewed as an attempt to renew relations with the modern theatre, is finished. Henceforward Wagner rarely assisted at performances in operatic theatres ; when he did so, it was only tem- porarily, and for the sake of some special purpose ; he was now finally released from the theatre, as well as from the necessity of trying vain experiments. Soon afterwards he built his own festival play-house in a remote corner of Germany. Till then— that is from the flight from Munich, 1865, till his establishment in Bayreuth in 1872 — he lived in the beautiful "silent asylum" (ix. 2)73) i^^ Switzerland, which had appeared dumb and toneless to him in 1859; he lived there happy and free and without care, entirely for his artistic work, as he could never have lived in Munich. Paris. Wagner's residence in Paris (1859 to 1862) is known to the outside world by a single event, one indeed which was of importance in its consequences : the performances of Tannhduser on the 13th, i8th, and 24th of March 1861 in the Grand Opera. This was, as everybody knows, the occasion for unprecedented and scandalous scenes. The press had here, as elsewhere, raged vehemently against Wagner, and had found powerful allies in the gentlemen of the Jockey Club who had been cheated of their ballet. These two factions, supported by a hired claque, succeeded, by dint of whistling, shouting and howling, in entirely preventing the work from being heard, so that Wagner was obliged to withdraw it after the third performance. When we know the share which Germans bore in these scandalous proceedings ; how the public itself took the part of the German Meister against the tyranny of the press and the plutocracy ; especially when we consider who were Wagner's friends in Paris, we shall never fall into the mistake of sup- posing that the French showed less understanding for Wagner than the Germans.^ 1 As far as I am aware the name of Meyerbeer has never yet been publicly mentioned in con- nection with this scandal, by which his control of the Parisian stage was assured for another thirty years ; but he was freely spoken of in Paris at the time. Wagner himself knew very well by whom the contemptible battle against him was led; he writes (x. 177): "I rejoice at my ill-success' in Richard Wagner's Life 77 On the contrary, the residence in Paris brought him many pleasant experi- ences, in part of a kind such as he never met with in Germany. Tannhduser was performed by the express command of the Emperor of the French : two years later the Berlin Intendant still refused to receive Wagner at all ! It must be added that the order for the performance of Tannhduser was issued without his having moved in the matter ; in fact it was decidedly against his wish, as his letters of that time (partly yet unpublished) show very clearly. He very soon discovered the importance of court intrigues, and in the summer of i860 he writes : " My greatest danger lies in the hatred of the Grafin Walewska for the Fiirstin Metternich " ; in the same letter he continues : " Under no circumstances can I accept your earlier congratulations on my laurels in Paris. I have long ago regretted having ever' entered upon an undertaking of this kind, with all its consequences." ^ And how favourably did the manner in which the rehearsals of Tannhduser were conducted in Paris contrast with the methods of German theatres ! Wagner himself says: " Everything that I wished for was purchased at once, without the cost ever being considered. The mise en scene was pre- pared with minute care, such as I had no notion of before." He also praises "the careful diligence, quite unknown amongst us, with which here (in Paris) the rehearsals at the piano are conducted," and "the unsurpassably beautiful way in which the pilgrims' chorus was sung and put upon the stage." The Paris public he praises as possessing " a lively receptiveness, and a truly wide-hearted sense of justice "2 (vii. 187-191). When Wagner declares that " the recollections which he retained of his stay in Paris were for the most part of the pleasantest kind," the reason is that here for the first time in his life he found himself appreciated at his true value. Even now, in his own fatherland, the mighty poet, Richard Wagner, is often regarded as "only a musician"; those who do not con- sider themselves musical take no notice of him at all, and those who are musical often think it not worth while to consider whether the performances which they hear of his works are good or bad, whether the red pencil has left any Paris. Could I have been pleased at a success purchased by the same means as were employed by my alarmed and secret antagonist ? " In accordance with a very common system of tactics, the attempt has frequently been made of late years, to represent the attitude of the press, the aristocracy and the plutocracy, as a mere demonstration against Napoleonism. That is to throw dust in the eyes of the public. For it was just the papers which supported the Emperor— the Figaro at their head— who ■ agitated against Wagner, and who tried, amongst other things, to brand him as a republican, whilst many of the independent organs, and of those which were written by born Frenchmen, fought manfully on his side. Wagner's Judenthum in der Musik, and the opinions which he expressed about Meyerbeer in Oper und Drama had more to do with the scandal than any sudden fit of desire for freedom on the part of the Parisians. 1 From letters in the possession of M. Alfred Bovet. 2 An account of the hundred and sixty-four rehearsals for Tannh'duser in the Grand Opera has been written by M. Charles Nuitter, the librarian of the Grand Opera, and will be found in the Bayreuther Festbldtter, 1884. 78 First Chapter dramatic coherence or not ; they only want to enjoy the music.^ In Paris on the contrary, immediately after Wagner's first concerts, a circle of enthusiastic admirers collected round him; few or none of these were musicians, but many were amongst the most eminent poets, authors, painters and historians of art ; besides these were doctors, engineers and politicians — all men who joined Wagner, not as musical enthusiasts, but because they felt with more or less distinctness that here a new artistic ideal was coming forward, and that the extraordinarily powerful effect of this music was not only due to its melodic and harmonic sub- stance, but to the fact that in a certain sense it embodied a poetic intention. What Schiller had required, that music should " become form," had here been achieved, and the mind of the Frenchman, receptive as it is for form, saw it at once. The Frenchman felt enthusiasm for Gluck at a time when his music was tabooed in his fatherland, when the sister of Frederic the Great could say of it that " it stank." Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was performed in a masterly way in Paris, when in Germany it was as good as unknown ; and now there arose a circle of enthusiastic men who divined the extraordinary importance of Wagner's genius, and at least had a presage of his artistic aims. It was a small circle, but it included some of the best names, and it offered Wagner that which he had not yet found in Germany, except with Liszt and Bulow — reverence. Wagner himself testifies to the deep intelligence of these foreigners. "What had been revealed to my French friends, and what my German artistic contemporaries and critics still looked upon as the ridiculous chimeras of my arrogance, was in reality an art form, which, while differing entirely both from the opera and from the modern drama, surpassed them both, inasmuch as it alone fulfilled their best aspirations, and bound them together into one free ideal whole" (vi. 382). As far back as the year 1853 the well- known authoress Contesse Gasparin wrote : "A day will come — how soon I know not — when Wagner will be enthroned as undisputed ruler of Germany, and of France too. Perhaps we shall not live to see the glory of this dawn; no matter! if only we have greeted it from afar ! " Read the enthusiastic articles of the great poet Charles Baudelaire, and hear this literary purist of the strictest order, this pupil of Theophile Gautier, everywhere calling attention to the admirable beaute littiraire of Wagner. How truly does Baudelaire perceive the close relationship between Wagner and the great dramatists of Greece! but he knows too that Wagner — unlike Gluck — does not live in the dream of a renaissance of the antique, that he is just the contrary, the creator of a new form, the artist of a fermenting future.^ For an example of more musical, and so to speak theatrical understanding, read the essays of the Doctor Gasperini, which were afterwards collected and published in book-form (1866). A wonder- 1 To mention a single example of the cuts which are common in Germany : Tristan und Isolde, Act II., Konig Marke : « Trotz Feind und Gefahr, die fiirstliche Braut brachtest du mir da : die kein Himmel erlost, warum mir diese HoUe ? " 2 Baudelaire's essays on Wagner will be found in the third vol. of his Oeu-vres completes. ^^yC^^- y^^ 8o First Chapter fully striking, and quite intuitive insight into the soul of the German master was possessed by Champfleury ; ^ his little treatise Richard Wagner tells in barely fourteen pages so much that is true and deep that it may supply the place of a whole Wagner library. Frederic Villot, the Keeper of the Imperial Museums has, as far as I am aware, written nothing about Wagner, but he possessed an astonishingly accurate acquaintance with both the words and the music of Wagner's works and soon became his confidential friend and adviser: the famous essay Znkimfts-Musik (Musik of the Future) is addressed to him. Nuitter, the well-known librettist, deserves credit for the translation of Tannhauser ; so too does the unfortunate Edouard Roche, who died at an early age. Looking further into this circle we meet with the names as Auguste Vacquerie villy : of arfists, like authors of note, like de Lorbac ; politicians Jules Ferry and Chal- translator of Tristan journalists of the first supporting him man- Gautier, Ernest Reyer, above all the celebrated of the Journal des the gentleman who of arms for the Jockey champ de gueules exergue : Asinus ad gained by multiplying emphasise the one :^ ' 9BI 1 'tL m ■IH i Charles Baudelaire. of famous poets, such and Barbey d'Aure- Bataille and Morin ; LeonLeroyandCharles like Emile OUivier, lemel Lacour (the und Isolde). Some rank are also found fully: Theophile Catulle Mendes, and and formidable critic Debats^i Jules Janin, suggested a new coat Club: "Un sifllet sur hurlantes, et pour lyram ! " Nothing is names ; we need only thing which stamps this Paris episode as of enduring importance in Wagner's life — that is, not the wretched story of the Ta?inhaiiser performance, and of its massacre by Albert Wolff, the brothers Lindau, David, and other individuals of the same calibre, but the enthusiastic recognition which he won from the elite of really important, independent men. One more name I must mention from this Paris time. One noble woman, Marie von Muchanoif, nee Grafin Nesselrode^ong an enthusiastic votary of the ■Meister, and now resident in Paris — carried on the traditions of his faithful Zurich friends and came to his assistance at one of those moments when nothing but unconditional generosity is of use. In this case the deed was all the more noble because Frau v. MuchanofF was not herself wealthy. True, she regarded her friendly deed — which she kept carefully secret — not as a sacrifice, but as a valued privilege ; all the more does her name deserve to be entered in the golden 1 Champfleury was poet, painter and sculptor ; when he died a few years ago he was artistic director of the great porcelain factory in Sevres. Richard Wagner's Life 8 I book of the truly faithful. It was from Paris that Wagner wrote of himself as "a man who has been widely loved and admired, but about whose actual existence not a soul really troubles himself." i This reproach does not apply to Frau Mane von Muchanoff ; she did trouble herself about Wagner's existence Sad to say, this faithful and devoted friend died a few years afterwards ; she never saw Bayreuth, but— to use Comtesse Gasparin's words— she " greeted the glorious dawn from afar." In Paris, too, Wagner met the celebrated authoress of the Mcmoiren e'lner Idealistin, Baroness Malwida von Meysenbug. He had already formed a slight acquaintance with her in London in 1855, and from this time forward she was one of his most valued friends. Of the Vienna years there is little at all, and still less that is edifying to relate. Beethoven (whom the Viennese like to regard as their own) once exclaims in his own blunt way: "Cursed be the life here in this Austrian barbarism ! " This peculiar mixture of southern frivolity and northern ponderosity, in which neither the bril- liant talents and intuitive sense for form of the Latin races, nor the depth and sterling qualities of the Germans have any part; this "Austrian barbarism," Wagner now learned to know by painful experience. When he reached Vienna, FRmERic Villot. he heard his own Lohengrin for the first time in his life. The exultation of the public throughout the performance was indescrib- able ; deeply moved, the Meister expressed his thanks at the close : "Allow me to strive after my artistic aims. I beg you to support me by preserving your favourable feelings towards me." It was this "truly impressive" reception which led Wagner to further undertakings in Vienna, whereby he soon learned that not even a fraction of the whole public would provide him with the slightest support ; the enthusiasm had been a passing excitement, such as the Viennese delight in ; for the aims of Wagner's art, not one of them cared a bit. Beethoven did not owe his livelihood in Vienna to the enthusiasm of the Viennese, but to the artistic sense of Hungarian magnates and Bohemian feudal noblemen. These traditions had long ago been lost, and besides, Wagner's art afforded no soil for patronage ; it required a people, or a king. Here, however, there was neither people nor king ; except for a few genuine Germans belonging to the middle classes, his life in Vienna was quite isolated ; he had to push his lofty artistic aims alone and without any support, against theatrical conditions which were amongst the most corrupt in Europe, and in the teeth of a press which \^ienna. 1 Unpublished letter in the possession of M. Alfred Bovet. L 82 First Chapter stood morally on a level with the theatre, but which at the same time went to work more cleverly and was more conscious of its purpose. The troubles of this time all turned about a projected performance of Tristan und Isolde, which after all never took place. As Lohengrin, Tannhauser, and der Fliegende Hollander had drawn the public, and proved to be '■'■KassenstUcke " (i.e. paying pieces), the authorities of the Imperial Opera were glad to have Wagner's latest work. But directly they discovered what a task they had set themselves, when they realized the high degree of artistic perfection which the composer required in the performance, their only aim was to extricate themselves from their obligations. A writer who was himself a daily witness of all the events of these years in Vienna says : " Incompetent management, intrigues of the singers, diatribes in the newspapers, want of discipline and the untrustworthiness of important agents, all united to harass the nerves of the unfortunate composer. Wagner was kept in suspense by promises in the shabbiest way. Various excuses were put forward to pacify him. In the first year it was always the news of the expected convalescence of Ander (the tenor) ; then it was broken engagements, and negotiations with singers, of whose fitness no serious judge would entertain a thought. Their clear duty, which was to engage a singer competent to under- take the title role, the directors never could or would see. Their word, which had been pledged to the composer, was gradually withdrawn. An artist existed at that very time whose whole heart was set upon the creation of Tristan, and who was equal to the task, both as regarded the volume of his voice and his poetic mastery of the character : Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld. Wagner had mentioned his name to the authorities in Vienna, and urged them strongly to engage him ; they paid no attention to his wish." ^ I do not think that Wagner's whole life contains another episode so piteous and miserable, so hopelessly barren, intellectually and artistically, as these Vienna years. What advantage could a Richard Wagner derive from the great success of his concerts in Vienna, Prague, St Petersburg, and Moscow ? They provided him with money, but with nothing else. Wagner's " Sybaritic life " in his little house in Penzing, near Vienna, supplied the newspapers with inexhaustible matter for moral indignation against the great poet. We hear of silk and velvet, of champagne suppers and so on. Supposing these accounts to have some founda- tion, they would still, at most, only bear out what has already been said. In his silent asylum in Switzerland, the lonely forsaken artist had been able to look out upon the Alps ; they spoke comfort to him ; in Paris he might feel that he was amply repaid by the admiration and friendship of the most eminent intellects for all the injustice which he had received ; later, in Munich the faithful friendship of the King, and the aft'ection of Schnorr made up for everything; but here in Vienna, in the capital of "real frivolity," as Wagner afterwards called it, there was nothing — no comfort, no worthy diversion, no " asylum " for the poor tortured heart, for genius driven almost to the verge of despair ; there was 1 Gustav Schonaich, in a series of articles in the IVeiner Tagehlatt, 1892. Richard Wagner's Life 83 nothing— except frivolity. It is possible that Wagner may have resorted to the advice of his fiivourite poet Hafiz. Cause enough he had with him to wish that the sad lamp of reason would pale. The intellectual and moral quagmire of his surroundings is mirrored in his despair, but the creative impulse in his soul did not stagnate, and to finish the sublime work which he had already begun Die Meister singer — he needed another atmosphere. He lied from Vienna. Amid the countless number of those who had so loudly extolled him in Vienna, one single really sympathetic figure stands forth, that of Doctor Standthartner, afterwards first physician at the Vienna General Hospital. Nothing in Wagner's whole life is more beautiful than these friendships, awakened one after the other by the magic of his art and of his personality, and remaining without exception firm and true until death. Standthartner, too, had to endure much for and through his great friend, but his attach- ment was never shaken, nor did Wagner's gratitude ever grow cool. Of this relation " broken only by death " Doctor Standthartner's stepson writes: "it afibrds the most beautiful and undeniable evidence of the warmth of Wagner's heart, and of his steadfast adherence to his friends."! Peter Cornelius, who was then living in Vienna, and also Tausig proved truly devoted friends during those unhappy years. One more heavy trial Wagner had to endure before he could escape from Munich. the hideous life of our great cities, and retire into the glorious world of his own fancy, there to bring forth such works as Die Meistersinger^ Siegfried^ and Gdtterddmmerung. For the nineteen months in Munich, from May 1864 to December 1865, though contrasting in every way with the years in Vienna, were a tragic time. His poverty indeed was over, but with a mind like Wagner's this only supplied more soil for his artistic requirements ; his pleasure was not in having, but in giving ; " the world owes me the little bit of luxury which I require," he had once remarked, but now, when the anxiety for his daily bread was removed, when he was allowed his "little bit of luxury," there was but one consuming wish — to give to the world what he conceived that he owed it ; his full artistic capabilities, everything which he saw so clearly, and which he — and he alone — w^as able to call at once into life, if only he had free hand. Even with performances at Zurich, when everything was against him, Wagner had gained a great opinion of his " skih in making the impossible possible," but now means of every kind were to be placed at his disposal. There could be no doubt about what he had to do ; on the one hand completely to reconstruct the modern operatic stage, and on the other to reveal to men a new art, undreamed of before — the word-tone-drama. His intensely practical nature, which compelled recogni- 1 Gustav Schonaich, Ib'ul. Dr Standthartner. 84 First Chapter tion even from his enemies ; his experience of the stage, which at that time already extended over nearly fifty years, enabled Wagner at once to find the ways and means which would lead to his end. Perfect performances, with the materials then available, would, he thought, first show what could be attained by real, earnest, ideal effort, and strict, workmanlike handling of the artistic elements; these performances would especially educate the public, and show by examples the diiference between true and false art. At the same time a German school of music was to be founded in Munich on new principles, to train German artists — both singers and instrumentalists^to the fulfilment of their new task, by imparting a firmer technical basis, and wider intellectual education ; finally, a festival play-house was to be erected, in which not only the obvious faults of our monstrous opera houses — which seem built neither for seeing nor for hearing — should be removed, but an attempt should be made, gradually to solve the problem of the " theatre " in a new way, in a way corresponding to our new requirements. With restless energy Wagner commenced his work. The news- papers, which here as everywhere fell upon the great man with unprecedented violence and meanness, had again much to tell of his " extreme Sybaritic tastes." The Augsburger Allgemeine writes, "An Oriental Grandseigneur need not hesitate to take up his permanent abode in Wagner's house." I am afraid the oriental Grandseigneur would have been put out of breath by the mere sight of such an incredible amount of daily labour. For what Wagner accomplished in this short space is simply fabulous. Of the extensive plans enumerated above, some were already accomplished, all the rest were in a fair way towards being carried into execution, when suddenly Wagner had to yield to his enemies, and after these few months' residence to leave Munich at the wish of the King. After some very satisfactory introductory experiments with Der Fliegende Hollander and Tannhduser, the ever memorable performance of Tristan und Isolde^ the first stage- festival-play {Biihnenfestspiel), had taken place on June 10th, 1865; on March 31st of the same year Wagner had submitted to the King his comprehensive report on a German school of music to be erected in Munich,^ and in April the commission entrusted with the execution of the scheme had commenced work. Gottfried Semper, the first architectural genius -of our century, and one of Wagner's oldest friends, had arrived in Munich ; the King had commissioned him to build a monumental festival play-house, and that no time might be lost, it was agreed that as a provisional measure another building should in the meantime be adapted for the purpose. It must be mentioned, however, that this does not by any means represent the whole of Wagner's activity during these short months : in 1864 appeared one of his most important essays, ''Uber Staat und Religion" (" On the relations between the State and Religion "), of which Nietzsche very truly remarks: "it compels a silent, inward, devotional contemplation, such as one feels at the opening of a precious shrine." Soon afterwards the same ecstatic 1 This report, which marks an epoch in the history of German music, has been included in his collected works, vol. viii. Richard Wagner s Life 85 mood produced the first detailed sketch of Parsifal, whilst all this time the score of Die Meistersinger was progressing vigorously. These are the works to which Wagner may point if it be asked whether he justified the confidence reposed in him by his royal friend, and merited that of the Bavarian people. But if we exclude his own artistic work for a moment, and ask ourselves what portion of all his other efforts in Munich — his efforts for the world, in the world and with the world — has remained, we must answer ; nothing at all. What the years in Dresden had been on a small scale, the months in Munich were on a large one. The leading powers of our society showed not the slightest sign of intelligence ; they thwarted all the plans of the Meister ,- nobleman and citizen, court, press, plebs, all joined the standard of mediocrity against genius, and cried with one voice, "Stone him!" Even the monarch had to yield to superior force. The building of the festival play-house was stopped, the school of music (in Wagner's sense) came to nothing : the performance of Tristan (like that of Die Meister- singer, which took place under very similar circumstances in 1868) remained a solitary event — a kind of nionstrum per excessum — in the annals of the opera, without result, still-born, as far as the theatrical life of Germany was concerned. For this reason the time at Munich was one of the bitterest experiences of Wagner's life ; here his fondest hopes were brought to nought ; here was enacted the third and last act of the tragedy : Paris — Vienna — Munich. But the real positive gain of this time was carried away by the banished master himself He had tried to serve the world with the sacrifice of all his powers ; the world rudely rejected his service, but he received the reward of the truly selfless ; what he had tried to create for the happiness and the glory of others brought glory and happiness to himself Cabals and hatred had only confirmed the King's friendship for Wagner ; under the protection of his august friend the exiled artist was to enjoy in complete seclusion from the world, the happiest, most peaceful years of his life. With his " ideal popular theatre " the public of Munich would have nothing to do ; ^ in its place the shamefully mis- understood Meister was to build a festival play-house to his own eternal glory in Bayreuth. These gifts were reserved for the future, but Wagner saved two others, no less precious, out of the wreck of these years so inglorious for Germany ; the love of Ludwig II. and his experiences in the performance of Tristan. For Wagner's life, King Ludwig's influence was similar to that of Schopen- King 1 That this may not be denied at the present day, when Munich looks with envy upon Bayreuth, two short passages may be quoted : the Augshurger Allgemnne Zeitung writes on January z 5th, 1867: "Now the building of the ideal 'people's theatre' will be taken up again more vehemently than ever. We think, in common with many experts, that with the first stone will be laid the founda- tion stone of a ruin." On February 19th, 1869, the same paper writes : "We should hail the day when R. Wagner, together with all -his friends, should be really crushed, and should turn his back on the good and true city of Munich and on all Bavaria." I have purposely chosen to quote from the time after the war of 1866, and when Wagner had long ceased to live in Munich ; these are no longer the vulgar attacks on his person of 1865 ; they are the expression of the calm, well-considered judgment of the most highly respectable newspaper of Bavaria — and of the "experts ! " Ludwig. 