ISllill 
 
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CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Gift of 
 
 Professor and Mrs. 
 
 Donald J. Grout 
 
 Music 
 
Cornell University Library 
 ML 410.W1K27 1915 
 
 Richard Wagner 
 
 3 1924 022 322 899 
 
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/cu31924022322899 
 
RICHARD WAGNER 
 
Richard Wagner 
 
 WITH SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS 
 FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
Copyright, 1915, by 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 September, 1915 
 
GENERAL NOTE 
 
 Of all books perhaps the one best designed 
 for training the mind and forming the charac- 
 ter is "Plutarch." The lives of great men are 
 object-lessons. They teach effort, devotion, in- 
 dustry, heroism and sacrifice. 
 
 Even one who confines his reading solely to 
 biographies of thinkers, writers, inventors, poets 
 of the spirit or poets of science, will in a short 
 time have acquired an understanding of the 
 whole History of Humanity. 
 
 And what novel or what drama could be com- 
 pared to such a history? Accurate biographies 
 record narratives which no romancer's imagina- 
 tion could hope to rival. Researches, suffer- 
 ings, labors, triumphs, agonies and disasters, 
 the defeats of destiny, glory, which is the "sun- 
 light of the dead," illuminating the past, 
 whether fortunate or tragic, — such is what the 
 lives of Great Men reveal to us, or, if the phrase 
 
vi WAGNER 
 
 be allowed, paint for us in a series of fascinat- 
 ing and dramatic pictures. 
 
 This series of biographies is accordingly in- 
 tended to form a sort of gallery, a museum of 
 the great servants of Art, Science, Thought and 
 Action. 
 
 On the mountain tops we breathe a purer and 
 more vivifying air. And it is like ascending to 
 a moral mountain top when we live, if only for 
 a moment, with the dead who, in their lives did 
 honour to mankind, and attain the level of 
 those whose eyes now closed, once glowed like 
 beacon-lights, leading humanity on its eternal 
 march through night-time towards the light. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Part First 
 THE LIFE OF RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I Richard Wagner's First Steps towards the 
 Light. — From Poetry to the Theatre and 
 to Music. — A Rebellious Pupil. — An 
 Opera Staged in Ten Days. — The Trials of 
 a Kapellmeister 3 
 
 II The Calvary of an Artist. — From Hate to 
 Love. — A New Art. — Waiting between 
 Rays of Hope and Shadows of Despair. — 
 The Revolutionist of Music . . .37 
 
 III The Genesis of a Work of Art. — An Asylum : 
 
 an Oasis in the Desert. — A Romantic Love. 
 — From Real Life to the World of 
 Thought and of Art . . . .57 
 
 IV Richard Wagner Greeted with Hisses. — 
 
 The Splendor and Misery of an Artist. — 
 Between Charybdis and Scylla. — On the 
 Way to Success. — A King of Dreams and 
 Mysteries 76 
 
 V Peace and Meditation. — From Dream to 
 Reality. — The Apotheosis of Richard 
 
 Wagner 110 
 
 vii 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 Paht Second 
 THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I Some Principles of Wagnerian Art. — Poetry 
 
 and Music. — From Opera to Drama . 135 
 
 II The Great Wagnerian Themes. — From Love 
 to Sacrifice. — In the Realm of Dreams 
 and Beauty 147 
 
 III Epic and Lyric. — From Human Deities to 
 
 Divine Humanity. — A Gospel in Music . 168 
 
 IV The Wagnerian Cult. — Those For and 
 
 Those Against It. — The Initiated and the 
 Profane. — Wagner in the Judgment of 
 Posterity 191 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 RICHARD WAGNER . Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 "RICHARD WAGNER, HIS FAMILY AND HIS 
 PRINCIPAL INTERPRETERS AT BAY- 
 REUTH," by G. Pappebitz 
 
 From left to right : Siegfried and Frau Cosima 
 Wagner, the painter Lenbach, the singer Scaria, 
 the conductor F. Fischer, the celebrated singer 
 Materna, Richard Wagner, the chief machinist 
 at Bayreuth, Fr. Brandt, the conductors Her- 
 mann Levy and Hans Richter, the composer 
 Liszt, the baritone Betz, the Countess Schlein- 
 itz, the Countess Usedom, the painter Joukow- 
 ski 16 
 
 WAGNER'S FAMILY 
 
 Frau Cosima Wagner and her son Siegfried are 
 indefatigably devoted to the culte of the 
 Master 48 
 
 WAGNER IN CARICATURE 
 
 Above: Caricature by Faustin (London Fi- 
 garo, 1876) , and by Gill (Eclipse, 1876) . Below: 
 Wagner as Premiere Danseuse, by Tiret-Bo- 
 gnet (1891); Wagner the Tetralogist, by Gill 
 (1876) 80 
 
* ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE THEATRE AT BAYREUTH r £™° 
 
 Interior of the Theatre where the Pilgrims of 
 Art commune in the Wagnerian Religion . 112 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL INTERPRETERS OF WAG- 
 NER IN AMERICA 
 
 Mmes. Gadski, Destinn, Ober, Fornia. Messrs. 
 Witherspoon, Slezak, TJrhii and Kingston . 160 
 
 RICHARD WAGNER'S MONUMENT AT BER- 
 LIN 
 
 This monument, erected in the Tiergarten in 
 Berlin, by the sculptor Elberlein, is worthy of 
 his universal and colossal glory . . . 208 
 
PART FIRST 
 THE LIFE OF RICHARD WAGNER 
 
RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 eichaed wagner's first steps towards the 
 light' — from poetry to the theater and 
 to music — a rebellious pupil— an opera 
 staged in ten days — the trials of a 
 kapellmeister 
 
 ON the manuscript of one of Wagner's 
 earliest operas, written in the days of 
 poverty and anxiety, the following note occurs: 
 "Per aspera ad astra (which may be rendered: 
 By rough ways upward to the stars). God 
 willed it so. Richard Wagner." 
 
 This formula admirably symbolizes the trou- 
 bled and tumultuous life of this Titan of mod- 
 ern art, whose powerful genius created a world 
 of new sensations and ideas by revolutionizing 
 the aesthetics of music and the drama. It calls 
 to mind at one and the same time his cruel 
 
 3 
 
4 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 trials, his ardent and sublime mysticism, his 
 errors such as they were, and his marvelous 
 ascension into radiant light. 
 
 The road that he traveled was full of black 
 shadows and blinding brilliance, a Calvary be- 
 fore it became an apotheosis. 
 
 As was the case of Berlioz in France, before 
 Wagner succeeded in winning the acclaim of 
 the German nation and the world at large, he 
 went through the atrocious torment of vain 
 endeavor to obtain a hearing. He drained the 
 cup of bitterness to the lees before his lofty 
 inspiration at last triumphed and spread 
 throughout all lands the superb, enchanting 
 and torrential flood of his vast harmonies. 
 
 The one way to approach Richard Wagner is 
 whole-heartedly, recognizing him as one of the 
 boldest and noblest champions of the Dream 
 and the Ideal. And no one can survey without 
 amazement and something approaching rever- 
 ence his remarkable destiny as musician, poet 
 and dramatist. 
 
 Notwithstanding a sort of mystery which 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 5 
 
 seems to surround his prodigious career as an 
 artist, it is possible for us to follow it almost 
 without hesitation. And this is largely due to 
 the fact that Wagner himself was profoundly, 
 almost passionately anxious to make his con- 
 temporaries and posterity acquainted with his 
 ideas and his life. 
 
 We can best initiate ourselves into these 
 lofty ideas and into what we may call the Wag- 
 nerian religion, through the aid of Wagner him- 
 self, thanks to his important literary contribu- 
 tions, his Memoirs, his Correspondence, and 
 the various other writings which bear the 
 stamp of his immense personality. 
 
 Accordingly we shall rely largely upon Wag- 
 ner himself in our attempt to understand and 
 interpret him. Yet there are many other her- 
 alds of his fame, the majority of whom are as 
 conscientious as they are well informed. For 
 not only in Germany but in France as well 
 Wagner has attracted a host of fervent enthu- 
 siasts. Indeed, it is astonishing to see how 
 many writers have drawn their inspiration 
 
6 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 from the Wagnerian spring! Few men have 
 shared with the author of Tannhauser, the Fly- 
 ing Dutchman and the Walkyrie, the gift of 
 attracting and retaining pilgrims of the ideal 
 and the beautiful. 
 
 Undoubtedly, it was because he was at first 
 misunderstood and even ridiculed, that he was 
 afterwards all the more beloved and venerated. 
 Undoubtedly, his legitimate glory profited by 
 those earlier hostilities, and it was deemed 
 necessary to avenge them by a devotion that 
 was at times over partial and sterile. Yet fash- 
 ion and snobbishness have been as powerless to 
 harm him as was blind hostility. Vain clam- 
 ors and excessive and sterile adulation alike 
 subside necessarily with the passage of years. 
 Yet such abatement takes nothing from the 
 splendor and majesty Of Richard Wagner, cre- 
 ator of the musical drama. It is no longer 
 necessary to be fanatical in order to be able to 
 admire him as he deserves and to continue a 
 faithful worshiper at his shrine. 
 
 "My name is Wilhelm Richard Wagner, and 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 7 
 
 I was born at Leipzig on the 22d of May, 
 1813. 
 
 "My father was chief of police, and he died 
 six months after my birth. My step-father, 
 Ludwig Geyer, was an actor and painter; he 
 was also the author of a few comedies; one of 
 them, The Massacre of the Innocents, was suc- 
 cessful. With him, our family removed to 
 Dresden. It was his desire that I too should 
 become a painter, but I had very little talent 
 for drawing. 
 
 "My step-father also died prematurely, when 
 I was only seven years of age. Shortly before 
 he died, I had learned to play two pieces on 
 the piano, Ob' immer Treu und Redlichkeit and 
 the Jungfernkranz, which then had the advan- 
 tage of being new. The night before he died, 
 he had me play these two pieces in the room 
 adjoining his own; and then I heard him say to 
 my mother in a feeble voice: 
 
 " 'Perhaps the boy has a talent for music!' 
 
 "The following morning, after his death, my 
 mother came into the nursery and said to me, 
 
8 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 'He was in hopes of making something of you.' 
 "I remember that for a long time afterwards, 
 I clung to the idea that they were going to 
 make something out of me." 
 
 Such is the beginning of the Autobiograph- 
 ical Sketch, from the, French version by a 
 musical critic of repute, M. J. G. Prud'homme, 
 to whom we owe some valuable details regard- 
 ing Wagner. But we need to supplement the 
 above account with further information in re- 
 gard to Wagner's family and the environment 
 in which he passed his childhood and youth. 
 Let us begin by casting a glance at his progen- 
 itors. They were of Saxon stock and belonged 
 to a class that, although in modest circum- 
 stances, thirsted for culture; in fact, they were 
 most of them organists or school teachers. 
 
 Wagner's grandfather, who had once made a 
 serious study of theology, and his father, who 
 was passionately fond of the theater, both led 
 the peaceful life of government employees, the 
 former as a post-office clerk, the latter, as we 
 have already seen, as chief of police, at Leipzig. 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 9 
 
 Richard was Friedrich Wagner's ninth child. 
 And although the family was far from pros- 
 perous, they were all deeply interested in art 
 and learning. His mother, whose maiden name 
 was Rosina Peetz, had many very estimable 
 qualities. His father died on the 22d of No- 
 vember, 1813, a victim of the epidemic which 
 broke out as an after consequence of the san- 
 guinary battle of Leipzig. 
 
 Ludwig Geyer, his step-father, whom he al- 
 ways after held in grateful memory, had a 
 number of real talents. He was an artist and 
 more especially a portrait painter of some re- 
 pute, an actor of ability, and furthermore he 
 sang in the operas composed by Weber, who 
 appreciated his fine voice and dramatic powers. 
 
 Adolf Wagner, Richard's uncle, was a scholar 
 and man of letters, author of some remarkable 
 translations and interesting comedies. 
 
 It was in August, 1814, that Geyer installed 
 himself at Dresden; and from his childhood up, 
 Richard lived among actors and attended re- 
 hearsals, even taking some small part in an 
 
10 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 occasional private performance. It was not 
 long before his three sisters went upon the 
 stage, and his brother, who was fourteen years 
 older than Richard and was destined to be his 
 chief protector after Geyer's death, renounced 
 the study of medicine, in order in his turn to 
 adopt the same career. 
 
 It is worth noting that Wagner, free and in- 
 dependent genius, was never subjected to that 
 harsh intellectual discipline from which so 
 many artists have had to suffer. He grew up 
 in a congenial and pleasant atmosphere, in 
 which every one had the right to consult his 
 own tastes and devote his activity to. them. 
 Little Richard, for example, from the moment 
 of his first intellectual awakening, conceived a 
 passionate fondness for the theater. On this 
 point Wagner's own autobiography gives con- 
 clusive testimony: 
 
 "From the date of my earliest childhood, the 
 theater exercised a great influence over my 
 imagination. I frequented it, not only as a 
 child spectator, occupying a place in a box 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 11 
 
 which mysteriously communicated with the 
 6tage, or as a habitue of the wings, admiring the 
 extraordinary costumes and characteristic dis- 
 guises to be seen there, but I also made my 
 appearance as an actor. I had already seen 
 performances of The Orphan and the Mur- 
 derer, The Two Galley Slaves, and other som- 
 ber dramas which filled me with terror and in 
 which my step-father played the part of villain, 
 when it came my turn to take part in certain 
 comedies. In one piece that was produced on 
 the occasion of the return of the King of Sax- 
 ony from captivity, — The Vineyard on the 
 Banks of the Elbe, — and set to music by the 
 kapellmeister, Karl Maria von Weber, I played 
 the part of an angel, and clad in tights, with 
 wings on my back, posed in a tableau in a 
 graceful attitude that was very difficult to take 
 and to retain. I remember also receiving on 
 this occasion a large sugar cookie, which, they 
 told me, the king had had prepared especially 
 for me. Lastly, I remember having had a 
 speaking part of a few words in Kotzebue's 
 
12 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 play, Hate and Repentance, and that I made 
 use at school of the pretext of a long scene to 
 memorize as an excuse for not having done my 
 lessons." 
 
 We next follow little Richard to Possendorf, 
 near Dresden, to the home of a country clergy- 
 man, named Wetzel, who in the evenings re- 
 lated the adventures of Robinson Crusoe. He 
 also read aloud a biography of Mozart, and 
 newspaper articles about Greece. 
 
 A little later, we find young Wagner living 
 with an uncle, a goldsmith, at the small and 
 ancient town of Eisleben. He has recorded 
 pleasant memories of a school conducted by a 
 worthy man named Weiss, of Luther's house, 
 and of the Market Place where he lived and 
 where he had occasion to witness the perform- 
 ances of acrobats, who walked upon a tight- 
 rope stretched from tower to tower, all the way 
 across the square. 'Tor a long time after- 
 wards," writes Richard Wagner, "I retained, as 
 the result of this spectacle, a passionate inter- 
 est in feats of this class. With the aid of a 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 13 
 
 balancing pole, I myself succeeded in walking 
 with some degree of skill upon a cord which I 
 had stretched in the courtyard. Those days 
 left me with a certain fondness for acrobatic 
 exercises which I have not lost, even to this 
 day" {My Life). 
 
 At eight years of age he entered the Kreuz- 
 schule, in Dresden. It was here that Weber's 
 Freischutz filled him with enthusiasm, and he 
 felt something akin to veneration every time 
 that he saw the illustrious author of this opera, 
 Karl Maria von Weber himself, pass by in the 
 street. One of Wagner's teachers, who taught 
 him Latin, began at this time to give him piano 
 lessons. The boy had a strong repugnance for 
 scales and exercises and put all his energy into 
 picking out the overture to Der Freischutz 
 after a fashion of his own. Horrified at his 
 fingering, his master predicted that nothing 
 could ever be made of him. As a matter of 
 fact, Wagner never claimed to be a brilliant 
 pianist. It is related that he contented him- 
 self with saying, at any joking reference to his 
 
14 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 lack of skill in playing, "I play better than 
 Berlioz/' — which was by no means a difficult 
 matter. 
 
 On the other hand, he seems to have received 
 from boyhood up a solid course of instruction. 
 His classical studies fired him with enthusiasm. 
 At the age of eleven he was already grounded 
 in Latin and Greek, and loved to brood over 
 the great themes of mythology and ancient 
 history. He began to write verse, and he 
 wished to learn English in order to familiarize 
 himself with Shakespeare, to whom he was 
 strongly attracted. He straightway began the 
 composition of a great dramatic work, Leukald 
 and Adelaide, in which he undertook neither 
 more nor less than a combination of Hamlet 
 and King Lear. 
 
 "The plot," he writes, "was exceptionally 
 magnificent; forty-two personages died during 
 the action of the play, and towards the end I 
 found myself under the necessity of bringing 
 most of them back in the form of ghosts, for 
 all my characters were dead before the begin- 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 15 
 
 ning of the last act. This play occupied me 
 for the space of two years." 
 
 We must not attach an exaggerated impor- 
 tance to the first stammerings of genius nor to 
 the flattering accounts that are so apt to be 
 given of such early manifestations. But it is 
 at least curious to discover in young Richard 
 Wagner this predominant taste for poetry and 
 the drama and a predilection for vast subjects 
 requiring a sovereign imagination and a most 
 uncommon energy. 
 
 In 1847, the family returned to Leipzig, 
 where Rosalie Wagner, who was then twenty- 
 four years of age, had just secured an engage- 
 ment at the municipal theater. It was at the 
 Nikolaischule, in that city, that Richard lost 
 his fondness for philological studies. Haunted 
 as he was by dreams of the theater, it must be 
 confessed that he proved to be a deplorable 
 pupil. He hated what in later years he called 
 the pedantry of schools and universities, and 
 he did not hesitate to revolt against his teach- 
 ers. Consequently the superintendent was 
 
16 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 obliged to make a serious complaint to his 
 uncle, Adolf Wagner, in regard to the undis- 
 ciplined lad. 
 
 Disgusted with school, Richard took his sis- 
 ter Ottilie into his confidence one day and read 
 her his ambitious drama in the midst of a 
 storm which, terrible as it was, was out-rivaled 
 by his Goethe-like and Shakespearean scenes, 
 ""is sister begged him to stop reading; but he 
 
 mtinued imperturbably, and she submitted 
 
 ith touching resignation. 
 
 Mozart's Requiem and more especially the 
 music of Beethoven came to him at this epoch 
 as a revelation. He heard his elder sister, Ros- 
 alie, and more especially the second sister Clara 
 playing the piano. "Clara," he writes, "pos- 
 sessed not only an expressive touch and a pro- 
 nounced artistic feeling, but a voice that was 
 extraordinarily beautiful and full of soul." 
 
 Young Wagner constantly heard discussions 
 going on around him in regard to German 
 opera and the Italian school. He himself took 
 the side of German opera, partly because the 
 

 <! ^ ■ « 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 17 
 
 Italian tenor Sassaroli horrified him with "his 
 high-pitched feminine voice and his noisy 
 laughter, bursting out on all occasions." 
 
 From this time forth he held to the belief 
 that the mission of music was to instill new 
 life into the theater. He decided to write a 
 score for his tragedy, and there seemed to him 
 to be nothing unnatural in the project. 
 
 "I assumed without further thought that I 
 was qualified to write the necessary music ; but 
 it seemed to me a good idea to begin by acquir- 
 ing some knowledge of the principles of thor- 
 ough-base. So, in order to lose as little time 
 as possible, I borrowed Logier's Method of 
 Thorough-base for a week and studied it zeal- 
 ously. But my efforts did not bear fruit as 
 soon as I expected; the difficulties of the sub- 
 ject stimulated and delighted me ; and then and 
 there I determined to become a musician." 
 
 He became one very speedily, though at first 
 with no very striking results. He planned an 
 opera based upon the legend of Faust, and 
 wrote a quartette and a sonata. At the age of 
 
18 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 sixteen he was author of a Pastoral. Weber 
 and Beethoven had opened a path to him, and 
 he boldly entered upon it. 
 
 His mother once more had him take lessons; 
 but he rebelled against method. Anything in 
 the form of discipline was hateful to him. In- 
 stead of drudging away at arid exercises, he 
 preferred to compose overtures for the full or- 
 chestra, one of which was played at the Leipzig 
 theater, on December 24th, 1830. Wagner's 
 reminiscences regarding this maiden produc- 
 tion are quite picturesque and well deserve to 
 be reproduced: 
 
 "This overture was the culminating point of 
 my extravagance. In order to render it easier 
 to understand, I had persisted in writing it with 
 three different inks, red for the string instru- 
 ments, green for the wood, black for the brass. 
 Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was to be re- 
 duced to the level of a Pleyel sonata, in com- 
 parison with this marvelously complicated 
 Overture. ... A kettle-drum, played fortis- 
 simo at regular intervals of four measures, 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 19 
 
 turned the scales against me. The persistence 
 of that drummer roused the audience, first to 
 surprise, then to ill-concealed disapproval, and 
 finally to an outburst of hilarity that filled me 
 with consternation. That first performance of 
 one of my own compositions has left a lasting 
 memory." 
 