86 First Chapter hauer. Schopenhauer had supplied him with "the conceptions for his intuitions," that is, with the only thing which he needed in the domain of philosophy, and therewith Schopenhauer had given him rest after the storm, the safety of secured possession, and the possibility of extending it. From King Ludwig Wagner received the material resources, if not fully to realize his artistic ideals, at least to produce such intelligible exemplars that his objects became clearly manifest. The Meister himself was from this time onwards no longer " to gamble on for profit or for loss " ; a strong arm protected him from the grim army of philistines, those " mean, cowardly poltroons who are yet so cruel and so tied to their habits " (L., i. 96) ; and in protecting him the King became, in a similar sense to Schopenhauer, his fellow workman, a decisive portion of Wagner's own life. That the Meister was able to complete his Nibelungen Ring, his Meistersinger, and his Parsifal, and to have them performed, we owe to King Ludwig; the festival play-house in Bayreuth, the symbol into which Wagner's whole artistic being is concentrated, is equally a monument to the glory of this exalted monarch. What gives its true significance to the deed of Ludwig II. is the fact that with him there was no idea of ordinary " protection " of art, such as monarchs regard as a duty incumbent on their rank, nor was it, as was said at the time, a sentimental ' fancy for music. King Ludwig was a man of unusual parts; his abilities were those of the greatest artists. The first impression of Wagner's music had induced him thoroughly to study Wagner's writings, and so far from finding in them anything democratic, socialistic, or revolutionary, such as had led Graf Beust to regard the author's mere return to Saxon soil as dangerous to the state, this proudest of princes had discovered in them a truly royal ideal. Without ever having seen Wagner, he was seized with a deep, glowing, and, as the future showed, immutable love for the man who had created Lohengrin and written Eine Mitteilung an Meine Freunde. Not because he raved about him, but because he recognized his supreme importance, did King Ludwig call Wagner to Munich. Perhaps this prince was the very first man who knew exactly who Wagner was, and what he wanted. "He knows everything about me, and understands me as my own soul. ... He knows perfectly who I am, and what I need ; not one word did I have to lose about my position," Wagner wrote in May 1864.1 Of Liszt — the only other man who could be considered at this time- such an understanding for Wagner's aims could not be asserted. Liszt was so great an artist that a single work sufficed to reveal to him Wagner's importance in art, but nowhere do we find him paying any attention to his great friend's art- doctrines, to his views on the position of art in modern society, on regenera- tion, etc. — doubtless he had little sympathy for them. Wagner himself bears witness to it. "My thoughts Liszt does not understand; my actions are dis- tinctly distasteful to him" (U., 44). Liszt's faithful affection deserves all the more acknowledgment ; but were we to confine the meaning of the word friend to one who understood him " as his own soul," then King Ludwig is certainly 1 Letter to Frau Wille. Richard Wagner's Life 87 Wagner's first, and almost his only friend. Speaking in 1872, Wagner said "What this king is to me, goes far beyond my own existence ; that which he has helped on in me, and with me, represents a future which spreads in wide circles around us, which stretches far beyond what is ordinarily understood by social and political life ; a high intellectual culture, a step towards the highest destiny of which a nation is capable — that is expressed in the wonderful friendship of which I speak." The attempt has been made, and is still made, to represent the beautiful friendship which existed between the King and Wagner in a totally false light. The friendship of the King, it is said, was not sincere ; the King had a character incapable of devoted affection. Wagner tried to misuse his position for political purposes, etc. etc. The mere fact that these stories and accusations contradict each other ought to prove how little foundation they possess. Several memoirs however, written quite seriously of late years, have tended to revive the old fables. One man declares that Wagner carried on "a national policy, founded on an understanding with Prussia"; another that he was "full of aversion to Prussia," and so it goes on. The claim to rest upon " personal recollections " does not give the slightest weight to these different tales, for the " recollections " of people who were at the time but very imperfectly informed regarding the real course of events, and who were quite incompetent to j udge them rightly, do not gain value by keeping. It is a strange fallacy to suppose that gossip which has lain for fifty years in the cellar of an understanding, never very clear, should afterwards afford valuable material for history. Wine may gain body by age, recollections never can. Genuine documents relating to this tragic time in Munich will some day be published. But they are not in the least necessary to enable us to form a true judgment of the relations between the King and the Meister, and to show the falseness of the old wives' tales about the political intriguer Wagner. As far as the King is concerned, twenty years of unflagging, self-sacrificing fidelity have proved his "sincerity" and his "devotion"; of Wagner himself we already possess printed letters enough — to say nothing of his writings — to afford ample information about his actions. These only confirm what we might conjecture without their aid. King Ludwig not only admired Wagner's music, but also loved and honoured his personality, as he never loved and honoured any other man ; he recognized in Wagner a spirit towering far above his surroundings and above his age, and it was inevitable that, whether he wished it or not, the artist should exert an influence upon the monarch. It is not necessary to assume that actual advice was given ; still less to imagine political combinations ; the mere presence of such a man influences every thought. And when we find Wagner (after his departure from Munich) writing such words as these : " The time of trial for the King has arrived ; he will endure it. When you see him become stronger, exclaim with me : Hail to Germany ! " ^ then we know in what direction his silent influence made itself felt. Just as natural as the King's love for 1 Letter of December 24, 1865 to G. Wittmer {Musikalisches Wochenblatt, 1894, p. 226). 88 First Chapter Wagner, was the hatred which the mighty ones at court feh for him, a hatred nourished by the fact that Wagner very properly repelled every attempt to misuse his position to influence the King. The insupportable situation in which Wagner at last found himself appears in his letters, and they also prove the accounts of his political ambition to be simple lies. In 1864, only a few months after he came to Munich, we already see him filled with evil apprehensions ; his penetrating mind had soon realized that he was here in a situation sans issue. " From the time of my first call to Munich, full of promise as it was, I never for a moment doubted the fact that the soil provided for the realization of my new art-tendencies did not belong to me or to my tendencies " — so he writes in vol. viii. p. 254 of his collected works. What should he do? In an impressive letter of February 1865, in which Wagner gives expression to his longing for rest and seclusion, he continues : " Whenever the wish to withdraw into the narrower limits which alone would bring me rest grows uppermost in my mind, I cannot but shudder at the thought of relinquishing him to his surroundings. I tremble to the depths of my soul and ask my dsemon : why this cup to me ? why, at a time when I require rest and leisure for uninterrupted work, am I entangled in a responsibility in which the welfare of a man of heavenly gifts, perhaps the future of a country, are laid in my hands ? How shall I save my heart ? How am I still to be an artist? He lacks every person who is necessary to him! . . . My longing for the last rest is unspeakable. My heart can no longer endure this dizziness."! In March 1865 he writes to Roeckel:"I long to be away — in a beautiful corner of Italy — strange — as lazzarone — to nurse my poor nerves ; but how can I desert this young king in his odious surroundings, while his soul is marvellously bound to me ? This is how it stands ! What ought I to do, and what shall I be able to do ? I keep asking myself this and know as yet of no answer, nor can any human being give me one! I am too tired!" (R., 83). Other letters of 1 866 testify how painfully the King was aifected by Wagner's resolve to reside no longer in Munich. The King had only contemplated a temporary withdrawal and conjured Wagner to return, but he was not to be moved. He writes: "It cost me a terrible struggle with my feelings to abide by my resolve, and to announce my intention to this splendid young man. But — so it will now remain." 2 That Wagner longed for a strong and united Germany, cannot, as I have said, be doubted ; in this same letter he writes : " One thing is becoming more and more clear to me — with Germany's re-birth and well-being, the ideal of my art stands or falls ; herein alone can my art flourish ! " and in June 1866 he writes to Graf Enzenberg: "Only that Germany which we love and desire can help to realize my ideal." ^ It is quite beyond doubt that this German feeling, which King Ludwig found not only in Wagner's writings, but in his entire life and action, exercised a determining influence upon him in the critical 1 Letters to Frau Wille, February 26th, 1865. 2 Letter to Julius Frobel of April i (th, 1866, Lucerne [Font Feh zum Meer, 1894-95, Hft. i). 5 jillgeme'ine Musik Zeitung, 1885, p. 460. Richard Wagner s Life 89 S^unc^en. ^omgl. §of- uit) ttational-Cdratm ®amfti)g belt 10. Sunt 1865. ^u^ec 'Slbonnement- 3um crjicn iDlale: Jianig QRath 3foH» Jluni)(nal . . . ' . antior . . . . SBtangSnc . . . . flfn J^irt .... Sin Sifudmann l^crroiu'ii Dcr ^anDfuno' ^tn @i(iion eon Sarolflftlb. Qrau @4noii oon Sarolirtlb. ^nt SDlitttnouijtr. ^m $(inn4. Sriulrin Srinft. ^CTT Simons. ^eti igattmantu days which were soon afterwards to decide the fate of Germany.i To exert this influence Wagner had no need to organize conspiracies ; he had only to be what he was, a German poet and thinker; whoever understood him was under his influence. This was the case with King Ludwig. I was compelled to enter into this question in detail. The anonymous slanders which Wagner's person and character had to endure from the press can be treated with con- tempt, and left to be forgotten, but we cannot allow the relations be- tween him and the King to be misrepresented and falsified ; for here quite diflFerent interests are involved ; "historical lies " have a charmed life, and many a person had no other object in slan- dering the artist than that of vilifying the King. About the perform- ance of Tristan und Isolde on June loth 1865 — "more wondrously beautiful than anything that was ever seen," says Wagner — I cannot here speak in detail; only I must point out its great significance in Wagner's life. It was his first opportunity of putting all that he had taught about the value of a ferfect theatrical per- formance, to practical proof, particularly his opinion concerning the special " Stimmung " (frame of mind) both actors and public would be plunged into by' a "festival performance" outside the usual humdrum repertoire. Moreover it was the first performance of any work 1 It is stated on credible authority that King Ludwig more than once appeared suddenly in Triebschen in the course of the summer and autumn of 1870. M a^Hlbudjcr Tuib, >afl Stud |u 12 h., on btr Jtajje ju ()ttttn. ERroir: ^rrr @ifll. 9tene 3ecoratlonen: 3in (iflcn StuFiUSc ^tlmty^ti ISmaif auf btiii iSrrtcif finte €rci'itiff(8, BDm Jt ^oft^rottimaltr $(iin Qlngflo Cuaglto. 3ni jlvdttn !Uuf)UBf; 3)arr vor 3fofbt'fl (Simaii, wm R. ^[}fl^r @nbe nac^ y^f^n Uhr. Ibtt frrir (Slntrftt ift obne allr <2liiena|»me aiiffirl^obni pn^ iDlrb o&ne ftoffdbillrt giicnianft ciiiflrlgfffn. ' UrprrtDirr: Itn II 3unt: (3m Jl fiaf* ant ^IiiIlonal'IbtoiEi) QAnitiin., Cpti •am Qlalon. turpi(l von Voul ^ftfr. »n 13. . : (3ni St. ^o\' uiib 9talieni]l'II)(aln) iNil nurgtlicbrnrm Hboiinimmi: 3uni tiiltii VRM niibfibolr: • Xtiftan unt Sfo'l't. von -Ni^arB SBnnnrr. -SonnttDag w n 15. „ . Qm Jt, ^I'f- »nP aarittinl'lhfJttr) gjlla jBcatb, Dpre von gtllcitn 'Dapitt. S)T oiiidnf 3tlltl loSM 2 h. Ilnul wn Or. IL jCsIf A Solfa €eiiiir m^ j^^^H^EhiH ^g3[H l^g^^jJH[H| ^^^^^■^^H ^■vjjtM ^^H ^M L_J* «A i-m. tionist. "My busmess is to make revolution wherever I come! (U., 20). Inese words may be taken as Wagner's motto for his whole life. And if any one chooses to call him a revolutionist., nothing need be said against it — provided it be observed that, even in his storm and stress period, Wagner never believed in a political revolution, and can therefore under no circumstances be called a political revolutionist. Wagner only believed in the possibility of a thorough and successful reform for a very short time, perhaps only for a few weeks in 1848. In the summer of '1849 he wrote Die Kunst und die Revolution., and in September 1850 he announced to Uhlig his present "mistrust of all reforms, and behef only in Revolution " (U., 58). If we admit the term "revolutionist" as in some degree applicable to 1 From an unprinted letter of 1850. 138 Second Chapter Wagner, though not in its present accepted sense very accurate, the reader must well understand that his share in the political movements of the forties has absolutely nothing to do with it. At that time Wagner was, according to his own admission, "involved in error and carried away by passion " (L., ii. 122) ; the events of those days have therefore great value for the knowledge of his character (his intrepidity, his confidence in the German nature etc.), but none for the estimation of his socialistic views. Those are to be found expressed very clearly, and in full detail, in his writings from 1849 ^^''^^ to 1883. And it is in the light of these writings as a whole that we feel it impossible absolutely to reject the term revolutionist as applied to Wagner. But what does Wagner understand by revolution^ if not a political revolution .? He understands it to mean, " the great revolution of mankind, the beginnings of which anciently subverted the Greek tragedy," which "displayed its first effects ... in the dissolution of the Athenian State " (iii. 36-38). For more than two thousand years, ever since the victory of " the revolutionary statesman " Pericles, Europe has been living in the chaotic state of revolution. The real State, the State of our dreams, has "always been in decadence, or more properly, it has never attained real being" (iv. 81), and our so-called civilization is a chaos (ix. 144). Our entire poHtical activity, whether its form be reactionary, liberal, democratic, or socialist, is in truth revolutionary. Revolution comes from revolutio, and means turning; the different parties resemble the spokes of one and the same wheel, which will continue to turn as long as there are slaves to drive it and slave-owners to keep them at work. His essay Die Kunst und die Revolution contains in forty short pages a masterly sketch of this revolutionary movement in which (according to Wagner) men are still involved. It is not possible to select quotations from a work so concise ; we hope the time is not far distant when every German will value the works of Richard Wagner just as highly as those of his other intellectual heroes. Then he will understand the pecuHar sense in which Wagner was a revolutionist. Schiller Wagner stands on exactly the same ground as Schiller. For Schiller too and the State of the present day is a make-shift ; for Schiller " the spirit of the time ^ ^^' oscillates between perversity and coarseness, between unnaturalness and pure Nature " ; Schiller too expects from the future a different order, one which can not be expected from the State of the present day, "for the State, as now constituted, has caused the evil,"i etc., etc. Wagner's "revolution of mankind" is therefore the same as Schiller's succession of different kinds of make-shift States ; he regards humanity as now in a chaotic intermediate stage, dating from the moment when doctrinaire politics began, and the goal of his longing is what Schiller calls "the substitution of the State of Freedom for the make-shift State," namely, the end of the revolution. What here distinguishes Wagner from Schiller is, not the standpoint, but solely the mode of exposition. In his letters on the esthetic education of man Schiller begins with an appeal to Kant ; 1 Cf. Briefe uber die aesthetische Erz'tehung des Menschen. Richard Wagner s Writings and Teaching 1 39 Wagner appeals to Greek art ; in Schiller's dissertation the philosopher is pre- dominant, in Wagner's the artist ; Schiller's has, therefore, the character of unim- passioned grandeur, Wagner's that of glowing passion. What Schiller says contains perhaps more incontestable truth, but for that it is more abstract, less easy to grasp ; Wagner is recklessly one-sided, but more penetrating. As an example of this penetrating quality of Wagner's writing we give here in facsimile one of the most brilliant passages in Die Kunst und die Revolution. f'?-*rc ■-..^afiLsrK- f^ Ktt^i^-,^ tCf ui^ , .u&tZ^^^4^^,^^^JI^^!!:^)!^ Facsimile. (R. W., Collected Works, vol. iii., p. 33).^ This dissertation on slavery reaches a climax in the sentence : " directly all men cease to be equally free and happy all will be equally slaves and miserable." The equal distribution of property is rejected by Wagner, as we have seen ; here 1 " This slave now became the fateful hinge on which the whole history of the world revolved. His existence was regarded as necessary, and therewith the slave proved the vanity and uncertainty of all the beauty and strength of Greek exclusive humanity ; he has proved for all time that beauty and strength, as fundamental features of public life, can only have enduring value when they are possessed by all alike. With the proof in the abstract however it unfortunately remained ; the thousands of years of human revolution which followed were almost entirely of the nature of a reaction ; the free and beautiful man was dragged down to slavery. It is not the slave who has become free, but the free man who has become slave. The Greek counted only the strong and beautiful man as free, and this was himself alone ; whatever was not this Greek man, this priest of Apollo, was for him barbarian, and, when the Greek made use of him, slave. It was quite right : the non-Greek was barbarian and slave ; but he was human ; barbarism and slavery were not his nature but his fortune ; they were the sin of history against his nature, in the same way as at the present day it is the sin of society and of civilization that the healthiest people, living in the healthiest climate, have become miserable cripples. It was not long before history sinned against the Greek himself. Wherever the conscience was not awakened in absolute love of mankind the strength and the beauty of the Greek were lost, along with his freedom, the moment he was subjugated by the barbarian. Two hundred millions of men thrown promiscuously together, and crushed under the yoke of Rome, soon learned that directly all men cease to be equally free and happy, all will be equally slaves and miserable." 140 Second Chapter we learn what equality he requires in its place ! If we place ourselves on the standpoint of our "revolutionizing " make-shift State, and regard this as valid for all time, and worthy of preservation, then Wagner will appear as a revolutionist ; but if we feel with Schiller that our State appears "eternally strange to its citizens, because the feelings nowhere come into relation with it," and that the destination of man is not to neglect himself for some extraneous object ; or if one hold the view of Chateaubriand: "Le salariat est la derniere forme de I'esclavage," then Wagner will seem like a true anti-revolutionist (here again the plastic contradiction!). He longs to pass from darkness into light, from chaos into order, from the "barbarous constitutions" (as Schiller calls them) into the clear, fresh water of Nature (Kunstwerk der Zukunft^ iii. 62). y Many will think this is the dream of a poet ; great historians and men of practice have, however, favoured similar views. Carlyle exclaims, " Millennium of anarchies ; abridge it, spend your hearts'-blood upon abridging it," and he defines our society as "anarchy plus the policeman," and P. J. Proudhon, one of the most acute minds of the century, on whom by some inconceivable paradox the dreaded title of anarchist has been bestowed, after his having demonstrated the complete anarchy of the present order of things, and recognized in our constitutions, "the legalization of chaos"; Proudhon, too, understands by a revolution, not the building-up of a new order by violent means, but " the end of anarchy."^ Our At the present day one scarcely dares to pronounce the word anarchist; anarchic for us it is about synonymous with bomb-thrower, incendiary, and murderer, order. ^^^ taking the word in the paradoxical sense in which it was understood fifty years ago, I find many points of contact between the Wagner-Schiller mode of thought and the anarchism of Proudhon. Wagner is rather fond of the word "anarchy." He says, for instance, in 1852 : "How. shall a man who is method to the back-bone comprehend my natural anarchy " ? (U., 188). In another place he says : " I thought it better to make for chaos than to hold to existing condi- tions " (ii. 311); and in his account of Parsifal^ written in November 1882, he declares the excellence of the performance to have been the consequence of " Anarchy, inasmuch as everybody did what he liked, namely, what was right." The last remark, it is true, is meant half in jest ; bitter earnest, however, is the passage at the close of the same article, when Wagner, almost in the words of Proudhon, speaks of the world of the present day as " a world of murder and robbery, organized and legalized by lying, deceit, and hypocrisy" (x. 395)- Especially characteristic is the emphasis laid upon negation. Proudhon says : "La negation est la condition prealable de I'afErmation." Wagner had written before this : " Nothing has been more ruinous to the happiness of men than this insane zeal for ordering the life of the future by laws planned in the present " (iii. 203) ; and in another place : "The people only need to know what they do not want, and this they learn by their unconscious life-instincts ; the excessive 1 Cf. especially Idee generate de la Revo/ution, pp. I22 and 298. Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 1 4 I need will make this not-wished-for into the not-existing, will annihilate what is worthy of annihilation, and the something of the unriddled future will come of itself" 1 To the value of this negative as a principle I shall have to return in detail in the section on Regeneration. Here I will only observe that it is also hinted at by Schiller, when he speaks of "cowardice of the heart" as the principal reason "why we are still all barbarians." And we must bear in mind too that this faculty of negation, this "boldness" which Schiller requires, was, with Wagner, no passing fancy, but one of his most prominent characteristics all through his life. In his first utterances on the state of Society, in the Vaterlandsverein^ he requires "the abolition of the pale metal," and with this bold negative demand he comprises all the misery of our anarchic order of things in a single word. " Our God is money, our religion money-getting " — this God and this religion Wagner negatives. Thirty years later the same thought appears, but deeper (as it had already presented itself, even at this earlier time, to his unconscious artistic instinct in his Ring des Nibelungen) ; it is now no longer the innocent symbol of exchange ; it represents the curse of loveless existence (x. 2)^2). To the same category belongs Wagner's negative attitude towards " the conception of property, simple as it appears in itself" ^ Not for any political end, be it well observed, but "for the sake of the art which we desire, it is indispensable that we should be under no delusion regarding the shocking form which our inner and our outer social life has assumed" (x. 163). With Wagner the faculty of negation went hand in hand with a rare faculty of affirmation, and formed a part of it ; it is this fact which makes his character appear so mighty.^ The significance of this rapport with anarchism will now be evident. It only exists in his negative attitude. The present world is acknowledged to be bad, and this confession forms a fundamental article of his social creed. Any further relation between Wagner and anarchy there neither is, nor ever was, nor ever could be. The political anarchist does not build on God ; his watchword is not " the fulfilment of the pure doctrine of Christ " ; he does not regard King- ship as "the holy centre" of the State ; nor does he teach Regeneration as a first condition of future happiness . . . above all : the anarchist breaks the threads 1 This thought is expressed with great beauty in a very early fragment : " We only need to know what we do not want, and we shall spontaneously, of necessity, and quite certainly attain what we do want, of which we are not fully and clearly conscious until we have attained it ; for our condition when we have removed what we do not want, is just that which we wish to arrive at. It is thus that the people act, and therefore they act in the only right way. You consider them incompetent because they do not know want they want. But what do you know? Can you conceive or imagine any- thing else than what really exists, what therefore has already been attained ? You can imagine it, form an artificial picture, but not know it. Only what the people have achieved can you know ; till then be satisfied with clearly recognizing .what you do not want, with abjuring what is to be abjured, annihilating what is to be annihilated" (E., 19-20). ^ Cf. in this connection the section on Regeneration. 3 Feuerbach remarks profoundly, " Only he who has courage to be absolutely negative has the strength to create what is new." 1^2 Second Chapter of history, and with this impudent deed he sins against all Nature. Wagner, on the other hand, though he may sometimes exercise his privilege as a poet, and leave the present, with all its possibilities, far behind him, abides by the historical development of the human race as by his alma mater ; here his certain instinct, his grand mode of thinking shows itself, and has earned for him the confidence and the respect of thoughtful men, even of those who are not able to follow him in every particular. " The future is not conceivable otherwise than as conditioned by the past," Wagner wrote in 1851. And to show what such a declaration really means, compare what the philosopher Auguste Comte alleged as his object in 1848 : "reorganiser la societe sans Dieu ni roi"i with the "confidence in God and the King " which Wagner endeavoured in the same year to instil into a democratic society ! The one is history, the other none ; the one wisdom, the other folly. Concluding It is a fact very generally overlooked that the German poetical "seer" — a remarks. Schiller, a Richard Wagner — holds a place much nearer to the practical ruler of people than does the doctrinaire reformer of the stamp of a J. J. Rousseau or an A. Comte. 2 These, by their excessive attention to strict logic, and their anxiety to deduce everything mathematically, show how far removed they are from Nature. The politician only cares for reality ; the same is true of the poet, but with this difference, that his reality is of a higher order. The really great-minded politician, and the poet of real genius, are therefore to a certain extent the complements of each other ; the opposite of both is the theore- tician, the doctrinaire. We do wrong in studying Lassalle, John Stuart Mill, Aug. Comte, and Marx, and simply shrugging our shoulders at the political views of a Richard Wagner and passing them over as "the dreams of a visionary." It is just because the poet sees something, that what he says deserves full attention. Idle and dangerous are only the waking, sober dreams of people who see nothing, who reckon by algebra how the world ought to be in order that it may square with reason. I hope the reader has understood why Wagner cannot be regarded as belonging to any particular political party, and that he will not fall into the error of which the Meister complains at the beginning of the fifties : that he was denounced to the democrats as a disguised aristocrat, to the Jews as a persecutor, to the princes as a revolutionist {cf. U., 162). The same game continues to the present day; misunderstanding still dogs Wagner's steps; a -just, worthy, and lofty apprehension of the man must not be expected until his writings and teachings have passed beyond the small circle of narrow-hearted critics and literati^ and have become part of the intellectual property of the best and 1 Discours sur V ensemble de Posittvisme, 2 The great Rousseau is always in the right as long as he remains by the only possible work which is his, that of negation, and of demonstrating our modern State to be " un ordre apparent, destructif en effet de tout ordre, et qui ne fait qu'ajouter la sanction de I'authorite publique a I'oppression du faible et "a I'iniquite du fort " ; in his constructive work he of course fell into absurdities. Richard Wagner s Writings and Teaching 1 43 noblest. Then too it will come to be generally understood that Wagner's politics are but the. preparatory school for his doctrine of Regeneration. We have seen that Wagner — like every rational man — acknowledged the validity and necessity of politics. But he realized that its sphere of influence was very restricted, and that in particular it possessed no creative force. He refused to believe that politics would ever be able to master the social movement, either by laissez-faire or by suppression. His prophetic eye distinctly recognized that movement, at a time when the Metternichs and Bachs and Beusts saw nothing but tranquillity and order around them, or were at the most temporarily disturbed by wicked men, whom they shot or threw into prison. Wagner saw in it the end of the great revolution of mankind, that is, the end of the make- shift States, and therewith the end of all politics. That pleases his artist's heart, for he holds that " art in its real truth is not possible until there is no more politics " (U., 285, letter to Fischer). Never allowing his specific German object to pass out of sight, Wagner thought to see in this expected " end of politics " a favourable opportunity for the development and preservation of Germanism; for he says: "It seems that we Germans will never be great politicians ; but perhaps we may be something much greater, if we judge our capabilities rightly . . . something through which we may be destined to become, not indeed the rulers, but the ennoblers of the world" (x. 173). And when he himself turned his back finally upon politics, recognizing that its sphere of action was limited to the present, then his relations to politics became perfectly clear. "Where the statesman despairs and the politician is helpless, where the Socialist torments himself with impracticable systems, and even the philosopher can only interpret, never foretell, because the phenomena before us can only display themselves in an unconventional form, not to be brought evidently before the senses, the clear eye of the artist will discern the forms by which his desire for what alone is true, his desire for humanity, will be fulfilled" (1851, Oper und Drama^ iv. 282). Richard Wagner's Philosophy "A very small number now remains of those who worthily are conversant in philosophy, who happen either to be de- tained somehow in banishment, and whose generous and well-cultivated disposition persists in the study of philosophy, being removed from everything which tends to corrupt it." Plato, Ref. Introduc- Wagner's public capacity as an artist had led him into contact with 'oi'y- political questions, but the attempt to enter the field of practice had ended disastrously, and he had to live for many years afterwards in exile. This compulsory separation from the world on which he had hoped to exert a personal influence for good, and to the advantage of art, provided him with leisure and inducement to meditate deeply on the enigma of human hfe. Despairing for the present, Wagner turned to the past and to the future. In the past he thought himself