 Numerous anecdotes relating to Richard 
 Wagner's youthful days have been given to the 
 public by the pianist, Ferdinand Prager. Not- 
 withstanding that, in the estimation of Mr. 
 Chamberlain, their authenticity is extremely 
 questionable, the following story at least ought 
 to be cited: 
 
 "Richard Wagner's mother," writes Prager, 
 "enjoyed a modest pension as widow of a gov- 
 ernment official. One day young Richard, 
 being then fourteen or fifteen years old, was 
 sent to collect the quarterly payment. On his 
 way home, with the money in his pocket, he 
 passed the door of a public gambling house. 
 At that moment he had a sensation such as he 
 had never before experienced. He felt as 
 
20 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 though the hazard of the die would serve him 
 as an oracle of his destiny. The money did not 
 belong to him, but none the less he entered, 
 determined to tempt his fate. At first he was 
 unlucky and lost all his stakes, until only a 
 small sum remained. Yet he could not resist 
 the fascinating temptation, but promised him- 
 self that this time he would stake his very life 
 upon the turn of fortune. Fortunately for the 
 world and for art, his luck changed. By a most 
 unlooked-for run of luck, he won back not only 
 the original sum but considerably more besides. 
 He came out from the gambling house far 
 richer than when he entered it. 
 
 " 'But,' I said to him, 'what would you have 
 done if you had lost it all?' 
 
 " 'Good God!' he replied, 'before crossing the 
 threshold of that house, I had made a firm re- 
 solve to throw myself into the river, if I lost, 
 and on the contrary to believe in the greatness 
 of my destiny if I won.' 
 
 "At the time that he told me this story, he 
 was a man forty-three years of age, and I could 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 21 
 
 not resist repeating my question : 'Would you 
 really have done it?' 
 
 " 'I certainly should,' he answered, briefly 
 and decidedly. 
 
 "The lad found himself incapable of hiding 
 what he had done from his mother, but told 
 her the whole story as soon as he returned 
 home. 
 
 " 'Instead of scolding me,' he said, 'she threw 
 her arms around my neck, kissed me tenderly 
 and cried: "Your voluntary confession proves 
 to me that you will never do such a wicked 
 thing again." ' 
 
 "Wagner told me this story while I was stay- 
 ing with him at Zurich in 1856. This was not 
 the only occasion on which he defied destiny. 
 He was always filled with an invincible faith 
 in his mission, which sustained him through 
 many a trial and at the same time drove him 
 into audacious actions before which a graver 
 mind would have recoiled." 
 
 It is a well known fact that throughout his 
 life, and notably in a number of far echoing 
 
22 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 pamphlets, Wagner vented his animosity 
 against the Jews, notwithstanding that his or- 
 chestra leader at Bayreuth and a number of 
 his friends were of that race. His resentment 
 in regard to Meyerbeer and Halevy, who at 
 that time were on the top wave of popularity 
 in France and who watched with very doubtful 
 pleasure the rise of a rival star of such magni- 
 tude, would doubtless suffice to explain his 
 anti-Semitism. 
 
 Prager however gives another version, the 
 responsibility for which we will naturally once 
 more leave to him. At all events, it is a pic- 
 turesque story and at least contains some ele- 
 ments of truth, if only the vivacity of feeling, 
 the feverish impetuosity of the young poet. 
 
 "Wagner," narrates Prager, "knew the Israel- 
 ites from close proximity in his earliest years 
 and shared all the prejudices of his fellow citi- 
 zens in their regard. In Leipzig there was a 
 whole quarter inhabited by Polish Jews. All 
 the legends with which it is customary to brand 
 the persecuted race were circulated about them. 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 23 
 
 They were accused, among other things, of 
 offering up children in sacrifice. When any- 
 one wished to frighten a little boy in Leipzig, 
 he would tell him, 'The Polish Jew is coming!' 
 The scenes that followed were extremely brutal, 
 and often a poor Jewish child would be chased 
 through the streets by a gang of boys, cruelly 
 beaten and rolled in the mud, regardless of his 
 cries. It is strange that Wagner, who was al- 
 ways opposed to acts of violence and oppres- 
 sion, never took their part. The reason for 
 his antipathy was partly sesthetic and partly 
 personal resentment. He could not pardon the 
 Jews for the vulgar accent with which they 
 spoke German. It seemed to him that they 
 degraded the language. On the other hand, 
 their extravagant gesticulation irritated him. 
 He insisted that 'They acted like galvanized 
 corpses.' " 
 
 It would seem that a disappointment in love 
 also had its share in this indelible aversion: 
 
 "Among the friends of his sister Louise was a 
 young girl named Leah David, the daughter of 
 
24 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 a wealthy Hebrew family. When she made a 
 round of calls, she often left her dog, a hand- 
 some Dane, at her friend's house. Throughout 
 his life, Wagner was extremely fond of dogs. 
 He soon became strongly attached to the hand- 
 some animal that served the young girl as com- 
 panion and protector. But it was not long 
 before he had formed a far warmer attachment 
 for the young Jewess herself, who was just his 
 own age, namely between fifteen and sixteen 
 years old, and possessed that dazzling and ar- 
 dent oriental beauty that is so frequently met 
 with among the Polish Jews. She was the in- 
 timate friend of Louise Wagner, who shortly 
 afterwards became the wife of the famous Ger- 
 man publisher, Brockhaus. Leah David made 
 a speedy conquest of Richard Wagner. 
 
 " 'Never before,' he said, 'had I encountered 
 a young girl so richly attired and so beautiful. 
 Never before had I been spoken to with such 
 oriental profusion of caressing politeness. Sur- 
 prised and dazzled, I experienced for the first 
 time the indescribable emotions of first love.' 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 25 
 
 "Wagner was invited to call at the house of 
 Leah's father, Herr David, the luxury and 
 splendor of which completed the mental bewil- 
 derment of the young man. Leah was the only 
 daughter and had lost her mother. The enthu- 
 siastic young musician, deeply attached to the 
 big Dane and madly in love with the young 
 girl, obtained permission to continue his visits. 
 He did not declare his passion, but contented 
 himself with the sympathetic welcome that was 
 extended to him. At this time young Wagner 
 was slender, somewhat undersized and absorbed 
 in his own dreams. He was treated by the 
 David family more as a young boy than as a 
 suitor. If Leah was not at home when he 
 called, he would sit down at the piano, or else 
 amuse himself playing with the dog, Iago. His 
 calls became more frequent and his attachment 
 assumed a tone of intimacy. The number of 
 musical evenings multiplied rapidly. At one 
 of them a young Dutchman was present, a 
 nephew of Herr David. He was a pianist and 
 had precisely that technical dexterity which 
 
26 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Wagner lacked. Flattering applause greeted 
 his performance. But Wagner, being jealous, 
 allowed himself to make an indiscreet remark. 
 He claimed that the pianist lacked feeling. 
 Whereupon he was begged to play in his turn. 
 But his playing was so defective that it called 
 forth ironical comments from the Dutchman 
 and a general laugh from the rest of the com- 
 pany. Wagner then lost all control of himself. 
 Wounded in his most intimate emotions in the 
 presence of the young Jewess whom he loved 
 so madly, he gave rein to the full impetuosity 
 of his temperament and replied in such rude 
 and violent language that a death-like silence 
 followed on the part of Leah's guests. Then 
 he flung himself brusquely out of the room, 
 took up his hat, said farewell to the dog Iago, 
 and swore to avenge himself. He waited for 
 two days; then, not having received any com- 
 munication, he returned to the scene of the 
 quarrel. To his great indignation, the door 
 was shut in his face. The following morning, 
 he received a letter bearing Leah's hand-writ- 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 27 
 
 ing. He opened it feverishly, and felt that he 
 had received a mortal blow. Fraulein David 
 announced her forthcoming marriage to the 
 hated Dutchman, Herr Meyers. Richard Wag- 
 ner and Leah David never met again. 
 
 "In concluding this story, Wagner said: 
 
 " 'This was my first disappointment in love 
 and I felt that I could never forget it.' 
 
 "Then he added with characteristic imperti- 
 nence : 
 
 " 'After all, I believe that I regretted the dog 
 more than I did the young Jewess.' " 
 
 While a student at the University of Leipzig, 
 Wagner became particularly interested in the 
 political and social ideas which had been dis- 
 seminated by the Revolution of July. At the 
 same time, however, he realized the necessity 
 of working seriously in order to acquire that 
 knowledge of musical technique that would 
 assure him a free expansion of his natural and 
 original powers. 
 
 Providence, as he afterwards acknowledged, 
 brought him in contact with the very man that 
 
28 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 the situation demanded: Theodore Weinlig, 
 cantor at the Thomas-schule in Leipzig. At 
 the end of six months he had mastered the diffi- 
 culties of counterpoint. 
 
 "Now you have acquired your independ- 
 ence," his master told him. 
 
 After composing a new Overture, which had 
 a more encouraging success at the Leipzig the- 
 ater than his former effort, young Wagner ap- 
 plied himself to the production of a symphony, 
 in which the influence of Mozart could be felt. 
 The theater, however, still fascinated him. 
 After composing a Scena and Aria, he wrote the 
 libretto for The Wedding, but the subject of 
 this opera, which, as a matter of fact, was far 
 from agreeable, displeased one of his sisters, 
 and in spite of a sextette, which Weinlig pro- 
 nounced quite satisfactory, he renounced the 
 task. 
 
 This brings us down to 1833. Wagner felt 
 the need of securing some sort of salaried sit- 
 uation. He applied first to the theaters and 
 before long obtained a chance. It was, to be 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 29 
 
 sure, quite modest. The offer came through 
 his brother Albert, actor and director at the 
 theater in Wurzburg. Wagner's duties were to 
 rehearse the choruses and soloists, and he was 
 to receive in payment a monthly salary of ten 
 guldens. 
 
 He remained there a year, and won a repu- 
 tation for his activity. Meanwhile he was 
 writing the music and verses for The Fairies, a 
 romantic work based upon The Serpent-Wom- 
 an, by Gozzi. 
 
 Armed with the score of this new opera, in 
 which, notwithstanding his enthusiastic imita- 
 tions of Beethoven and Weber, it was subse- 
 quently recognized that he had embodied the 
 first important draught of a true Wagnerian 
 lyric drama, the young man returned to Leip- 
 zig. He was filled with the most ambitious 
 hopes. Encouraged by the friends who had 
 proclaimed in the public press their interest in 
 his earlier efforts, he counted upon the sym- 
 pathy of the director of the Leipzig Theater 
 and the support of his sister Rosalie. But the 
 
30 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 director, a disciple of Mendelssohn, was unfa- 
 vorably disposed towards him. 
 
 Wagner was destined to meet with many an- 
 other trial and reverses of every sort. But he 
 gave himself up to the sheer joy of living, and 
 does not seem to have been unreasonably dis- 
 couraged by this first disappointment. The 
 celebrated singer, Schroeder-Devrient, revealed 
 to him the power that lies in dramatic inten- 
 sity, and this again was a fruitful discovery, for 
 it set him dreaming of combining faultless har- 
 monies with emotion and spectacular grandeur. 
 It was from this moment that Wagner began 
 to realize to what an extent a singer may realize 
 the ardent thought of the author. 
 
 Accordingly, in no wise discouraged, he prof- 
 ited by a pleasant summer excursion in Bo- 
 hemia to draft a new opera entitled Das Liebes- 
 verbot (The Love- Veto), or The Novice of 
 Palermo, baaed upon Shakespeare's Measure 
 for Measure. 
 
 At this juncture (in 1834) he was appointed 
 musical director, or leader of the orchestra, at 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 31 
 
 the Magdeburg theater. Wagner made a suc- 
 cess in his new line of duties, but the theater's 
 financial affairs were going badly. At the 
 moment when the company was about to be 
 disbanded, he succeeded in having his Liebes- 
 verbot produced. This was in 1836. It was 
 nothing short of a tour de force, and Wagner 
 himself has related in a most amusing manner 
 the history of this more or less sensational pro- 
 duction : 
 
 "With more light-headedness than sober 
 judgment," he writes, "I ventured to undertake 
 to stage this opera, which contains some ex- 
 tremely difficult parts, within a space of ten 
 days. I placed my trust in the prompter and 
 in my own baton as leader of the orchestra. 
 With all their efforts the singers had not suc- 
 ceeded in memorizing more than half of their 
 parts. To all of us the performance was a sort 
 of bad dream. It is impossible to convey any 
 idea of it. And yet such parts as were even 
 passably rendered received genuine applause." 
 
 Nevertheless, out of devotion to their leader, 
 
32 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 the singers had labored day and night. The 
 leading tenor sought to cloak his unprepared- 
 ness behind a bold presence and a swaggering 
 manner. It should be added that the manage- 
 ment had not found the means to have the 
 librettos printed; consequently, notwithstand- 
 ing the greatest good will on the part of the 
 author, the performers and the audience, the 
 whole production seemed as unreal as though 
 enacted by so many musical ghosts, while the 
 orchestra added to the general havoc its over- 
 whelming crash of confused sounds. 
 
 After a fruitless journey to Berlin, Wagner, 
 who was now beginning to feel the sharp pinch 
 of adversity, settled at Konigsberg where he 
 obtained an appointment as conductor of an 
 orchestra. It was there, on the 24th of Novem- 
 ber, 1836, that he married a young actress, Wil- 
 helmine Planer, who was quite pretty and 
 greatly admired. The marriage took place in 
 spite of his family's opposition and all sorts of 
 material difficulties. 
 
 Wagner freely admitted later on that this 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 33 
 
 union was as big a piece of folly as the un- 
 timely production of his opera had been. 
 
 "I was in love," he said, "and I married out 
 of sheer blind obstinacy. I placed myself and 
 others with me in the lamentable position of a 
 household without resources, precipitated my- 
 self into a condition of poverty which has 
 brought thousands upon thousands of others to 
 their ruin." 
 
 The situation really was lamentable; there 
 was no exaggeration in the terms he used. In 
 1837 the theater at Konigsberg went bankrupt, 
 as that of Magdeburg had done before. Wag- 
 ner, now without resources, made matters 
 worse by his extreme jealousy. His wife even 
 thought of leaving him; while he on his part 
 considered the question of divorce. But she 
 could not make up her mind to a separation 
 and accordingly accompanied him to Riga, 
 where he once again secured a position as con- 
 ductor. 
 
 Wagner performed his functions as musical 
 director with alternate zeal and indifference, 
 
34 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 from the month of August, 1837, until June, 
 1839. At times in his eagerness to achieve a 
 sustained perfection down to the finest shad- 
 ings, he wearied the members of the orchestra 
 by long rehearsals, endlessly repeating the 
 same movement; while at other times, although 
 he chose a great diversity of works, ranging 
 from Mozart and Gliick to Bellini and Cheru- 
 bini, he grew bitter and disheartened at the 
 long delay of success and fame. At this time, 
 it should be added, he gave little evidence of 
 being the herald of a new and radical art. He 
 realized the public demand for scenes portray- 
 ing the pleasures and the passions of life; and 
 he himself had a genuine fondness for Italian 
 opera. 
 
 After Rule Britannia and the Overture for 
 Columbus, he composed the libretto and the 
 first two acts of Rienzi, based upon the novel 
 by Bulwer Lytton. Staking all his hopes on 
 this great tragic opera in five acts, he made up 
 his mind to leave Riga. On the one hand his 
 contract with the director of the theater was 
 
WAGNER'S FIRST STEPS 35 
 
 about to end and he was unpleasantly aware 
 that he had competitors; while on the other 
 hand, he was cherishing the project of going to 
 Paris, in search of glory and gold. 
 
 This vagabond phase of Wagner's career, 
 which had taken him all the way from the 
 Rhine to the Duna, was destined, as Mr. Cham- 
 berlain has very justly pointed out, to be very 
 far from sterile in its effects. In the course of 
 it he had acquired some essential material for 
 the future creation of his great musical dramas. 
 Himself a German poet and playwright, he had 
 learned to know and understand the profound 
 aspirations of the German public. 
 
 This first period was one of struggles and 
 gropings. Wagner was now in possession, if 
 not of his full measure of genius, at least of 
 his impelling desire to create. He understood 
 the resources of the orchestra, and he thrilled 
 with visions of the noblest emotions known to 
 humanity. He had an immense pride, a daunt- 
 less, almost foolhardy courage, and a limitless 
 desire to achieve \beauty through harmony. 
 
36 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Where was he to find a field worthy of him and 
 of his mighty activities, if not in Paris, the 
 preeminent center of civilization, where the 
 most illustrious reputations had been born and 
 fostered? 
 
 We shall see that Wagner had not yet fin- 
 ished his struggles against ill fortune. But who 
 can tell whether it was not essential to his 
 genius that it should develop in the midst of 
 suffering? And how could he have celebrated 
 in Tristan and in Parsifal all the sorrows known 
 to humanity if he had not been a hero him- 
 self, a victim of all the tragedies known to 
 that great Drama called Life? 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CALVARY OF AN ARTIST — FROM HATE TO 
 LOVE — A NEW ART — WAITING BETWEEN RAYS 
 OF HOPE AND SHADOWS OF DESPAIR — THE 
 REVOLUTIONIST OF MUSIC 
 
 IN September, 1839, Wagner arrived in Paris 
 with his young wife, after a wearisome 
 journey of three weeks and a half. They had 
 embarked on a sailing vessel; and a raging 
 tempest had compelled the captain to seek 
 shelter in a small Norwegian port. By talk- 
 ing to the sailors, Wagner accumulated all 
 sorts of information regarding the legend of 
 the Flying Dutchman, which has been related 
 by Heine, and which was destined to be the 
 theme of his third opera, published in France 
 under the title of Le Vaisseau Fantome. His 
 maritime adventures in a land wearing the as- 
 pect of dreams and nightmares must have 
 
 37 
 
38 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 greatly helped him to achieve the exact and 
 picturesque color of his work. 
 
 He spent a week in London and a month at 
 Boulogne-sur-Mer, where he made the useful 
 acquaintance of Meyerbeer. 
 
 Without further introductions, without re- 
 sources, and with little acquaintance with the 
 French language and customs, but full of hope 
 and energy, Wagner installed himself in Paris, 
 with his wife and Newfoundland dog, in a 
 furnished house on the Rue de la Tonnellerie, 
 near the Holies. 
 
 An introduction from Meyerbeer, at that 
 time all powerful, brought him into relations 
 with Anthenor Jolly, director of the Renais- 
 sance Theater, who accepted his Liebesverbot. 
 A vaudeville writer, Dumersan, who also had 
 a reputation as a numismatist, was commis- 
 sioned to adapt the work to the requirements 
 of the French public. 
 
 Overjoyed and counting upon an early suc- 
 cess, Wagner moved into a more comfortable 
 apartment, No. 25, Rue du Helder. But ill 
 
CALVARY OF AN ARTIST 39 
 
 luck pursued him: the theater went bankrupt! 
 In France, just as formerly in Germany, he met 
 with the same identical reverse. This time it 
 was a veritable disaster. He passed through 
 atrocious hours of chagrin, despair and ruin- 
 ous destitution. Apropos of his short story, 
 A German Musician in Paris, he wrote: 
 
 "I myself came very near dying of hunger 
 in Paris, like the hero of my story. My pur- 
 pose, by the way, in writing it, was to utter a 
 cry of revolt against the conditions of art andi 
 artists of our epoch." 
 
 It would be impossible to paint in colors 
 sufficiently somber the three years of lamenta- 
 ble distress that Wagner passed in Paris. He 
 was forced to squander his energies on all sorts 
 of unworthy tasks in order not to starve to 
 death, grinding out articles for the reviews, 
 and more especially making arrangements for 
 various instruments, including the trombone, 
 of the popular melodies of the hour, the most 
 distinctive pieces by Donizetti and Halevy. 
 
 Consequently, it is easy to conceive his re- 
 
40 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 sentment, not only against these composers 
 who had already "arrived," but against Paris 
 itself, which he had failed to take by conquest, 
 and in which he had known, to use his own 
 expression, "the black misery of long nights of 
 suspense and anguish." It was all in vain that 
 his young wife performed prodigies of economy 
 and maintained an indomitable courage ; it was 
 equally in vain that his rare moments of leisure 
 gave him a chance to chat pleasantly with a 
 few friends, such as the painter Kietz and the 
 librarian Anders. 
 
 Nevertheless, despite the bitterness of de- 
 feat and the disheartening melancholy of van- 
 ished hopes and repeated failures, Wagner con- 
 tinued to work. He composed romances, such 
 as The Two Grenadiers, he wrote an Overture 
 to Faust and an Overture to Columbus. The 
 latter, by the way, was the only work by Wag- 
 ner produced in Paris during this period (Feb- 
 ruary, 1841, at the Salle Herz). 
 
 The doors of the Opera remained implacably 
 closed against this foreign composer. He had 
 
CALVARY OF AN ARTIST 41 
 
 now finished Rienzi; and being finally con- 
 vinced of the impossibility of succeeding in 
 Paris, he decided to try his luck in Dresden. 
 
 The winter of 1841 was one of the most 
 critical periods of his whole restless existence. 
 He found small consolation in listening to 
 Beethoven's Symphonies at the Conservatoire, 
 in selling the manuscript of his Flying Dutch- 
 man for five hundred francs, in studying the 
 luxurious stage settings of the great Paris 
 theaters, or even in pouring out his pent-up 
 bitterness and rancor in articles for the Ga- 
 zette Musicale and in literary problems of a 
 morbid humor. 
 
 The reason why this lugubrious period must 
 be regarded as important in the development 
 of Wagner's real genius is as follows: side by 
 side with his bitter revolt against the bad taste 
 of the public and the vulgar sensuality of the 
 fashionable composers, was born his determina- 
 tion to be a great revolutionist in the domain of 
 musical and theatric art. His hatred of silli- 
 ness and vulgarity, his disgust at all the hu- 
 
42 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 miliations inflicted upon his pride were accom- 
 panied by a love of beauty amounting to a 
 magnificent religion. 
 
 He issued from all his defeats more exalted, 
 and consequently, stronger than before. Hence 
 came a tenderness and a fervor that added 
 much to the loftiness of his inspiration. In 
 this respect Wagner has admirably analyzed 
 himself in the following terms: 
 
 "I wish to speak here of music," he wrote 
 in A Communication to My Friends, "as the 
 good angel that assured my salvation as an 
 artist. I owe it to music that I became an 
 artist, beginning with the day when, in a spirit 
 of revolt, I rose up in protest, with a growing 
 clearness of purpose, against the existing con- 
 ditions under which art had to manifest itself 
 to the public. This feeling of rebellion was not 
 born from a point of view external to art, like 
 that of our critics, for example, or of our 
 mathematicians of current politics, enemies of 
 art and socialistic calculators; on the contrary, 
 my revolutionary instinct served to awaken 
 
CALVARY OF AN ARTIST 43 
 
 in my heart an inspiration, the faculty of cre- 
 ating a work of art, — and this I owed to music 
 and to nothing else." 
 
 And Wagner added, "For my own part I 
 cannot conceive of the spirit of music apart 
 from love. It was love and not hate or envy 
 that made me a rebel; and that is why I be- 
 came an artist and not a critic." 
 
 It was in this state of mind of mingled 
 pleasure and pain that Wagner installed him- 
 self at Meudon, in the spring of 1841. There 
 he resumed, though not without some misgiv- 
 ings, his interrupted work upon the Flying 
 Dutchman. But after finishing the chorus of 
 sailors and the song of the spinners, he felt 
 sure of himself, and in a short time the opera 
 was completed. This work in a certain way 
 bears the material traces of the composer's 
 struggle against want, for at the end of the 
 second act the manuscript of the Flying Dutch- 
 man contains this painful indication: "To- 
 morrow, must have more money," and at the 
 end of the third we read: "Meudon, August 
 
44 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 22d, 1841. Written in poverty and torments." 
 Seized with nostalgia for his native land, 
 that he aggravated still further by brooding 
 over the popular German legend of Tann- 
 hauser, Wagner impatiently waited for favor- 
 able news. Rienzi, which had been accepted by 
 the Dresden Theater, was at last to be put into 
 rehearsal. Meanwhile, the Flying Dutchman 
 had found favor at Berlin, thanks to the medi- 
 ation of Meyerbeer. 
 
 Wagner now dreamed of nothing else than 
 his return to Germany. In order to earn the 
 cost of the journey he resumed almost light- 
 heartedly the tasks of a musical hack and pro- 
 ceeded to raise the necessary funds by arrang- 
 ing the scores of Halevy's operas for the piano. 
 Henceforward, however, he was to be relieved 
 from the necessity of any such wretched 
 drudgery. 
 
 On April 7th, 1842, he left Paris, the vast 
 and tumultuous City of Light, in which he had 
 suffered so keenly from his obscurity, and 
 towards which, in spite of his anger and bit- 
 
CALVARY OF AN ARTIST 45 
 
 terness, he afterwards looked back wistfully, 
 with a secret desire to see his German achieve- 
 ments and reputation further augmented by 
 the applause of France. When he reached the 
 Rhine he shed tears and swore fidelity to the 
 fatherland. In default of Paris and of France, 
 which were destined later on to recognize his 
 splendid genius, he set forth to conquer Ger- 
 many by drawing his inspiration from her 
 legends and most deep-rooted traditions. 
 
 Wagner's sojourn in Dresden, where he re- 
 mained seven years, is a characteristic and 
 decisive epoch in his life. He there accom- 
 plished his definitive rupture with traditional 
 opera, and it was there that he acquired a 
 clear and direct understanding of his tempera- 
 ment, his work and his mission. 
 
 On October 20th, 1842, Rienzi was produced 
 at the Dresden Opera House, and proved to be 
 not only a success but a veritable triumph. 
 Wagner became famous in a single day, even 
 though he was none too well understood. His 
 fame was not yet the sort that he deserved, 
 
46 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 but then in Rienzi he had not yet produced a 
 "Wagnerian" opera. 
 
 This success brought about a radical altera- 
 tion in Richard Wagner's career. In order to 
 reach a better interpretation of the signifi- 
 cance of such an event in a life which, to 
 borrow his own terms, had hitherto been "dis- 
 jointed and over-burdened," let us see what 
 he himself has said: 
 
 "After a most painful struggle, after hard 
 conflicts, suffering and privation, in the midst 
 of the agitation and the indifference of Paris, 
 I found myself all of a sudden in an attentive 
 world, full of encouragement and consideration. 
 . . . How natural it was that I should have 
 allowed myself to be rocked in the cradle of 
 these illusions, from which I must soon be 
 awakened, the victim of a cruel experience! 
 If anything was capable of deceiving me as to 
 my true position at that time, it was the un- 
 common success achieved in Dresden by the 
 performance of my Rienzi. I, a solitary man, 
 friendless and without a country, suddenly 
 
CALVARY OF AN ARTIST 47 
 
 found myself beloved, admired and nattered 
 by a multitude of followers. In view of the 
 established conditions of life, this success 
 ought to have given my career a lasting founda- 
 tion of artistic and bourgeois prosperity. To 
 the surprise of the general public, I was ap- 
 pointed Kapellmeister to the court of Saxony." 
 
 This unexpected appointment, due partly to 
 the simultaneous death of two incumbents, 
 and partly to the activity displayed by Wag- 
 ner in training the orchestra at the time his 
 opera was produced, did him almost as much 
 harm as good. To be sure, these functions 
 which he performed from 1843 to 1849, gave 
 him great authority as well as an annual reve- 
 nue of fifteen hundred thalers, or a little more 
 than eleven hundred dollars. But Wagner had 
 the legitimate ambition to develop his new con- 
 ception for the benefit of Saxon and German 
 art, and his apostleship was destined to en- 
 counter the opposition of tradition, incom- 
 prehension, jealousy and even hatred. 
 
 The Flying Dutchman, also performed at 
 
48 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Dresden, had meanwhile achieved a success 
 comparable to that of Rienzi, notwithstanding 
 its innovations in technique. But before long 
 the critics reconsidered their verdict; and from 
 this moment the campaign against Wagner 
 began, and this splendid and vital creator had 
 need to summon up all his mighty will power, 
 all his colossal energy, in order to hold his 
 own against the adversaries of an art that was 
 at once human and divine. 
 
 While The Flying Dutchman was announced 
 for production at Berlin, Riga and Cassel, its 
 performance was stopped in Dresden after the 
 fourth occasion. In the king's Intendant, 
 Baron von Luttichau, Wagner had found, if 
 not an open enemy, at least a man who had 
 small intention of abandoning routine and sac- 
 rificing the customary pleasures of the court 
 and the general public, to the idealism of a 
 revolutionary artist, and to his devout worship 
 of the beautiful. 
 
 Now, as V. H. Lichtenberger, the author of 
 
CALVARY OF AN ARTIST 49 
 
 some important studies upon Wagner, has done 
 well to remind us, the Dresden Opera House 
 offered an ambitious artist exceptional chances 
 of success. The theater itself, the orchestra, 
 the chorus, the marvelous talent of Schroder- 
 Devrient, whose gifted nature was so splen- 
 didly fitted for interpreting a noble genius, the 
 glorious voice of the tenor Tichatschek, the 
 financial resources at command, all united in 
 enabling him to perform an important service 
 to art, and base his productions on the stable 
 foundations of his own fervid inspiration and 
 his vast and profound experience of music and 
 the theater. 
 
 Accordingly, we find him interpreting, with 
 all the enthusiastic respect due to such mas- 
 ters as Mozart and Gliick, Armida and Iphi- 
 genia at Aulis, and initiating Dresden into the 
 splendors of Beethoven's Ninth Sympathy. 
 
 Meanwhile, during the year 1844, after fin- 
 ishing the Love Feast of the Apostles, he ex- 
 pressed his passionate admiration for the au- 
 
50 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 thor of Der Freischutz by composing the fu- 
 neral music on the occasion of the transfer of 
 Weber's ashes to Dresden. 
 
 Wagner had now surrendered himself wholly 
 to his religion of art, and he henceforth pur- 
 sued his task of human and social regenera- 
 tion with a sort of mystical fanaticism. Tann- 
 hauser, the first performance of which he con- 
 ducted on October 19th, 1845, was the fruit of 
 prolonged meditation and the first great mani- 
 festation of Wagnerian art. He was destined 
 to bring his art to a loftier and more sustained 
 perfection. But he had now found himself, 
 he had acquired his characteristic manner, 
 ample, vast, intense; from this time forward 
 he had to be recognized as the master of a 
 system which would become revealed little by 
 little to the initiated and the extraordinary 
 majesty of which was felt even by the unbe- 
 lievers. 
 
 As Richard Wagner has himself told us in 
 his autobiography, it was in a mood of pain- 
 ful and exuberant excitement, a feverish exal- 
 
CALVARY OF AN ARTIST 51 
 
 tation, that he composed Tannhauser, the in- 
 spiration of which had come to him, majestic 
 and consoling, during the hopeless days and 
 nights of his exile in Paris. Through Tann- 
 hauser, he eseaped from actual life and its little 
 trivial joys, and soared into an ethereal region, 
 a new and glorious world. 
 
 However, as Wagner was soon to discover 
 for himself, this work, begotten in suffering, 
 was destined to beget suffering in its turn. 
 Wagner afterwards declared that in writing it 
 he had written his own death sentence. He 
 had not yet learned that the highest honors 
 are often purchased at the cost of the longest 
 and most frightful martyrdoms. 
 
 The friction between Wagner and the In- 
 tendant, his official superior, had meanwhile 
 been increasing. The campaign waged by the 
 Dresden newspapers against this pioneer in a 
 sublime art had begun to bear its unwholesome 
 fruit. In spite of the sympathizers he had 
 already gained for his drama, and some of them 
 were most zealous, the kapellmeister could not 
 
52 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 help recognizing that he had failed in his dar- 
 ing attempt to awaken souls to the sovereign 
 sway of purity and beauty. It was with no 
 little bitterness that he became aware of the 
 unfriendliness of most of the members of the 
 court circle, the timid spirit of some, the in- 
 difference of others. 
 
 How very few disciples he met along his 
 path, but on the other hand, what hosts of 
 Pharisees! Accordingly there was nothing 
 surprising in Richard Wagner's attitude in re- 
 gard to the insurrection which broke out in 
 Dresden during the Revolution of 1848. It 
 was evidently far less on account of his social 
 and political views, than for the sake of the 
 new world of sensations and ideas that he was 
 striving to establish by the overthrow of idols 
 in the form of traditional rules for the opera, 
 that Wagner looked upon the Revolution pri- 
 marily as the dawn of an era fertile in the bet- 
 terment of individuals and peoples. The fate 
 of his music seemed to him to be closely allied 
 with the desire for independence. 
 
CALVARY OF AN ARTIST 53 
 
 Accordingly, Wagner allied himself with the 
 leaders of the movement, such as Bakunin, who 
 incidentally was never under any misapprehen- 
 sion as to the true character of this exalted 
 idealist's revolutionary views. He collaborated 
 on the Volksblatter edited by his friend Rolker, 
 and having drafted a Plan for a National Ger- 
 man Theater, for the kingdom of Saxony, he 
 delivered a stirring address in behalf of it be- 
 fore a patriotic club, known as the Vaterlands- 
 verein, in the course of which he recognized the 
 authority of the king, but eloquently advocated 
 republican ideals. 
 
 What was the part played by Wagner in the 
 riot which broke out at Dresden and was rap- 
 idly repressed by Prussian bayonets? 
 
 There has been as much exaggeration on the 
 one side as on the other. That he would have 
 consented to set fire to the theater, as has been 
 asserted, through his being confused with a 
 pastry-cook also bearing the name of Wagner, 
 one that is exceedingly common in Germany, 
 is manifestly untrue. But it is certain that 
 
54 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Wagner willingly placed himself at the service 
 of the insurgents. Are we to conclude that it 
 was he who sounded the tocsin from the tower 
 with his own hand? It has never been proved. 
 In any case, his sanguinary zeal does not seem 
 to have been very formidable. The sculptor 
 Kietz informed one of the foremost authorities 
 of Wagnerian literature, Mr. Chamberlain, that 
 the author of Tcmnhauser took him with him 
 to the top of the tower in order to see the view 
 and hear to better advantage the effect of 
 the bells blending with the thunder of the 
 artillery. Another witness, Dr. Thum, relates 
 that he also had a conversation with Wagner 
 on the summit of that same tower, on the sub- 
 ject of — music and philosophy, Beethoven and 
 Berlioz ! 
 
 Accordingly Wagner was able to affirm, with 
 entire good faith, that his participation in pol- 
 itics was always of an artistic nature. 
 
 The revolution in Dresden lasted only a few 
 days (April 28th to May 8th, 1849), and the 
 activities of the Prussian troops, sent to put 
 
CALVARY OF AN ARTIST 55 
 
 down the provisional government, resulted al- 
 together in not more than thirty victims. 
 
 Having compromised himself, Wagner stayed 
 for a time at Chemnitz, in the home of his 
 brother-in-law, Wolfram. But when he 
 learned that an order for his arrest had been 
 issued, he yielded to the advice of his friends 
 and took steps to reach the frontier. Among 
 others, Franz Liszt, who was one of his earliest 
 admirers, gave him hospitality, and provided 
 him with a passport, bearing the name of a 
 certain Dr. Widemann. 
 
 It is stated that Wagner's first intention was 
 to cross over to England. But he stopped at 
 Zurich, then proceeded to Paris, where he re- 
 mained only a short time, during May and 
 June; after which he installed himself at 
 Zurich. 
 
 This was the beginning of the fertile period 
 of his exile, which lasted for a dozen years 
 (1849-1861). Wagner had now found himself 
 and had attained the full maturity of his cre- 
 ative powers. He was destined, during these 
 
56 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 years of exile, to achieve, in dreamy and melan- 
 choly peace, or in the exhausting effort of final 
 consecration, imperishable masterpieces, bear- 
 ing the hall-mark of his vast and imperious 
 genius. 
 
 A. 
 
 
 7 
 (7 
 
 Facsimile Letter by Wagner 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE GENESIS OF A WORK OF ABT — AN ASYLUM: 
 AN OASIS IN THE DESERT — A ROMANTIC LOVE — 
 FROM REAL LIFE TO THE "WORLD OF THOUGHT 
 AND OF ART 
 
 IN leaving Dresden, Wagner abandoned a 
 settled, and on the whole a brilliant posi- 
 tion. Nevertheless, yielding to what he after- 
 wards called the omnipotence of folly, he had 
 conceived the idea that Dresden was likely to 
 become "the tomb of his art." Accordingly, 
 he resigned himself to exile and retirement, pre- 
 occupied with the single purpose of accom- 
 plishing his task, and quite indifferent to riches 
 and honors. Study, the joy of meditating and 
 philosophizing, the confidence of a few chosen 
 friends, who faithfully awaited the fruition of 
 his original thoughts, a sufficiently warm dress- 
 ing gown, a good piano and the attachment of 
 
 57 
 
58 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 his pet dog and parrot, were to him amply 
 sufficient. 
 
 But Minna Wagner, from this time forth, 
 took an entirely different view of their mode of 
 existence. So long as he had occupied an 
 enviable position, she had not been unreason- 
 ably disturbed by her husband's chimerical 
 dreams and by an idealism so ill adapted to 
 the immediate needs of his contemporaries. 
 But now she regarded it as sheer folly for him 
 to turn deliberately aside from the beaten path, 
 and devote himself, as he was now doing, to 
 the preaching of a new gospel. All that her 
 husband said or wrote, his music, his slightest 
 actions seemed to her the conduct of a vision- 
 ary. Furthermore, she suffered from the loss 
 of those material advantages, with which Wag- 
 ner, absorbed in his dreams, could so easily 
 dispense. "I shall never turn my art-works 
 into merchandise," he once wrote to Liszt, who 
 from the first had estimated him at his true 
 value. But Minna Wagner was far from shar- 
 ing a philosophy so Utopian in its conceptions. 
 
THE WORLD OF ART 59 
 
 She rejoined her husband at Zurich from a 
 sense of conjugal duty, but with a secret hope 
 that he would awaken to a clearer perception 
 of reality and strive for pecuniary success. 
 
 On the contrary, Wagner became more and 
 more engrossed in his proud, uncompromising 
 cult of beauty. With a sort of dogged ob- 
 stinacy, he grew more and more averse to mak- 
 ing concessions. It was no longer a Rienzi that 
 occupied him; he dreamed of a vast, crowded, 
 mighty work, impossible perhaps ever to stage, 
 but at least conforming to his ideals. He con- 
 sidered the possibilities of such subjects as 
 Achilles, Frederick Barbarossa, The Death of 
 Siegfried; he dreamed of a Jesus of Nazareth, 
 which was later metamorphosed into Parsifal. 
 
 But before finally consecrating himself to the 
 composition of his great musical dramas, 
 Wagner must needs develop his own artistic 
 creed, and proclaim the principles of his aesthet- 
 ics in a series of special articles, in which he 
 could explain himself at leisure. First came 
 Art and Revolution, and The Art-Work of the 
 
60 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Future (1849), after which he published Art 
 and Climate, Judaism in Music, in which he 
 attacked Meyerbeer (1850), Opera and Drama, 
 the most important of his writings along this 
 line of thought, and A Communication to My 
 Friends. 
 
 Meanwhile Liszt, who was Wagner's herald, 
 and whose friendship, Wagner insisted, was the 
 greatest event of his life, taught the public at 
 Weimar to appreciate and applaud the earlier 
 works of this genius who was destined to 
 achieve a greater and finer development amidst 
 the solitude of the picturesque Swiss valleys, 
 or in the society of fellow thinkers. 
 
 Zurich, as it happened, being a university 
 town, was at this time the center of a choice 
 intellectual group. Among others, Wagner 
 here once more encountered Semper, the court 
 architect at Dresden, who was also in exile, and 
 who later on was destined to build the Bay- 
 reuth Theater. There were, besides, poets such 
 as Herweg, and philologists such as Ettmuller; 
 also, he there made the acquaintance of Chal- 
 
THE WORLD OF ART 61 
 
 lemel-Lacour, who later translated some of his 
 works and became one of the most judicious 
 Wagnerians in France. 
 
 Although Wagner held himself aloof mis- 
 trustfully, he nevertheless met a number of 
 people who were eager to prove their admira- 
 tion by doing him services. In this respect spe- 
 cial mention should be made of the First Sec- 
 retary of State, Sulzer, who gave Wagner gen- 
 erous financial aid, and Frau Julia Ritter, who 
 for five years secured him a small annual in- 
 come, and whose sons, all talented musicians, 
 were brilliant partisans of this still unappre- 
 ciated master. And we must not forget to 
 mention, among the most zealous apostles of 
 Wagnerism, Klindworth, Draesaeke, Theodore 
 Uhlig, and the most ardent of them all, Wag- 
 ner's one true pupil, Hans von Biilow. 
 