able clearly to discern an epoch when art had been the highest moment of human life ; days yet to come held out to the longing artist "the redeeming life of the future " (iv. 283). This withdrawal from the sensible present denoted the entry upon a world of thought. The man who had hitherto followed exclusively practical ends, and had only attended to things T'' '^ron LeiibtLcli piiu^' Pliotoi-jTaATLTC BiTLLct-iTi-anni SCHOPENHAUER ■jinal ixu IlaxLSC WalTiifrie d., Tia v'j?eT.Ll:"lL Richard Wagner s Writings and Teaching 1 45 immediately given, now lays out a bold philosophy of history (Kunst und Revolution). To the " cognition by dates " there soon comes the " cognition by principles," to speak with Kant. His unerring insight shows him that, though all futurity is conditioned by the past, no inference can be drawn from the past to the future, and he is compelled to base his enquiry into the future upon philosophical speculations on Nature and mankind, on science and on art (Kunst- werk der Zukunft). The broad contours of this future of his dreams were however unable to satisfy the creative artist, who moreover had in the last- named work in some sense to annul himself ; there follows a philosophy of the perfect drama (Oper und Drama), from which every artist can draw inexhaust- ible instruction, and in which again the deepest thoughts about State and Religion, about natural history and language, about the past, the present, and the future of the human race are produced in overwhelming abundance as the outcome of Wagner's special method of artistic enquiry. In later years followed speculations " on State and Religion " and related themes, " on Actors and Singers " and other subjects belonging to dramatic art, and especially on the grand problem of the Regeneration of the human race. If, therefore, we agree with Kant in regarding philosophy not only as a scholastic discipline, but more especially as an extension of our interests to all the practical concerns of this world, if we hold his view that " the practical philosopher, the teacher of Wisdom by doctrine and example, is the real philosopher,"! then we must view all Richard Wagner's writings from the very earliest as philosophical writings. Wagner never wrote on the sesthetics of art; only once does he seem to touch upon this subject, namely, in Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft, in the course of his speculations upon the different single arts, and it has given rise to many misunderstandings; aesthetics is a school-philosophy; what Wagner offers is world-wisdom. Metaphysics in the strict sense he only wrote once, in Beethoven — metaphysics of music ; it was with special reference to Schopenhauer. Obviously the philosophic views of such a man have a special interest. Nevertheless they have not as yet received nearly the attention which they deserve. The novelty of his standpoint has probably more than anything else prevented people from understanding his writings and his whole philosophy, and still continues to do so. Wagner regards the entire range of human life from the standpoint of the poet. Art is for him a sure standard of measure- ment ; it is the heart-pulse of society. At first he merely seeks for enlighten- ment on art, but as he opens out the different phases of public art the entire history of mankind discloses itself to his view. " Compression (Verdichtung) is the peculiar function of the poetic {dichtende) intellect," says Wagner (iv. loo). He compresses the vague, scattered multi- tudes of events to plastic pictures in glowing colours. Whether he is speaking of Greek and Roman civilization, or of the middle ages and the Renaissance, 1 Kant, Logic, iii. Q 1^6 Second Chapter or of Myth, Saga, legend, romance and journalism, of Shakespeare, Corneille and Goethe, of history, language and religion, Wagner always gives in a few sentences, sometimes in a single sentence, the quintessence of the subject — not, however, in an abstract concept ; it is compressed to a picture and easily apprehended. This is the method of the poet ; but probably no one ever employed it so drastically before except Goethe, and the elliptic course of thought is not always easy to follow. The justification of the ellipsis is the picture, and it is just the picture that many overlook, because we are so accustomed to deal with abstractions. What perplexes most is the fact that Wagner's writings do not fit into any known category. The artist finds them too philosophical, the philosopher too artistic ; the historian does not realize that the cognitions of a great poet are " compressed facts " ; he despises them as dreams ; the educated aesthetic dreamer beats a timid retreat before the energetic will of the revolutionist, who desires anything but "I'art pour les artistes," and wishes to remodel the whole world with the help of art. In short, these writings deserve in some respects Nietzsche's title '■'■For all and no one." With time they will become the common property of all, just because they aim far beyond the moment — even those which owe their origin to some momentary, perhaps long forgotten cause — e.g. Ein Theater in Zurich and others. They are philosophical works, they contain the philosophical views of a great intellect. It is not my purpose to expound these philosophical views within the few pages of a single chapter ; a worthy treatment of the subject would far exceed the limits of a book like the present one. But anyone who reads this whole book attentively, and carefully weighs Wagner's teaching with regard to Regenera- tion and Art, to be treated of in the following sections, as well as the section on the Bayreuth idea, will certainly obtain a clear perception of the outlines of Wagner's philosophy. In this section I shall confine myself to a very narrow field. Without entering into the " school-conception " of philosophy, which would lead to nothing at all — for Wagner never had anything to do with " school-philosophy " — I shall merely endeavour to trace, as shortly as possible, the main lines of Wagner's philosophical development. My only object is to obtain clearness. Kant never tires of declaring that only he who thinks for himself "is a true philosopher," and this contains implicite the assertion that only he who thinks for himself can follow the thoughts of a true philosopher. But the attempt, which has been made, to force the philosophy of a Richard Wagner into the narrow framework of this or the other sect, is a crime against the free self. Necessary it is however to clear away the clouds which in this case undoubtedly obscure the subject. Poet and Wagner says : " It is the mark of the poet to be riper in the inner philosopher, perception of things than in conscious abstract knowledge" (viii. lo), and in another place he regrets, in his Zurich writings, " the hastiness and unclearness in the use of philosophical schemata" (iii. 4). With these two remarks the difficulties which I mean are exactly indicated. Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 1 47 With the poet the formation of concepts does not keep pace with observation. All such distinctions are of course only relative ; every great thinker is a poet ; an abstract cognition, that is a cognition in words, will never correspond in every respect to his observation of phenomena, or be even distantly adequate thereto. It is a question of degree, and as the artist is by temperament more disposed to observation and less to abstraction than other thinkers, manifestly the disparity is more disturbing with him. This disparity itself therefore would be a source of misunderstanding, to which I would herewith draw the reader's attention. Wagner admits too that there is in some of his most important writings an unclearness in the use of philosophical schemata; the author himself calls it confusion. Not only therefore were the words inadequate to their task, but the artist, owing to his hasty use of the first schema which presented itself to him, that of Feuerbach, sometimes, even in important passages, employed words in a wrong sense ; his words were, as the Frenchman says, traitors to his thoughts. He himself laid much less weight on the use of any particular terminus technicus than his readers ; for him the only object was to communicate a clear thought to others ; they, however were apt to grasp only the technicality. The Zurich writings therefore contain a second, very prolific source of misunderstanding, and I do not think that it ever quite disappeared, any more than the first one. Wagner once said, "I can only speak in art" (R., 69). In 1856 he imagined that Schopenhauer had "provided him with concepts entirely agreeing with his observations," but he presumably very soon found out that the agreement was by no means exact. The use of Feuerbach's schema had caused great "confusion," that of Schopenhauer too occasionally led him astray. Our most important business will therefore now be to trace Wagner's relation to Feuerbach and Schopenhauer in its essential features. Without this we shall never understand Wagner's philosophical views. The task is the simpler, because no others have to be considered except these two. We have already observed that Wagner never busied himself with school-philosophy ; even such names as Kant and Hegel very rarely occur with him, and then only in a way that does not indicate any close acquaintance with their works. But the manner in which he came to draw his concepts, first from Feuerbach and later from Schopenhauer, is very characteristic, and itself throws light upon his own philosophy. Of Hegel's philosophy Wagner says that "it succeeded in making the "Wagner minds of the Germans so completely incapable of even apprehending the problem and of philosophy, that ever since it has been considered the only true philosophy ^"^^ ^'^ ' to have no philosophy at all " (viii. 60). These words perhaps express a personal experience. It is evident that a world-embracing mind like Wagner's was certain to 148 Second Chapter feel the "metaphysical need," and all the more so that the need, as Schopenhauer very truly remarks, "becomes most apparent when the teaching of faith has lost its authority." The artist could never feel at home in Kant's pure reason; on almost every page of Hegel he met with thoughts positively repulsive to him. What, for instance, could the artist think of such words as these : " the more educated the man, the less he requires direct observation." How could he agree with a philosopher who says : " in the State the mind is developed to a beautiful body," and whose doctrine of art is that "in it the passions cease." And so the wistful artist turned in his despair, like so many others, to the philosopher who expressly "placed the essence of philosophy in the negation of philosophy" (Feuerbach, Complete Works, vii. 11). At the present day, when Feuerbach's name has almost entirely passed away, and his writings appear to us almost as tedious and irritating as the speeches in the Frankfort Parliament, a great effort of the imagination is needed to realize the fame which this anti-philosopher enjoyed at the time of the German Revolutions. Feuerbach owed his excessive notoriety to quite a complex of circumstances. Some believed in him because he belonged to the school of Hegel ; others because he threw this very school overboard ; the free-thinkers applauded him as a destroyer of religion ; pious spirits thought — with himself — that his doctrine betrayed the theologian, that it was "the real philosophy of religion," that it "imparted a religious meaning to life as such" (Joe. cit.), that " philosophy must as philosophy become religion. "1 The Biichners, Moleschotts and Vogts hailed him as the philosopher of materialism, while budding Schopenhauerites, such as J. Frauenstadt,^ felt drawn to the man who had written : " backwards I entirely agree with the materialists, but not forwards." 3 One thing could not but attract men of all parties to Feuerbach: his spotless character. He was at once a model of learning, a model of modesty, a model of fearless love of truth. His writings have perhaps been somewhat too severely censured by Schopenhauer as "verbose chatter"; be this as it may, his works and his life both testify to an ideal, disinterested striving. To this honest philosopher — (truly a rara avis)— Wzgner now turned. What particularly prepossessed him in favour of Feuerbach was that, finding philosophy to be nothing more than disguised theology, Feuerbach gave it up, supplying its place with a conception of humanity in which Wagner thought he recognised his own "artistic man" (iii. 4). This he wrote in the seventies, and it is not intended merely to justify retrospectively his former position, for on November 21, 1849, ''•^•, the very month in which he finished das Kunstwerk der Zukunft, Wagner wrote to his youthful friend, Karl Ritter : " Feuerbach's philosophy ends by merging into human nature; therein lies his importance, especially as opposed to absolute philosophy in which human nature is merged 1 Nachlass, published by Karl Griin, i. 409. 2 Letter of February 2nd (Karl Griin), i. 300. 2 Nachgelassene Aphorumen (Griin), ii. 308. Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 1 49 in the philosopher." ^ It was not, therefore, the philosopher Feuerbach to whom Wagner confided himself, but the opponent of abstract (or, as Wagner calls it, absolute) philosophy, the philosopher whose endeavour was to blend his thought with human nature. Wagner's relation to Feuerbach is therefore especially a moral one, and lies in the sympathy which he feels with the tendency of Feuer- bach's mind towards the purely human. This alone will throw some light on the remarkable fact that Wagner's writings of the Zurich period only present a few general points of contact with Feuerbach, and these not strictly of a philosophical nature. Another fact, which has hitherto escaped notice, may be mentioned, namely, that when Wagner wrote these treatises, and used the schemata of Feuerbach, he knew very little of his works. In his very first letter to the publisher Wigand (of August 4th, 1849 '■> cf. the letter to Liszt of the same date), in the letter forwarding the MS. of Die Kunst und die Revolution, Wagner writes : " Unfortunately I have not yet found it possible here to procure any of Feuerbach's works except the third vol., with the Thoughts on Death and Immortality. ''^ Wigand did not take the hint, for a year later, in June 1850, Wagner begs Uhlig to have Feuerbach's works sent to him through Wigand, and on July 27th of the same year he repeats his request. Long before this. Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft was pubhshed; we know, therefore, for certain that when Wagner composed his first revolutionary works, and dedicated his Kunstwerk der Zukunft to Feuerbach, he knew nothing more of the works of that philosopher than the one youthful treatise we have mentioned. What happened to Wagner here with Feuerbach was a very common occurrence with him all through his life. He admired Feuerbach upon trust. Animated by one of the earliest and most brilliant of his works (Gedanken Uber Tod und Unsterblichkeit'), a treatise in which he displays all his merits and few of his defects, exhibiting humour, wit and learning in short articles and aphorisms, without venturing on constructive work in the grand style, the master's poetic fancy was kindled for a Feuerbach with whom the real hermit of Bruckberg had very little in common. There were thoughts, too, in Feuerbach's Tod und Unsterblichkeit which entirely agreed with his own: e.g., "highest being: com- munity of being"; "death, the last fulfilment of love." "The artistic genius does not produce with understanding, will and consciousness." He was attracted by his repudiation of materialism as insufficient; his "hope for a historical future " and much more of the kind.* But these thoughts, too, appear in such a totally different light with Wagner, they are portions of a view of things so essentially different, that it is a mere verbal quibble to deduce any dependence of Wagner upon Feuerbach from them. Wagner really took nothing more from Feuerbach than a few words and concepts ('■'■Willkiir," '■^ Unwillkiir" 1 Unpublished letter ; autograph in the possession of Monsieur Alfred Bovet. 2 Unprinted letter. Autograph in the possession of Herr Doctor Potpischnegg. 3 Feuerbach. Ges. Schr., iii. 3, 16, 50, 55, 301. 150 Second Chapter " Sinnlichkeit" " Not " etc.) ; so little did they express the true thoughts of the master that at a later date (see the Introduction to vols. iii. and iv. of his collected writings) he had to explain them, in order to prevent incessant mis- understandings. Feuerbach too is in part responsible for the violent attacks upon the Christian Church in Die Kunst und die Revolution; it is in his Gedanken iiber Tod und Unsterblichkeit that Feuerbach calls religion "the holy residue of the original coarseness, barbarism and superstition of the human race " ; his later writings are much more moderate in tone, and he protests against his attitude to religion being regarded as one of negation only {Ges. Schriften, vii. 361). In short Wagner's concepts were rather confused than made clearer by Feuerbach ; he made it more difficult for Wagner to communicate what he had to say ; but on the whole the influence is not of great importance. The favour- able effect of the stimulus which Wagner received from Feuerbach was also slight. Fortunate however it is that Wagner had finished his fundamental writings before he was able to study Feuerbach's real philosophy more thoroughly. From a letter to Roeckel of January 25, 1854, we see what disastrous effects might have been wrought by his "verbose chatter" upon so eager a mind, and Wagner here gives his friend a paraphrase of paragraph 30 and following paragraphs of Feuerbach's Grundsdtze der Philosophie der Zukunft. "Truth, Reality and Sensibility are identical," and "only in love does the finite become infinite. 1 In many words of Wagner's letter the spirit of the artist suddenly flashes up ; still we feel ourselves surrjounded and suffocated by the leaden atmosphere of Feuerbach's impotence, and Wagner's remark shortly afterwards to Roeckel, that when he wrote before he was "estranged from himself" (R., 6$), is evidently true. But he soon found himself again, for a few weeks after the letter of January 1854 there came as "a gift from Heaven in his solitude " (L., ii. 45), Schopenhauer's Die Welt ah Wille und Vorstellung. The spell was broken. Much more might be said about Feuerbach; especially it might be observed that there are many points of contact between him and Schopenhauer, and that these are exactly the points which Wagner mastered, so that although Feuerbach mostly attacks Schopenhauer, whose works he never studied till late in his life, and whose name he never once spells correctly, he nevertheless could and did serve Wagner as a stepping-stone to Schopenhauer.^ This transitory significance is the only one which we can admit to the noble-hearted, lovable man with respect to Wagner's life. 1 Feuerbach. Ges. Schr., ii. 321, 323. 2 In later life Feuerbach felt more drawn. to Schopenhauer. In a posthumous fragment, Zur Moralphilosophie, he writes : " Schopenhauer, who is distinguished from all German speculative philosophers by his directness, clearness, and preciseness, rejects the empty moral principles of other philosophers, and has designated sympathy as the foundation of morality" {cf. Carl Griin, L. Feuerbach In seinem Brtefivechsel und Nachlass, p. 294) ; Feuerbach himself even dons the title of pessimist (p. 320). Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 1 5 1 Feuerbach provided Wagner with some formulas for his thoughts; Wagner Schopenhauer gave him a form. Feuerbach's immense learning may have ^nd supplied Wagner with material ; building stones, bricks, rubble, marble blocks, ^^auer"' Schopenhauer stood beside him as the architect. Feuerbach was a protestant theologian and a pupil of Hegel. Notwith- standing the freedom of his thought, he never quite lost the narrowness of the clerical ; the professed theologian clings to him as firmly as the priest's surplice to Ernest Renan.i Nor do we find in him as in Kant (the great " abstract ") the least genius for geometry; notwithstanding his desperate endeavours to strike root in healthy empiricism, Feuerbach remained above in the dry air of abstract conceptual philosophy, a poor parasite on the withered tree of Hegelism. And as for Feuerbach's rationalistic campaign against the church, it was like that of the democrats of forty-eight against royalty: small thoughts, small means, small results. Schopenhauer on the other hand in starting from the premiss: All truth and wisdom lie ultimately in observation^ revolutionized phil- osophy from its very foundation. His boldness really showed itself in his attack upon the source of all rationalism, whether pious or free-thinking, reactionary or revolutionist ; that is, it consisted in his enunciation of the subordination of the intellect to the will, and of abstract knowledge to perception. In the person of Schopenhauer, Kant's dictum is exemplified: "Genius with the Germans strikes more to the root." With unfaihng instinct, like that of a tree, Schopen- hauer avoided all innutritions soil, and sent his roots to seek nourishment only in the best, but in all that was best ; Christianity, the ancient Aryan religious philosophy of India, the entire range of human art, from Phidias to Beethoven, the various departments of natural science, all these he had profoundly studied, in all of them he possessed a thorough technical training ; the same with metaphysical thought, wherever its most luminous rays had appeared, and only there, from Plato to Kant. Such is the rich prolific soil of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Its individual conformation is in a certain sense secpndary : it may not suit everybody ; here the personal equation may have to be applied ; between Wagner and Schopenhauer were incisive divergences. But he who builds upon Schopenhauer builds upon a rock ; that Wagner clearly saw, and remained true to him from 1854 until his death. Feuerbach was a passing episode, the last echo of the dumme Streiche of the revolution. The acquaintance with Schopenhauer, " the most genial of mankind," as Graf Leo Tolstoi calls him, is the most important event in Wagner's whole life. Now for the first time his metaphysical yearning was provided with an efiicient receptacle in this all- embracing view of the world; now at last the marvellously ramified elements of his' own being (R., S^)-, as thinker and poet, were united again in his breast to a harmonious personality, conscious in every detail — the thinker meditated more deeply, the artist gained strength, the views of the politician became 1 Max Stirner has excellently said in his Der Einzige unci sein Eigenihum, Feuerbach only gives us a theological liberation from Theology and Religion. 152 Second Chapter clearer, the Christian spirit, that of sympathy, of longing for redemption, of steadfastness till death, of resignation to the will of a higher Power, returned to the heart, from which many years before had issued Tannhduser^ Lohengrin^ and Der Hollander. Over the Meister's work-table there hung only the picture of the great seer, and in 1868 he wrote to Lenbach, the painter of the mag- nificent portrait : " I have one hope for German culture, that the time will come when Schopenhauer will be the law-giver for all our thought and cognition." ^ Kinship Wagner's adoption of Schopenhauer's philosophy directly he became ■with acquainted with it, and his adherence to it all his life, are due to the fact that c open- j^ j^^^ hetn his from the first — not as a system of concepts, but as an instinct, and especially as an artistic intuition. Some have described his adoption of Schopenhauer's philosophy in 1854 as the result of intellectual development, but this is quite wrong; he would have adopted it in 1844 had fortune brought Die Welt ah Wille und Vorstellung into his hands at that time. Schopenhauer was, for him, not the discovery of a new country, but the return to his own first home. Only the clear mind of Schopenhauer revealed to him in this, his ancient home, many things which he had not seen clearly before. A short time after he had read Schopenhauer's principal work through for the first time, Wagner wrote to Liszt : " His main thought — the final negation of the will for life — is terribly solemn, but it alone brings release. To me of course it was not new, nor can anyone think it in whom it was not living before. But it was this philosopher who first awakened my mind to the clear perception" (L., ii. 45). Plenty of evidence could be brought to show that not only this thought of Schopenhauer, but other of his fundamental views, had taken definite form in Wagner's mind long before 1854. The will. On the very first page of Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (1849), we read: "Nature creates and fashions without purpose and spontaneously according to its needs, therefore, of necessity : the same necessity is the creating and forming force in human life — only that which is purposeless and spontaneous springs from a real need, and need alone is the source of life. Man recognizes necessity in Nature only in the interconnection of its phenomena ; so long as he fails to grasp this it appears arbitrary "^ (iii. 53). These are Kant-Schopenhauer 1 Schemann : Schopenhauer-Brief e, p. 510. That Wagner did not stand alone in this view is proved by the following words of Deussen, in the first vol. of his Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophic, which appeared in 1894. "Kant is the founder, Schopenhauer the completer, of a homogeneous metaphysical system of doctrine strictly founded in experience and strictly in harmony with itself, a system which will become and will remain in the future, as far as we can foresee, the foundation of all the scientific and religious thought of mankind." 2 " Die Natur erzeugt und gestaltet absichtslos und unwillkiirlich nach Bediirfnis, daher aus Notwendigkeit : dieselbe Notwendigkeit ist die zeugende und gestaltende Kraft des menschlichen Lebens ; nur was absichtslos und unwillkiirlich, entspringt dem wirklichen Bediirfnis, nur im Bediirfnisse liegt aber der Grund des Lebens. Die Notwendigkeit in der Natur erkennt der Mensch nur aus dem Zusammenhange ihrer Erscheinungen : so lange er diesen nicht erfasst, diinkt sie ihn WiUkur." Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 153 thoughts in the mask of Feuerbach. As an antithesis to Humboldt's " Nature is the empire of freedom," Schopenhauer had declared "necessity is the empire of nature." Wagner does not as yet, in these early writings, possess the concept of will, but he possesses the perception, and he torments himself in his Zurich writings with Feuerbach's terminology; "spontaneity," "necessity," "purposelessness," in the vain endeavour to understand himself and to make himself intelligible to others. The perfect agreement between him and Schopenhauer appears most unmistakably where he speaks of the laws which govern artistic productivity (i.e. productivity of genius). "The artist does not indeed proceed at once directly; his work is adjustive, selective, arbitrary, but exactly where he adjusts and selects, it has not yet become art ; his procedure here is rather that of science, which seeks and examines, and is therefore arbitrary and erring. Not until his choice has fallen, and has fallen of necessity on what was necessary, does the art-work spring into life and become a self-determining, direct reality" (Kunstwerk der Zukunft., iii. 57). Thus Wagner teaches ; now let us hear Schopenhauer : " from the fact that the mode of cognition of genius is essentially that which is purified from all volition and whatever is related thereto, it follows that its works do not proceed from a purpose or an arbitrary intention ; that it is on the contrary led by instinctive necessity " (Sdmmtliche Werke., iii. 433). We meet in Oper und Drama with the astonishing sentence, " space and time are nothing in them- selves " (iv., 253) ; I mention this merely in the parenthetical way in which it occurs in that work. Of decisive importance, however, is the discrediting of abstract cognition with reference to observation. This is an ever-recurring theme in Wagner's Zurich writings. A single quotation will make this clear. "However honest the endeavours of philosophy to grasp nature as a connected whole, they only succeeded in showing the insufliciency of abstract intelligence " (iii. 172). Herewith Wagner touches the centre of Schopenhauer's philosophy, distinguished as it is from all others, and owing as it does all its creative power to the fact that it declares abstract cognition to be " the secondary, the worse cognition, the mere shadow of true cognition." I have perhaps said too much in calling it the centre ; but this recognition of the secondary nature of abstract intelligence with reference to observation is the decisive and genetically in- dispensable step to arrive at the true foundation of Schopenhauer's philosophy, which is the recognition of the secondary nature of the intellect itself. Did Wagner take this last decisive step before he knew Schopenhauer.'' Perhaps not com- pletely ; but hint at it, prophetically point to it, he often did, especially in his later work, Oper und Drama., where his metaphysical thought had cleared itself very much in the high problem of the most perfect art-work. There we find such expressions as " the true consciousness is the knowledge of our unconscious- ness ... the understanding can achieve nothing more than the justification of the feeling, for it is itself but rest, following the generative agitation of the feeling ; it justifies itself only when it knows itself conditioned by the spon- 154 Second Chapter taneous feeling " ^ (iv. 95).