 Since these years of exile at Zurich are essen- 
 tial for an understanding of the life of Wagner 
 and the development of his works, we could 
 not do better than to conjure up the physiog- 
 nomy of the great musician, as recorded at this 
 
62 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 epoch by trustworthy witnesses. Frau Eliza 
 Wille, a woman of keen intelligence and a tal- 
 ented writer, has published a number of the 
 master's letters, together with her own recollec- 
 tions and explanatory notes. They form docu- 
 ments of the first importance. 
 
 In 1851, Dr. Francois Wille, a philosopher 
 and journalist, came with his family to Switzer- 
 land, as the result of reverses brought about by 
 the Revolution of 1848, and established him- 
 self at Mariafeld, distant about a league from 
 Zurich. Frau Wille had previously known 
 Wagner in Dresden, in 1843, at the time of 
 the production of the Flying Dutchman, and 
 his image remained graven on her memory: 
 "That graceful and slender figure, that head 
 with its massive brow, the piercing eye and 
 the strong lines of energy deeply imprinted 
 around the small, decided mouth." A painter 
 one evening called her attention to the straight 
 and prominent chin that looked as though 
 carved from marble and gave the musician's 
 face its characteristic expression. 
 
THE WORLD OF ART 63 
 
 Wagner called upon the Willes at Mariafeld 
 for the first time, in May, 1852, but it was a 
 visit which he was to repeat frequently, some- 
 times with the poet Herweg, sometimes with 
 his wife, whom Frau Wille has described as a 
 most solicitous housekeeper, but at this time 
 still much agitated by the stormy scenes of the 
 insurrection, a woman who loved the society 
 of her compatriots, but vastly below the level 
 of her husband. 
 
 The Willes' home was the meeting-place for 
 discussions of art, literature and philosophy. 
 Carlyle and Schopenhauer were both favorite 
 topics, especially the latter, whose profound 
 and satiric writings had made an enormous im- 
 pression upon Wagner. On one occasion he 
 burst out laughing, after having read some one 
 of the philosopher's Mephistophelian com- 
 ments upon women, and observed, "He certainly 
 must have known my wife, Minna!" Wagner 
 became one of Schopenhauer's adherents, not- 
 withstanding that Schopenhauer encouraged 
 him to cultivate letters at the expense of music. 
 
64 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 The doctrines of renouncement, sacrifice and 
 abnegation are quite as much a part of the 
 philosopher of Frankfort and his reconstructed 
 Buddhism, as they are of Christianity. 
 
 At Mariafeld, Wagner played fragments of 
 Tannhauser and Lohengrin and expounded the 
 character of the Ninth Symphony. Let us once 
 again listen to Frau Eliza Wille, whose recol- 
 lections are extremely instructive: 
 
 "These gentlemen (Wille and one of his 
 friends) once more plunged into natural his- 
 tory and philological discussions. Hereupon 
 Wagner came over and joined us. 'Good,' said 
 he, 'those two have started in again, digging 
 up roots; they will be at it for a long time.' 
 He began to laugh, then seated himself at the 
 piano. I can never forget the way in which, 
 before beginning, he explained the Ninth Sym- 
 phony to us and made us realize the necessity 
 of the Chorus and the Hymn to Joy as a crown- 
 ing touch to this magnificent tone-poem. Un- 
 der his fingers the key-board became a veritable 
 orchestra. Suddenly he paused and said to me, 
 
THE WORLD OF ART 65 
 
 'Now, listen: the Muses are entering. Amid 
 warlike accents they are leading a phalanx of 
 young men.' Since then I have frequently 
 heard the Ninth Symphony rendered by a full 
 orchestra, but that Allegro vivace alia marcia 
 I have never heard but once. No conductor, no 
 orchestra has been able to make me hear the 
 firm, light step of the Muses as Wagner did, 
 pianissimo, moving over the clouds and ap- 
 proaching with a sure and sustained movement. 
 Ah! how that magnificent revelation of the 
 rhythm emanated from that marvelous world 
 of sounds! ... A single pulsation more or 
 less, and the soul of the listener soars aloft or 
 remains inert! 
 
 "Wagner's manner was grave, self-contained, 
 and yet very gracious. One of our friends, an 
 elderly lady, very placid and not easily aroused 
 out of her tranquillity, was fairly electrified 
 when, in a burst of enthusiasm, he intoned 
 with sovereign power: 
 
 'Seid umschlungen, Millionen.' 
 
66 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 "But all at once he interrupted himself: 'I 
 cannot play the piano, you know/ he said. 
 'You do not applaud. Now finish it your- 
 selves.' " 
 
 It was also at Mariafeld that Wagner first 
 read his Nibelung's Ring, before giving a read- 
 ing of it at the Hotel Bauer, in Zurich. 
 
 In 1853 Liszt made his appearance in Wag- 
 ner's house. Wille asked him if he could not 
 use his influence at the Court at Weimar, in 
 order to make it possible for Wagner to return 
 to Germany. Liszt replied that he knew of no 
 position and of no theater that would be suited 
 to Wagner's needs. Scenery, orchestra, singers 
 would all have to be created expressly for him. 
 Wille observed that such an enterprise would 
 cost not less than a million. Thereupon Liszt 
 cried out in French, as was his habit when over- 
 excited, "He shall have it! The million shall 
 be found!" That was an occasion when Liszt 
 showed himself to be a good prophet. 
 
 Frau Wille, to whom we owe these details, 
 took supper on evenings at the Wagners', to- 
 
THE WORLD OF ART 67 
 
 gether with other friends. At dessert, the mas- 
 ter of the house disappeared, and returned 
 presently wearing the uniform of the King of 
 Saxony's Kapellmeister, his form bent and a 
 sarcastic smile upon his lips. He turned to 
 the guests with a facetious air, and addressing 
 his wife, said, "Yes, yes, Minna, it was all very 
 fine and you liked me this way. It is too bad, 
 poor girl, that the uniform has grown too small 
 for me!" And, in point of fact, that uniform 
 was too small for him! 
 
 Misanthropic though he was, Wagner had to 
 recognize that there were a great many people 
 in Zurich who not only esteemed him but had 
 an enthusiastic admiration for him. The con- 
 certs which he gave at the Zurich theater 
 brought him veritable ovations. One old musi- 
 cian, a violinist, declared, in speaking of Wag- 
 ner, "When he is present, it makes another man 
 of me, a different order of musician." 
 
 But although Wagner, with his hypersensi- 
 tive organism, suffered more than another 
 would from home-sickness for the fatherland, 
 
68 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 and from the fact that he had not received in 
 Germany the recognition which his artistic 
 pride demanded, it would not be just to say 
 that his years in Zurich taught him the poign- 
 ant agonies of exile. Every man to whom he 
 spoke, records Frau Wille, felt himself hon- 
 ored; and all the musicians looked up to him 
 as to a master who had opened up new and 
 wonderful paths to music. In spite of his 
 occasional spells of anger and melancholy, he 
 seems to have been treated with a regard verg- 
 ing upon veneration. 
 
 In the number of friends who exerted them- 
 selves actively in his behalf, special stress 
 should be laid upon his acquaintance with Herr 
 Wesendonck and his wife. Herr Wesendonck 
 was a wealthy merchant who represented a 
 large firm of silk manufacturers in New York. 
 He had settled at Zurich in 1851. Being fond 
 of the arts, he took a keen interest in the 
 destiny of the exiled musician. Frau Wesen- 
 donck was only twenty-five years old at the 
 time of her first meeting with Wagner in 1852, 
 
THE WORLD OF ART 69 
 
 and possessed a delicate and sensitive nature 
 and a rare artistic temperament. 
 
 A pleasant intimacy, a sort of tender and 
 idealistic attachment, soon sprang up between 
 the great and still misunderstood composer, 
 striving in obscurity to bring about the proud 
 accomplishment of his gigantic task, and this 
 docile pupil and devoted friend. J 
 
 Towards evening, he used to go to play for 
 her on the piano, often pieces of his own com- 
 position, based upon poems which she had en- 
 trusted to his lofty and melancholy inspira- 
 tion. And then he talked to her of his reading 
 and his work. 
 
 By this time Wagner had developed the full 
 and complete scheme of the Wagnerian drama, 
 the enchanted frame-work within which he was 
 to embody his pure and heroic visions in trans- 
 cendent harmonics. 
 
 In 1853 he finished the whole of the poem 
 of the Tetralogy. That same year, in May, he 
 conducted some concerts in the old theater at 
 Zurich, in which he taught his audiences to 
 
70 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 know and appreciate certain of his own com- 
 positions, in all their shadings and their integ- 
 rity. As a matter of fact, there had been times 
 when Wagner was forced, through want of 
 money, to consent to have his works produced 
 in various foreign cities, where for various rea- 
 sons great harm was done him through changes 
 and cuts in both text and music, because they 
 insisted upon regarding his works as operas 
 of a singular sort, and not as dramas developed 
 in accordance with a new formula and system. 
 
 In 1854 Wagner completed the Prologue to 
 The Nibelung's Ring. This same year Tann- 
 hauser was produced at Zurich. The year fol- 
 lowing he visited London, for the purpose of 
 conducting the concerts of the Philharmonic 
 Society there, and while in London he met 
 Berlioz. 
 
 After his return to Zurich, Wagner devoted 
 himself to the composition of Siegfried and the 
 Walkyrie. These prodigious masterpieces he 
 accomplished, in spite of the unhappiness of his 
 
THE WORLD OF ART 71 
 
 domestic life. His wife not only was a sick 
 woman, but she was incapable of understand- 
 ing the gigantic and tumultuous power of his 
 creations in art, poetry and metaphysics, and 
 furthermore she cherished a vindictive jeal- 
 ousy. As a matter of fact, Wagner had aban- 
 doned himself more and more to his intimacy, 
 — a wholly ideal, radiant and consoling inti- 
 macy, — with Frau Wesendonck, who sustained 
 his energy, shared his moments of exaltation 
 and lavished upon him the treasures of her 
 unwavering faith. Both she and her husband 
 surrounded the great man with attentions and 
 ungrudgingly gave him their enthusiastic and 
 devoted support. 
 
 The house in which Wagner was living was 
 close to that of a tinker, who made a fearful 
 noise, hammering on his anvil. It was un- 
 pleasant music at the best, but especially so to 
 the sensitive ears of Wagner. It is related that 
 he finally made up his mind to try to come 
 to terms with the worthy artisan; but the 
 
72 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 latter replied, "Each one to his own trade, Herr 
 Kapellmeister; I beat my anvil and you beat 
 time. I have no wish to stop you." 
 
 Wesendonck kindly suggested that Wagner 
 should have the benefit of a small house be- 
 longing to him and quite close to the splendid 
 villa which his own family was to occupy, in 
 the suburbs of Zurich, on what was known as 
 the Green Hill. Wagner joyously accepted and 
 promptly transferred himself thither, together 
 with his wife, his parrot Jacquot and his dog 
 Peps. Here he had a study in which he en- 
 joyed the most delightful security, comfort and 
 quiet, and from the windows of which his gaze 
 could wander over the lake and the wonderful 
 panorama of the Alps. It was in this retreat, 
 where he had foreseen that he would find the 
 necessary tranquillity, that he began the com- 
 position of Tristan and Isolde; the first act was 
 finished by the end of the year 1857. 
 
 But before long he realized that the passion 
 which he cherished for Mathilde Wesendonck 
 was growing stronger; while she, on her side, 
 
THE WORLD OF ART 73 
 
 found it hard to resist the emotions inspired 
 in her by the noble soul and bursting heart of 
 the great musician. Wagner found himself in 
 the romantic position of a second Werther, but 
 with this difference, that he himself was mar- 
 ried and that his wife, growing more and more 
 jealous, constantly quarreled with him, and 
 even went so far as to demand explanations 
 from Frau Wesendonck. 
 
 How was this romantic love of the great 
 idealist destined to end? Neither he nor his 
 enthusiastic pupil abandoned themselves to a 
 culpable passion. Their relations ended quite 
 philosophically, without suicide or intrigue, but 
 with a total and definitive renouncement. 
 Lichtenberger has analyzed with much delicacy 
 this episode in the life of the great poet-musi- 
 cian: "This drama," he says, "which was 
 wholly internal and unspoken, and which no 
 one except a very small number of his most 
 intimate friends even suspected, at the time 
 when it was taking place, awakened in Wag- 
 ner's heart some of the most intense and sub- 
 
74 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 lime emotions of which the human soul is 
 capable." 
 
 And Frau Wesendonck contented herself 
 with writing: "Wagner voluntarily left the 
 asylum which he loved. In witness of that 
 period we have his great work, Tristan and 
 Isolde. The rest is mystery and respectful 
 silence." 
 
 While Mathilde Wesendonck sought for 
 peace in the calm round of household duties, 
 Minna Wagner waged bitter battles with angry 
 creditors and finally returned home to her own 
 family in Saxony. 
 
 Richard Wagner was destined to find his 
 consolation in his art. His secret anguish was 
 already exalted in Tristan; and the mystic love 
 which blossomed in his later works and more 
 especially in Parsifal was an immortal echo of 
 the deep hidden and painful emotions of the 
 troubled days of his exile in Zurich. 
 
 It is possible also that Wagner had other 
 motives for wishing to leave Switzerland. Both 
 as man and artist, as he has himself phrased 
 
THE WORLD OF ART 75 
 
 it, he was journeying towards a new world. 
 Having entered upon a period of conscious ar- 
 tistic purpose, — to employ in our turn the 
 Wagnerian terminology, — and finding a return 
 to favor denied him by the king of Saxony, 
 he now felt a profound desire to leave his 
 silent retreat and reveal his genius to the light 
 of day. Accordingly, it is easy to understand 
 how some of his biographers, and even some of 
 the most conscientious, have chosen to pass over 
 in silence this episode of his romantic love. 
 Wagner not only had "volcanoes in his brain," 
 as Liszt has said, but, according to the wise 
 observation of M. Ad. Jullien, he also had 
 them in his heart. And it was not until a later 
 date that he was destined to achieve domestic 
 happiness. Nor was the joy of triumphing in 
 his art to be granted him until after a new 
 series of formidable trials. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 RICHARD WAGNER GREETED WITH HISSES — THE 
 SPLENDOR AND MISERY OF AN ARTIST — BE- 
 TWEEN CHARYBDIS AND SCYLLA — ON THE WAY 
 TO SUCCESS — A KING OF DREAMS AND MYS- 
 TERIES 
 
 IT was in a vein of bitter humor, and while 
 suffering from hunger and the agony of 
 suspense, that Richard Wagner wrote, at the 
 time of his first stay in Paris: "0 Poverty, 
 cruel misery, accustomed companion of German 
 artists, it is thou whom I shall invoke first of all 
 in writing these fervent memories! I wish to 
 glorify thee, my faithful patroness, who hast 
 accompanied me always and everywhere ; thou, 
 whose brazen arm has saved me from the as- 
 saults of prosperity which is full of deception, 
 thou who hast so carefully sheltered me from 
 its ardent rays behind thy dark and heavy 
 cloud, constantly hiding from my eyes the mad 
 76 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 77 
 
 vanities of the world. Yes, I am very grate- 
 ful for thy material interest, but couldst thou 
 not for the future bestow it upon some other 
 protege? Out of sheer curiosity, I should be 
 glad, if only for a single day, to enjoy the 
 pleasures of existence without any aid from 
 thee. Forgive me, austere goddess, for cherish- 
 ing this small ambition, but thou knowest the 
 bottom of my heart, thou knowest with what 
 sincere devotion I shall always worship at thy 
 shrine, even if I cease to be thy favorite, the 
 object of thy preference. Amen." 
 
 This humorous prayer, which was really a cry 
 of hidden pain, was only half heeded by the 
 inconstant goddess, for during his second so- 
 journ in Paris and also throughout his long 
 and weary wanderings (1859-1864) he experi- 
 enced many a day of hard privation, which 
 disappointment and the pain of being misun- 
 derstood, calumniated, and hated made him 
 feel all the more keenly, notwithstanding his 
 pride in his genius and his intrepid courage. 
 It must be confessed that his extravagant 
 
78 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 tastes and his prodigality were a big disadvan- 
 tage to him, and in some cases did him no 
 small harm. 
 
 The whole life of this most powerful dram- 
 atist of modern times was itself made up of a 
 series of dramas, each composed of innumera- 
 ble acts. In following Richard Wagner to Paris 
 for a second time, and then to Vienna and 
 Munich, we are really witnessing a tragedy in 
 three parts, three separate stage-settings. 
 
 It was in the autumn of 1859 that Wagner 
 returned to Paris, which it was still his dream 
 to conquer. This time he came with his hands 
 full of works which, if not already famous, had 
 at least received the endorsement of serious 
 artistic successes. He had the admiration of 
 the chosen few, and all the elements essential 
 to success. 
 
 He installed himself at the start in the 
 Champs-Elysees, on the Avenue Matignon. 
 For does not fortune smile most graciously 
 upon those who are fortunate to start with? 
 And this time Wagner had not come to Paris 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 79 
 
 to search his path and vegetate on the proceeds 
 of obscure hack-work, but to produce a work 
 that represents one of the mightiest efforts of 
 his vast genius, namely Tannhauser. 
 
 A short time later he hired a private dwell- 
 ing, previously occupied by the author of The 
 Romance of a Poor Young Man, Octave Feuil- 
 let. It was situated on the Rue Newton, No. 
 16, near the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne and 
 what was then known as the Barriere de 
 l'Etoile. The building has since been demol- 
 ished. Wagner furnished it mainly with ob- 
 jects that he brought from his retreat in Zurich, 
 and that conjured up tender memories of the 
 charming Mathilde Wesendonck. 
 
 In his personal recollections, M. E. Michotte 
 has recorded a good many precise details as to 
 the more striking characteristics of the great 
 composer's habits and mode of life at this time. 
 He lived in a tranquil and modest fashion. 
 Aside from a short walk in the Bois de Bou- 
 logne, whither he went accompanied by a 
 bright and lively little dog, whose antics 
 
80 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 amused him, he passed his time in working, 
 either with Edmond Roche on the French 
 translation of Tannhauser, or giving the finish- 
 ing touches to his Tetralogy. 
 
 Minna Wagner had once again returned to 
 her conjugal duties, and is described at this 
 time as a person of middle-class appearance, 
 simple and self-effaced. 
 
 Wagner, bold innovator that he was, had 
 come to Paris hoping to find the atmosphere 
 necessary to the success of his art, and he had 
 the good fortune, almost immediately after his 
 arrival, to form some valuable and comforting 
 friendships. Roche, who was a poet and musi- 
 cian of some talent, was working one day rather 
 sadly in the office of the Customs Department, 
 when he overheard a heated discussion. A 
 foreigner, a German, was protesting vigorously 
 against some of the formalities to which that 
 department is still only too ready, alas, to force 
 us to submit! The stranger gave his name, 
 Richard Wagner. Roche at once hastened to 
 intervene and smooth away the difficulties. 
 
WAGNER IN CARICATURE 
 Above: Caricature by Faustin (London Figaro, 1876), and by 
 Gill (Eclipse, 1876). Below : Wagner as Premiere Danseuse, bv 
 Tiret-Bognet (1891); Wagner the Tetralogist, by Gill (1876) 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 81 
 
 When Wagner sought to express his gratitude, 
 Roche declared that he had been only too 
 happy to have been of service to so great an 
 artist. 
 
 "What, you know me then?" asked Wagner, 
 surprised and delighted. Roche smiled and 
 began to hum softly some airs from Tann- 
 hauser and Lohengrin. 
 
 "Ah," cried Wagner, "what a happy omen! 
 The first Parisian whose acquaintance I make 
 knows my music. I must write and tell Liszt 
 at once. Monsieur, we shall meet again." And 
 he forthwith sent Roche a present of several 
 pieces of music which he unearthed from his 
 trunks and on which he inscribed a dedication. 
 
 We shall meet Roche again among the few 
 friends who used to gather around Wagner at 
 his house on Wednesday evenings, and who 
 included Gasperini, Champfleury, one of his 
 warmest partisans, Gustave Dore, Emile Olli- 
 vier and his wife, the daughter of Liszt, 
 Stephen Heller, Villot, superintendent of the 
 imperial museums, Berlioz, Jules Ferry, de 
 
82 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Lorbac, Charles Baudelaire, the great poet of 
 Fleurs du Mai, who was one of the first to write 
 a splendid analysis of the romantic art of 
 Richard Wagner. 
 
 Hans von Biilow soon added himself to the 
 number of the initiated, and used to play for 
 them on the piano, rendering with extraordi- 
 nary mastery portions of Tannhauser and 
 Tristan. 
 
 Wagner was able to express himself quite 
 fluently in French, and he used to amaze his 
 guests with his furious eloquence, the loftiness 
 of his views on topics of the most diverse sort, 
 as well as by his witticisms, and unexpected 
 and often highly picturesque anecdotes. 
 
 He interpreted his own works with surpris- 
 ing vigor, and his declamation was uncom- 
 monly powerful. His voice, on the other hand, 
 was not always true. The master had no illu- 
 sions in this respect and freely admitted that a 
 composer with so inharmonious a voice was 
 enough to put to flight all the master singers of 
 the world, including those of Nuremberg. 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 83 
 
 It is well known that Wagner made no claim 
 of being a better pianist than he was a singer, 
 and no doubt for good reason. 
 
 Gasperini has related that the author of 
 Tannhauser once invited the director of the 
 Theatre Liriqua to come and hear the score of 
 his opera: 
 
 "Wagner battled with the formidable finale 
 of the second act; he sang, he cried, he raved, 
 he played with his hands, his wrists, his elbows, 
 he smashed the pedals and bruised the keys. 
 In the midst of this chaos, M. Carvalho re- 
 mained as impassive as the man of whom 
 Horace told, waiting with a patience worthy of 
 antiquity for the pandemonium to cease. 
 When Wagner had finished, M. Carvalho mur- 
 mured a few words of thanks, turned on his 
 heel and disappeared." 
 
 Wagner determined to get the profane public 
 into training before producing Tannhauser. 
 The Theatre des Italiens was hired for the sum 
 of eight thousand francs, exclusive of the cost 
 of the orchestra and the lighting, and the first 
 
84 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 of three Wagner concerts was given there on 
 January 25th, 1860. 
 
 The first half of the program consisted of 
 the overture to the Flying Dutchman and se- 
 lections from Tannhauser, and the second half 
 included the prelude to Tristan and Isolde 
 and selections from Lohengrin. 
 
 Without dwelling too much upon the recep- 
 tion accorded at that time to Wagner's music, 
 and upon the division of audience, critics and 
 composers into two camps, we will cite the fol- 
 lowing ironic portrait of Wagner, drawn by the 
 incisive pen of Fiorentino, and published in the 
 Constitutionnel: 
 
 "He has a fine, noble and lofty brow, but 
 the lower part of his face is weak and vulgar. 
 One would say that two fairies, the one ma- 
 licious and the other kind and affectionate, had 
 presided at his birth. The fairy of harmony 
 caressed and beautified the brow from which 
 so many daring conceptions and mighty 
 thoughts were destined to come forth ; the fairy 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 85 
 
 of melody, foreseeing the harm which this 
 child would do her, seated herself upon his 
 face and flattened his nose." 
 
 The audience was made up of artists, musi- 
 cians and persons of social prominence; and 
 there were many Germans present. Wagner 
 was warmly applauded, and even those of his 
 hearers who were least inclined to be enthu- 
 siastic found themselves forced to accord him 
 their frank admiration after seeing him stand 
 for three hours, baton in hand, conducting both 
 the orchestra and the choruses from memory, 
 without music-rack or score. 
 
 This concert, which earned Wagner a num- 
 ber of fervent friendships and a few implacable 
 enmities, was followed by two others, on the 1st 
 and 8th of February respectively. M. J. G. 
 Prud'homme records that the deficit for these 
 three performances amounted to the sum of ten 
 thousand francs, which was paid by Mme. de 
 Moukhanoff. 
 
 Another event, more important, not to say 
 
86 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 momentous, was the famous production of 
 Tannhauser at the Opera, March 13, 1861. 
 
 It was all in vain that Wagner made calls 
 upon the most celebrated composers of the peri- 
 od, since irritable and nervous as he was, he had 
 allowed himself to express a multitude of caus- 
 tic judgments regarding them. He must needs 
 seek to secure some other influences. The most 
 efficacious seems to have been that of the 
 Princesse de Metternich, for it was thanks to 
 her, so the statement goes, that the Marechal 
 Maignan undertook to interest the Emperor on 
 Wagner's behalf. 
 
 Roche had now been working for a whole 
 year on his French translation of Tannhauser. 
 Sunday, his one day of freedom from the cus- 
 tom-house, he was in the habit of spending 
 with Wagner. On the basis of Roche's own 
 account, Victorien Sardou has pictured that 
 terrible man, striding up and down, with blaz- 
 ing eye and furious gesture, pounding on the 
 piano as he passed it, singing, shouting, and 
 repeating to his harassed collaborator: 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 87 
 
 "Go on, go on!" 
 
 And when finally the latter was forced to 
 sue for mercy, he asked in surprise: 
 
 "What is the matter?" 
 
 "I am hungry," answered the unhappy poet. 
 
 After swallowing a mouthful of food, the 
 two would return to their task; and as twilight 
 set in, poor Roche could see, as in a sort of 
 nightmare, a huge, stooping shadow that 
 seemed to dance around him, in the flickering 
 light of the lamp, still pounding on his infernal 
 piano, constantly shouting, "Go on, go on!" 
 and wearying his ears with cabalistic phrases 
 and notes imported from the lower regions. 
 
 The first rehearsal took place September 
 24th, 1860. But it was not until after a hun- 
 dred and sixty-four rehearsals, a number which 
 provoked the merriment of journalists and 
 caricaturists, that the first public performance 
 was given. 
 
 Everything had been done on a truly mag- 
 nificent scale. The leading singers, the tenor 
 Niemann, the baritone Morelli, Mmes. Tedesco 
 
88 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 and Marie Sasse were of the foremost rank; the 
 stage settings were sumptuous. 
 
 But Wagner had aroused all sorts of hostility, 
 against his work, against his reforms in music 
 and the theater, even against himself person- 
 ally. A clique had been formed, composed 
 chiefly of members of the Jockey Club, and 
 the uproar they made rendered a hearing of the 
 opera impossible. Wagner's tempestuous na- 
 ture, his aggressive publications, the more or 
 less disguised hostility of the French compos- 
 ers, his own unwisdom in writing the bac- 
 chanale of the Venusberg in the symphonic 
 style of his latest works, and offering it to his 
 audience by way of a ballet after the overture, 
 were quite enough, aside from certain reasons 
 of a political nature, to explain Wagner's fail- 
 ure and what amounted to a riot. It should 
 be added that, in spite of the fervor of the 
 initiated few, a band of independent and auda- 
 cious artists, the French public was not yet 
 ready to understand such complicated instru- 
 mentation, nor the distinctly Germanic nature 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 89 
 
 of the theme celebrated by this new genius. 
 
 For the second performance Wagner made 
 certain modifications in the passages which had 
 provoked hilarity. There was less laughter but 
 more disturbance, thanks to an assortment of 
 hunting whistles purchased from an armorer in 
 the Passage de l'Opera and distributed among 
 the members of the Jockey Club. The presence 
 of the emperor and empress in no wise deterred 
 this demonstration, against which a good many 
 people arose in protest, and which called forth 
 an eloquent and indignant denunciation from 
 Charles Baudelaire. Similar scenes of violence 
 greeted the third performance, and Berlioz as- 
 serts with evident satisfaction that Wagner was 
 publicly hailed as a knave, a blackguard and 
 an idiot. 
 
 Although the receipts amounted to 10,790 
 francs, 60 centimes, Wagner, acting upon the 
 advice of his friends, withdrew Tannhauser. In 
 addition to Baudelaire, other writers such as 
 Theophile Gautier, Vacquerie and Catulle 
 Mendes, undertook to defend the insulted art- 
 
90 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 ist, who for the next six months signed his let- 
 ters, "The hissed author of Tannhauser." And 
 Jules Janin, the critic on the Debats, suggested 
 a picturesque coat-of-arms for those members 
 of the Jockey Club who had made the demon- 
 stration: "a whistle, on a field of howling 
 throats." 
 
 Notwithstanding that he answered the at- 
 tacks of his adversaries in a fierce and incisive 
 manner, and that he suffered from this out- 
 come which cruelly aggravated his financial 
 difficulties, Wagner could at least console him- 
 self with the fact that he had been estimated 
 at his real value, as poet, musician and dram- 
 atist, by a select minority of the French public. 
 And that, too, at a time when in Germany he 
 was for the most part more discussed than 
 honored, and where they hesitated to produce 
 such costly spectacles. Nevertheless the author 
 of Tannhauser was profoundly hurt in his 
 pride as an artist, and more especially a Ger- 
 man artist, and he made the mistake of nursing 
 the memory of his enemies rather than his 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 91 
 
 sympathizers, in connection with these experi- 
 ences in France. 
 
 Austria, whither he next went, was far less 
 hospitable to him. Vienna appeared to him 
 as the capital city of true frivolity, and al- 
 though Lohengrin had been applauded there, 
 he had to renounce the pleasure of seeing 
 Tristan produced. Paris, on the other hand, in 
 spite of the bitterness of a defeat which was 
 perhaps more apparent than real, had left him, 
 to borrow his own phrase, "some encouraging 
 memories." 
 
 Vienna, on the contrary, was a solitude in 
 which he felt misunderstood and discouraged. 
 Evidently condemned to a wandering life, Wag- 
 ner now returned to Paris and remained there 
 incognito for two months (December and Jan- 
 uary, 1861-1862), living on the Quai Voltaire, 
 and working on the text of the Meister singer. 
 He passed the ensuing year at Biberich, on the 
 banks of the Rhine. Then he returned to. Aus- 
 tria, making it the starting point for a trip to 
 Russia, where he gave several concerts at Mos- 
 
92 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 cow and St. Petersburg (1863), and for visits 
 to Budapest and Prague, to superintend the 
 production of his works. 
 
 M. Adolphe Jullien, whose writings on Wag- 
 ner are authoritative, relates that he was very 
 well received at court and that his concerts 
 brought him in a considerable sum. But like 
 many another artist, Wagner took little pains 
 to economize. With the true instinct of the 
 theatrical profession, he loved all things that 
 pleased the eye, and especially fabrics that 
 lent themselves to harmonious folds. 
 
 A Viennese dressmaker of high repute, Frau- 
 lein Bertha, made him dressing-gowns and 
 jackets of pink, pale blue and flaming red satin, 
 with lilac or orange ribbons. Lace shirts and 
 satin shoes completed the princely flamboyance 
 of his attire. According to letters dating from 
 1864 to 1867, the cost of these furnishings 
 amounted in a single year to eight thousand 
 francs. This correspondence betrays the fact 
 that his love of luxury was far greater than his 
 desire to pay his bills promptly. 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 93 
 
 Without indulging in useless comments, we 
 need not be greatly surprised to find that his 
 financial condition was greatly aggravated. 
 Meanwhile the campaign against this reformer 
 of the operatic stage continued to bear bitter 
 fruit. He was accused of the most heinous 
 misdeeds. At this time he was living in a small 
 house at Penzing on the outskirts of Vienna. 
 Nevertheless, he was reproached for luxurious 
 living and abominable misconduct, even for 
 the champagne which he drank to calm the 
 state of his disordered nerves. Yet in reality, 
 notwithstanding his expensive tastes, he sought 
 his true pleasures in the full development of 
 his musical dramas. His experience as a dram- 
 atist had served only to increase his zeal for 
 revolutionizing both the musical technique of 
 the opera and its methods of portraying human 
 emotions. If he failed to achieve works in full 
 accordance with his desires during these years 
 of trial, he nevertheless abandoned none of his 
 gigantic conceptions, nor marred them by a 
 single concession. But how is an artist to 
 
94 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 struggle against the self-interest of some and 
 the settled habits of others, and establish a new 
 system in the art of evoking the beautiful, 
 when he is destitute of resources and must 
 slave desperately merely for the purposes of 
 keeping himself alive? For, after a few profit- 
 able engagements and brilliant performances, 
 Wagner had once more dropped back into 
 silence and isolation. 
 
 Hounded by his creditors and wearied by so 
 many useless efforts, he left Austria, returned 
 to Switzerland, and took refuge with the Wille 
 family, at Mariafeld. 
 
 Frau Eliza Wille welcomed her illustrious 
 and unhappy guest with charming gracious- 
 ness. All he wanted was to be let alone and 
 to work in peace upon the last portion of his 
 Meister singer. She pictures him to us strid- 
 ing up and down the terrace in front of the 
 villa, in his long tunic of brown velvet and with 
 his black cap on his head, looking like some 
 patrician who has just stepped out of an en- 
 graving by Albrecht Diirer. 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 95 
 
 This exceptional woman saw that the ener- 
 getic and unconquerable Richard Wagner was 
 now broken down, weary of work, unable to 
 control himself. In addition to the tortures 
 which his own imagination inflicted on him, 
 and the wretched state of his finances, the 
 causes of his present prostration were legion. 
 His irritability had estranged him from his 
 family and his life-long friends. As for Frau 
 Minna Wagner, she had gone back to her own 
 family in Dresden. 
 
 Wagner was worried by his inability to give 
 his wife financial aid. But one day he showed 
 Frau Wille a letter and said that now he could 
 send the money, since the people in Paris were 
 honest enough to pay a royalty to a composer 
 whose works they had publicly produced. 
 Then, becoming excited, he cried out: 
 
 "Everything would have gone well between 
 my wife and me, if I had not spoiled her so 
 deplorably. . . . She could not understand 
 that a man like me cannot live if his wings are 
 fettered. What did she know of the divine 
 
96 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 rights of passion, which I have proclaimed by 
 the blazing funeral pyre of the Walkyrie, ban- 
 ished from heaven by the gods! Love sacri- 
 fices itself in death, that is the significance of 
 the Gotterdammerung." 
 
 It was in vain that Frau Wille lent him 
 books on Napoleon and Frederick the Great, 
 and the works of the German mystics. It was 
 in vain that she foretold the splendid future 
 which awaited him. But let us listen once 
 again to her own words, for she has admirably 
 described Wagner's attitude and utterances 
 during that painful sojourn at Mariafeld. A 
 biographer is only too lucky to have at his dis- 
 posal documents of this sort, written in so 
 fine a style and with such rare psychological 
 discernment: 
 
 "The sun had just set in all its beauty, and 
 the sky and earth were bathed in light and 
 flame. Wagner said to me : 
 
 " 'Why do you talk to me of my future, when 
 my manuscripts are still stowed away in the 
 bottom of my closet? Who is going to produce 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 97 
 
 a work of art which I cannot allow to be per- 
 formed without the collaboration of propitious 
 demons, so that the entire world may know 
 that it is thus that the master conceived it and 
 wished it to be given?' 
 
 "In the intensity of his excitement, he was 
 striding back and forth through the room. All 
 of a sudden he paused in front of me and cried 
 out: 
 
 " 'I am differently organized, I have more 
 sensitive nerves, I must have beauty, brilliance 
 and light! The world owes me what I need. 
 I cannot live in a miserable position as organ- 
 ist, like your master Sebastian Bach. Am I 
 incredibly exacting in asking for the small 
 amount of luxury which I crave, I who am 
 preparing delight for thousands upon thou- 
 sands of human beings?' 
 
 "As he said this, he raised his head as though 
 he were uttering a challenge, then dropped 
 back into his seat in the window alcove and 
 stared out, straight ahead of him." 
 
 In spite of the heart-breaking cares of pe- 
 
98 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 cuniary distress that was only too genuine, in 
 spite of sleeplessness and ailments which forced 
 him to adopt a diet and take the waters of 
 Vichy, Wagner returned to his task and to a 
 short respite of hope. 
 
 Nevertheless, when he left Mariafeld he said 
 gravely to Frau Wille: 
 
 "My friend, you do not know the extent of 
 my misfortunes, nor the depths of wretched- 
 ness which await me!" 
 
 In taking leave of the village barber, he as- 
 sured him that he was going away because the 
 latter's prices were too high ! The good Figaro 
 of the place replied that he need not leave on 
 that account and that henceforward he would 
 give him bargain rates. Wagner was much 
 amused by this incident, notwithstanding his 
 many anxieties. 
 
 Wagner made his way to Stuttgart. At this 
 moment he had reached the acme of discour- 
 agement and misfortune. He thought of re- 
 turning to Russia, and even of setting out for 
 America. But one cannot help believing that 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 99 
 
 his "propitious demons" were watching over 
 Wagner and over his immense and pathetic 
 art. An envoy from the young king, Ludwig 
 II of Bavaria, Herr von Pfistermeister, after 
 having vainly sought him in Vienna and Maria- 
 feld, finally discovered him at Stuttgart, in 
 April, 1864. 
 
 This was an immense good fortune for Wag- 
 ner, and he wrote to tell of it to Frau Eliza 
 Wille, who had helped him to bear so many 
 sorrows and anxieties. 
 
 He had just been presented to the king, on 
 the 4th of May: 
 
 "The king," he wrote, "is unfortunately so 
 handsome, so intelligent, so ardent and so great 
 that I fear that his life will vanish away from 
 this vulgar world like a fugitive and divine 
 dream. He loves me with the ardor and fer- 
 vor of first love, he knows and understands 
 all that concerns me. He wants me to remain 
 permanently with him, he wants me to work 
 and to rest and to produce my dramas; he is 
 willing to give me everything that I need; he 
 
100 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 wants me to finish the Ring of the Nibelung, 
 and he is going to have it produced precisely 
 in the way that I desire. I am to be relieved of 
 every pecuniary care ; I am to have everything 
 that I want; and the sole condition is that I 
 remain with him." 
 
 Thus it was that Wagner became, not the 
 conductor of the Court Theater's orchestra, but 
 the personal friend of this strange sovereign, 
 who craved intellectual intoxication. This 
 dreamer, this mystic, this noble and singular 
 patron of arts and letters saw in Wagnerianism 
 and in the development of the musical drama 
 a source of ecstasies and lofty religious emo- 
 tions. He understood Wagner as he really was, 
 systematic, obstinate and sublime in his concep- 
 tion of a supreme art; indeed, he understood 
 him better than his best friends did. Even 
 Hans von Biilow and Liszt were less devoted 
 followers than he. 
 
 It looked as though Wagner had now come 
 to the end of his humiliations. For was not 
 this king, who had just succeeded to the throne, 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 101 
 
 and was so enamored of Wagner, destined to 
 become his "guardian angel"? And indeed, the 
 path towards triumph did seem to have been 
 made easy; yet Wagner had not yet finished 
 climbing his Calvary. Notwithstanding that 
 Ludwig of Bavaria showed such remarkable 
 faith in him, he still had to contend against 
 the force of tradition and the settled habits of 
 a public which even yet numbered far too many 
 Philistines. 
 
 Wagner became all powerful at court. The 
 extraordinary monarch, Ludwig II, began to 
 hoard up his revenues and postponed certain 
 public works undertaken by his father, in order 
 to preserve intact the sum needed for the pro- 
 duction of the Ring of the Nibelung. Conse- 
 quently, the great poet-musician was looked 
 upon as the king's favorite. The socialist Las- 
 salle, as well as the parents of a murderess, ap- 
 pealed to him to intercede on their behalf with 
 Ludwig II. 
 
 The king appointed Hans von Biilow as his 
 own personal pianist; and Wagner, in a frenzy 
 
102 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 of joy, looked upon the kindly monarch as a 
 divine being, endowed with the most marvel- 
 ous faculties. 
 
 After having had a representation of Tann- 
 hauser at the Court Theater in Munich, he 
 gave a production of the Flying Dutchman at 
 the same theater, on the 4th of December, 1864. 
 For a time, Wagner lived in a sort of enchanted 
 dream, which was nevertheless troubled by the 
 clamors of a certain element which criticized 
 the conduct and infatuation of the king. The 
 latter, with unparalleled sureness of purpose, 
 dreamed of nothing but the realization of the 
 Wagnerian drama; and it was under admirable 
 conditions that Tristan, an incomparable speci- 
 men of Wagnerian art, was produced (May- 
 June, 1865). These performances, to borrow 
 the author's own phraseology, were veritable 
 artistic festivals, conducted with absolutely no 
 regard to the financial outcome of the venture. 
 It was no longer a question of pleasing or not 
 pleasing, but of at last presenting a "solution of 
 pure problems of art." Among the members of 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 103 
 
 the cast, special mention should be made of 
 Schnorr von Carolsfeldt and his wife. 
 
 Hans von Biilow had now become conductor 
 at the Court Theater. Wagner and the king, 
 however, were preoccupied with plans for an 
 ideal theater, for the exclusive production of 
 Wagnerian drama, and a small model of which 
 was exhibited to a special public composed of 
 those who showed more or less zeal for the 
 cause. 
 
 Meanwhile, the hostility against the mon- 
 arch and his protege was increasing and began 
 to be disquieting. While the one was re- 
 proached for his prodigality, the other was cen- 
 sured for his unrestrained sybaritism. Journal- 
 ists circulated calumnies about him, and as- 
 serted that "a great oriental potentate could be 
 very well contented with the standard of living 
 set by Wagner." 
 