^ Here and in similiar places Wagner approached very closely to the fundamental proposition of Schopenhauer; it is at least a presentiment, according to his own definition of this word : " the involuntary longing of the feelings for definition in an object which they again define in advance by the force of their need, as one which must answer to them, and for which they wait" (iv. 2,33). Wagner only waited for Schopenhauer. Along with such remarkable cases of agreement in the domain of meta- physics we find many others, equally important, in that of ethics. They complete the picture of intellectual affinity. Pessimism. Pessimism, for instance, is always appearing with Wagner, in spite of his endeavours to believe in Feuerbach's doctrine of universal happiness (R., 66). Probably the soul of every man of vigorous temperament harbours pessimistic views in its depths ; was not the last injunction even of Oliver Cromwell this : "Love not this world ; 1 tell you, it is not good that you love this world." In the summer of 1852 Wagner writes: "My views on mankind become more and more dismal ; it generally seems to me that the race must perish entirely " (U., 205). In January 1854 (ten days before the Feuerbach letter to Roeckel) he writes to Liszt: "I believe no more, and know only one hope — a sleep — a sleep so deep, so deep — that all the pain of life ceases " (L., ii. 6). As early as 1 841 he had exclaimed : Facsimile.^ And immediately after his aquaintance with Schopenhauer he sighs relieved : "It has long been difficult for me, in view of the phenomena which crowd before my notice, to preserve myself on a footing of optimism" (R., 54). In this connection too Wagner's enthusiasm for Hafiz in the years 1852-53 is very instructive. The true pessimist soil from which springs Hafiz's delight in life glimmers through many of his songs, and appears still more clearly in the poems of his great predecessor and prototype, Omar Khayyam. Of Hafiz Wagner says (in October 1852) : "He is the greatest and sublimest philosopher; so certainly and irrefutably no one ever yet understood the world's secret " (U., ^2>7^- 1 " Das richtige Bewusstsein ist Wissen von unserem Unbewusstsein . . . Der Verstand kann nichts andeies wissen als die Rechtfertigung des Gefuhles, denn er selbst ist nur die Ruhe, welche der zeugenden Erregung des Gefiihles folgt : er selbst rechtfertigt sich nur, wenn er aus dem unwill- klirlichem Gefiihle sich bedingt weiss. . . ." - Entirely Plato, and just as entirely Schopenhauer, is the surprising thought, " true cognition is recognition" (iv. 95). ^ " Happy the genius on whom happiness never smiled ! It is so much to itself, what could happiness be more to it." Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 155 It is very remarkable that the Indian " Tattvamasi " is to be found as an artistic creed in a passage in Oper und Drama. Art is the fulfilment of the desire to find one's own self again in the phenomena of the outer world (cf. iv. 42). Still more remarkable is the strong emphasis laid upon sympathy as a moral impelling force in Wagner's writings and works, from the very first ; this is the distinguish- ing mark of Wagner's moral individuality. In Wagner's story, Eine Ende in Paris., written in 1840, the starving Sympathy. Cierman musician falls into a swoon, from which he is awakened by his faithful dog licking him : "I stood up, and in one lucid moment I at once recognised the most important of my duties : to obtain food for my dog. A discriminating 7narchand-d' habits handed me several sous for my bad gilet. My dog ate, and what he left I finished" (i. 161). To the same period belongs this beautiful passage on the hunter in Freischutz. " Ever since he has loved he is no longer the rough unsparing huntsman intoxicating himself with the blood of the slaughtered game; his maid has taught him to see God in Creation, to hear the mystic voices which speak to him out of the silence of the forest. He is now often seized with compassion when the roebuck springs lightly and gracefully through the thicket ; then with hesitation and abhorrence he fulfils the duties of his caUing, and he can weep when he sees the tear in the eye of the noble beast at his feet" {Der Freischutz., i. 261). Ten years before this, in his very first work for the stage, Die Feen., Wagner had found touching musical expression for the sympathy with animals in Arindal's words : " O Seht ! das Tier Kann weinen ! Die Thrane glanzt in Seinem Aug' ; O ! wie's gebrochen nach mir schaut ! " 1 Let us once more consider the points of relationship between Wagner and Schopenhauer. With Schopenhauer metaphysics consists of three parts : metaphysics of Points of Nature, metaphysics of the beautiful, metaphysics of morality. In the metaphysics agreement of Nature Wagner had a presage of Schopenhauer's solution of the problem ; in „ Y^ the metaphysics of the beautiful a complete parallelism with Schopenhauer, even hauer. before Wagner knew his philosophy, was only prevented by his faulty con- ceptional schema ; in the metaphysics of morality there was spontaneous and absolute identity in the practical moral application, and the decided accentuation of sympathy with animals very clearly indicates that Wagner empirically, so to speak, saw through the principium individuationis. Richard Wagner might be likened to a man whose vision has, during a long night of darkness, become more acute, so that he is able to recognise all the objects around him, the nearer ones quite plainly, but the further ones only dimly, and as if mingled with the dark- ness. Then came Schopenhauer, and it was day ! It is for this reason that I have dwelt so strongly upon the agreement between Wagner's philosophical convictions and the doctrines of Schopenhauer even before he knew the name of 1 See the facsimile in the first part of chap. iii. 156 Second Chapter Schopenhauer. From this too it is clear that if Wiigner had died in 1854 we should almost certainly misinterpret his earlier writings, since, as he says himself, " his concepts did not at that time agree with his perceptions " ; but now every- thing is clear as daylight, because Schopenhauer found him the concepts for these perceptions which had long lived within him. What took place therefore was in no sense an inversion, nor was it the discovery of a world unknown before, but it was the light of day thrown upon that which was already there. The difference is indeed as great as that between day and night — but it is not greater. Another inference may be drawn from what has been said. Not only to understand those of Wagner's writings which were composed before the Schopenhauer period, but also for his later, more mature philosophical views, we must be thoroughly at home in Schopenhauer's philosophy. For the artist never dreamed of saying again what the great philosopher had already said once in the only adequate form. He disdained even to make alterations and amendments in his writings of the Zurich period, conceiving that the difficulties which they present to the understanding in their present form are " a peculiar recommendation to the earnest student" (Dedication to the second edition of Oper und Drama^ '^^^3-, viii. 248). Once only, in his Be-ethoven (1870), did Wagner write what may be called a philosophical supplement to Schopenhauer's Metaphysik der Musik. This supplement was necessary, inasmuch as the philosopher, though he opened the way into this domain, nevertheless, owing to his imperfect acquaintance with musical works, passed over many a wide prospect which his own philosophy opened out, and committed errors in details.^ For the rest however it is significant that Wagner henceforward touches less upon purely philosophical problems than formerly; he always pre-supposes Schopenhauer, and builds on, whether on the ground of art or on that of society and religion. 2 Whoever would know Wagner's philosophy therefore must have studied that of Schopenhauer. Points of The points in which Wagner differed from Schopenhauer require a disagree- ^o less accurate acquaintance with the philosopher. These differences do Schopen- "°^ appear till later, and, at least in their most important phases, especially hauer. towards the end of Wagner's life. Space would not permit me to dwell upon the details of these differences ; it will suffice for me to refer to the principal work of the master's last years — Religion und Kunst ("Religion and Art "). Here Wagner rejects absolute pessimism., and says: "the so-called pessimistic view could here only appear justified to us on the supposition that it rests upon a historical estimate of mankind ; it would have to undergo some important modifications, could we know pre-historic man sufficiently to be able to infer from his nature, as we perceive it, a later process of degeneration, the cause of 1 Cf. Asher's Arthur Schopenhauer : Neues •von ihm und iiber thn. ^ Cf. the following section of this chapter. Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 157 which does not lie in his original nature itself " i {Religion und Kunst, x. 304, cf. also 311). Whoever wishes to realize the enormous divergence between this "historical pessimism" and Schopenhauer's "metaphysical pessimism" should read Die Welt ah Wille und Vorstellung^ Book iv. sect, ^t,^ where Schopenhauer says amongst other things: "we are of opinion that anyone who supposes that he can by any possibility grasp the nature of the world by the historical method, however cleverly it may be masked, is very far from a philosophical cognition thereof ; this he does if in his view of the world per se there is contained any idea of becomings or of having become^ or of going to become^ or if the slightest significance is attached to the ideas of earlier or later " etc.^ Wagner too, in the place just quoted, gives an account of the origin of beasts of prey in consequence of geological cataclysms and subsequent famines,^ which could not possibly have met with the approval of the philosopher who teaches : " where a living being breathes there at once appears another to devour it " ; who knew too that in this beast of prey every detail of the whole organism is designed for the seizure of prey, a fact which Schopenhauer regards metaphysically as an immediate effect, or more correctly as the phenomenon, the picture, the objectivation of the will. " The Will is the first thing. . . . Every special impulse of the will appears in a special modification of the form. Hence the home of the prey came to determine the form of the pursuer" (Joe. cit., iv. 46). Indeed the entire substance of the third section of Religion und- Kunst, the story of a historical degeneration of the human race, and of a redemption positively to be looked for through regeneration (whereby the negation of the will is interpreted as the negation of a negative — i.e., an affirmation) is scarcely to be reconciled with Schopenhauer's teaching. Schopenhauer speaks approvingly of the doctrine of the fall of mankind as a metaphysical truth, but, as he adds in explanation, only an allegorical truth; it has for him the same metaphorical significance as the doctrine of metempsychosis for the Indian thinkers. This too gives mythical expression to a metaphysical truth, a,nd regeneration is for Schopenhauer neither more nor less than a myth. "True salvation, release from life and from suffering, is not conceivable without complete negation of the will " (Joe. cit., iv. 470). Just as little would Wagner's views on vegetarianism and on original inequality of the human races find favour with Schopenhauer. Does this bring to light a profound antagonism between Wagner and Schopenhauer? Or does the poet, after being instructed by the philosopher, appear as a conscious creator of myths.* 1 " Die sogenannte pessimistische Weltansicht miisste uns hierbei nur unter der Voraussetzung als berechtigt erscheinen, dass sie sich auf die Beurtheilung des geschichtlichen Menschen begriinde ; sie wiirde jedoch bedeutend modifiziert warden miissen, wenn der vorgeschichtUche Mensch uns so weit bekannt wiirde, dass wir aus seiner richtig wahrgenommenen Naturanlage auf eine spater eingetretene Entartung schliessen konnten, welche nicht unbedingt in jener Naturanlage begriindet lag." 2 Schopenhauer's Sdmmtliche Werhe. (Frauenstadt) 2nd edition, ii. 322. 3 Wagner adopted this view from the French apostle of vegetarianism, GleTzes. Cf. his Thalysia. * Cf. IVas nUlzt diese Erkenhtnisi ? x. 335. 158 Second Chapter This book is, as we have remarked, not the place for an exhaustive con- sideration of so wide a question. The author would have to express his own views, whereas his object really is to engage the reader's attention to everything essential in Richard Wagner himself, whilst leaving his own judgment free {cf. however in the following section the discussion on the philosophic doctrine of regeneration). Strange, and at the first moment rather perplexing, is the fact which appears from all that has been said, that Wagner makes more the impres- sion of an orthodox " Schopenhauerite " before his acquaintance with Schopen- hauer than he does afterwards. We shall never get to the bottom of these paradoxes and contradictions and enigmas unless we remember that the theoretical, philosophical element is only a fragment of Wagner's entire being. He is an artist not only before all things, but in all things. In a letter to Roeckel he confesses how little like a philosopher he feels, and he adds, "I can only speak in art-works" (R., 69). Art and The danger of the attempt to find a philosophic meaning in works of art is philosophy, very strikingly illustrated by Wagner himself. In the year 1852 he wrote of his Nibelungenrhig^ "All ray views of the world have found their coraplete artistic expression therein" (U., 192). These views he then interpreted in a philosophical sense as pointing to a " hellenistic-optimistic world " ; two years later he discovered in the self-same work, which had since undergone no alteration, a Germanic-pessimistic view of the world! (R., 66; compare with each other the letters iv. and vii. to Roeckel). "The artist stands before his work — if it really is a work of art — as before a puzzle, regarding which he may fall into just the sarae errors as any other person " : those are Wagner's own words (R., 6^^ ; they ought to suffice to protect at least his own works from the craze of our time for interpretation, a craze as inartistic as it is philosophically useless. The lesson, however, which we both can and must learn from these works, is that an artist can only in a very restricted sense be regarded as a philosopher. Unquestionably the artist is superior to the philosopher in many respects ; unquestionably genial art contains "all wisdom" (as Schopenhauer says), whereas genial philosophy contains only one fragment of wisdom. But just because, and just in so far as genial art contains — or rather reveals — all wisdom, it does not contain any one particular wisdom. For the nature of the human mind is such that not breadth, but sharpness, penetrates deepest ; reason can only reach the metaphysical centre when it attacks the world at one point and there bores its way in, like the Lithodomus into granite. It is natural to suppose that the creative artist would never be able to acquire this indispensable one-sided- ness ; we must not therefore expect that the artist will ever subordinate himself to the philosopher, or fully assimilate his doctrine; nor should we ever be justified in counting a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Vinci, or a Wagner to any particular philosophical school. Very interesting, however, it is to observe the mutual reaction between the artist and the philosopher. Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 159 The high value which Schopenhauer laid upon art and upon the artist, who "understands the half-expressed thoughts of Nature, and now pronounces clearly what she only falters," is well known. His philosophy drew its wisdom from art. The case was similar with Wagner after Schopenhauer had initiated him into true philosophy. He says: "in a decisive catastrophe of my inner life it gave me fortitude and strength for resignation " (R., $;^). In another place he calls it "a gift from heaven" (L., 45). Remarkable, too, is the fact that the acquaintance with Schopenhauer's philosophy gave a stimulus to Wagner's artistic productivity ; the music of Die Walkiire, the idea of Tristan^ the figure of Parsifal, all date from that momentous year 1854. The clearing effect of this philosophy upon his artistic views is evident in his next great work, Zukunftsmusik (i860) ; its purifying influence on his thoughts on religion and society will be sufiiciently seen in his works Ueber Staat und Religion (1864), and Deutsche Kunst und Deutsche Politik (1865); the greatest metaphysical depth is reached in his Beethoven (1870). But the stimulus is quite general ; it is a strengthening of the entire man. On beholding the might of the congenial " art-inspired " philosopher, the fire of his own genius broke forth again into high-ascending flames. Schopenhauer's pessimism was the only doctrine which could bring comfort to the bold prophet of a better future, when his hopes had proved vain in every point. And by the immense importance which Schopenhauer laid upon art he strengthened the artist's faith in himself. Quite fanciful is the comnion notion that the effect of Schopenhauer was to impart a philosophical character to Wagner's art. On the contrary, we meet with the same process in his art as in his writings : Wagner remained more strictly within the pale of Schopenhauer's philosophy before he knew Schopenhauer than he did afterwards ! Der Fliegende Hollander, Tannh'duser, Lohengrin, and above all, Der Ring des Nibelungen, are the four works in which the tragic negation of the will to live — though appearing in very different forms — may not unjustly be regarded as the pivot of the action. From the standpoint of pure philosophy the negation of the will appears most directly in Der Fliegende Hollander, where both heroes, one taught by suff'ering, the other by intuitive sympathy, solemnly renounce the will for life ; this is really the only meaning of the drama, for even death itself can here only be regarded as an allegory, denoting the release by negation. But also with Tannhduser and Lohengrin, the poet himself acknowledged at a later date that, " if any character- istic poetic feature is expressed in them, it is the high tragedy of renunciation, that which alone avails ; the negation of the will fully justified, and at last follow- ing of necessity " (R., 66). In the Nibelungenring the entire action turns upon the conflict between cognition and will in Wotan's heart. Here the analogy with Schopenhauer is so striking that the direct influence of the philosopher was generally taken for granted, until a comparison of dates showed that the plan of the poem in its present form was ready in the autumn of 1851, and the poem itself printed at the beginning of 1853; whilst Wagner first heard Schopen- i6o Second Chapter hauer's name iji the winter of 1853-54, and did not study his works until the spring of 1854, so that any influence of the philosopher on the poet is out of the question. Indeed we know now that the case is in a certain sense just the contrary ! Wagner, it is said, was only induced to venture once more upon the study of speculative philosophy by his friends Herwegh and Wille drawing his attention to the wonderful correspondence existing between the views which seemed to be expressed in his Nibelungenring and the philosophy of Schopen- hauer.^ Nevertheless it seems to us as if "Wagner, when fully possessed of Schopenhauer's world of thought, felt himself in some sense less fettered as an artist. Tristan und Isolde is the highest glorification, the apotheosis of the affirmation of the will to live. For Tristan the world contained only Isolde ; that is, only the object of his desire, and Isolde dies the Liebestod^ " love-death ! " The night, of which Tristan and Isolde sing in such glorious strains in the second act, is the " night of love," the night " wo Liebeswonne uns lacht " " where love- delight laughs to us " ! Truly a Nirvawa of which neither the holy Gotama nor the wise Schopenhauer ever dreamed ! And the often-cited " Selbst dann bin ich die Welt" — "I am then myself the world" — cannot possibly be seriously taken as the utterance of a world-renouncing sage, — a twice-born " Givanmukta " ; for Tristan is lying in the arms of his beloved when he says it, and immediately before are the words : " Herz an Herzdir, Mund an Mund ! " If Isolde and Tristan curse the sun of day, it is because the sun ever delights in their sufferings whilst Schopenhauer teaches that " negation consists in abhorring, not the pains, but the enjoyments of life" (Sammtl. Werke^ ii. 471)- If this drama contains philosophy at all, it is the direct opposite to that of the negation of the will. Buddha fled from his young and lovely wife to become wise. Tristan's life is only maintained by one thing, "ein heiss inbriinstig Lieben," an ardent glowing love. But what must be regarded as decisive once for all is the fact that sympathy, which played such a prominent part in all Wagner's earlier works, is entirely absent in Tristan. This matchless work therefore is neither meta- physically nor morally dependent upon Schopenhauer. The same may be said of Parsifal. Here we do indeed meet with sympathy as a central idea of the drama, but nowhere is there a trace of negation of the will ; the strict pessimistic resignation (which was to have found expression in Die Sieger., had the sketch ever been carried out) has yielded to action. Wagner's We shall therefore do well not to mix up art and philosophy with Wagner, philosophy. Especially we should see that Wagner's view of the world — in the widest sense — is by no means exhausted in his philosophical creed, or even adequately expressed therein. Wagner's faith in Schopenhauer was indeed unbounded, but metaphysics was for him not the crown, but the foundation of his intellectual life ; in Schopenhauer he saw that " ideal teacher " of whom Kant had spoken 1 Hausegger. Richard Wagner und Schopenhauer, p. 4. An ingenious exegetist might infer from passages here and there in Wagner's Zurich writings an influence on the part of Joh. Duns Scotus with his celebrated doctrine : Voluntas Superior intellectu ! Richard Wagners Writings and Teaching i6 I half prophetically. The following words will show how highly Wagner valued him in this field. Facsimile, " Was nutzt diese Erkenntnis." R. W., Collected Works, x. p. 330.1 Wagner's philosophy, and in particular his belief in Schopenhauer, is only one link in the chain, or better, one organ in his complex artistic individuality. In order of time, the close occupation with speculative philosophy succeeded that with political and social problems. Artistic speculation could never be an end in itself ; nor was the idea "of redemption by knowledge, which Schopenhauer had borrowed from the Indians, fitted to warm or to satisfy his heart ; and so we soon see Wagner return to the great social problems. Redemption by knowledge is the redemption of the single individual ; the metaphysician may rest content there- with, for in the metaphysical understanding he redeems with himself the entire phenomenal world. But Wagner is not in this sense a metaphysician. He is in the same position as Goethe, who adopted the creed of Spinoza although he rejected the monistic idea as sterile: "With the doctrine of universal oneness," says Goethe, " as much is gained as is lost, and at the end there remains the Zero, just as comforting as it is comfortless." Truly Wagner was not the man to remain satisfied with a Zero. Metaphysics was for him an instrument, a weapon. What he had taught before about community, and about the merging of egoism in communism, remained his ideal. Instructed by Schopenhauer, and by the other experiences of his life, he returns to the problem which has always occupied him, and devotes the strength of his last years to the great question of regeneration of the human race, which will be treated of in the next section of this chapter. 1 " In this sense, and to help us to set out independently on the paths of true hope, the present state of our development points to Schopenhauer's philosophy as in every respect fitted to become the foundation of all future intellectual and moral culture ; we have now to use every exertion to induce men to see the necessity for this in every province of life. Should we succeed, the beneficial result for regeneration will be immeasurable ; for we may observe the helpless state to which we have been reduced, intellectually and morally, by the absence of any fundamental, all-embracing cognition of the nature of the world." 162 Second Chapter Wagner's position in the general development of the human mind, that which may perhaps be called, not his philosophy, but his philosophical signifi- cance, can be estimated only when we know his doctrines of regeneration and of art, and especially when we know his art-works. An estimate of his philo- sophical significance must therefore be deferred to the close of the book. In Chap. iv. sec. 2, under '■'•the Bayreuth Idea" some observations will be made with a view to obtaining a right understanding of this matter. ['iT.ideii tn. Genuaiuy SCHILLER OriqirLal Iil'^Iel "Wakru&iei, Ba3?Teii£h. mmmmmmmmm Richard Wagner's Doctrine of Regeneration " He who will not venture beyond reality will never conquer truth." Schiller. " We recognize the cause of the decadence of historical man and the necessity Simplest of his regeneration, we believe in the possibiUty of the regeneration and devote form, ourselves thereto in every sense " (Was niiizt diese Erkenntniss ?,i x. 336). These words of Richard Wagner, written in 1880, exhibit very clearly the substance of his practical doctrine of regeneration. We see that it consists of two parts, closely connected with each other: a negative and an affirmative. The present conformation of human society (the modern state and its churches) is conceived as the result of a process of progressive decadence, and is rejected. On the other hand the recognition of the causes of the decadence leads to the acknowledgment of the possibility of regeneration. But we wish above all to establish one point before entering more particularly into details : the negation here is not metaphysical but empirical, the affirmation is not mystic but positive, and points to a historical future. Our decadence is due to material causes; material remedies, or rather the removal of those causes, will bring us back to the right path, to "our lost Paradise now consciously regained." Our enquiry into Wagner's political and philosophical thoughts was much The three impeded by the circumstance that they only occurred as accessory parts of doctrines of expositions in other fields of thought. We had to search for them amongst a ^^^^^l]^' 1 Erkenntniss, i.e. recognition of the fall of historical man. 164 Second Chapter mass of writings and letters, and the fact that his views were nowhere systemati- cally laid down made it difficult to define them sharply. The doctrine of regeneration on the other hand forms the main subject of a whole series of essays, and is formulated so clearly that it would seem as if we were standing upon terra fir ma^ and that it must be easy to follow a course of thought worked out so lucidly and in such detail, and to reproduce it to ourselves on a diminished scale. But a new obstacle appears in the way ; in this practical doctrine of regeneration, philosophy and rehgion play such an important part that to pass them over would be to misrepresent Wagner's thoughts most seriously. And if we are to include philosophy and religion together with our practice, we shall have three doctrines of regeneration — one practical, one philosophical, and one religious. Each of these pre-supposes the two others while yet appearing to contradict them in important points ! The harmony of this philosophy — for Wagner's doctrine of regeneration is a complete and far-reaching philo- sophy — will appear when we have mastered every part ; the single parts how- ever will present serious difficulties, until we have been able to overlook the whole, and so to perceive the organic connection of things apparently contradictory. Let us for instance consider the philosophical doctrine of regeneration for a moment. Along with the simple, practical doctrine of regeneration, we find continual references to Schopenhauer's philosophy ; it serves Wagner in a certain sense as a foundation. Now this philosophy indeed contemplates a metaphysical "rebirth," which is regarded as seeing through the principle of individuality, and consequent inversion of the will. No philosophic writer however would have ventured, either here or in any other part of Schopenhauer's system, to find any indication of a doctrine of regeneration of mankind, still less the foundation for such a doctrine. Wagner however, who is here not a philosopher but an artistic seer, is not disturbed by such considerations. He neither neglects the meta- physical perception of the thinking individual, nor the convictions which have forced themselves upon him in his living observations of the history of the whole human race. In that same work, for instance, which contains the positive doctrine of regeneration with which this section begins, Wagner quotes with approval Schopenhauer's words : "Peace, rest, happiness dwell where there is nowhere and no when^'' and in the same place he speaks of: "the soul affrighted at the illusion of the real appearance of the world " (x. l'},'^. One cannot help feeling staggered at first. Are we then to devote ourselves to carrying out a regenera- tion which can nowhere and never be achieved ? Are we to build up a historical future on a historical past, when the reality of the appearance of this world is altogether an illusion? In Wagner's view doubts of this sort express a mere logical contradiction ; their value is nil as against all that we see and must acknowledge in the truths which Nature offers to us. We have here the same phenomenon as that which I have already referred to in detail in the section on Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 165 politics, the simultaneous subsistence of contradictory propositions, contradictory however only in appearance, in reality complementary and essential portions of a mighty intelligence, an intelligence which is above all things truthful, and truthful to itself, which is an organic growth and is not hampered by syste- matic lies. In Wagner's consciousness are to be found, side by side, metaphysical negation and practical affirmation. To these there comes a third — religion. Practical regeneration is expressly spoken of as attainable, but it can only succeed if we are "bold and believing" (iii. 77) ; this Wagner requires in 1849, and in 1880 he writes: " Only from the deep soil of a true religion can the inducement and the strength proceed which are necessary for carrying through the regeneration." It is in religion that the opposites of perception joyous with life, and cognition weighty with thought, of optimism and pessimism, are recon- ciled. But a new difficulty arises in the fact that our religion itself has under- gone decadence, so that its immediate application to the purpose of regeneration is not possible (x. 310); on the other hand again: "the artist cannot invent religions ; they always grow out of the heart of the people " (iii. 77). We are therefore thrown back upon a religious foundation which, as we understand Wagner's own words, does not at present exist. At the close of this section I shall return to the point, and endeavour to explain this apparent inner discord. For the present I merely draw attention to the extreme difficulty of stating Wagner's optimistic doctrine of regeneration, owing to the pessimist philosophy which accompanies it throughout, like a basso continuo^ and also to its assumption of a religion which is yet to grow out of the Christian revelation (x. 288). My endeavour will be to state the matter as simply and as clearly as possible, but I cannot conceal from myself the applica- tion of Omar Khayyam's words, " A hair perhaps divides the false and true," and I do not flatter myself that I shall always be able to keep on the right side of this narrow boundary. The discussion of Wagner's doctrine of regeneration will naturally fall Division into two parts : the negation and the affirmation. The negative element is the recognition of the decadence ; and this forms the foundation for the affirmation of the faith in the possibility of regeneration. Before entering on the subject it will be well to state exactly which of Wagner's writings are to be regarded as directly dealing with regeneration. In the narrower sense they are the works of his later years : Religion und Sources. Kunst (1880), and the others which group themselves round this principal work: Wollen wir hqffen? ("Shall we hope") (1879), Offenes Schreiben an Ernst von Weber, uber die Vivisektion ("On vivisection") (1879), Was nutzt diese Erkennt- niss ? ("Of what use is this knowledge?") (1880), Erkenne dich Selbst ("Know thyself"), and Heldenthum und Christenthum ("The heroic age and Christianity") of the enquiry. 