 There is no doubt that Wagner took advan- 
 tage of his prestige in a lordly way and without 
 scruples. The story is told that the principal 
 upholsterer of the city, to whom he owed a 
 
104 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 sum equivalent to twenty thousand dollars, 
 waylaid him one day publicly in the theater, 
 and swore that he would not let him go until 
 he had paid his debts. The man raised such 
 an outcry that Wagner was forced to draw 
 him a draft on the royal treasury. 
 
 If we are to avoid the charge of partiality, 
 we must admit that such occurrences, even if 
 allowance is made for exaggeration, are charac- 
 teristic, and explain the anger of the subjects of 
 Ludwig II. 
 
 Between him and Wagner a real intimacy 
 existed, and in their intercourse they employed 
 the familiar "thou" and "thee." Ludwig II has 
 left evidence of his affection and his Wag- 
 nerian fervor in a letter addressed to a cousin, 
 the fiancee of his dreams, who had once of- 
 fered him some wild flowers. He tells how he 
 had found on a piano, belonging to relatives 
 of his, the Princesses Max, some of the poet- 
 musician's librettos. He became absorbed in 
 Lohengrin. The mystery of the legend ap- 
 pealed to his own mysterious soul: 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 105 
 
 "How many times," he wrote, "I have seen 
 in imagination the knight and his faithful swan 
 gliding over the waves! There I found my 
 childhood dreams and my youthful fantasies 
 delightfully realized. And these familiar per- 
 sonages spoke to me in rhythms which intoxi- 
 cated me like the voluptuous perfume of the 
 lindens in bloom." 
 
 Let us hear further these strange and noble 
 confessions of the poet-king, who found in the 
 art of Wagner the realization of a pure and 
 religious ideal, who said to him, "You and 
 God," and who assured him of his faithful en- 
 thusiasm until even beyond the grave, in the 
 empire of universal death: 
 
 "How we became friends, friends in the high- 
 est sense of the term, which has been so much 
 abused, the world already knows. And this 
 world, which I have never loved, obliges me 
 to reveal myself continually more and more, 
 because of the manner in which it judges this 
 friendship. What might I not have had to 
 endure from this venial and despicable world, 
 
106 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 if I had not been King? . . . God in his good- 
 ness will leave me the joy which I derive from 
 fostering and carrying out the plans of this 
 dear friend, and from being to him in a small 
 measure what he is to me infinitely." 
 
 In order to understand the tone of this 
 mystic admiration, a form of romanticism full 
 of morbid ecstasy, it will suffice to read a letter 
 written by Ludwig II to Wagner after the 
 performance of Tristan: 
 
 "Great and divine friend, I can hardly wait 
 until tomorrow evening, I am so eager to at- 
 tend the second performance. . . . My soul 
 longs to be ravished once again by that splen- 
 did, lofty, sublime work. All honor to its 
 creator ! All glory to him ! Will you not assure 
 me, my dear friend, that you will never allow 
 yourself to lose the courage to create new 
 works? In the name of those upon whom you 
 have bestowed a happiness such as God alone 
 can give, I pray of you that you will never 
 cease." 
 
 It is not unprofitable to dwell upon the ex- 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 107 
 
 altation of this eccentric and unhappy king, 
 for it enables us to define in advance the psy- 
 chology of Wagnerianism, an almost Europe- 
 wide cult of beauty, which is one of the most 
 striking intellectual events of the end of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 Under the auspices of Ludwig II of Bavaria, 
 who as a matter of fact made it possible for 
 him to realize his ambitious dreams in all their 
 integrity, Wagner played the role of a sort of 
 high priest. 
 
 The documents above cited are also of 
 weighty interest from the simple point of view 
 of the musician's biography, — especially if, 
 having shown an adequate appreciation of 
 these impassioned appeals, these intensely po- 
 etic avowals, we take the trouble to remember 
 that the sum expended in staging Tristan and 
 Isolde at Munich amounted to very nearly forty 
 thousand dollars, and that it had cost over 
 thirty thousand for Lohengrin. And it should 
 be added, without fear of exaggeration, that the 
 royal presents, both in money and in specific 
 
108 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 articles, had cost the Treasury something in 
 the neighborhood of a hundred thousand 
 dollars. t 
 
 It can easily be imagined that the Bavarian 
 press did not fail to circulate sensational details 
 and to excite the resentment of the public 
 against a king with such a passion for the 
 fine arts. The Kolnisches Zeitung announced 
 one day that Ludwig II had just presented his 
 favorite musician with a walking stick, the 
 handle of which was a swan wrought of gold 
 and set with diamonds. 
 
 The performance of Tristan, which had been 
 hours of enchantment for the king, the author 
 and the initiated few, meant little or nothing 
 to the general public. The author himself 
 stopped them after the fourth. 
 
 Eager to escape the "persecution" of the pop- 
 ulace of Munich, Wagner withdrew to Geneva. 
 He realized that, in the face of a more or less 
 open animosity, it would be impossible ever to 
 see the theater of his dreams erected in Mu- 
 nich. Accordingly, he decided to live in retire- 
 
SPLENDOR AND MISERY 109 
 
 ment. But he was not to be forgotten, for 
 Ludwig II remained his faithful friend 
 throughout all the time that he was striving, 
 in obscurity and silence, to complete the crea- 
 tions which were to win the admiration of 
 posterity. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 PEACE AND MEDITATION — FBOM DREAM TO REAL- 
 ITY — THE APOTHEOSIS OF RICHARD "WAGNER 
 
 IT was in his retreat at Triebschen, pic- 
 turesquely situated on the shore of the 
 Lake of the Four Cantons, that Wagner made 
 the first draft of Parsifal and finished his 
 Meister singer, the first representation of which 
 took place in June, 1868. 
 
 It was a splendid occasion. The king who 
 occupied the central box, had invited the dram- 
 atist to sit with him. After the end of the 
 first act there were calls for the author to 
 appear upon the stage, but Wagner was unable 
 to find the way. At the end of the perform- 
 ance, at the request of Ludwig II, he arose from 
 his seat and, from the eminence of the royal 
 box, bowed to the audience. 
 
 Nevertheless, from this time forth Wagner 
 no 
 
FROM DREAM TO REALITY 111 
 
 avoided the Bavarian capital. The first per- 
 formances of the Rhinegold (September 22, 
 1869) and the Walkyrie (June, 1870), were 
 given without him and suffered from his ab- 
 sence. The king, however, continued to hold 
 him in favor, and it is stated that he paid him 
 a visit incognito at Triebschen. 
 
 There Wagner continued to live, in a state 
 of happiness so great that it bordered upon 
 ecstasy. His wife Minna had died, January 
 25th, 1866, from heart disease, which for a long 
 time had undermined her health, although it is 
 stated that her condition became especially 
 precarious after the failure of Tannhauser at 
 Paris. 
 
 The great artist had never found in her that 
 intensity of love, confidence and surrender of 
 which he had dreamed. He once wrote that 
 he would give all his art in return for a woman 
 who would love him without reserve. Such a 
 woman he found in Cosima Liszt, who had 
 married Hans von Billow, and who left him in 
 order to share the destiny of Wagner. But far 
 
112 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 from demanding that he should abandon his 
 art, she aided its development. The Bayreuth 
 Festivals were destined to be her work, quite as 
 much as that of Richard Wagner, and she alone 
 had the necessary intelligence and energy to 
 carry on his sacred task and mission. 
 
 On this subject let us hear what Wagner 
 himself said, in his last letter to Eliza Wille, 
 dated June 23d, 1870: 
 
 "Since I last saw you in Munich (this was 
 at the time of the performance of the Meister- 
 singer, two years previous), I have not left my 
 retreat, which since then has been shared by 
 her who was destined to prove that there was 
 something that could be done for me, and that 
 the axiom formulated by so many of my 
 friends, 'There is nothing to be done for Wag- 
 ner,' was not true. She knew that there was 
 something to do and she has done it. She 
 has braved every ignominy and borne the bur- 
 den of every condemnation. She has given me 
 a son who is marvelously beautiful and strong, 
 and whom I have boldly named Siegfried. He 
 
FROM DREAM TO REALITY 113 
 
 is now as flourishing as my works are, and has 
 given me a renewal of life, for at last I have 
 found a reason for living." 
 
 Frau Wille herself is the source of some 
 graphic details of Wagner's intimate life during 
 this period of his complex and tumultuous life, 
 — a period as fruitful as that of Zurich, for all 
 that it was more secluded. Neither Frau Wille 
 nor Nietzsche, who spoke so highly of Wagner 
 before he began to disparage him, could con- 
 ceal their admiration for Frau Cosima, who 
 was a heroic woman and came of a noble 
 race. 
 
 "The gifted daughter of Liszt," said Frau 
 Wille, "resembled her illustrious father, and 
 yet with a marked difference. The intelligence, 
 the imagination and the poetry that animated 
 her made her the true companion for Wagner 
 and enabled her to follow him, with full under- 
 standing, to all the heights towards which his 
 genius drew him. She absorbed herself in his 
 music with the most devout enthusiasm, for 
 the world in which he lived was also her own. 
 
114 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Wagner often exerted his genius to pay her 
 some delicate and touching tribute in the form 
 of music. In her home life she was wholly- 
 devoted to her duties as wife and mother, gov- 
 erness and teacher of her children, as Wagner 
 himself has told me in his letters. Her intel- 
 lectual culture, her feminine tact, and her 
 knowledge of the world and of life rendered her 
 conversation most attractive." 
 
 It can be readily conceived that this atmos- 
 phere of alternate serenity and radiant exalta- 
 tion was essential to Wagner while he was com- 
 posing his wonderful idyll of Siegfried and the 
 greater part of Gotterdammerung, not to men- 
 tion numerous articles, such as The Art of 
 Conducting, The Aim of Opera, and Beethoven. 
 
 We have other picturesque details of the 
 Wagner of the Triebschen period. Catulle 
 Mendes, who had known him when he was liv- 
 ing in Paris, in the Rue d'Aumale, suffering 
 from all sorts of privations and anxieties, went 
 to pay him a visit on the shores of Lake 
 Lucerne. 
 
FROM DREAM TO REALITY 115 
 
 "We had hardly stepped from our convey- 
 ance," wrote Mendes, who was accompanied 
 by that rarely gifted poet, Villiers de l'lsle 
 Adam, "when we saw a huge straw hat, and 
 beneath it a pale face, with eyes that glanced 
 restlessly from right to left, as if seeking some- 
 thing. It was he. Somewhat overawed, we 
 stood there looking at him, not venturing to 
 advance. He was small, lean, and closely en- 
 veloped in a long frock coat of maroon cloth ; 
 and through the suspense of waiting, his whole 
 frail looking body, — which possibly was really 
 very strong, like a bundle of steel springs, — 
 was trembling almost convulsively, like an 
 hysterical woman. But his face retained a 
 magnificent expression of proud serenity. 
 While his mouth, with lips so thin and pale 
 as to be hardly visible, was twisted into the 
 lines of a sour smile, his splendid brow, be- 
 neath the hat that was pushed backward, his 
 splendid, vast, pure brow, surmounted by sin- 
 gularly soft hair, already turning gray, that was 
 brushed back, suggested unalterable peace and 
 
116 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 the pursuit of some immense idea. The mo- 
 ment that he saw us, Richard Wagner quivered 
 from head to foot with the suddenness of a 
 violin string vibrating to the rhythm of a piz- 
 zicato, tossed his hat in the air with cries of 
 mad welcome, almost dancing with joy, and 
 flung himself upon us, hung on our necks, 
 seized us by the arm, until hustled, jostled, 
 swept along in a whirlwind of words and ges- 
 tures, we found ourselves at last in the carriage 
 which was to take us to the master's habita- 
 tion." 
 
 One diverting anecdote is related in connec- 
 tion with this visit of Mendes and Villiers de 
 l'lsle Adam. The two French writers noticed 
 that they were treated by the hotel staff with 
 something more than respectful consideration. 
 The proprietor himself kissed their hands obse- 
 quiously. One day, after he had bowed many 
 times, he said to Mendes : 
 
 "Sire, Your Majesty's wishes shall be obeyed, 
 and since Your Majesty insists, we shall re- 
 spect his incognito." They had mistaken him 
 
FROM DREAM TO REALITY 117 
 
 for the king, Ludwig of Bavaria, and Villiers 
 for the Prince of Taxis. 
 
 Mendes further shows us Wagner with his 
 black dog and his black cap, or such as tradi- 
 tion has represented him, clad in frock coat, 
 with trousers of golden satin embroidered over 
 with flower designs of pearls. He had a passion 
 for silks and velvet, and luminous fabrics. He 
 moved tremulously; yet he never remained 
 seated, but talked, talked continuously, inter- 
 spersing his sublime conceptions with puns and 
 witticisms, expounding his dramatic projects 
 and the themes of his plots, and exhausting 
 the vocabulary of terms expressive of pride, 
 tenderness, violence and buffoonery. 
 
 His hearers laughed with him, wept with 
 him, taken out of themeslves, seeing his vis- 
 ions, yielding to "the terror and the charm of 
 his speech," as to a cyclone of sun-enveloped 
 dust and tempest. 
 
 And undoubtedly Mendes, the belated ro- 
 manticist, and Villiers, the artist of the scin- 
 tillating word, were well qualified to under- 
 
118 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 stand the hero of romantic art, Richard 
 Wagner. 
 
 Mme. Judith Gautier, in her turn, has given 
 us, in the course of her interesting Souvenirs, 
 a fine moral portrait of Wagner (July, 1869) : 
 
 "It must be admitted," she writes, "that 
 there are in Wagner's character a certain vio- 
 lence and rudeness that are responsible for his 
 being so often misunderstood, but only by 
 those who judge solely from outside appear- 
 ances. Excessively nervous and impression- 
 able as he is, whatever emotion he experiences 
 is carried to the point of paroxysm. A mild 
 disappointment drives him almost to despair; 
 the slightest irritation goads him into fury. 
 His marvelous and exquisitely sensitive organ- 
 ization has passed through terrible crises, and 
 one wonders how he rallies from them; a single 
 day of distress ages him by ten years, but when 
 he is happy again, he is younger than ever 
 within twenty-four hours. He squanders his 
 energies with extraordinary prodigality. He is 
 always sincere, always gives himself up wholly 
 
FROM DREAM TO REALITY 119 
 
 to whatever he is doing; yet at the same time 
 his nature is extremely changeable, and his 
 opinions and ideas, although quite absolute in 
 the beginning, are not in the least irrevocable; 
 no one is readier than he to admit an error, but 
 he must needs wait until the first heat is 
 passed." 
 
 Is it not worth while to meditate upon this 
 judicious portrait, in order to have an intelli- 
 gent understanding of this great artist, who 
 was at one and the same time so greatly adu- 
 lated and so greatly decried? 
 
 Notwithstanding his impulsive tempera- 
 ment, Wagner's life at Triebschen was on the 
 whole very happy and exceedingly fruitful. 
 From eight o'clock in the morning until five in 
 the afternoon he toiled ceaselessly, in the midst 
 of that majestic and fertile Swiss valley. It 
 was during his meditations at Triebschen that 
 the plans were matured for the Festspielhaus, 
 that temple of musical drama, of Wagnerian 
 drama, of German drama, which had been 
 Wagner's dream throughout long years. It was 
 
120 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 to be built at Bayreuth, whither even to this 
 day the Wagnerian pilgrimage wends its way 
 in accordance with the established rites. Wag- 
 ner himself openly declared that all his prior 
 successes were founded upon misunderstand- 
 ings and poor performances, and that his repu- 
 tation was not worth a nut-shell. Accordingly, 
 the dawn of his real glory was destined to date 
 from Bayreuth, where his thoughts were for 
 the first time realized in all their amplitude, 
 in that series of what we may call the Olympic 
 Games of modem Germany. 
 
 The laying of the cornerstone of the theater 
 at Bayreuth, built in accordance with the plans 
 drawn by Wagner's old friend, Semper, took 
 place on the 22d of May, 1872, to the accom- 
 paniment of a march written by Wagner in 
 1864, in honor of the king. The town had 
 donated the site. Nietzsche was present and 
 occupied a place of honor beside Frau Cosinia 
 Wagner. Ludwig II sent his secretary to give 
 assurance that the royal coffers would always 
 be open for these sublime manifestations, — and 
 
FROM DREAM TO REALITY 121 
 
 in point of fact those coffers were drawn upon, 
 time and again, during the years that followed. 
 The king also sent the following telegram to 
 Wagner: 
 
 "My dearest friend, on this day of such im- 
 portant significance to all Germany, I offer you 
 from the very bottom of my heart, my sincerest 
 and most ardent congratulations. Greeting 
 and benediction upon this great enterprise. 
 Today, more than ever, I am one with you in 
 spirit!" 
 
 Wagner had good reason for writing, as he 
 did in 1872: 
 
 "What the king has done means far more 
 than my life to me. What he has desired and 
 sought on my behalf represents a future of 
 glorious promise. A high intellectual culture, a 
 movement directed towards the noblest des- 
 tinies of which a nation is capable, that is what 
 the relations between him and me express and 
 represent." 
 
122 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 From this time forward, Wagner made his 
 permanent home in a house situated some little 
 distance from the Festspielhaus, and which he 
 christened Wahnfried, a somewhat enigmatic 
 term and one difficult to translate, but which 
 we may render "freedom from illusions, after 
 so many disappointments," could it not be 
 more appropriately rendered, "the illusion of 
 freedom," since Wagner, as Mr. Chamberlain 
 has remarked, was still destined to suffer from 
 his uncertainty of achieving that absolute, 
 total, definitive success, for which he had 
 prayed, even at Bayreuth, in the glorious years 
 of his old age? 
 
 Thanks to the development and activity of 
 the Wagnerian societies, and to the resources 
 furnished by the establishment of a special 
 fund, the cycle of the Ring of the Nibelung, 
 conceived by Wagner "in his confidence in the 
 German spirit and completed to the greater 
 glory of his august benefactor, King Ludwig II 
 of Bavaria," was produced in its integrity in 
 1876. Yet the attachment of his wife and son, 
 
FROM DREAM TO REALITY 123 
 
 and the devotion of the king, of Liszt and sev- 
 eral others, such as the Comte de Gobineau and 
 the poet Heinrich von Stein, did not save Wag- 
 ner from being once again misunderstood. 
 
 In spite of the presence of several kings and 
 other highly influential personages, the result 
 had not come up to the expectations of the 
 master. It was, in fact, a material setback. 
 Nevertheless, a second fund was collected and 
 a school of music and lyric declamation was 
 opened. But the success of this was not pro- 
 portioned to the effort. 
 
 In July, 1882, through the aid of a new sub- 
 scription, and thanks to various liberal dona- 
 tions, the public was admitted to sixteen repre- 
 sentations of Parsifal, Wagner's crowning work, 
 in which he has developed in heroic form his 
 doctrine of love and regeneration. These per- 
 formances were followed by six representations 
 of the cycle of the Ring. 
 
 The number of tickets sold was 8,200, and 
 the gross receipts amounted to 240,000 marks 
 ($60,000). 
 
124 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 The money subscribed had not been entirely 
 spent, so a fund was started to meet the ex- 
 penses of another series of Wagnerian perform- 
 ances, which owed their success quite as much 
 to dilettanteism as to the zeal of Frau Cosima 
 Wagner, and all the partizans and Wagner- 
 vereine taken together. 
 
 Accordingly, in spite of some last anxieties 
 and disappointments, Bayreuth represents the 
 apotheosis of Wagner, the great genius so long 
 decried and reviled, but henceforth glorified 
 in an almost religious manner, in those modern 
 mystery plays of drama and music. 
 
 Consequently, it is to Bayreuth that we must 
 turn in order to conjure up the glorious Wag- 
 ner of these closing years. And first of all the 
 question arises: Why did he choose Bayreuth 
 for the site of a theater which, according to his 
 own statement, was to cost in the neighborhood 
 of $225,000? Wagner's explanation is as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 "The choice could not be a capital city nor 
 any town already possessing a theater, nor a 
 
FROM DREAM TO REALITY 125 
 
 bathing resort that during the summer would 
 attract a great crowd of a sort utterly incapable 
 of appreciating such spectacles. It ought to be 
 situated as nearly as possible in the heart of 
 Germany. Besides, I could not choose any 
 other than a Bavarian town, if I was to hope 
 for a place of permanent residence, and it was 
 in Bavaria that I was destined to find it." 
 
 Mme. Judith Gautier, a Wagnerian from the 
 earliest hour, one might almost say from her 
 birth, and one who in her writings has paid 
 the highest tribute to the illustrious master, 
 may be entrusted to conduct us to Bayreuth. 
 We could scarcely ask for a more competent 
 guide: 
 
 "This little town . . . which the caprice of 
 a man of genius suddenly made famous, is hid- 
 den behind the cool mountain ranges of upper 
 Franconia: pine woods, rapid streams, vast 
 meadows bounded by hills showing faintly blue 
 against a misty sky; long roads bordered with 
 poplars, along which teams of oxen plod slowly, 
 two by two, straining under the copper yokes 
 
126 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 that almost form a crown for their heads: — 
 such are the first impressions as we approach 
 this town that is ordinarily so peaceful; and 
 then suddenly, when the theater standing sim- 
 ply and proudly upon the hill has opened its 
 doors, the same town witnesses a gathering of 
 emperors, kings and princes from all lands, an 
 influx of rejoicing crowds, whom the inn-keep- 
 ers, roused out of their long lethargy, proceed 
 to plunder to the best of their ability." 
 
 The theater, situated outside of the town 
 and overlooking it, is a structure of simple as- 
 pect, somewhat resembling the Trocadero. In 
 the interior there are neither boxes nor bal- 
 conies. The rows of seats form a segment of a 
 circle of very slight curvature, there are no side 
 seats, there is no prompter's box, and the or- 
 chestra is hidden from view beneath the stage. 
 Such, in Wagner's eyes, was the way that 
 drama should be given; and it may well be 
 asked why we have not followed so good an 
 example. The parterre contains fifteen hun- 
 dred seats, and the "Fiirstengalerie" two hun- 
 
FROM DREAM TO REALITY 127 
 
 dred. The stage alone is lighted. Trumpets 
 announce the commencement of each act. 
 
 Mme. Judith Gautier has also described 
 Wagner's house, which was built after his own 
 plans. It stands at the end of a broad alley; 
 it is almost square, and is built of reddish gray 
 stone, with no ornamentation excepting a 
 fresco over the front entrance, representing a 
 scene from the Ring. 
 
 A straight staircase leads to a little ante- 
 chamber, from which one enters a well lighted 
 and lofty vestibule; it contains a gallery on a 
 level with the second story; it has a marble 
 floor and contains a number of marble statues ; 
 to the right is the dining-room, to the left a 
 drawing-room filled with works of art; at the 
 back is a sort of vast library terminating in a 
 rotunda. 
 
 Mme. Judith Gautier paid a last visit to 
 Wagner on September 29th, 1881. After cross- 
 ing the garden, planted with ampelopsis and 
 jars of Bengal roses, and passing a two-story 
 pavilion, a children's gymnasium and a poul- 
 
128 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 try-house, in which she saw peacocks and sil- 
 ver pheasants, she found the master, who wel- 
 comed his visitors "with that tremulous eager- 
 ness that he always showed to those faithful 
 friends whose love, he felt, was of the perfect 
 sort; for Wagner had no taint of that egotisti- 
 cal indifference that so often affects great men 
 when they have arrived at a certain degree of 
 glory." 
 
 Wagner, on this occasion, seemed to be full 
 of gayety and good spirits; and although he 
 spoke French with some difficulty, this fact did 
 not prevent him from indulging in puns and 
 witticisms. He said that he was homesick for 
 sunshine, he wanted to visit India and the Bos- 
 phorus. He took his friends to the studio of 
 the artist Joukowski, and then to call upon the 
 machinist Brandt. He talked enthusiastically 
 of his own work. 
 
 "When one is young," he said, "when the 
 nerves are not yet wearied, and one can still 
 write opera scores with a certain nimbleness 
 (even that of Lohengrin), even if one does not 
 
FROM DREAM TO REALITY 129 
 
 know all the resources of tonal coloring and 
 orchestration, the work is not to be compared 
 with the labor demanded by new works that 
 have to be written in ripe old age. Auber, how- 
 ever, continued to compose up to the age of 
 eighty-four without fatigue, but then he had 
 not changed his manner." 
 
 At sixty-nine years of age, Wagner was still 
 capable of considerable activity; he rose at six 
 o'clock; after his bath, he lay down again, and 
 read until ten; at eleven he set to work and 
 continued until two. After dinner he rested 
 again for a short time, reading as before; from 
 four until six he took a carriage ride, after 
 which he resumed his work until eight, spend- 
 ing the rest of the evening with his family. He 
 was a vegetarian by choice. He was patriotic. 
 He was the declared enemy of vivisection, and 
 we know that he always had a great fondness 
 for animals. 
 
 "Our campaign," he said to his guests, "has 
 already borne good results in Germany. The 
 carpenters who make the instruments of tor- 
 
130 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 ture intended for unhappy dogs complain that 
 they do not sell nearly as many." 
 
 After all the storms and struggles, Richard 
 Wagner still retained his keen and ardent sen- 
 sibility. On the occasion of his seventieth an- 
 niversary, when a benefit performance was 
 given for the aid of needy musicians, he de- 
 clared that he was one of them, since he had 
 the most urgent need — of affection ! Up to the 
 very end of his life he continued to show the 
 same alternations between violence and singu- 
 lar tenderness. 
 
 The spirit of religious reverence which ani- 
 mates his magnificent Parsifal also inspires his 
 essay on Religion and Art. 
 
 After 1879 Wagner was in the habit of pass- 
 ing his winters in Italy. On the thirteenth of 
 February, 1883, he died suddenly in Venice, 
 where he had formerly written Tristan, stricken 
 down while at work by apoplexy. 
 
 On the evening of his death, his gondolier 
 was found weeping bitterly, on the steps of the 
 Vendramini Palace, where he resided and in 
 
FROM DREAM TO REALITY 131 
 
 which he had a bedroom hung in pale blue and 
 rose-colored satin. 
 
 Ludwig II of Bavaria gave orders that no 
 one should touch the body until after the ar- 
 rival of his envoy. The body was embalmed 
 by Professor Hofmann of Berlin. The king's 
 secretary escorted the remains to the frontier, 
 and in Munich his adjutant general brought a 
 wreath of laurels and palms, with this inscrip- 
 tion: "King Ludwig of Bavaria to the great 
 poet of word and music, Richard Wagner." 
 
 Wagner was interred in the Villa Wahnfried 
 with great pomp. It required three wagons to 
 carry the wreaths, of which there were more 
 than two hundred. 
 
 Ludwig II came next day to weep alone be- 
 side his tomb. 
 
 Wagner left no fortune at his death, in spite 
 of the fact that the publishing house of Schott, 
 in Mayence, had purchased his score of Par- 
 sifal for a sum amounting to sixty thousand 
 dollars. His works and his memory are faith- 
 fully defended by his widow and his partizans. 
 
132 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 He created a human and a superhuman world, 
 which survives him and which transmits his 
 harmonious and richly colored vision of na- 
 ture and life to all succeeding generations. Ac- 
 cordingly, his long martyrdom, which preceded 
 the far too brief hours of his apotheosis at Bay- 
 reuth, was not endured in vain. Has not Wag- 
 ner himself said that he gave birth in the midst 
 of suffering? This suffering is perpetuated in 
 his majestic works, and is illumined by the rays 
 of love and faith. Thus, the Wagnerian re- 
 ligion was born of his own religion; it fortifies 
 and consoles men today as it fortified and con- 
 soled Richard Wagner during his life, a life 
 dedicated to all the infernos and all the glories 
 of immortal art. 
 
PART SECOND 
 THE WAGNERIAN DRAMA 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 SOME PRINCIPLES OF WAGNERIAN ART — POETRY 
 AND MUSIC — FROM OPERA TO DRAMA 
 
 A WORK of art, says Richard Wagner, "is 
 religion rendered perceptible in a living 
 form." This definition is, at the same time, the 
 definition of Wagnerian drama. 
 
 Brought up among actors, a poet himself 
 from childhood, drawing his inspiration from 
 the lofty conceptions of the Greek tragedians 
 and from Shakespeare, and nurtured on Wie- 
 land, Schiller and Goethe, Wagner formed the 
 dream of incorporating music in the drama, and 
 he succeeded perfectly in realizing it. 
 
 On the other hand, believing that art was 
 able to convey spiritual truths through physical 
 sensations, he was convinced, as Mr. Chamber- 
 lain has ably demonstrated, of the moral sig- 
 nificance of the world, and placed his mighty 
 135 
 
136 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 genius for symphonic construction at the ser- 
 vice of a philosophy of love and pity and 
 human and religious renovation, or, for the 
 sake of using the consecrated term, redemp- 
 tion. 
 
 Now that we have drawn his portrait and 
 followed the essential vicissitudes of his career, 
 it seems worth while to examine briefly his 
 principal characteristics as poet, dramatist and 
 musician, not to say metaphysician. 
 
 The poet in him holds considerable place. 
 There have too often been attempts to ignore 
 this, and, besides, his fame as a composer over- 
 shadowed that of poet. Are we not in the habit 
 of contemplating people, and famous men are 
 no exception, from a single angle? This is a 
 wide-spread error, and it is all the more serious 
 when the person in question is a Wagner, 
 whose art is essentially a synthetic art com- 
 posed of the most diverse elements. 
 
 Wagner left nothing to chance in his work, 
 which was the fruit of flawless genius and of a 
 prodigiously daring and tenacious will. He 
 
WAGNERIAN ART 137 
 
 wrote all his own librettos, in order that they 
 should be adapted to his music, and in writing 
 them he revealed himself as a delicate and im- 
 passioned poet. Berlioz also worked upon his 
 own librettos, but with various collaborators. 
 Wagner adhered invariably to his system. And 
 therein lay his power and his safety. 
 
 How many musicians of talent and genius 
 have struggled to infuse life and harmony into 
 shapeless scenarios, mediocre and silly librettos ! 
 Beethoven, for whom Wagner professed a keen 
 admiration, amounting almost to a cult, found 
 himself embarrassed by the libretto of Fidelio, 
 and was unable to do himself full justice in that 
 opera. As has been convincingly shown by Al- 
 fred Ernst, Wagner succeeded in attaining a 
 perfect fusion between the poetic and the 
 musical element. 
 
 As a poet, Wagner was master of his forms 
 even in his earliest productions; he drew his 
 inspiration from ancient texts, he employed 
 both regular rhyme and alliteration, he revived 
 archaic terms, and excelled, especially in Tris- 
 
138 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 tan and Isolde, in coining new substances of 
 broad significance. 
 
 If the composition of the Ring of the Nibe- 
 lung is the work of a master, the poem of Tann- 
 hduser is in itself a profound inspiration, ex- 
 quisite in sentiment, the work of a writer pos- 
 sessed at once of great vigor and great charm. 
 The famous Romance of the Star and the In- 
 vocation of Venus are poems which would do 
 honor to the best poets of contemporary Ger- 
 many. 
 
 Similarly, the rhythms and cadences in Par- 
 sifal prove him to be an artist of exquisite 
 subtlety in the value of words. It is certain 
 that when such ingenious and discerning wri- 
 ters as Gerard de Nerval, Baudelaire, and Vil- 
 liers de l'lsle Adam made themselves heralds of 
 the Wagnerian drama, they had an intuitive 
 perception not only of his vast purposes, but of 
 the lyric audacity and wealth of poetic re- 
 sources that are so easily to be found in him. 
 
 Accordingly, Wagner is a great poet, and it 
 should be at once added, a great dramatic poet. 
 
WAGNERIAN ART 139 
 
 As a dramatist, he could not limit his genius 
 within the bounds of recorded history. Wagner 
 did not become himself until subsequently to 
 Rienzi. He could move at ease in the midst of 
 immense, mysterious subjects, among legends 
 and myths, in which the characters, while mak- 
 ing us feel their kinship, have no difficulty in 
 taking on the quality of heroes and divinities. 
 Invention and fantasy are not only permissible 
 but even necessary to themes of this character. 
 In their primitive form they already contain 
 symbols; transmitted from generation to gen- 
 eration, they become the embodiment of the 
 soul of a people, and hence lend themselves to 
 the original symbolism of the modern artist. 
 
 The Wagnerian drama, contained in three 
 acts, which carry us from the exposition to the 
 denouement, through all the fluctuations of the 
 plot, transports us to fairyland by its swift 
 changes of scene and more especially by the 
 pomp and diversity of its spectacles. 
 
 And as such, it is no longer content to be 
 merely a drama, but becomes a sort of festival, 
 
140 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 majestic, national, religious. And why should 
 we be surprised at the luxury and prodigality 
 of Richard Wagner, when we remember his 
 concrete love of sumptuous, amazing, dazzling 
 decorations? Such, for example, as the storm 
 in the Rhinegold, followed by the rainbow; or 
 again the Rhine-Maidens, depicting nature in 
 her strangest and most fascinating aspects. 
 
 In the midst of these enchanted settings, his 
 personages are exalted, his characters rise 
 above human desire and heroic will to the 
 heights of abnegation and renouncement. 
 Thus it is that we have side by side, Elsa and 
 Isolde, Brunnhilde and Kundry, Wolfram and 
 Lohengrin, Siegfried and Parsifal. Earthly 
 passions join hands with celestial sacrifices. 
 
 In order to realize of what great variety 
 Wagner is capable in his creation of charac- 
 ters, it will suffice to compare the daring Sieg- 
 fried with the crafty dwarf Mime, and to con- 
 trast the good and adroit Hans Sachs in the 
 Meistersinger, with the sorrowing and divine 
 Tristan. 
 
WAGNERIAN ART 141 
 
 Is it true that Richard Wagner availed him- 
 self of existing and fully developed types, con- 
 tenting himself with placing them in a setting 
 of musical tragedy? In order to convince our- 
 selves of the contrary, it will be sufficient to 
 consider the differences pointed out by Albert 
 Ernst, between the Scandinavian Odin and the 
 Wotan of the Tetralogy. 
 
 Wagner's mysticism which, in our opinion, 
 has set in motion throughout the length and 
 breadth of Europe a current of ideas and senti- 
 ments in opposition to the doctrine of posi- 
 tivism, found free scope in this atmosphere of 
 miracles, magic and damnation. And it is the 
 Christian idea of sacrifice which asserts itself all 
 the way from the Flying Dutchman to Parsifal. 
 More than that, as has not failed to be noticed 
 on numerous occasions, Christianity is, in cer- 
 tain cases, contrasted with paganism. For in- 
 stance, in Tannhauser, Venus vanishes when 
 the name of Mary is uttered. 
 
 As for Parsifal, it is a veritable mystery play, 
 and the triumph of religious feeling in this last 
 
142 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 of Wagner's works has been generally recog- 
 nized. It is certain, nevertheless, that Wagner 
 intended it, not as an apology for any particu- 
 lar sect, but as a magnificent affirmation of 
 pure evangelism. 
 
 Amid all the confusing mass of dissertations 
 and discussions, involving all degrees of Wag- 
 nerianism, it seemed necessary to try to get a 
 clear conception of his general tendencies. Now 
 that we have done so, it remains to ask, what 
 are the laws which govern his musical drama? 
 
 They become more and more defined, in pro- 
 portion as he departs from conventional opera 
 and develops his own method with a majestic 
 amplitude that is sometimes complex to the 
 point of obscurity. It is above all in the Meis- 
 tersinger and Tristan, or in Parsifal, that we 
 may study his system and compare it with the 
 accepted methods of the opera. 
 
 In the true Wagnerian musical drama, we no 
 longer have recitatif, no isolated lyrics with 
 their required rhythms. The characters carry 
 on a dialogue, there is an orchestral movement 
 
WAGNERIAN ART 143 
 
 accompanying the action. The orchestra ex- 
 presses and generalizes all the emotions, an- 
 alyzing them to the utmost fugitive shading; 
 and the critics have good reason for drawing a 
 comparison with the role played by the chorus 
 in Greek tragedy when they attempt to define 
 that of the orchestra in the Wagnerian drama. 
 The symphony of motives serves as a descrip- 
 tion of the elements of nature and of the 
 drama: for instance, the undulation of the 
 waves, and the gallop of the Walkyries. 
 
 The prelude permits us to participate in a 
 sort of dream-vision of the action of the drama, 
 and consists of an idealized commentary on the 
 events we are about to witness. It is a collec- 
 tive and powerfully suggestive meditation, a 
 harmonious philosophizing over the persons 
 and the events which the musician is about to 
 conjure up. 
 
 It is generally known, furthermore, that in 
 each drama there are a number of leading 
 themes of leitmotiv consisting of basic melo- 
 dies. Gluck, to be sure, had already employed 
 
144 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 this method. Wagner certainly did not invent 
 it. Beethoven utilized it, and so did Mozart. 
 But Wagner built up his works on a foundation 
 of these characteristic themes. 
 
 With him, the melody accompanies the ac- 
 tion and never recurs arbitrarily. The themes 
 employed undergo a multitude of variations, 
 distinguished from one another as a result of 
 successive modifications. This is perfectly logi- 
 cal. An individual remains himself, even when 
 he alters; and it is the same way with every- 
 thing that is human, everything that forms 
 part of the universe and is in a perpetual state 
 of change. 
 
 In spite of the extreme complexity of cer- 
 tain of these themes, it has been observed that 
 this tempestuous revolutionist never went to 
 extremes, in regard to the vocal difficulties of 
 his roles. But he needed experienced actors, 
 with a gift for mobile and expressive mimicry. 
 His singers have to play and to make use of 
 all their means. Wagner demands of each one 
 all that he can give, in the same way that he 
 
WAGNERIAN ART 145 
 
 himself exhausts all the combinations in the 
 development and analysis of a passion that has 
 become a musical element. 
 
 Wagner's harmony unites the traditional 
 counterpoint of the schools with the indepen- 
 dent development of melodies. Whatever may 
 constitute the striking originality of the author 
 of the Tetralogy, his work is not an isolated 
 and unforeseen phenomenon, but it carries on, 
 in a gigantic synthesis, on the one hand the 
 work of Gluck, and on the other that of Bach 
 and Beethoven. 
 
 Thanks to the innumerable resources of his 
 orchestra, he succeeds in giving a strong and 
 vivid personality even to the minor characters 
 in his dramas. The instruments are appor- 
 tioned in groups, and reunited in families; each 
 one has its own particular role. It has been 
 remarked, for instance, that while, in the Ring 
 of the Nibelung, the tuba-counterbass indi- 
 cates in a certain way the redoubtable person- 
 ality of the giant Fafner, the trombone-coun- 
 terbass indicates that of Wotan, and announces 
 
146 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 his profound and dominating voice. We know 
 how many sentiments Wagner has succeeded in 
 expressing in his music-language, enormous 
 and tumultuous, eloquent and tender, thanks to 
 the horns and the clarinets. 
 
 But let us leave to technical musicians the 
 care of studying in detail and with precision 
 the Wagnerian methods of expression, and, if 
 they choose, his habitual processes, which be- 
 came more and more defined as he attained full 
 self-mastery. We will not even stop to ask 
 whether his rules have not done harm to some 
 over-zealous disciples, and hampered the full 
 expansion of certain musical personalities. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE3 GREAT WAGNERIAN THEMES — FROM LOVE 
 TO SACRIFICE — IN THE REALM OF DREAMS AND 
 BEAUTY 
 
 ONE of the most authoritative interpreters 
 of Wagner's works and doctrines, Mr. 
 Chamberlain, has said that the first of Wag- 
 ner's operas, The Fairies (1833), which was 
 produced in Munich some years after the mas- 
 ter's death, in June, 1888, contained "some- 
 thing quite prophetic," not only in some of its 
 musical developments, but also in the theme, in 
 which the plot is subordinate and the idea of 
 redemption is sharply emphasized. 
 
 But this work survives only as an indication 
 and a curiosity. 
 
 Although the Liebesverbot, or Novice of Pa- 
 lermo, contains a melody afterwards introduced 
 into Tannhauser (the Pardon of the Pilgrims), 
 147 
 
148 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 it is of very slight significance. The libretto 
 is a veritable imbroglio that reminds one of 
 certain old stock comedies, crowded with hack- 
 neyed episodes such as disguises, abductions, a 
 confused mass of intrigues, letters, exits, en- 
 trances, etc. 
 
 The work, however, is interesting for two 
 reasons: in the first place, because of the 
 doubled fervor of poet and musician, which re- 
 veals a curious and poignant sense of the pic- 
 turesque ; and secondly, because it represents a 
 state of mind. Young Wagner, thirsting for 
 liberty, an enemy of traditional German oper- 
 atic music, here shows himself equally tihye 
 enemy of puritanical hypocrisy. He exalts 
 pleasures and passions. 
 
 Rienzi, or The Last of the Tribunes, is a con- 
 ventional opera, destined primarily for the 
 Grand Opera at Paris, drawing its inspiration 
 from the customs of the period, and resembling 
 the works of Halevy, Scribe and Meyerbeer. It 
 is an historic drama, with far too much history 
 in it, overburdened with detail and constantly 
 
GREAT WAGNERIAN THEMES 149 
 
 sacrificing the development of the spiritual con- 
 flicts expressed by the musical motives, to 
 purely human action. 
 