1 66 Second Chapter (i88i).i The last words of this last work are: "having herewith reached our ground " (in the preceding sentence he had spoken of " the great poets and artists of the past") "we will collect our thoughts for the further consideration of the subject " (x. 362). These words and many similar indications lead us to conjecture that after having in the series Religion und Kunst laid the principal weight upon religion — as being the foundation of every true regeneration — a second series was to have followed, and that this intention was frustrated by the master's death. We may suppose that the second group would have been entitled "Art and Religion," or "Art and Regeneration," with the emphasis on the word Art. For, notwithstanding that in his later writings, which I have named, art is always pointed to as being, after religion, the most important factor of regeneration, we nowhere find any detailed discussion of art, either in its inner nature or in its external operation. The second series of essays on regeneration does however exist ; it was written thirty years earlier ! Of course the Meister in his seventieth year would have expressed many things otherwise than he did in his thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh year ; still there is no breach of continuity, for everything in his Zurich writings which might have given rise to misunderstanding is explained in Religion und Kunst. The Zurich writings then, die Kunst und die Revolution.! das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (1849), Kunst und Klima (1850), Ofer und Drama.^ Eine Mitiheilung an meine Freunde (1851), form a second group (in order of time the first) of works on regeneration, the group which is required to complete the series Religion und Kunst., and in these the stress is indeed laid upon Art. The leading thought of both groups is exactly the same : Art cannot really come to maturity in the present state of society ; this is only possible in a regenerated society ; but without the cooperation of art regeneration is impracticable. Even in his Vaterlandsverein speech in 1848, Wagner had defined his object to be "the complete rebirth of human society." And in one passage of his later writings on regeneration he expressly refers to his former works : " And so I return, undeterred by the circuity of the path, to the thoughts which I conceived regarding this relation thirty years ago, and now declare that my subsequent life-experience has shown me nothing to aher in the boldest expressions which I then used" (Wollen wir hofen? x. 162). In short, the idea of regeneration pervades the entire second half of the master's life. It is fully elucidated in the two groups of works already named, as also in the others, more especially : Veber die Goethestiftung, Ein Theater in Zurich, Das Judenthum in der Musik, Zukunftsmusik, Staat und Religion, Deutsche Kunst und deutsche Politik, Beethoven, Ueber die Bestimmung der Oper, Was ist Deutsch ? Modern, Publicum und Popularitat, Das Publicum in Zeit und Raum. All these either presuppose the idea of regeneration, or stand in some relation thereto, and we may regard them all as sources for the knowledge of Wagner's doctrine. 1 Also the treatise Ueher das WeMche im Menschlkhen, which Wagner began two days before his death, would have been amongst these. Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 167 Those who live in the faith that mankind is constantly advancing, and Recogni- that there is no reason to imagine any end to this eternal progress and this is tion of the probably the belief of the majority — will never admit the necessity, or even the •^^'^^'^eiice. possibility of regeneration. The very conception of regeneration assumes two hypotheses — first, the belief in the original goodness (at least relatively) of man, in so far as his life and his development take place in harmony with his own nature and that of his surroundings; secondly, the conviction that historical mankind has wandered from the right path and strayed further and further from the heahhy and natural course of its development. What, therefore, one regards as progress is for the other decadence. The antithesis is a true logical contrary, and consequently very easy to grasp. ^ It is possible to regard decadence as the work of a destiny against which no efforts can avail, as an inevitable deterioration of the powers, similar to that of the individual in old age. Or it might be the product of a real degeneration, in which case the recognition of the fact must be the first and most important step towards regeneration. Could we but ascertain the causes of degeneration, then the regeneration would appear not only worthy of attainment, but as a thing really to be hoped for. Wagner therefore says, "The hypothesis of a de- generation of the human race, however much it may seem to contradict that of steady progress, may possibly, when seriously considered, be the only one from which we can draw any reasonable hope for the future. If we are justified in supposing the degeneration to have been caused by overpowering' external influences, which the prehistoric man, in his inexperienced state, was unable to resist, then the history of man, as we know it, must be viewed as that of his period of suffering, whilst his faculties were being developed to apply the experi- ence which he had gained in combating those hostile influences." And further on, he writes : " The history of this decadence might, if we regard it as the school of suffering of the human race, teach us that our task now is with conscious purpose to make good the damage caused by the blind authority of the will which shapes the world, and which has prevented the achievement of the unconscious aims of humanity as it were to build anew the house which the storm has demolished, and to ensure it against further damage " (Religion und Kunst, x. 304 and 315). It is very characteristic of Wagner that from the moment when his artistic work brought him into contact with public institutions, he at once saw and denounced everything that was bad in our social state. Never has he had a ^ To prevent misunderstandings I must observe that Wagner never denies the capacity of the human race for development ; only he holds that it should take place " in rational harmony with his nature" (iii. 262), not by progressive departure therefrom. Just as little does he dispute that "the process of human development is not retrogression towards a pristine state, but progress : retrogression is never natural, but always artificial" (iv. l88). What Wagner does not subscribe to is the notion of simple people that the new is in every case a higher, a better state, a state answering in a more noble way to the "holy laws of Nature," than the old; throughout Nature degeneration always lies nearer to hand than improvement; regarded from below this line of movement appears as advance, from above as retrogression. 1 68 Second Chapter word of approval for the " chaos of modern civilization " ; never did he believe in its so-called " progress." In his speech in the Vaterlandsverein (1848) he speaks of "mankind as sorely degraded and suffering." In Kunst und Revolution he calls the progress of culture "hostile to man" (iii. 39); in Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft the fundamental importance of recognizing the decadence is very clearly expressed. Wagner speaks of the future and says: "The force of our need impels us only to a quite general perception of how we are to conceive the antithesis of our present admittedly corrupt conditions not only as the heart desires, but as a necessary inference of the reason " (iii. 202). In this work too he lays the greatest stress upon negation in its special significance as an indispensable preliminary to affirmation. " The people has only to negative in deed what is indeed nothing — unnecessary, superfluous, nil . . . and the something of the unriddled future will at once present itself" (iii. 6y). At exactly the same time (the end of 1849) ^e wrote to Uhlig : "only demolition is now required; all new-building must for the present be arbitrary " (U., 21). But he soon learnt to see that the root of the evil lay deeper, and in October 1850 we already meet with the word degeneration : " Wherever we look in the civilized world, we find the degeneration of mankind " (U., 71). The causes of the degeneration are, even at that time, sought where he believed that he found them thirty years later, especially in our food. To this I shall return. Three months later Wagner speaks in Oper und Drama of " the fearful demoralization of our modern social conditions, so revolting to every genuine man," and towards the close of the same work he says : "Shall we seek to make terms with this world.? No ! for however humiliating the conditions, we should be excluded from them. . . . Neither faith nor courage will be ours until we listen for the pulse of history, and hear the eternal stream of life flowing in pristine freshness, inex- haustible, though at the present buried beneath the ruin of historical civiliza- tion" (iv. 257-281). In his Mittheilung an meine Freunde he says: "I was able frankly to tell this world that with all its sanctimonious concern for art and culture, I despised it from the bottom of my heart, that in its veins there flowed not one drop" of true artistic blood ; that it was incapable of giving out one breath of human excellence, one breath of human beauty" (iv. 406). These are utterances from his earliest writings on regeneration. It must not be supposed that in the works of his old age he dealt more gently with our civilization. He calls it " heartless and bad," it aims only at " the correct application of calculating egoism," it is "profoundly immoral," "a world of murder and robbery, organized and legalized by lying, deception and hypocrisy," it "transforms men into monsters" (x. 302, 309, 310, 395, 264), etc., etc. Everything which he has said on this point is comprised in the following words : " the task which devolves upon the spine of truthfulness is that of recognising our culture and civilization as the misbegotten progeny of the lies of the human race."i ' Let not Wagner be misunderstood ; his attack is not directed against culture, but only against what he regards as our inartistic and immoral culture. " Only through culture is a man a social and Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 169 So much with regard to Wagner's negative attitude towards our civilization. The number of quotations could be multiplied indefinitely, and it would never end if we wanted to pick out everything which Wagner has said against the modern State, "which only lives on the vices of society" (iv. 82), and against the religion "from which God has been discarded," "the impotent religion of churches" (x. 166). Here we are merely concerned with the recognition of the decadence on principle. This we see was present with Wagner throughout his life. From the very first we find Wagner seeking for the causes of the decadence. The causes We may gather from this that his absolute condemnation of the present condition , °^^^^. of mankind was neither dyspeptic, nor in the main metaphysical. His ceaseless endeavours to find an explanation for the degeneration of civilized man in philosophy, in history, and in natural science, are a proof of his invincible faith in the inner strength of mankind, and of his religious hope for the future before him. Herein we see Wagner's poetic nature ; the affirmation of the will, the belief in the forming power of his own work are the foundations of the true artist's nature. Absolute negation and art are incompatible. The Hindoos, for instance, with their pre-eminent metaphysical gift, expressly taught that Redemption is not a thing to be endeavoured after,i and they remained without a trace of art. Artistic creation itself presupposes an optimistic temperament, an inexhaustible force of will, of faith, of hope. The artistic seer cannot rest satisfied with declaring the world bad ; in his own breast there dwells a witness that it is beautiful ; but the beauty cannot come into being without the world. The philosopher requires no one but himself ; other men are a burden to him, and he retires into the shade of the primeval forest ; the artist on the contrary • is dependent upon other men as an element of his life ; he can do everything, but nothing without their help. Hence Wagner's conviction that "man cannot be redeemed singly"; hence too his endeavours from 1848 until his death — notwithstanding the quieting influence of Schopenhauer — to seek for the causes of the decadence of mankind. It is interesting to follow the progressive deepening of his views in this respect. In his very first utterance on the subject, in his speech in the Vaterlandsverein^ Money and property. almighty being. Let us not forget that to culture alone is due our power of so enjoying as mankind in the highest fiilness of its being can enjoy" (U., 71). It is quite wrong to mix up the German and the French idea of regeneration, as is often done. In France Pascal had exclaimed long before Rousseau: " Abetissez-vous ! " and in our own time Jules Laforgue had demanded: " La mise en jach^re de I'intelligence humaine." Even if we understand Rousseau to mean by the word " nature, ' not as the foolish always suppose, the raw state of nature, but a spiritual ideal (as Kant remarked long ago, and as Heinrich von Stein has shown conclusively), still a hostile attitude towards art is character- istic of the French school. Schiller on the other hand considers that only through art can man return to Nature, and Wagner's hopes for regeneration spring from his faith in the measureless power of an ideal art. [Cf. too the section on "the Bayreuth idea"). 1 Cf. ^ankara's Commentary on the Vedanta Sutras, i. 1, 4 {Sacred Books of the East, edited by Professor Max Miiller, vol. xxxiv. p. 23). 170 Second Chapter Wagner says : " We have to look the question firmly and boldly in the face, and ask ourselves what is the cause of all this misery in our present social condi- tions ? " The answer which he gave to this momentous question has been stated in the section on politics i; the source of the misery was money. This first attempt of Wagner to arrive at the cause of our degenerate social conditions has been described as remarkably naive, and consequently unworthy of the atten- tion of serious men. Others will perhaps judge differently. Wagner had deeper views, even at that time. For the purposes of a popular speech he was contented to conjure up the spectre of the "pale metal, whose subjects we are in bodily servitude," but he knew that beneath the mysterious might of that "most rigid, most inert of Nature's products " there lay the conception of property. In his essay, die Wibelungen^ written in the same summer, 1 848, Wagner expresses the opinion that inherited property is the main cause of the decadence of the human race. "In the historical institution known as the feudal system, so long as it preserved its early purity, we see the heroic principle of human nature very clearly expressed. An enjoyment was bestowed upon one man, present in person, whose claim rested upon some deed, some important service which he rendered. From the moment when a feu became heritable, the man himself, his deeds and actions lost their value ; this passed over to the property ; his successors held their position from the property which they had not inherited by their own merits, and the ever lower depreciation of mankind which followed in consequence, together with the increasing appreciation of property, were at last embodied in the most un-human institutions. . . . Property came to confer upon men the rights which heretofore men had conferred upon property" (ii. 197). To this conviction Wagner remained true to the end of his life. In das Kunstwerk der Zukunft he points to the principal care of the State in modern times, the endeavour to secure property immovably to all eternity, as the one thing which bars the way to independent life in the future (iii. 203). In Oper und Drama he says: "In this possession, now become property, which strangely enough is regarded as the foundation of good order, originate all the crimes in myth and in history " (iv. 82). In one of his very last works, Erkenne dich selbst (1881), he touches once more upon the same theme: "It would seem that the adoption by the State of the conception of property, in itself apparently so simple, has driven a stake through the body of humanity, by which it must sicken and painfully languish away " (x. 342). Deteriora- So acute a thinker as Wagner could not long continue to overlook the fact ^Tlood.^^ *^^* ^^^^ institutions as money and heritable property are at best only " causes of the second order," or perhaps rather symptoms than causes of decadence. Wagner looked deeper. He sought for physical causes, and thought to find them in the deterioration of the blood. He then asked how the fact was to be explained that the peoples of Europe were not only undergoing ever-increasing degeneration, but were drifting further and further from their own nature, and ^ See p. 1 41. Richard Wagner s Writings and Teaching 1 7 1 that especially the German races appeared quite estranged from themselves. The explanation which presented itself to him was : the moral influence of Judaism. Deterioration of the blood, and the demoralizing influence of the Jews : these then were, according to Wagner, the fundamental causes of our decadence. First in order comes the deterioration of the blood ; but the influence of Judaism enormously hastens the process of progressive degeneration, and is especially mischievous from the fact that it hurries men round in a restless whirlwind of movement, leaving them no time for reflection, or for realizing their wretched fallen condition, and the loss of their own nature. The deterioration of the blood is caused especially by the food which we eat, but also by the admixture of inferior races with the nobler ones. How early the question of food began to occupy Wagner's mind is shown Influence of by his letter to Uhlig of October 20th, 1850, some words of which I have ^°°^- already quoted : " On the one hand, lack of wholesome nourishment, on the other, excess of wanton enjoyment, and above all a general mode of life entirely foreign to our nature, have reduced us to a state of degeneration, which can only be checked by the complete renovation of the crippled organism. Excess and privation are the destroying enemies of the human race at the present day " (U., 70). In his correspondence with Liszt too, Wagner devotes some earnest words to this question: "Truly all our politics, diplomacy, ambition, feebleness, science — unfortunately too all our modern art . . . all these parasitic growths upon our life have no other soil upon which they flourish than our ruined stomachs ! Ah ! would and could everyone understand me to whom I speak these words, which — almost ridiculous as they sound — are so terribly true ! " (L., i. 153). It is of interest to note that Wagner's own physical sufferings and experiences contributed more than anything else to direct his attention to this important question. But nowhere have I found any reference to Feuerbach, though one might have been expected here, since the movement in this direction at the beginning of the fifties was partly set going by Feuerbach, and reflected in him, as is proved by his celebrated aphorism — half jest though it was — " Der Mensch ist was er isst " (Homo est quod est) ; it was taken up vigorously and "sensationally" by physiologists (Liebig, Moleschott, etc.) and by historians (Buckle). Considerations of natural history therefore, not of philosophy, first led Wagner to engage in his enquiry into the effects of nourishment. Numerous passages in his correspondence testify to this. Where special knowledge was lacking, Herwegh was his guide. It is often supposed that Wagner despised natural history ; this is not the case. One passage in das Kunstwerk der Zukunft proves the absurdity of this notion. Wagner there writes : " Modern natural science and landscape painting are the achievements of the present day, they alone afford comfort, they alone save us from infatuation and from incompetence in respect to science and to art " (iii. 173). And in a letter to Roeckel of the year 1854, Wagner clears up the misunderstandings prevalent even at that time, by showing that he only treats science coldly when it tries to take the place of 172 Second Chapter real life (R., 45). Here it is especially important that we should understand this positive relation of Wagner to science. In Religion und Kunst^ and in other works of his latest years on regeneration, he defined his view thus : " the degeneration of the human race has been brought about by its having forsaken its natural nourishment" (x. 311); man's natural nourishment is vege- table food (x. 306). Such ideas were generally regarded as the phantasms of an artist on the verge of old age, whose mind was weakened and led astray by pessimist doctrines and its own mystic visions, whereas they were really the result of thirty years of minute study and thought. Wagner's deduction of the moral from the physical degeneration also shows how strictly and scientifically historical was the whole course of his thought. "The beast of prey cannot prosper, and so too we see the prevailing man of prey deteriorate. In conse- quence of his unnatural food he is subject to diseases peculiar to himself, and never again attains either his proper age or a peaceful death; tormented by cares and sufferings, bodily as well as mental, and known to him alone, he passes through an inane life to a close which he cannot but fear " (x. 307). As regards the special teachings of history, Wagner says they show man to be "a beast of prey in steady process of development. He conquers lands ; subjugates the fruit-eating races ; by the conquest of former conquerors he founds large empires, forms states and develops civilization that he may enjoy his plunder in peace. . . . Attack and defence, disaster and battle ; victory and defeat ; authority and servitude, the whole sealed with blood — this is all that the history of the human races has to tell about ; the immediate consequence of the victory of the stronger is enervation, due to the civilization sustained by the labour of the conquered ; then extinction of the degenerate by new and coarser powers, whose thirst for blood is yet unsatisfied" (x. 291-293). And herein little is altered " by the tearing beast of prey having been in great part transformed into a calculating beast of prey " (x. 263-344). I will not detain the reader with a discussion of Wagner's hypothetical explanation of the geognostic processes which converted the plant-eating man into a meat-eating murderer of animals. Here indeed the " phantasms " pre.dominate ; the influence of Glei'zes, the author of Thalysia^ the leading work on vege- tarianism, is unmistakable, and the contrast between the thoughts of the great master's own genius, and the hasty and rather grotesque application of the teachings of natural history by the amiable Frenchman, is somewhat painful. It matters little whether we subscribe to Wagner's view or not; the most important argument which he brings against the eating of meat as the main cause of the deterioration of our blood is his own conviction.^ Inequality Only in his last work on regeneration, Heldenthum und Christenthum^ does ' Wagner discuss the inequality of the human races, and find a second physical cause of the decadence in the circumstance " that the nobler race may indeed 1 Further on, when I come to speak of the positive proposals for regeneration, I shall return to J;he question of food and to the " phantasm," as Wagner called it himself. of the races. Richard Wagner s Writings and Teaching 173 rule over the inferior ones, but can never raise them to its own height by mingling with them; it will only be itself degraded. ... It has been made very clear that we should have no history of mankind if there had been no movements, successes, creations of the white race, and the history of the world may fairly be regarded as the outcome of the mixture of the white race with the various branches of the yellow and black races ; these lower races however only take part in history in so far as they are modified by the mixture, and come to resemble the white ones. . The deterioration of the white races is due to the fact that, being much less numerous than the lower races, they are forced to mix with them, whereby, as has already been remarked, they themselves have suffered more by the loss of their purity than the others have gained by the improvement of their blood" (x. 352-3). These views Wagner borrowed from his friend Comte de Gobineau, the author of the Essai sur rinegalite des races humaines. Notwithstanding their immense range, they are of secondary import- ance for the doctrine of regeneration proper, inasmuch as they throw light only on the past, not upon the future. At least they can only regard the future in the entry of a necessary and terrible cataclysm. But Wagner rejects this deduc- tion from the doctrine, and looks upon the true Christian religion as an antidote "provided to cleanse the blood of the human race from all impurities " (x. 360). One other race question occupied Wagner's attention from an early time : Influence of the demoralizing influence of one of these white races on the others, of Judaism Judaism, upon non- Jewish peoples. Wagner's yudenthum in der Musik first appeared in 1850 in Brendel's Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik ; it was published as a pamphlet, and with a detailed preface in 1869. Perhaps no work of the Meister is so well known, at least by name; the expression " author of das Judenthum in der Musik " is one of the most favourite periphrases for "Richard Wagner." But it is a mistake to suppose that Wagner's views on the influence of Judaism are all expressed in this one work, and it is this mistake which has lent countenance to the ridiculous accusa- tion that he had mainly the success of Jewish musicians in his mind. Art was of course the subject with which Wagner was most directly concerned, but it was not at all the only one by which the influence of Judaism upon the morality of the nation was considered. In Deutsche Kunst und deutsche Politik he speaks of this influence in detail — though sous entendu ^ — as estranging the German from himself. His most important utterances on the subject, however, are scattered amongst the entire group of his last writings on regeneration, two of which are entirely devoted to this question : Modern and Erkenne dich Selbst (" Know thyself"). Especially the last work is important; in twelve pages "the inevitable disadvantage in which the German race stands to the Jewish " is exhaustively treated. Whoever therefore is earnestly concerned to know accurately Wagner's views about " the plastic dsemon of mankind's decadence " should study this little work. 1 Because the essay originally appeared in the form of articles in a great liberal political newspaper. 174 Second Chapter In view of the fact that Wagner, notwithstanding his repeated detailed and luminous discussions, has almost always been misunderstood — intentionally and unintentionally — it would be a bold act on the part of any other individual to attempt to condense Wagner's views on Judaism into a few lines. In the excited state of the public at the present time, it is almost impossible to speak frankly and impersonally upon the subject. I will therefore confine myself to giving a few hints which may assist an unbiassed person to form a judgment for himself. The so-called " Jewish question " is often supposed to be one of recent times, but quite wrongly ; quite recent however is the phase which the question has assumed ; formerly it was unreservedly discussed, but now people's minds have become so sensitive that it is almost proscribed. Formerly there was, on both sides, more sincerity and less violence. We do not require to go back to the sceleratissima gens of Seneca, nor even to Goethe and Beethoven; it is sufficient to remark that in the forties, when Wagner first entered upon public life, all who were not Jews were Anti-semites, from the communistic democrat to the ultra-conservative. Herwegh, the Socialist, complains of the friendship which the Jews show him ; it insults him. Dingelstedt, the proclaimer of German freedom, writes : " Wohin Ihr fasst, Ihr werdet Juden fassen, Alluberall das Lieblingsvolk des Herrn ! Geht, sperrt sie wieder in die alten Gassen, Eh' sie Euch in ein Christenviertel sperr'n ! " ^ In the Prussian Landtag, in 1847, Freiherr v. Thadden-Trieglaff" literally de- manded "the emancipation of the Christians from the Jews," and Herr v. Bismarck-Schonhausen expressed himself similarly ! 2 Nor was it in Germany alone that the ablest minds regarded the admixture of a foreign element of such a peculiar kind in the public life of Europe as likely to be attended with very serious consequences. In that same year, 1847, there appeared in France the prophetic work of Toussenel: Les Juifs rots de V^oque. The way in which Ludwig Feuerbach is glorified by those very Jews is most significant, after he had again and again written about them in a way which at the present day would have assured his literary death: "The principle of the Jewish religion is egoism. The Jew is indifferent to everything which does not directly refer to his own well-being. Hebrew Egoism is immeasurably deep and powerful. The Jews received by the grace of Jehovah the command to steal," etc. (1841, Bas Wesen des Christenthums). Since then a great change has taken place. The Christians have grown more tolerant, the Jews more intolerant. To lay the ^ " Wherever you seek you will find Jews, Everywhere the chosen people of the Lord, Go, lock them up again in their old ghettos Before they lock you in a Christian's quarter ! " "^ Cf. Treitschke Deutsche Geschichte im xix. JahrL, v. 634. This was Bismarck's first speech in parliament. Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 1 75 blame of a tendency which belongs to a whole epoch upon a single man is to defy all historical justice.^ It follows from what we have said that it was not from caprice that Wagner raised his warning voice against the increasing influence of the Jews on German art. The best men of his time, of every party, thought as he did. But it is worthy of note that whilst the Jews bore no malice against the others on account of their anti-semitic views, they never forgave Wagner ! Das Judenthum in der Musik appearing in the columns of a professional paper with a limited circulation would have remained quite unnoticed, if the Jews themselves, with that faultless instinct which Wagner speaks of as theirs (x. 347), had not felt the extraordinary importance of this little essay. In the entire European press a war was commenced against Wagner, of the immoderate violence of which I have already spoken in my first chapter ; it continued until his death. ^ Nothing could be better suited to bring Wagner's attitude to Judaism into notice than this action of the Jews ; we cannot help thinking that he had hit the nail upon the head. The following considerations must however be noted. The malicious literary warfare against Wagner had begun in Dresden, long before the appearance of his Judenthum in der Musik. The Jews themselves, with their acute perceptive faculties, were almost everywhere amongst the first to recognise Wagner's extraordinary importance as an artist ; moreover, among the critics who achieved reputation by their stupid vilification of the great master were many who were not Jews. An instinctive antipathy to Wagner's art on the part of the Jews cannot therefore be assumed. Moreover Wagner never avoided the society and friendship of Jews ; if we go to the bottom of the matter we shall find that the agitation against Wagner was carried on exclusively by the worse elements of Judaism proper, and that it was really nothing more than a conspiracy of mediocrity and incapacity of every confession against genius. It deserves our unmitigated contempt. But when we pass from the consideration of these historical events to that of Wagner's own utterances, two things will occur to us : their absolute integrity, and their high human significance. Like his hero Siegfried, Wagner was free from envy. The aptitude of the Jew for amassing money is usually the principal reproach made against him. Wagner however merely defended German taste 1 For a whole generation after this the Germans seem to have been struck with blindness, or they could never have considered men clever who said like Gustav Freytag : " We do not regard the present time as favourable for a serious attack upon Judaism in any quarter, in politics or in society, or m science and art (controversy on das Judenthum in der Musii; Grenzboten, 1869, No. 22). The difference between Freytag and Wagner is that between talent and genius ; had people at that time listened to the warning and peace-making voice of genius, it would never have come to the malignant and dangerous conflict which we see now. 2 On the republication of das Judenthum (1869) there appeared more than one hundred and seventy rejoinders ! 176 Second Chapter in art and German notions of morality against a race which felt differently on these points. Nowhere does he speak of any economic interests, and nowhere is the discussion of principles tainted with personal malice. In order to defend his thesis in Judenthum in der Musik he was of course obliged to speak of Israelite musicians, and chose the most venerated names for this purpose ; we may note the honourable manner in which he names Meyerbeer, with what respect and appreciation he speaks of Mendelssohn, and compare these with the low attacks and abuse to which he was himself subjected in this connection. We may well believe that Wagner lost none of his faithful " truly sympathetic " (viii. 300) Israelite friends, and that he reckoned confidently on gaining new friends amongst the Jews themselves. With him it is not a passing question of the day, but "a thought of historical importance, affecting the culture of humanity at large" (viii. 322). At the beginning of his "Judenthum in der Musik Wagner tells us that his purpose is : "to explain the unconscious feeling which in the people takes the form of a deep-rooted antipathy to the Jewish nature ; to express therefore in plain language something really existing, not at all by force of imagination to infuse life into a thing unreal in itself" (v. 85). And how was this really existing thing to be removed ? How was the baneful yawning abyss to be bridged over? Wagner points to the regeneration of the human race, and to the Jews he says: "Bear your share undauntedly in this work of redemption, gaining new birth by self-immolation ; we shall then be one and undivided ! but remember that there can only be one release from the curse which rests upon you: the release of Ahasuerus — destruction." What he means by destruction is evident from an earlier sentence: "to hecome men in common with us is for the Jews primarily the same thing as to cease to be Jews" (v. io8).i We find the same direct plain speaking later on : " One thing is clear to me ; as the influence which the Jews exert upon our intellectual life, and which shows itself by distorting and falsifying the highest tendencies of our cukure, is not a mere accident, due perhaps to physiological causes, it must be acknow- ledged as undeniable and decisive. ... If this element is to be assimilated in us, to mature with us and cooperate in the higher development of the nobler part of our human capacities, then it is clear that the right way to help on the process of assimilation is, not to hide the difficulties, but to display them fairly to view" (viii. 322). What Wagner believes himself justified in asserting of the Jews, namely, 1 It is amusing to learn that the Herren Joachim, Moscheles, Hauptmann, David, etc., felt them- selves so deeply injured by this invitation « to become men in common with us " that they demanded the immediate dismissal of the Editor of the Neue Zeitschrift fiir Musik, Franz Brendel, from the staff of teachers in the Leipzig Konservatorium ! Wagner's proposal reminds us— except that it is much milder— of Luther's, that the Jews should cease to be Jews ; « if they will not, we will not endure or suffer them with us." Of Wagner's Judenthum in der Musii Ludwig Nohl has said very finely, "it was like the awakening conscience of the nation, except that the dull minds of men failed to comprehend the new profound spirit of reconciliation which here appeared to heal and to save. Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 177 that they live on "the plunder of the general decadence " (x. 298), is, after all, nothing more than what their own prophet Micah foretold of them: "And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many people as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep : who, if he go through, both treadeth down, and teareth in pieces." Lion is, perhaps, a tropical exaggeration ; sheep^ certainly, is not. After Micah came a greater prophet, who cried to the daughters of Jerusalem : "Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children." He taught the Jews what Wagner now says to them, "In order to be men in common with us, cease to be Jews ! " \ We have seen that Wagner regards the present condition of culture and The belief civilization as a condition of decadence. We have also seen that he believed inregenera- himself to have discovered the most important causes of this decadence. It now *'°"" remains for us to adduce something about his positive thoughts, and his proposals for regeneration. Regarding the recognition of a state of decadence, Wagner says : " It is not new, for every great mind has been led by it ; ask the truly great poets of all times; ask the founders of truthful religions." He rejects, however, the pessimist inferences which were drawn from this by the Hindu and Christian religions, and by metaphysics, and says : " the recognition of the cause of our decadence leads us on to the possibility of regeneration, which must be no less thorough" (x. 2)'^6). And in truth the argument is so simple and logical, that if we admit the two premises we cannot but admit the conclusion. My present task would accordingly be very simple ; if animal food is the principal cause of the decadence of mankind, the remedy clearly is to confine ourselves strictly to a vegetable diet ; if the commingling of races brings about deterioration of the blood, we must see that it does not take place, etc. I might, therefore, now close this chapter on Wagner's doctrine of regeneration. But here Wagner's many-sided intellect forces us on; the difficulty of reducing a world-philosophy which has drawn its life from the most various and widely-distributed channels to a few simple sentences is very great. Once more we become conscious of the enormous diiFerence between the philosopher, whose endeavour is, and must be, to simplify everything in accordance with the organic laws of reason, to bring his entire cognition as nearly as possible into a single proposition, and the artist, to whom observation is the prima lex^ and who pays little more regard to the rigid laws of mechanical thought than does Nature herself. Wagner indeed recommends, vegetarianism, but herewith the question is by no means disposed of for him. His philosophic insight is so deep that he always recognizes the connection of mankind with Nature, and natural necessity as the only efficient force, and hereby a pessin^istic side-light is thrown on every artificial attempt at regenera- tion. And again, his emotional life, his best powers, belong to that art which 1 78 Second Chapter he found to be " completely one with true religion " (x. 322). Neither material nor metaphysical attempts at amendment can of themselves lead to regenera- tion ; on the contrary, " all genuine impulse and all really efficient strength to carry out the great regeneration can only spring from the deep soil of true religion" (x. 313). The three It is as if three worlds existed side by side : a material or empirical, a doctrines, transcendent or metaphysical, and a mystic or religious world ; art is the bond of connection between them all; its form is material, its substance transcendent, its interpretation mystic ; for this reason all three worlds are reflected in the mind of the artistic genius himself with remarkable clearness. But if the artist has observed something, and wishes, not to represent it in a work of art, but, as here with the doctrine of regeneration, to develop and communicate it to the intellect, he will assume three diiferent sets of hypotheses, without troubling himself much about their agreement together ; their unity is quite evident to him through his own personality, and he can communicate it directly to others in a work of art. It follows that anyone who wishes to represent Wagner's views in a simple comprehensive form, is at once met by great difficulties ; for their real and complete understanding the definite impression of his art-works is a necessary foundation ; this imparts to our whole being — to use a simile from science — an increased faculty of vibration, and enables us to become good " conductors " for the most complex combinations of thought, which before we viewed with blank bewilderment. Not Wagner alone, but every genius in art is in the same case ; Goethe too would appear like a chameleon, or like a living kaleidoscope, were it not for his mighty individuality showing itself har- moniously in his art. It will help us to a conscious and logical apprehension of Wagner's doctrine of regeneration if our minds are quite clear on this point, First we must separate the three points of view : the material, the metaphysical, and the religious. The About the material, or empiric and realistic point of view not much remains empirical fo,. ^q ^o say. The principal thing is here, according to Wagner, the food ; we regenera- ™^^^ abstain from meat and from alcoholic drinks, tion. This extreme view Wagner only adopted late in his life. At an earlier date he had said "the right thing is for us to enjoy everything, but with suitable moderation " ; he even writes : " the simple substances of nutrition are not for people Hke ourselves ; we need more compUcated food, substances which contain the most nourishment whilst making the smallest demand upon the digestion " (U., 232-239). But after he had become convinced that the adoption of a vegetable diet was " the key-stone of regeneration " (x. 307), he was not to be put out by any considerations. He admits that in Northern climates possibly a meat diet may be necessary ; if so, then we, the nobler races, should undertake "a migration, rationally organized" into other parts of the world (x. 311).! 1 This proposal for a national emigration will no doubt appear in the highest degree extravagant. A man of empirical science, the well-known French physiologist, psychologist, and political economist, Richard Wagner s Writings and Teaching 1 79 Wagner indeed expressly calls this, as well as many others of his proposals in the domain of material and practical life, " Phantasms of an attempt at regenera- tion" (x. 312). This must be remembered, particularly by those with whom the mere thought of vegetarianism calls forth a supercilious smile. In view of the great progress which vegetarianism has made amongst the practical Anglo- Saxons and Americans, and of the extraordinary physical achievements of strict vegetarians latterly at public competitions, those of the opposite opinion might well learn to regard the question objectively. Experimental Science has yet produced no proof on either side, and even if it did, the proof would be of only limited value, because the question really rests upon a moral basis, and has more particularly to do with man's relation to animals {cf. Wagner's letter to E. von Weber). Only one thing I would again draw attention to, namely, that Wagner's theories of vegetable diet are a much weaker argument than his own conviction. About the "phantasms" of his natural science I have already spoken.^ The historical evidence is equally unsatisfactory. Wagner speaks of a pre-historic man who lived on vegetable food ; but at the extreme limit of pre-historic man we always find flesh-eaters.^ The appeal to the Hindus is also unfortunate, for the Vedic Hindus were meat-eaters ; their bill of fare was not unlike our own ; ox, goat, sheep, game, birds, fish, sometimes, too, it is said horseflesh (Oldenberg Religion des Veda^ 355)- Even at later times there has never been any real prohibition against the eating of meat, and we must not overlook the fact that the Brahmans themselves, the thinkers and intellectual leaders of the people, ate the sacrificial flesh — that is, the best. An old Indian proverb says: "Meal is ten times better than rice, milk ten times better than meal, flesh eight times better than milk."^ The sages who retired into the forest in their old age never made their own abstemious diet into a general rule of conduct. Flesh- eating is therefore, certainly in India, the older custom ; vegetarianism is a later institution. Buddha himself, if the account of his own disciples may be believed, died of indigestion, brought on by the excessive enjoyment of pork. With the Aryans of Persia vegetarianism finds just as little support : " Of two men, he who fills himself with meat is filled with the good spirit much more than he who does not do so ; the latter is all but dead ; the former is above him by the worth Alfred Fouillee, in his recent work (July 1895), Le temperament et le caractere selon les indi-uidus, les sexes et les races, makes exactly the same proposal, the only chance of saving the Indo-Germanic race ; the possibility of carrying this thought into execution is, according to Fouillee, guaranteed by the latest discoveries in medicine. 1 In a problem of such extreme complexity natural science will find arguments both for and against, ad libitum. The Dinosauria for example seem to have carried out the experiment on a grand scale ; in the flesh-eating genera, the fine proportions and the development ot the head are remarkable; the vegetable eaters on the other hand attain the most colossal dimensions (Brontosaurus, for instance, sixty feet long), but the head remains comparatively undeveloped. 2 Cf. Johann Ranke, Der Mensch, vol. ii. 3 Bohtlingk, Indische Spruche, 363. i8o Second Chapter of a sheep, by the worth of an ox, by the worth of a man " (Sacred Books of the East, iv. 46). This is the Zend-Avesta That Pythagoras taught vege- tarianism as Wagner asserts, has never been proved ; his strict prohibition of beans as food would seem to point to something very different. And finally Gleizes' interpretation of the words of Christ at the Last Supper: "This do in remembrance of me," by an interpolation of the word "only" — "this only eat" (namely bread and wine) would probably not be allowed to pass uncontradicted. These remarks are not brought as criticism, but in order to indicate a striking characteristic of Wagner's doctrine of regeneration, namely that just in the empiric or material portion the "phantasms" everywhere predominate. And it might easily happen that too concrete a conception of things which are valuable only as arguments, as pictures, would give quite a wrong impression of the truth which lies at the bottom of them, but which neither history nor experiment can prove. In the last section but one I remarked that it was one of the most essential merits of the German struggle for regeneration that neither in its deductions nor in its visions of the future did it follow the abstract, logical method of Rousseau. The inner necessity, the need (as Wagner says) is acknowledged as law-giver, the outer perception frankly admitted to be a phantasm. The The philosophical treatment of the idea of regeneration is freer. " Nature, philosophi- and Nature alone, can bring order into the great world-destiny. Civilization, cal doctrine gj^j.j.jjjg (y.^^ ^y^q Christian belief in the depravity of human nature, has repudi- generation. 'ited mankind, and thereby made an enemy which will necessarily destroy it, just in so far as man has no room in it ; for this enemy is nothing else than Nature itself which alone lives eternally" (Kunst und Revolution, iii. 37-38). The same thought, but in more lucid form, was expressed by Wagner a few days before his death, in his letter to Heinrich von Stein of January 31st, 1883: "We cannot begin far enough away from the consummation hitherto achieved, if we wish to find the purely human in harmonious agreement with the eternally natural" (x. 416). Evidently such reflections are not empirical. The "purely human " and the " eternally natural " are perhaps not abstractions ; but at least we must admit that these conceptions have not been gathered from observation. In the next section we shall learn the radical signification of this conception of the purely human for Wagner's art. For the doctrine of regeneration its value lies, first in the fact that Wagner adhered to this phrase and this idea throughout his whole life, and secondly that the " purely human " — which is merely a part of the wider conception, " the eternally natural " — forms the optimistic element in Wagner's philosophical conviction of the possibility of regeneration. From the passages quoted (which could be multiplied indefinitely), it is perfectly evident that Nature, and more especially true "human nature," is regarded as good. Wagner calls our world "the wilderness of a blighted Paradise" (ix. 151). In one of his earliest writings he laments over "the shattered faith in the purity of human nature" (iii. 47), and in one of his Richard Wagner s Writings and Teaching 1 8 1 latest he says " we look for salvation only in the awakening of man to his simple and holy dignity" (x. 350). The true pessimist teaches: "far truer than the Pantheistic identification of Nature with God, would be its identification with the Devil," and of Mankind he says : " man is at bottom a wild, a shocking animal. We know him only in his tame state, bound, in what is called civilization, and are terrified at the occasional outbreaks of his nature. But if ever the lock and chain of legal order are loosened, and anarchy begins, he shows what he is " (Schopenhauer). This belief, firm as a rock, in the purity and holiness of human nature, is therefore the philosophical foundation of Wagner's -doctrine of re- generation. Another conception too we find with Wagner from the very first, one which has a pessimistic tinge, and holds the balance against the first. It is the concep- tion of necessity. In the section on philosophy I have already pointed to the stress laid upon " spontaneous necessity " in Wagner's earlier writings, as having a strong savour of Schopenhauer.^ Wagner himself regarded what he before called " spon- taneity" (Unwillkur) as so entirely identical with Schopenhauer's Will, that in later editions he did not consider it worth while to revise the text and correct it ; he only calls attention to the identity of the two conceptions once for all in the preface (iii. 4). This conception of necessity, like Schopenhauer's Will, embraces the whole range of the phenomenal world : "Nature creates and fashions of necessity " (iii. 54) ; and with mankind " necessity alone determines us to real creative deeds" (v. 5^); "without necessity nothing genuine and true can be commenced" (x. 179). Quite logically it follows from this that "life is the proximate, the self-determined " ; science " the unconscious justified ... the destruction of the arbitrary in the Will of the necessary " (iii. sy). A little consideration will show that such a conception of Nature leaves no place for regeneration. Nature has fashioned everything of necessity; the wisdom of the wise is therefore "willing of the necessary." Still more clear does the matter become directly his perception attains compact form through Schopenhauer's metaphysics. With Schopenhauer there can be no talk of regeneration, if only for the reason that the conception of decadence would have no meaning in his system, and never occurs with him. The attempt to demonstrate progress he indeed dismisses as "an artificial and imaginary con- struction " ; but just as little does he admit decadence ; the teaching of history is for him, " that we still have the same, equal and unalterable being before us, doing exactly the same things to-day as it did yesterday, and will do to all eternity" (Ges. Werke, iii. 507). Schopenhauer indeed speaks approvingly of the story of the Fall, but only as a myth ; existence is in itself sin. Accord- ing to him the wise man can at most desire one thing; with Wagner's Wotan : " Das Ende ! das Ende ! " Wagner, who was thoroughly at home in Schopenhauer's metaphysics, and accepted it unreservedly, undertook with the 1 See p. 152. 1 82 Second Chapter greatest boldness a similar role with regard to this philosophy as that which Schopenhauer assumed towards Kant; he carried on Schopenhauer's thought! He expressly says : " from Schopenhauer's own demonstrations of the depravity of the world I obtained the first incentive to my meditations on a possible redemption of this same world" (x. 48). He says, "the inversion of the mis- guided will, the ways to which are clearly indicated by Schopenhauer alone, and which may indeed lead to hope, have been pointed out plainly and definitely, and in a sense conforming to the most exalted religions, by our philosopher; it is not his fault if the correct representation of the world, as it lay before him, so entirely engaged his attention that he had to leave it to ourselves to find out the paths and to follow them ; for we can only enter them upon our own feet " (x. 330). Wagner, in fact, recommends Schopenhauer's philosophy as the only one which will lead us "to set out independently on the paths of true hope."i That, certainly, is a most surprising turn, and one which would have surprised nobody more than the man who described hope as " the foolishness of the heart," b\it this proves nothing, for Kant would have been just as little likely to acknowledge Schopenhauer as his continuer. Schopenhauer may be said to have taken a salto mortale from Kant's Critical Idealism, to find das Ding an sich in the Will. Wagner made a leap which was no less bold. His unerring judgment soon recognized that the negation of the Will for life, whatever its motives might be, " must always appear as the highest energy of the will itself " (x. 2,S^) '1 from this footing he attained the conviction that whoever recognizes the decadence with clear insight, and at the same time possesses this highest energy of the will, holds in his hand all that is required for regeneration ; he knows the evil and is master of the remedy. Out of this springs his " faith in the possibility of regeneration," his fervent belief in the "All-might of the Will" (ix. 91), and herein is the explanation of the strange words, "the Will's assurance of victory is achieved by the recognition of the decadence " (x. 320). Of course, all this is valuable only as an indication; more cannot with justice be expected within the limits of a general account. This curious organic relation between Schopenhauer's pessimism and Wagner's optimist doctrine of regeneration — the doctrine that out of the inner negation of the world the affirmation of redemption will be born (x. 282) — constitutes in my opinion the most interesting and most important part of Wagner's philosophical thought. It is true that one who remained content with the philosophical statement of the doctrine of regeneration could hardly gain a clear and satisfactory view of it. For the roots from which Wagner's conviction springs go much deeper ; at bottom the doctrine is religious. The The basis of Wagner's religious belief is the conviction of a moral signifi- religious cance of the world, exalted far above all doubt. He says : ''■the recognition of the doctrine or i • • /» o ^ regenera- "^'"' "SW'^^^'^^ "f ^he world is the crowning point of all knowledge " (x. ^t,^). tion. This conviction too is the foundation of hope, and herewith of the belief in ^ See the facsimile given in the last section, p. 161. Richard Wagner s Writings and Teaching 1 83 regeneration. In 1853 ^^ writes: "I possess faith in a future of mankind, and draw it simply from my necessity" (L., i. 236). But belief from inner necessity is religion, and this sentence, penned in the earlier part of his life, helps us rightly to understand the later one : " Only from the deep soil of a truthful religion can the inducement and the strength proceed, which are necessary for carrying through the regeneration" (x. 313). So that without religion we can neither possess strength to carry out the regeneration, nor indeed feel any impulse thereto. Religion is consequently the indispensable condition of Wagner's doctrine of regeneration. Here another consideration forces itself on our notice. Between religion and regeneration there exists a parallelism, resting, not upon external features, but upon real kinship. "The deep foundation of every true religion," Wagner writes, "lies in the infirmity of the world and the consequent inducements which we have to free ourselves therefrom" (x. lyS). This religious perception of the infirmity of the world is reflected in history as decadence. But religion includes an affirmation as well as a negation, regeneration as well as decadence : the belief in redemp- tion. In consequence of this relationship we must regard the idea of regenera- tion as proceeding from the deepest foundations of religion. Faith here becomes a deed. That which commonly presents itself to men's minds in their rare moments of devotional meditation, the sinfulness of their being, and the desire for redemption, is henceforth to be the positive impulse of their lives. As it is said in Parsifal: Bekenntniss wird Schuld und Reue enden, Erkenntniss in Sinn die Thorheit Wenden ! ^ This Bekenntniss (confession of decadence) and this Erkenntniss (recogni- tion of the possibility of regeneration) will therefore, as we have said, in future be something more than mere subjects of pious meditation, or a bond of con- nection with a hereafter too remote to exert any determining influence upon the things of this world. Wagner says to us : "Provide a real fertile soil for these ideals in your habits of life, and a new power will proceed from them" (x. 179). And in the practical confession of belief with which this section opens he says : " We believe in the possibility of regeneration, and devote ourselves thereto in every sense." We are here involuntarily reminded of Feuerbach, of his inextinguishable faith in the future, and of his noble endeavours to breathe new life into religion by employing it to fertilize the existing soil of real life. I name Feuerbach here in order to draw attention to the immense diflference between all materialistic belief in the future and Wagner's religious optimism. The difference lies in Wagner's belief in destinies of the human race which lie "beyond all time and all space" 1 Confession will end sin and repentance ; knowledge will turn folly into wisdom. 184 Second Chapter (x. 352), in a "moral signification of the world." This is all that he cares for. His entire doctrine of regeneration is the application of this belief With material progress it is in no way concerned. To the conception of progress it opposes that of the harmony of Nature — an antithesis exactly corresponding to that of Judaism and Brahmanism. Nowhere does he preach a "return to Nature " ; but the oneness of Man with Nature^ whereby the life of primitive man was unconsciously shaped, shall be raised to an acknowledged law. This thought is entirely in harmony with the teachings of natural science ; nor is Wagner an enemy of science — that we have already seen ; he praises mechanical science, for, says he, the machine is the artificial slave of free-creating man (iii. 41). But, on the other hand, neither by perfecting machines nor by amassing knowledge can we cause one tear less to fall in the ocean of human misery ; such things are of temporary, relative, not of eternal, absolute importance. Wagner's idea of regeneration, on the other hand, only considers man as a moral being ; to him it is " appalling and wonderful . . . that we wish to be hopeful without possessing a true morality" (x. 329). Nor is he at bottom concerned for the attainment of any temporal object ; in one place he says mankind may perish if it only perishes divinely (x. 2)5'^)- Here Schiller's words apply: "Reason knows no limits; to begin is to accomphsh, and the journey is finished directly it is undertaken." But even when we believe the journey to be finished, when the regenerated life of the future has been reached, though we should indeed be freed from the common sufferings of sinful life, it would be by "a conscious impulse, in which the terrible problem of this world is always present" (x. 319). In no sense then is regeneration a substitute for religion (as it would be in Feuerbach's sense) — still less is it an antidote against religion (as others have supposed). The following passage from Religion und Kunst leaves no doubt about Wagner's meaning: "However peaceful the condition may be which results from the regeneration of the human race, by reason of an appeased conscience, the fearful tragedy of the world's existence will continually make itself felt, in Nature around us, in the violent conflicts of the elements, in the ceaseless lower manifes- tations of the Will beside and about us, in sea and desert — even in the insect, in the worm upon which we carelessly tread ; and daily we shall look to the Saviour on the Cross as our last exalted refuge" (x. 317). Regeneration is thus a mere picture of true redemption, " that other world of redemption must therefore differ from this world, exactly as the kind of cognition which we need to apprehend it. differs from that which only apprehends this illusive suffering world " (viii. 27). Art as the I hope now to have made it clear how it is that Wagner's doctrine of dement ^^5^"^'"^^'°^ ^akes three different forms, according to the three standpoints from which it may be regarded : the empiric and historical, the abstract philo- sophical, and the religious. Only one word remains to be said about the element in which all three worlds become conscious of their oneness, and which therefore plays such an important part in this conception ; namely art. Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 1 85 In each of these three the influence of art is decisive. Art and In his very first Zurich treatise, Die Kunst und die Revolution^ Wagner Life, ascribes a very high office to art : " It is the business of art to indicate to this social impulse (for free human dignity) its noblest significance; to direct it in the right path." It is however at the same time admitted that "the influence of art alone will indeed not be sufficient to enable men to develop human society to human beauty and nobility " ; not only to Apollo, the god of art, must the future raise an altar, but also to "Jesus, who suffered for mankind" (iii. 40, 49, 50). Even here then, at a time when Wagner's idea of regeneration was as yet immature, and appeared to a certain extent distorted by the historical and political growth clinging to it, one thing is clearly recognised and expressed, that art, in the reformed human society for which we hope, will play the part of a mediator. It will reveal to men the significance of his unconscious impulse, and lead the erring into the right path. It does not exert any direct influence, such as that of ennobling the manners (as Kaiser Josef II. thought), but it possesses the magic power of showing man to himself, and herewith pointing out the way to regeneration. Almost at the same time Wagner recognized that " art represents the Art and necessary," or, as the context explains, natural necessity (E., 23). Herewith philosophy, too the relation of art to metaphysics is clearly defined. Art can never ex- press a philosophic concept; the highest art is distinguished from ordinary artistic handicraft in its procedure being necessary, spontaneous (see E., 22, iii. 57, and R., 37) ; what it represents is the phenomena of the transcendent foundation of the world: natural necessity, "Will," or whatever else we like to call it. Art " liberates the unsensible thought in sensibility " ; and for this reason it was that Schopenhauer valued art so very highly ; from his philosophical standpoint he considered its final object to be : "To facilitate the cognition of the ideas of the world." Here too, therefore, according to Wagner's conviction, art has the important part of a mediator to play ; it is a mediator for the attain- ment of a deeper cognition of the nature of the world ; this cognition however is an indispensable constituent of the idea of regeneration.^ In das Kunstwerk der Zukunft we find the third decisive proposition : "Art Art and is the living representative of religion" (iii. yy). Here again, then, with rehgion. religion, art is the mediator; it represents; here, too, its office is to indicate "the noblest significance" and "the true path." "It will be well with us," he writes at a later date, "when we can, with the consciousness of a pure life- impulse, keep open our sense for that mediator of the overwhelmingly sublime ; when the artist-poet of the world's tragedy leads us on to reconciliation with this human life. This poet-priest, the only one who has never lied, has always been the best friend and companion of mankind through his most terrible errors, and he will accompany us into our reborn life, to show us in ideal truth the symbol 1 Cf. the following section, p. 192. 1 86 Second Chapter of all transitory things, when the realistic lies of the historian are long buried in the dust of old records " (x. 317). We have already seen that "all genuine impulse and all strength" for regeneration "can spring only from the deep soil of a truthful religion"; for this reason, therefore, the most important relation of art is that to religion. For if art succeeds in raising itself from the very inferior position of a harmless entertainment and diversion to that of a " hallowed and purifying religious act," as Wagner requires (iii. 157, and x. 320), then we may understand "the signifi- cance which art may have, when completely freed from immoral demands, in a new order of things, and especially for the people " (x. ^;^5). How great is the service which art, understood in this sense, has already performed, and is destined to perform in a still higher degree in the future, for true religion, Wagner tells us in one of the weightiest passages of his works, the opening words of Religion und Kunst. h ^ .y^"<^ uM^ en^--^ x^>>t^ -t^^ •^^«-*-^ ^.-.-^-c^v^a^ Facsimile from the Original MS. (x. 175).^ The first concern of the priest is that religious allegories shall be regarded as actual truths ; for this the artist cares nothing at all, for he frankly and openly offers his work as his own invention. But when religion teels the necessity of further developing its dogmatic symbols, that is for hiding the one true divine thing which it contains, by attaching to it things impossible, and recommending belief in them, its life is but artificial. Feeling this, religion has always sought the cooperation of art, which, however, remained incapable of higher develop- ment so long as it was employed to represent these symbols in their supposed reality, that is by producing idols, fetishes for visible adoration; "Art never fulfilled its true mission until, by ideal representation of the allegorical picture, it showed people the substance, the unspeakable divine truth contained therein " (x. 275).^ Regarding the significance of art for human life, I shall have much 1 " We might say that where religion becomes artificial, it is reserved for art to save its substance, by construing the mythic symbols which religion wishes shall be believed in a literal sense, as images, and by this ideal representation making manifest the deep truth which they contain." 2 It is sufficiently important to notice that Wagner, thirty years earlier, when speaking of the Greek Tragedy, expressed this view that art was destined " to save the substance of religion," in almost exactly the same words : " The Tragedy was a religious celebration, become art ; by the side of it the actual traditional religious service, still continued in the temples, necessarily lost so much of its fervency and truth that it became a thoughtless conventional ceremony, while its substance con- tinued to live in the work of art" [Kunsi-weri der Zulunft, iii. 157). Richard Wagners Writings and Teaching 187 to add in another place ; ^ here we are concerned only with the doctrine of regeneration, and the important part which art plays here is that it " saves the substance of religion," that it " expresses what the philosophy of religion cannot express" (iv. 218), that in the decadence of religious dogmas "true, idealizing art comes to save" (x. 281), that it "preserves the noblest heritage of the Christian thought in its extra-worldly, reconstructing purity" (x. 288). Still, if we hope for regeneration, our hope must first be directed to the " recovery of a true religion " (x. 309) ; for art can not supply us with religion. What it certainly can do is to " point out the path " ; it is able " to reveal the unspeak- able beyond all conceptions of thought" (x. 321); it is fundamentally related to "that purest religion which is to spring from Christian revelation" (x. 288). That in thus repeatedly emphasizing religion none of the churches of the Wagner's present day were in Wagner's mind is certain ; the last quoted words suffice to "religion- prove this. In what sense he was Christian the reader will be able to judge from many of the passages here quoted. As far back as 1851 he retorts upon his Pharisaic detractors: "If I, in the desire to free myself from the depravity of the modem world, have been a Christian, I was at least a more honest Christian than those who with their insolent piety reproach me with falling away from Christianity" (iv. 371).^ Later he wrote: "Henceforward our only concern will be to prepare a vigorous soil for the renewed culture of the religion of sympathy amongst us, in defiance of the disciples of lutiitarianism " (x. 260). "Perhaps the sage who helped us to look upwards in our decadence would be not seen but heard — as a sigh of deepest sympathy, such as was once heard from the Cross at Golgotha, now springing from our own soul" (x. 48). Wagner derives " the corruption of the Christian religion from the admission of Judaism in the construction of its dogmas" (x. 299). Our civilization is by no means Christian ; on the contrary it is a " triumph of the enemies of the Christian faith " (x. 302), " a patch-work of Judaism and barbarism " (x. 343) : and for that reason our religions are incapable of preparing the way for regeneration.^ What religion was in Wagner's mind we learn, not from his writings, but from his works of art, from die Feen to Parsifal. For if the cooperation of art is indispensable for the recovery of a truthful religion, no less is truthful art inconceivable, except as an emanation from religion. " Only upon the founda- tion of a truthful morality can the true aesthetic blossom of art spring forth " (x. 362) ; and therefore Wagner too says : " the new religion embraces in itself the conditions of the art-work" (iii. 146). In Was niitzt diese Erkenntniss we read : " The highest art can never gain strength to reveal itself, unless it is at bottom the religious symbol of a perfect moral order of things, whereby alone 1 Cf. the next section, and the second part of chapter iv. ^ Cf. the passage from his letter of 1880, quoted at p. 133. ^ Cf. Tolstoi's Short Exposition of the Gospel : "As I studied Christianity I found this spring of the purest water of life mingled with dirt and mud which obscured its clearness ; by the side of the high Christian doctrine, and one with it, was a strange, misshapen Hebrew church doctrine." Transition to tlie doc- trine of art. 1 88 Second Chapter it can become really comprehensible to the people " (x. ^^5). We see in what sense Wagner's art — and all highest art — may rightly be called religious. Art and religion mutually condition each other ; true art cannot come into life without religion ; nor can religion reveal itself without the aid of art. In so far, too, religion and art form a single organism (x. 322). And this living product, a deeply religious art, serving to reveal a truthful religion, is the only thing out of which the desire and the abihty to carry out the great regeneration can proceed. From this regeneration will spring: "The reborn, blessed, artistic mankind of the future (iii. 103) What then shall that art be like, that it may be worthy of so exalted an office? that it may point out the true path to him who struggles for free human dignity? that in it the inconceivable thought of the metaphysician may acquire visible embodiment? that it may give the living representation of religion ? The reply to this question is contained in Wagner's art-doctrine, and especially his doctrine of the perfect drama., the art-work: where the "highest and deepest things which the human mind is capable of grasping shall be communicated in the most intelligible way." J R "Krausse ^inx Photogravure Bmickmann BEETHOVEN Original im. Hecuse "Wahnfrieii, B aypeixth. 4 Richard Wagner's Art-doctrine " The arts are regarded by the masses /' as mere instruments of sensual pleasure ; to restore them to their first dignity, and place them once more upon the throne so long usurped by fashion, luxury, and rank sensuality, is indeed a great and bold undertaking." WiEtAND. In the general Introduction to this book I stated my intention of avoiding all Meaning technical questions. That we can learn a great deal from Wagner in the matter of the of technique — musical, poetical, dramatic technique, is beyond all question ; but doctrine this is for technicians. "Technique may be spoken about," says Wagner, "but of course only among artists; the outsider must never hear of it."i And if we leave the narrower limits of technique, everything else, that is to say, what the masters called i ntellectual ri oting in musjc, is distinctly to be condemned, or if that is saying too much, at least it would be out of place in a Wagner biography. The hunt for motives and reminiscences, for variations and parallel passages, the desire to find in every chord some special unfathomable meaning, to hear an invocation of spirits in every innocent note which is played, is harmless, in some 1 Letter to Louis Kohler of July 24, 1853 (printed in the Bayreuther Blatter, 1895, p. 2). ipo Second Chapter cases even useful, but has nothing to do with Wagner's art-doctrine. In general nothing is more dangerous than the attempt to deduce technical lessons from works of art; only an undoubted genius could do it successfully, and the extreme caution with which genius goes to work may be seen in the reverential reserve which Wagner maintains when speaking, as he often does, of his true master, Beethoven. We may notice too how Goethe gradually learned caution in his judgment of Shakespeare as a model ; how, after hastily imitating, he left him again, and did not attain full, living insight until much later. The mischief wrought by Greek art of every kind with the aid of the sestheticians is immense, simply because we are, and always have been, bent on drawing lessons, i.e. laws from them, when manifestly they have only one lesson to teach : that men who could create such glories, and were of the same flesh and blood as ourselves, must have breathed quite another intellectual atmosphere, and been surrounded by quite a different society. They were a nation of artists ; we are not ; that is the great lesson, the only one to be drawn from their works. This leads us at once to the question, what Wagner means by the expres- sion art-doctrine? Neither a musical tendency nor an artistic system. The Meister himself makes merry over the so-called Wagner tendency ; with bitter sarcasm he says : " wherein my tendency lies is a question which puzzles no one more than myself. Perhaps in the fact that for a time people had a pre- ference for libretti on mediaeval subjects; the Edda too, and generally the bleak North were considered good sources on which to draw for libretti. And not only the choice and character of the libretti appeared important for the new tendency, but many other things besides, especially '■through-composition.,^^ and above all the ceaseless interference of the orchestra in the affairs of the singer, in all which composers were the more liberal from the fact that latterly orchestral compositions have shown a considerable amount of 'tendency' in respect of instrumentation, harmonization and modulation " (Ueber das Opern- Dichten und Komponieren., x. 224). And with regard to the so-called "Wagner system," he says at the close of his chief work, Oper und Drama : "Anyone who supposes that I have endeavoured to lay down an arbitrary theoretical system for the guidance of future musicians and poets has not wished to understand me " (iv. 255). Neither technical accomplishments therefore, nor any special habits or characteristic manner of composing poetry and music, can be called a " tendency," all these are quite personal and impossible to imitate ; only one person can succeed with them; nor is it any rigid system, such as people endeavour to extract from Wagner's works and writings, as they did with the works and thoughts of former art-heroes — none of this is Wagner's art-doctrine ! 2 The one thing which we may denote with this high-sounding name is that for which Wagner fought, undaunted, untired and undiscouraged throughout the 1 Germ. : " Durchkompon'ieren.' 2 The French composer Augusta Holmes relates that Wagner gave her this advice : " Above all, belong to no school — not even that of Wagner." Richard Wagners Writings and Teaching 191 second half of his life in his writings and with his deeds, and to which he always returned ; it is the doctrine of the dignity of art. In the very first work of the second half of his life, " Kunst und Revolution^'' Art and Wagner begins with the Greeks, and again and again in the further course of ^'^^" his life he points to them, most minutely and most distinctly in Religion und Kunst^ but not with any vain notion of extracting " eternal rules " from their architecture, their sculpture, their music, or their drama, but because the mere ruins of " that world teach all future ages how the subsequent course of its life might be shaped so as to render it endurable" (Beethoven^ ix. 141).^ According to Wagner then, true art possesses such a dignity that we may find the highest instruction even in its ruins ; they teach us, not how to make works of art, but how to fashion our lives. In the last section we saw the high office which Wagner ascribes to art. From its influence alone he hopes the incentive to come for the regeneration of the human race, i.e. for a more endurable shaping of life. But the contempla- tion of those very ruins teaches us that it can only be shaped worthily when "art is the highest moment of human life." That it holds that position in our modern world cannot be asserted : rather does our public art — especially dramatic art — fall under Rossini's definition : " Pastime must be regarded as the beginning and end of all art."^ Whatever tries to go further than this is, as Wagner says, only "a wish, expressed more or less clearly ... an admission of our impotence." And if we remain by the impotent wish, the reason is that art lacks the nourish- ing soil of a life to which it might in truth belong, that it is " an artificial art," a superfluity, a luxury. " Only from life can the desire for art spring, and only from life can it draw matter and form. . . . Only by the appearance of its con- ditions in life itself can the art-work come into being" (cf. iii. 72). That is what Wagner learnt from the Greeks. The reader will have observed that this view of life, as an organism most Two parts surely and most "endurably" to be shaped by the means of art, and of art as of the its "highest moment," which can only draw matter and form from life, rests upon the same antithetical mode of thought as that which we met with in his politics, his philosophy, and his doctrine of regeneration. Here indeed the two theses involve no contradiction; their connection together, even their mutual organic dependence upon each other, is very obvious. But life and art are, with us, two different things, our art lies altogether outside our public life, which indeed could supply it neither with matter nor form, and on the other hand, our lives would not be altered one jot if all public art were to disappear to-morrow, and so it is not at first sight quite clear how one of these factors is to influence the other. Wagner has admitted this condition of affairs at the present time quite frankly, with his .usual sincerity. "In this life of the future, art will be that which to-day it can only long to be, and not really be ; but life will become 1 Cf. Schiller : Uher die aesthetische Er^iehung des Menschen. Brief n\. 2 Letter of June 21, 1868 (the day of the first performance oi Meistersinger !). 102 Second Chapter all that it can ever hope to be only by receiving art into its bosom " (Oper und Drama iv. 284). And here as before the objection which might be raised on the ground of this double hysteron proteron against the validity and utility of Wagner's doctrine, could at most possess the doubtful value of a purely logical argument. Wagner did not concern himself any more about it. Human society must be thoroughly reconstructed, and this can only be done with the aid of art which as we know, must not be separated from religion ; art must be inspired with new creative breath, and that again can only be drawn from life. Had the race undergone harmonious development ever since the time of the Greek tragedies (according to Xenophon the true makers of Greece) it would be impossible to conceive of life as inartistic, or of art continuing to vegetate independently of life. Wagner's double thesis too would then be equally inconceivable. But now " the great revolution of mankind," ^ the first sign of which appeared " in the breaking up of the Greek tragedy, in the dissolution of the Athenian state," has so widened the breach between life and art, that the mere thought of their being connected together generally either provokes a smile, or is rejected as monstrous. The unity of Wagner's view can therefore only be expressed in two separate theses ; — each contains one half of the truth (but is not therefore half true, but wholly true) ; each must be recognised, understood, and sought after by itself. As this double relation lies at the very root of the question, it affords the best basis for a discussion of Wagner's art-doctrine. We find in Wagner many dissertations on the dignity of art, i.e. its significance for the life of the entire human race, and this is the foundation of his art teaching. But we also find detailed attempts prophetically to determine the art-work in which the man who longs for art may at the present day recognize and attain his " highest moment." In treating of Wagner's art-doctrine under two separate heads I am there- fore following out his own thought : the first will deal with the significance of art for life., the second with the perfect art-work. Artistic 111 his treatise on the cognition of ideas, Schopenhauer distinguishes cognition, between ordinary cognition, which refers the things to ourselves, scientific cognition, which considers their relations to one another, and 'pure objective cognition,' in which "the very own being" of the object appears distinctly through its manifold relations ; this last he calls " artistic cognition." Herewith a fundamental idea of Wagner — an idea which was his long before he knew Schopenhauer — is expressed with absolute definiteness. The artist never attained the precision of the philosopher, and probably never tried to ; this is not surprising, but it is the reason why many of his utterances on this point have a paradoxical appearance, until we are at home in his philosophy. " The fulfil- 1 See p. 137. Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 1 93 ment of science is its redemption in the poetic art " is for instance a sentence absolutely unintelligible to those who are not prepared ; nor does its further elucidation help us much. " Science can attain complete surety of itself only in the art work, in the work which directly represents man and Nature — so far as this last attains conscious being in man " (Kunstwerk der Zukunft, iii. 12,9). Only the philosopher could supply intelligible concepts for the clear perceptions of the poet ; he did it in the manner just stated, and now we perfectly understand that Wagner distinguished the same three stages of cognition as did Schopen- hauer, and that he founded the dignity of art upon his view that artistic cognition is objective, highest cognition.^ "The path of science is from error to know- ledge ; the end of science is the justification of the unconscious ; the activity of the consciousness attained by science, the representation of the life which it has shown us, the image of its necessity and truth— is art " (iii. ^6^ ^y^ 55). The deep philosophical significance here ascribed to art is evident, And as it exactly agrees with Schopenhauer's view we may refer to him for the purely metaphysical treatment of the question. The agreement between Schopenhauer and Wagner will be seen if we look deep enough. The philosopher and the artist reached the same point by diiferent routes, and are thence led on to quite different tracks. The philosopher argues : " Philosophy has been studied for so long in vain, because it was sought by the way of science, instead of by that of art."^ Artistic objective cognition served his thought, his metaphysics. The artist on the other hand, who " in his very art, beyond its forms, sought life " (i. 7) argued from this that art was the true fashioner of man. About purely objective cognition, which proceeds from the simple artistic Art as the mood, Wagner says: "Man then speaks with Nature, and she answers him. educator Does he not understand Nature better than the observer with the microscope ? What does he understand of Nature, except what he does not need to under- stand ? But the other learns that from Nature which the highest functions of his being require, and through which he learns to know Nature in its widest and fullest aspect — precisely that aspect which can never reveal itself to the most comprehensive understanding " (Oper und Drama, iv. 109). And in his Beethoven, where he is speaking of the might of the musical tone, he describes very finely how "the very own being of the object" proceeds from the artistic mode of perception. "He calls, and in the answer he recognises himself ... his ear -reveals to him that regarding which, in the distraction of his life, he had been 1 I quote Schopenhauer here because, as far as I know, he has expressed most clearly and most decidedly what many other thinkers only felt vaguely. Kant for instance distinguished three ^faculties of cognition, and Baumgarten discovered "germs of philosophical cognition in the beautiful." It is however important to note that a profound distinction exists between the creative act of the artist and the cognition of the philosopher, but this, like all special philosophical and gesthetical speculations, lies be- yond the scope of this book {cf. on this point Hausegger, Das Jenseits des^ KUnstkrs, also chap. iv. section 2). ^ Memorabilien, p. 718. T ip4 Second Chapter deceived, namely that his innermost being is one with the innermost being of ail those things which he observes, and that this perception alone will enable him to apprehend the real nature of the external world " (ix. 93). Wagner, who does not wish to develop this view of the significance of art into a system, and looks everywhere for life, draws the conclusion that " the special cultivation of science, which in its higher walks is never capable of working directly upon the genius of the people, is only important for the history of culture when it forms the crown of a beautiful popular education already existing ; but the only education of the people is art " (Deutsche Kunst und Deutsche Politik^ vii. yy). The high dignity of art therefore lies further in the fact that it not only leads to philo- sophic cognition, but that it also educates. It teaches man to understand Nature, it teaches him to understand himself. Wagner thinks with Novalis : " Only an artist can divine the meaning of life." I have already several times in the course of this chapter laid stress upon the fact that art, by purifying and illuminating the human mind, is able to exert a dominating influence in many departments of our lives. To avoid repeating myself I would refer my readers to the section on regeneration, where we saw that, according to Wagner, it is the peculiar mission of art to indicate the right direction to men in their endeavours for free human dignity ; above all I drew attention to the decisive importance of art for religion. ^ I must now pass on to another point, the importance of which as a principle is very great. Art of com- Only to art in which all participate (allgemeinsame Kunst^ is Wagner's munity. q-^jj expression) does he ascribe this high significance, not to the egoistic solitary art which is born of caprice, to serve the whims and the luxury of individuals. "The true desire for art must be felt in common," the Meister writes in Kumt und K/ima ; "this community of artistic men will compose their works in concord with each other, completing the harmony of Nature, and at one therewith" (iii. 264). The single individual cannot produce this art; " only the collective man (der Gemeinsame) fully satisfied in life can do it " (iii. 74). One section of Wagner's treatise, Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft^ is headed: "The people, as the force conditioning the art-work," and else- where he says: "They (the exalted artists) cannot produce the great, real, one art alone ; we must all cooperate therein. The tragedy of Aeschylos and Sophocles was the work of Athens" (iii. 28). Only this art in which all participate, and which is not a separate thing from this life, only the art which can be regarded as " the highest product of man, developed to sensible beauty in concord with himself and with Nature " (iii. 20) is the " educator of the people " ; it alone can exert any influence on the conformation of human society and upon religion. Goethe's great words : " Only mankind in its entirety can apprehend Nature ; only mankind in its entirety can live humanly," seem as if coined for Richard Wagner. But the Bayreuth Meister has imparted a new 1 See pp, 185-187. Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 1 95 significance to this view — which guided him throughout his whole life — by- declaring that the disconnected perceptions and disconnected lives of men can and shall be gathered together in one perception and one life through art. That is what he means by " the redemption of science in the art of poetry " and "the redemption of utilitarian man in the artistic man." Perhaps Wagner's view could be formulated as follows : only in the highest ,, art can the collective world consciously apprehend itself; only collective art is highest art. In a few words I will now indicate the considerations on which this asser- tion depends, and the far-reaching consequences to which it leads. That observation leads to synthesis is shown not only by art but by the Art and whole course of modern natural science ; for in science too one-sided analysis science, only brings dismemberment and confusion. Nature itself, even in its smallest parts, is a whole,^ and science progresses, not by piling up fact upon fact, but by arranging facts together to new and apprehensible ideas. Laplace and Darwin are poetic seers, and so called empirical science, the roots of which lose them- selves in metaphysical antinomies, bears poetic blossoms on its highest branches. It must however be remembered, that art offers something essentially different from scientific synthesis ; in the proper sense of the word there is here no synthesis at all. Artistic cognition is, as Schopenhauer says, pure objective cognition. Science on the other hand remains within the categories of causality and relation. In truth the procedure of the artist consists, not in bringing together things which are separate, but in grasping what is apparently manifold, and presenting it in its essential unity.^ Here neither analysis nor synthesis take place. In science, individuality is always sacrificed for the sake of the genus, the concrete therefore for the sake of an abstraction ; art preserves it as a sacred possession ; as required by Schiller, " it seizes the individuality of things truly and chastely " ; it manifests the general in the individual, but not by systematically combining and mutilating, to show analogies and homologies with other individuals, but by freely developing this individuality, and by bringing forward its characteristic features, and so showing this concrete individual as the real, living, only substance of the universal, which beyond this is a mere abstraction. To science therefore there remains its own proper domain, and this is closed to art but art alone directly apprehends the universal* The following facts must however be noted. The immense quantity of material with which science has to deal makes a large body of inquirers necessary ; none the less is it essentially egoistic in its nature ; between it and ^ " Miisset im Naturbetrachten Immer Eins wie Alles achten." — Goethe. ^ " The simple conceals itself in the manifold." — Goethe. 3 The relation between State and Art is analogous. Wagner has indicated it very clearly in a short sentence : " Art is eternal, because it always presents the finite truly and faithfully, the State is final because it wishes to set bounds to eternity" [Entiuur/e, p. i8). 196 Second Chapter the outside world there is no point of contact ; it has no fatherland ; even the scholar only possesses so much of it as he has earned for himself, and that remains incommunicable, the exclusive property of a scientific class ; for "science is only communicable when it puts forth blossom as poetry. True, living art, on the other hand, can only come into being and continue by "universality." Pre- cisely the artistic genius too — however he may seem to create of his own free impulse — is tied by a thousand threads to his surroundings. The impression of his surroundings is determining for the poet. "When I try to explain the artistic faculty to myself I can do so in no other way than by identifying it in the first instance with the faculty of receptiveness," these are Wagner's words in his Mittheilung an meine Freunde. That too is the meaning of his paradoxical assertion: "The real inventor has always been the people ... the single individual can invent nothing, but only acquire possession of an invention" (E., 19). He protests too altogether against the title genius. "It is a most superficial and inane proceeding to derive the decisive element of artistic gift from some capacity which we call genius^ and think that we have fully accounted for it." Its real strength is communistic. "A power possessed in common, including as an effective agent within itself the individual power which we foolishly believe ourselves to have fathomed by calling it genius " (iv. 305-309). Be it well observed that herewith Kant's remark: "beautiful art is the art of genius," is not contradicted; how could living genius deny itself? Kant further observes that the ordinary man only differs in degree from the greatest scientific discoverer (the example which he gives is Newton), but from genius — a term which belongs only to the artist — he differs specifically. Wagner's view is exactly the same. Herewith he only gives expression to the profound truth that genius, though specifically differing from its surroundings, does not come into being independently of them, does not as it were fall from heaven, but is the living blossom of a joint power^ itself bringing forth new seeds. And the works of the artist who proceeds from this joint power must be enjoyed in common, for, unless they affect the souls of others sympathetically, they can never come into existence at all. Most of all is this true of the highest art, the dramatic : " the drama is only conceivable as the fullest expression of a desire felt in common for artistic utterance ; this desire will show itself in common participation therein. When either is wanting, the drama is not a necessary, but an arbitrary product of art" (iii. 129). Art as the If the reader considers these two theses together ; first the unrivalled saviour uniting power of art, secondly the truth that art must grow out of a common unng 1 e. pg^gj.^ T^e will at once observe that the highest 'common art which was before Wagner's mind, and which he sometimes calls the art-work of the future, is the fulfilment of a longing, mighty and sorrowful, felt by all mankind. It is the longing for release from the endless disunion into which human society sinks ever deeper, and in which the single individual rightly feels himself no longer as a man, but almost as an artificial homunculus^ as the minutest fragment Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 1 97 of an enormous chain of wheels. No one, not even the mightiest intellect, is able to oversee everything which this entirety of mankind apprehends, split up as it is into a thousand special departments, still less to assimilate it in himself. The further the development proceeds, the more knowledge accumulates, the more complicated the machinery of life becomes, the less is included in the horizon of any single individual. Its relative value undergoes progressive depreciation. This evolution takes place of necessity ; to retard or make it retrograde would be inconceivable ; and yet who could be blind to the dangers of a state in which the individual has an ever-diminishing share in the intellectual store of the entire community, until the community itself at last becomes little more than an abstraction ? It was at this that Schiller expressed his alarm: "Man, bound as he is to a small fragment of the whole, himself develops as a fragment; always the eternal monotonous noise of the wheel which he turns in his ears, he never develops the harmony of his being ; instead of receiving the stamp of humanity on his own nature, he receives that of his business, his science . . . the mischief of this intellectual tendency is not confined to science and productiveness ; it shows itself no less in his feelings and his acts." And Schiller too points to art as the only possible salvation ! " Man re- gains unity through the ideal " (Ueber Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung). Here then Wagner stands on exactly the same ground as Schiller, and inclines no less to Goethe. In the section on regeneration I pointed out the profound difference between the German conception of regeneration and the French, and I must here remark that in nothing does this show itself more than in their different estimates of the dignity of art. Rousseau — himself an artist — finds it impossible to speak contemptuously enough of art in his theoretical writings. Goethe calls the highest art "the magic of the wise." Schiller teaches : "mankind has lost its dignity; it is for art to save it." Beethoven says of his art, it is "the one and only immaterial entrance to the higher world of knowledge." Wagner acknow- ledges that in the extraordinary intensification of the means of expression now at the poet's command (owing to the development of music) " a profound inner requirement of man has been fulfilled" (vii. iii. 150). That Germany's greatest poets have expressed themselves with such unanimity of opinion about the dignity of art, and its high calling with regard to the further fortunes of the human race, may well give us cause for reflection. Like a wheel revolving with increasing rapidity, so the whirl of life forces us ever further asunder, ever further from " the firm soil of nature " ; soon it must launch us into sheer nothing ! Then art appears, " the kind Saviour of life," as Wagner finely says ; it liberates the thought by endowing it with form, redeems science, and teaches men " to understand nature in an infinitely grand compass " ; in the wretched utilitarian man it awakens the harmony of his human nature ; to the philosopher it shows the way of pure objective cognition ; to him who thirsts for freedom it points out the path which leads to human dignity ; it saves the substance of religion, and with it leads mankind from the state of 98 Second Chapter "organized and legalized murder and robbery," created by politics, to a new state of true morality, such as artistic humanity alone can bring. For art binds together what has been forcibly sundered ; it joins the broken fragments to a perfect whole ; art manifests unity in the multifold, rest in movement, the eternal in the temporal ; it delivers the mind from the confusion and endless mukiplicity of its perceptions, and reveals the eternally One. That is the high mission of art, a mission which it can only fulfil when it is the common property of all. The temptation is strong to follow Wagner into the details of his exposition, to learn from him how Greek art was destroyed by " casting off the bond of unity," namely religion ; how the public art of the Greeks was " the expression of the deepest and noblest consciousness of the people," while with us deepest and noblest human consciousness is "the negation of our public art"; how modern art can only be regarded as "artistic handicraft," and the first step to its rebirth consists in " liberating it from the shameful bands in which it now languishes in the service of industry ";i how "true art can only prosper on a basis of true moraUty," and the highest art " can only become fully intelligible to the people when it is the religious symbol of a perfect moral order." Here too I should especially wish to speak of the strong emphasis which Wagner lays upon the peculiar character of the German; for if "art which possesses any life at all must spring from community," it must in the first instance belong to the narrower community, the fatherland. Fashion will then appear as the certain mark of art not brought forth organically, but living egoistically for itself : " We have fallen under a positive curse from which only rebirth from the very foundation of our being can redeem us. Our whole being must be altered from the bottom, so that the conception of fashion may become quite meaningless, even for the external aspect of our lives" (ix. 138). It would also be important to point to Wagner's battle against the idea of art as an abstract concept, " from which our modern art has been constructed," and against esthetic theory in general, since the motives by which the artist is impelled " spring from a law of fitness which cannot be expressed, but can only be seen in the finished art-work." ^ And much more. But the space which remains for the discussion of this wide subject is very narrow. To avoid confusion therefore I prefer to confine myself, in treating of Wagner's art-doctrines, to the two points which I have mentioned : the signifi- cance of art, as a means of pure objective cognition, as the educator of the people, and as a " magic " power sent to lead men to their highest welfare — and the principle that only art which is common property of all is the highest art. 1 Art, as industry found its most naive and most direct expression with the jongleurs of the middle ages, who exclaimed loudly before the commencement of a performance — " Qui n'a point d'argent si ne s'assi^che mie : Car chil qui n'en ont point ne sont de ma partis ! " Gautier, Epopees franqaises (ii. ih)- 2 VIII. 138. Cf. especially too iii. 12 and 260, 278 ; vii. 152 ; viii. 191 ; x. 113, 114, etc. Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 199 When so high an office is ascribed to art, the questif)n arises, What are we The most to understand by art ? To this Wagner gives a very decided answer : the drama pei'fect art is the highest art^ and the most perfect drama is the purely human drama. work. We have now to determine the argunaents upon which each of the two parts of this thesis is based. In order clearly to indicate what Wagner means by drama.^ and in what way he was justified in regarding the drama, not as a variety of poetry, not even as a variety of art, but as high above all varieties, and as including within itself and conditioning all the artistic capacities of men, I must ask the reader to follow me along a path which is a little circuitous. Wagner's conception is indeed extremely clear and intelligible in itself; the only difficulty lies in its being so fer removed from the notions which are current among us, and from the aesthetic systems of the schools. In his work Uber das Dichten und Komponiren^ written in 1879, Wagner Seer, poet, draws a very judicious distinction between three degrees of the poietes^ the seer ^"'^ artist, the poet and the artist ; this distinction will help us, once for all, clearly to under- stand Wagner's conception of the drama. The seer apprehends, not the appearance, but the being of the world; "he sees, not the real, but the truthful, which is exalted high above all reality." In him is personified the unconscious, involuntary cognition of the people, the artistic cognition, of which we spoke in detail above. He therefore shares the creative gift of the people, " the power of inventing." What he invents is nothing more than the unaffected cognition of the truthful through the Maya of reality. The poet, unlike the seer, is a conscious creator. Whether we regard him as identical with the seer, like Homer, or as a separate personality, the poet, as distinguished from the unconscious and spontaneous inventor, is " the knower of the unconscious, the intentional representer of the spontaneous" (iv. 171). Be it well observed that Wagner here distinguishes two capacities in the poet ; he is a knower and a representer ; in another place he has expressed this double nature of the poet in less abstract terms : " man is a poet in two ways, in appre- hension and in communication" (iv. 39). And apprehension is, with the poet, conscious apprehension ; communication intentional representation ; therewith he is sufficiently distinguished from the seer. It is now clear that apprehension and representation will not necessarily stand on the same footing. The forms which appear before the eye of the seer are no fancies for him ; they are realities ; they speak to him in the wind, in the water, in the thunder, he sees them in the clouds, in the forest, in the light of the moon ; their home is the whole infinity of Nature, from the murmuring brook to the stars which smile on him from above; these forms the poet seizes, consciously to represent them, that is to show them to others, to lead others to " the clairvoyant state of the poet." In every case the poet has to reproduce the infinite in a finite form. He begins by relating what he has seen. For this reason too Wagner says " the narrator is the real poet." The narrator has at his disposal, not only language, which is 200 Second Chapter the highest, but at the same time the most strictly conditioned faculty of the poet ; 1 his words are accompanied by rhythmic movements of the body, defining gestures; the words themselves too are sung, not spoken. Wagner calls this language of gesture : " the most realistic of all arts," and to the language of tones alone belongs, according to Shakespeare, the power " to hale souls out of men's bodies." It is thus that the primitive poet sings ; he does not confine himself to words and concepts, he is at once singer and representer. Of Greek poetry, for example, we can only have a very meagre conception, "for of Homer, Pindar, Simonides, and the rest, only the skeletons of their poems are left.^ Besides these "purely human" languages — words— tones — gestures — the poet may draw upon all that Nature oifers for the more complete representation of the picture within him, he may "fashion out of natural materials" architecture, sculpture, painting, etc. This faculty of "communicating the inner picture to the outer world" Wagner calls the artistic faculty, and the more completely the poet succeeds in communicating what he knows^ in representing to the senses what he has seen, the more he will deserve the name of artist.'^ The value in such distinctions lies in their helping us to form clear concepts. We are not concerned with theoretical sesthetics, but only with indubitable facts lying at the foundation of the human mental faculties, and it is of very great advantage to determine the concept of seeing, as a psychological state antecedent to that of poetical composition proper — whether in the life of a people or of an individual — and to draw the distinction between the poet and the artist.* It is not necessary to commit oneself to any philosophical school to know that all the creative art-work of genius must proceed from observation, from clear seeing. Only, as Wagner warns us, we must not confound seeing with staring. " Of the two kinds of blind men, he that is blinded by the things of the sensible world is the blindest," says an Indian proverb ; the works of all the greatest poets prove that creative " seeing " does not rest satisfied with external details, but penetrates to the deepest being, and illuminates that with its own inner light. But when Wagner remarks that "all Greek genius is nothing more than artistic imitation of 1 The celebrated American philologist Whitney writes : " The idea that the voice is the specific organ of language is a deep-rooted fallacy; it is only one organ amongst others." (The Life and Growth of Language by William D wight Whitney.) 2 Whoever has, like the author of this book, travelled in the Balkan countries, can at least form a living picture of this genuine, ancient art of poetry. There the bard still sings the beautiful heroic songs. He accompanies them with a one-stringed instrument (the Guzla), and the pauses in the song — which often lasts for hours — are filled up with this music. Tone, gesture, and especially the ex- pression of the face, change every moment, and the whole is so thrillingly dramatic that the crowd around hang motionless on the lips of the narrator ; sometimes the audience breaks out into loud laughter, or rage gleams in the eyes of all, their fists are clenched, curses are whispered from mouth to mouth. . . . Rarely do our most famous companies of actors produce an effect like these simple poets, who have not yet attained the rank of " artists." ^ The German word for art, Kunst, comes from kb'nnen — to be able, " to can." See Wagner, iii. 88. * Cf. here Goethe's comparison of the rhapsodist and the mimic. Richard Wagner s Writings and Teaching 201 Homer," we must admit that the distinction here implied between seer and poet is not inessential. By means of this conception of seeing we learn very clearly that the basis of the artistic work of the poet is not, as is generally supposed, the writing of poetry, not at least in the common, narrow sense of word-poetry, but that it is rather a r^re power ofobservatioriywhether it be the actual creative jm«^ of a Homer, or a Goethe (in Faust)^ or the imitative seeing of most poets and artists. The poet seeks to evoke these forms, which he has seen so clearly with his own inner vision, before the eyes of others. By the more and more conscious employment of the various means at his disposal — words, tones, gesture — by widening their expression, and systematically overcoming the technical difficulties in their use, and thus discovering and fixing the laws which spring from their essential nature, he raises poetical composition to an art. Here, too, we must admit that the difference between poet and artist, though not so sharply defined as that between seer and poet, is very useful. The application to the drama will follow immediately. Schiller says we have fallen away from Nature by artificiality ; art would lead us back to it again. In art Nature is what the seer sees. In the endeavour to reproduce it, the original intention has been split up like a ray entering a dark room ; the single arts were developed independently, and drawn further and further away from their real purpose, that of bringing what the ecstatic seer had seen before the eyes of men, not in a fragmentary way, not congealed and dead, but living and entire. The more the single arts renounced the service of the one true creative force, and lived egoistically, or independently of each other, the more they lapsed into artificiality. True art will be like a powerful lens collecting all the scattered lights to a focus in a single ray, leading back to Nature, the inex- haustible source of all invention. The highest art, therefore, is that which does not merely appeal to the imagination, or to this or the other sense, but that which / returns to the original intention of all poetic composition, and while utilizing all the means of expression, enormously enriched as they have been in the meantime, has for its object the immediate representation of the things which the seer has seen. This highest art is the drama. The seer has seen forms, he has heard their voices, he has followed their changing life. No single art can fully reproduce what he has seen. Poetry may describe, the painter depict, the musician may awaken the mood in our hearts. But the drama is not a kind of art ; the drama which was in "Wagner's mind is — we cannot emphasize it too strongly — not a kind of poetry, it is the reflected image of the world, mirrored back from our "silent inner being" (x. 142), the reflection of that which the seer has seen. It is " the return through art to Nature " proclaimed by Schiller. The drama is art Kar e^o~^v. Here I must ask the reader's permission to make 'a short controversial Contro- digression : it is done for the sake of clearness. versia ° ' , . , • 1 !• • J digression. It is not true, as has been asserted agam and agam by malicious and ignorant people, that Wagner denied the right of any art to exist singly; 202 Second Chapter this is clear from numerous passages in his writings. I have already had occasion to quote his words with regard to landscape painting (see p. 171), and those who have read his remarks on the Italian painters of the best period in Religion und Kunst, and on every one of the single arts in das Kunstwerk der Zukunft, who know his profound conception of architecture,^ who have perused the unrivalled and masterly survey of the literature of the world which adorns the second part of Oper und Drama, and above all, those who are possessed of the treasure of criticisms on music and musicians stored up in his works, will find it difficult to believe that misunderstanding and ignorance should be so tenacious of life. As far back as 1850 Wagner complains bitterly of this habit of perverting his teach- ing; even then a newspaper had written : "It seems that Wagner wishes to pro- claim the death of sculpture," and with regard thereto the Meister says : " One can only fold one's hands in the conviction that all talking and writing is vain and profitless" (U., 47). To proclaim the death of the single arts would be simply to talk nonsense; Wagner writes the very opposite. "In the drama, illuminated by music, the people will find itself and every art ennobled and beautified" (I. viii.).^ True, none of the single arts will appear alone in the drama; here the rays of different colour and refrangibility are united again to the original, pure, white light of the sun. But from this source of all true inspiration each single art will draw fresh strength and undying life. But at the same time another objection, just the opposite to this, has been, and still is brought against Wagner, namely that he wished the arts to be mixed up in a confused medley. But in Oper und Drama Wagner writes very clearly, just after the reference to Lessing: "Purity of the art-kind will be the first condition of its being intelligible ; to mix up the different arts would only lead to obscurity." Of course this limitation only applies to the isolated single arts. "Such an artificial art can only succeed by strictly observing limits and bounds ; it has to proceed circumspectly, and with the greatest care, in order to preserve the imagination, which here takes its place as the immediate representer, from confusing excesses " (iv. 6). Those who wish to apply such limits to the drama fail to apprehend "the enormous difference between these arts and true art in the strict sense." Here we are reminded of the prophetic words of Herder : " the artist, when deprived of action, was driven by necessity to a certain course, but why should the artist who has action, and knows no such necessity, be driven to it?" (KritischeWdlder, xi.). "The artist with action" then, who knows nothing of such necessity, is the dramatist, and he expresses himself " by actual representation to the universal receptiveness of mankind, by 1 " This architect, who is so much neglected at the present day, is the real poet of formative art : with him sculptor and painter must cooperate in the same way as the musician and the actor with the real poet" (v. 21 ). 2 Of the spoken drama in particular he says, " manifestly then there is a side of the world very seriously concerning us, the terrible teaching of which can only be communicated through a process of contemplation in which music remains silent" (ix. 184). Richard Wagner's Writings and Teaching 203 addressing his complete sensible organism." This objection therefore falls to the ground. The essential thing then is to understand that what Wagner means by drama The drama, is not a particular branch of literature, nor yet the union of diiFerent kinds of art, but — I repeat it — art k