 The scenic effects are adroitly managed, and 
 the score is not lacking in color nor in strength. 
 Indeed, this strength is carried to the point of 
 brutality. We realize this while listening to 
 the overture, which is none the less full of ad- 
 mirable qualities. Wagner himself was the first 
 to see his mistakes, the first to realize what 
 his score lacked; and he underwent a reaction, 
 not only against the other contemporary musi- 
 cians but against himself. The Flying Dutch- 
 man, produced only a few months later than 
 Rienzi, is the manifest and brilliant proof of 
 this. 
 
 Here we are in the presence of Wagnerian 
 drama in its first phase, with those leitmotivs 
 (the importance of which, as M. J. G. Prud'- 
 homme has very justly observed, Berlioz had 
 already recognized in his Fantastique) , with its 
 symphonic orchestration, with its suppression 
 of all useless diversions tending to interrupt 
 
150 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 the dramatic action, with what was then con- 
 sidered the daring freedom of its soaring har- 
 monies, and the especially bold employment of 
 chromatic scales. With the Flying Dutchman, 
 Wagner's rupture with conventional opera was 
 accomplished. By emancipating himself from 
 an illogical form, he was henceforth free to 
 work in a manner congenial to his tempera- 
 ment. 
 
 Furthermore, he had not only found his sys- 
 tem, but he had also discovered a type of sub- 
 jects that would permit him to expound the 
 human and divine themes of love, anguish, pity 
 and regeneration. The theme of the Flying 
 Dutchman, and the motive of redemption, 
 which is superbly developed in Senta's ballad, 
 are most significant in this regard. Moreover, 
 the popular legend of the Accursed Dutchman 
 was peculiarly calculated to appeal to the mel- 
 ancholy nature of that other wandering and ill- 
 fated soul, the tempestuous, sorrowful and ro- 
 mantic Richard Wagner. 
 
 He gave a new and deeper color to the orig- 
 
GREAT WAGNERIAN THEMES 151 
 
 inal version of the legend by his own splendid 
 aspirations, which gave a vibrant intensity to 
 the marvelous prologue to the Flying Dutch- 
 man, and to the score of the opera itself, which, 
 although uneven, is full of vigor and of a lofty 
 and touching psychology. For in this work 
 Wagner no longer wasted his time in binding 
 together a series of episodes, and describing 
 them by external methods. One would say 
 rather, that he had concentrated his attention 
 on the human soul, with all that it contained of 
 pathetic nostalgia and helpless yearning, and 
 had magnified its quivering pulsations. In 
 doing this he left the domain of history and 
 time, and in a certain sense spiritualized his 
 inspiration. Wagner was yet destined to be- 
 come the sonorous echo of those secret religious 
 inquietudes concealed in the inmost depths of 
 the noblest souls. 
 
 The theme of the Flying Dutchman, imbued 
 as it is with a spirit of wild and somber poetry, 
 was well adapted to the development of Wag- 
 nerian symbolism. The unfortunate victim of 
 
152 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 the malediction cannot be saved unless through 
 the tender devotion of a woman. Let us not 
 inquire too closely why Senta, the daughter of 
 Daland, falls in love, in advance, with the ac- 
 cursed stranger. Let us yield ourselves to the 
 mystery within the mystery. Insensible to the 
 passion of Erik the hunter, Senta has yielded 
 her heart to an ideal love. When the Hollan- 
 der reaches shore, she recognizes him as the one 
 whose salvation she is destined to accomplish 
 through the purity of her love. She will fol- 
 low him and give herself to him. When the 
 vessel prepares to depart in the midst of a tem- 
 pest, she ascends a rock and flings herself into 
 the waves, in order to reach the victim of the 
 curse. The sea engulfs the vessel, but love, 
 stronger than death, will unite Senta to him 
 whom she has redeemed, in celestial beatitudes. 
 Under similar circumstances, Elizabeth sacri- 
 fices herself to the knight Tannhauser, in the 
 romantic opera in three acts which bears his 
 name, and which is the outgrowth of a popular 
 
GREAT WAGNERIAN THEMES 153 
 
 legend and of the war of the singers of the 
 Wartburg. 
 
 In spite of his numerous experiments with 
 foreign themes, Wagner, from his youth up, 
 was theoretically in favor of a national drama, 
 capable of thrilling the heart of the entire na- 
 tion. It must not be forgotten that it was 
 Weber's Freischutz which first awakened his 
 artistic sensibility and revealed to him the 
 mission of which he was destined little by lit- 
 tle to acquire a clearer and more profound con- 
 ception. 
 
 Now, Tannhauser furnished him with a 
 theme typical of old Germany — romantic, 
 chivalrous and idealistic. At the same time, 
 the conflict between the senses and the soul, 
 between Venus and the Divine Spirit, under- 
 lies the legend and gives it its human and uni- 
 versal significance. In the seductive and pic- 
 turesque personage of Tannhauser the mad, 
 unbridled desire for pleasure is at war with the 
 immaculate glory of eternal salvation. The 
 
154 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 conception of pagan ebriety, which Nietzsche 
 has undertaken to exalt in all his works, here 
 blends with the ethereal hymn of Christian 
 ecstasies. 
 
 It is this two-fold and powerful inspiration 
 that animates the magnificent Overture, where- 
 in we see reflected a generalization of the entire 
 drama, and which later animates the drama 
 itself. 
 
 The young and venturous knight, Tann- 
 hauser, like Goethe's Faust, is in search of hap- 
 piness. Amidst nymphs and bacchantes, in 
 Venus's grotto and at her feet, he savors vo- 
 luptuous joys; indeed, he has savored them 
 too long, since he has wearied of the intoxica- 
 tion of the unbridled senses. That is why his 
 troubled soul is anxious to escape from the 
 Venusberg and return to its share of earthly 
 trials. But the goddess and her sirens hold him 
 by their seductive power. The hero wishes to 
 break this charm, and when Venus curses him, 
 he invokes the sacred name of Mary. Venus 
 vanishes, and the hero returns to the smiling 
 
GREAT WAGNERIAN THEMES 155 
 
 valley of the Wartburg and to the common 
 life of men. 
 
 We are back in the heart of the Middle 
 Ages, in old Thuringia, amid the songs of pil- 
 grims and shepherds. The Landgrave, sur- 
 rounded by his poet-knights, has gone hunting. 
 "Return among us and mingle your voice with 
 ours," his noble rival and friend Wolfram says 
 to Tannhauser. And faithful friendship pours 
 itself out in song in the andante of the sextette 
 which urges him to return and take his place 
 among his peers. Tannhauser hesitates. But 
 when Wolfram speaks of the Landgrave's niece, 
 Elizabeth, who still loves him, he decides to 
 accompany them. Everyone knows the al- 
 legro, the stretto of which is interrupted by 
 the hunting horns at the close of the first act of 
 Tannhauser. 
 
 Now we are at the Wartburg. Even down to 
 the present time it has retained its medieval 
 aspect, and the chamber is still exhibited where 
 Luther threw the ink-bottle at the devil. But 
 to return to Tannhauser: conducted by the 
 
156 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 loyal Wolfram, he throws himself at Eliza- 
 beth's feet. Then ensues a sublime love duet, 
 in the course of which the knight pours forth 
 his yearning for infinite ecstasy. Accompanied 
 by his singers, the Landgrave proposes, at this 
 juncture, a singing contest, in which love is to 
 be worthily celebrated in the presence of the 
 lords and noble ladies. Wolfram, who also 
 loves ' Elizabeth, glorifies his sentiments with 
 equal amplitude and discretion. Tannhauser 
 responds. Little by little, he yields to the 
 magic spell of his memories, and exalts burn- 
 ing passion and the intoxications known only 
 to those who have penetrated the Venusberg. 
 
 This pagan invocation horrifies his audience. 
 The knights wish to kill the author of such a 
 scandal, but Elizabeth saves him, for she loves 
 him in spite of all. . . . And it is decided that 
 Tannhauser shall accompany the pilgrims to 
 Rome, in order to sue for pardon. 
 
 Elizabeth patiently awaits the return of the 
 one to whom she has given her heart and whom 
 she has pardoned in advance. But Tann- 
 
GREAT WAGNERIAN THEMES 157 
 
 hauser is not to be found among the returning 
 pilgrims. The tender and fair Elizabeth prays 
 for his salvation. Wolfram, in the dim dawn 
 of day, sings his famous Romance of the Star, 
 and Tannhauser advances. He has failed to 
 obtain his pardon. With bitter sarcasm he 
 tells the tale of his journey. At all events, he 
 will find intoxication and forgetfulness with 
 Venus, and the nymphs and sirens whom he 
 invokes. 
 
 Venus who has come at his summons, once 
 more vanishes. A mournful procession escorts 
 the body of the unfortunate Elizabeth, who 
 has been unable to survive her grief. The 
 knight Tannhauser finds pure and ideal love 
 as he dies beside his beloved, and he will be 
 reunited to her in the realm of grace and eter- 
 nity. 
 
 In Tannhauser, notwithstanding its dream 
 atmosphere, Wagner could not rid himself of 
 certain obligations towards recorded history. 
 Lohengrin, however, the Knight of the Swan, 
 which he borrowed from the legend of the 
 
158 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Graal, that was destined also to furnish him 
 Parsifal, left full liberty to his imagination and 
 fantasy. 
 
 It is an exquisite conception, and very gen- 
 eral in its symbolism. Wagner himself com- 
 pared it to the story of Jupiter and Semele, 
 and said further: 
 
 "The type of Lohengrin appealed to me with 
 a constantly increasing power of attraction. 
 ... I learned to understand the myth of Lo- 
 hengrin in its simplest significance, that is to 
 say, in its most profound significance as a truly 
 popular poem. . . . Lohengrin is by no means 
 exclusively the product of a Christian concep- 
 tion." 
 
 It is certain, none the less, that the seraphic 
 knight owes a great deal to "Christian concep- 
 tion," whatever may have been Wagner's 
 opinion. 
 
 The legend is familiar: it is charming, enig- 
 matic, and poignantly poetic. 
 
 The king of Germany, Henry the Falconer, 
 holds plenary court on the banks of the 
 
GREAT WAGNERIAN THEMES 159 
 
 Scheldt. Count Telramund, at the instiga- 
 tion of his wife, brings a charge against Elsa, 
 Princess of Brabant, falsely accusing her of 
 having killed her brother, the heir to, the 
 throne. They proceed to the trial by combat. 
 If no knight offers himself as Elsa's champion, 
 she is lost. And it seems likely that she will 
 be, since no one comes forward to defend her 
 cause. She prays and supplicates, but in vain. 
 Then, suddenly, a Swan appears, drawing a 
 little boat, whose occupant is the knight, of 
 dreams and mystery who is destined to save 
 Elsa. He defeats Telramund in combat, but 
 spares his life. Elsa is to become his wife. But 
 first she must promise that she will never ask 
 to know the name of the Knight of the Swan. 
 The wedding takes place. Elsa is tender and 
 loving; but she is a woman, which means that 
 she is curious. It should be added that the 
 wicked Ortrude arouses painful doubts in her 
 mind. In the nuptial chamber, after soft 
 avowals, Elsa forgets her promise and begs to 
 know where her noble savior and husband has 
 
160 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 come from. At this moment, Telramund en- 
 ters, hoping to take the knight unaware, but 
 the latter kills him. Elsa faints; curiosity has 
 extinguished love. 
 
 When Lohengrin has revealed his name, 
 which is that of the son of the knight Parsifal, 
 king of the Graal, and his mission, which is to 
 defend innocence, he is obliged, in obedience to 
 his oath, to disappear. The Swan returns and 
 Lohengrin departs; we see him fading into the 
 distance. He has gone. It is in vain that Elsa 
 moans and laments. He no longer exists for 
 her; in her despair she falls lifeless; doubt has 
 killed love and happiness. 
 
 If the drama properly so called lacks the 
 proportions and the interest of Tannhauser, 
 Lohengrin because of its sustained style and , 
 magnificent perfection remains the evocation 
 of a melancholy and enchanting dream. 
 
 Liszt, to whom Wagner's fame owes so large 
 a debt, has expressed his appreciation of the 
 music of Lohengrin in the highest terms. It is, 
 he says, the ideal of synthetic art. "Its princi- 
 
GREAT WAGNERIAN THEMES 161 
 
 pal characteristic is such perfect unity of con- 
 ception and style that not a phrase nor an en- 
 semble nor a passage of any sort whatever can 
 be found which, if separated from the work as 
 a whole, could be understood in its true sense 
 and definite character." 
 
 We feel that henceforth Wagner is sure of 
 himself, and of his musical resources; they are 
 revealed more plainly and definitively in his 
 wonderful Tristan, to write which he interrupt- 
 ed the composition of his Tetralogy. 
 
 After the separation which followed their 
 noble and melancholy renouncement, Wagner 
 wrote from Venice to Mathilde Wesendonck, in 
 reference to Tristan and Isolde, which was the 
 embodiment of all his despair and all his long- 
 ing to find consolation in his mystic art: 
 
 "What music this is going to be! Never 
 until now have I done anything to equal it!" 
 
 And from Zurich, he wrote again to the same 
 friend: 
 
 "When Tristan is finished, it seems to me 
 that a marvelous period of my life will have 
 
162 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 been brought to a close, and that I shall be able 
 henceforth to gaze upon the world peacefully, 
 clearly, profoundly, with a new-born soul." 
 
 Accordingly, Tristan and Isolde, taken chiefly 
 from the German poem of Gottfried of Strass- 
 burg, must be thought of as reborn from the 
 love and sorrow of the great romantic poet. As 
 Henri Lichtenberger has well said, the lament 
 of Tristan, tortured by desire and stretching 
 out his arms towards beneficent night and the 
 torches of kindly death, gushed straight from 
 Wagner's very heart. 
 
 In glorifying an unforgettable love, the mu- 
 sician surpassed himself. After he was cured 
 of his attack of Wagnerianism, Nietzsche, even 
 in the very act of flaying the friend whom he 
 had formerly adored, could not prevent himself 
 from exclaiming: 
 
 "The world must seem a very poor place to 
 anyone who has never been ill enough to appre- 
 ciate that inferno of passionate love." 
 
 Evidently, the whole power of the work lies 
 in its effusion, its pessimism, its fever of anni- 
 
GREAT WAGNERIAN THEMES 163 
 
 hilation, and Buddhism. We know how strong- 
 ly the doctrine of Nirvana, revived by Scho- 
 penhauer, had impressed Wagner during his 
 residence at Zurich. Love and death are the 
 great themes of this drama, and the prelude 
 celebrates them with extraordinary amplitude. 
 
 Isolde, princess of Ireland, is betrothed, 
 against her will, but in conformity with a 
 treaty between the two countries, to the king of 
 Cornwall, Mark. We first see her on board the 
 ship that is bearing her to this sad union. Con- 
 sequently she is praying for death. The nephew 
 of the king, the peerless knight Tristan, is in 
 command of the ship. He is grave and preoc- 
 cupied. He and Isolde are united in a passion 
 which bursts out of bounds when they drink 
 from a cup into which a love philter has been 
 poured. They are still lost in a mad whirl of 
 emotion when the ship reaches the realm of 
 King Mark. 
 
 After an interval of suspense the lovers are 
 reunited in a night of love and ecstasy. Their 
 hymn rises and swells, sublime, unlimited, ex- 
 
164 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 alted by the harps, and it blends with the mo- 
 tives of glorification and of death. The king 
 surprises them. Why has Tristan betrayed 
 him? And Tristan, begging Isolde to follow 
 across the dark river, allows himself to be 
 wounded. He has risen to the height of re- 
 nunciation, to the sacrifice of death. 
 
 We are now transferred to Tristan's own 
 castle, where he lies ill, dying amid somber har- 
 monies. The plaintive air of the shepherd's 
 pipe blends with Tristan's dying agony. The 
 faithful Isolde comes to join him on the coast 
 of Brittany, but when she reaches him, he is 
 dead, and she too has come there only to die. 
 The arrival of King Mark, the punishment of 
 Melot, the death of the loyal Kurwenal are all 
 crowded together in the third act for the pur- 
 pose of accentuating the sacrifice of Isolde, 
 who dies in ecstasy because she is going to be 
 united to Tristan through all eternity. 
 
 It was in Paris, after the fiasco of Tann- 
 hauser, that Wagner set to work upon the text 
 of the Meistersinger. 
 
GREAT WAGNERIAN THEMES 165 
 
 "It is certainly funny," he wrote to his wife, 
 Minna, "that I should be working here on my 
 Master Singers of Nuremberg, and looking out 
 on the Tuileries and the Louvre. I cannot help 
 laughing heartily, many a time, when I look 
 out of the window." 
 
 The Meistersinger occupies a position by 
 itself among Wagner's works, and it is by no 
 means the smallest jewel in his crown. It is a 
 joyous and radiant satire upon official and con- 
 ventional aesthetics, and at the same time a 
 humorous piece of special pleading pro domo; 
 in a series of comic and ironical situations, it 
 pictures the apotheosis of the genius of an 
 artist who soars to his full height when brought 
 in contact with the genius of his race. 
 
 Accordingly, the Meistersinger is a sort of 
 musical comedy, but in its technique, as well 
 as in the loftiness of its sentiments, combined 
 with the portrayal of burlesque characters, it 
 is an original work of distinct importance and 
 real power. In this work, Wagner's distinctive 
 manner is revealed in its full perfection. 
 
166 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 The young knight, Walther von Stolzing, 
 has come from Franconia to Nuremberg. He 
 is in love with the charming Eva, daughter of 
 the opulent goldsmith, Pogner. Walther, — we 
 almost wrote "Wagner," and probably with 
 good reason, — decides to compete for the grade 
 of master in the singers' guild of that city. 
 His brave and noble inspiration refuses to be 
 fettered by sterile rules. The town clerk, Beck- 
 messer, is his ridiculous rival. 
 
 As night approaches, Walther prepares to 
 elope with Eva. But he is prevented by chance 
 events, such as the passing by of the town 
 watchman and the grotesque serenade by Beck- 
 messer. Fortunately the kind-hearted and 
 worthy Hans Sachs, the poet-cobbler, has un- 
 dertaken to defend Walther. It is thanks to 
 his cleverness and far-sighted sagacity that 
 Walther converts both the master-singers and 
 the people, and wins his happiness. 
 
 The character of Hans Sachs, with his hid- 
 den sorrow, — for he has cast a wistful glance 
 at Eva before coming to the aid of the lovers 
 
GREAT WAGNERIAN THEMES 167 
 
 and working devotedly for their union, com- 
 pels our admiration, equally with his delight- 
 ful revery beneath the lilacs, on St. John's eve. 
 The much lamented Alfred Ernst was quite 
 justified in seeing in the marriage of the young 
 knight Walther, representative of an exclusive 
 caste, with Eva, daughter of the people, the 
 fruitful union of noble art and popular in- 
 spiration. But quite aside from this happy 
 symbolism, one cannot help being charmed 
 with the series of typical songs so picturesquely 
 interspersed among the leitmotivs. The com- 
 position of the work, showing exceptional 
 abundance and vigor, unites scholastic forms 
 with the most minute details of an "advanced" 
 technique. It sets us thinking of Bach, and 
 then it sets us thinking of . . . none else than 
 Wagner himself, in the full splendor of his 
 polyphonic utterance. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 EPIC AND LYRIC — FROM HUMAN DEITIES TO 
 DIVINE HUMANITY — A GOSPEL IN MUSIC 
 
 RICHARD WAGNER, the ^Eschylus of 
 modern times, has written a vast tragic 
 epic, in which he has undertaken, in the course 
 of a gigantic action, human and divine, to ex- 
 amine the problem of destinies and the con- 
 tinuous development of the passions, inter- 
 preted by words and music intimately blended 
 in a universal drama. 
 
 Such is his Ring of the Nibelung, piously 
 dedicated to King Ludwig II of Bavaria. 
 
 The Tetralogy consists of a prologue, called 
 the Rhinegold, and three day-long episodes. 
 
 After listening to the leitmotiv of nature, 
 the great cosmogonic theme of the work, and 
 after meditating upon the forces of the uni- 
 
 168 
 
A GOSPEL IN MUSIC 169 
 
 verse, distributed among all animate and in- 
 animate things, we see the daughters of the 
 Rhine, Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde. 
 The Nibelung, Alberich, drawn hither by de- 
 sire, learns that whoever possesses himself of 
 the river's gold and forges the magic ring, will 
 obtain dominion over the universe. Ambition 
 holds sovereign sway over the soul of Alberich, 
 who snatches the gold of the Rhine. He has 
 renounced love. The desire for power has 
 entered into him. 
 
 Walhalla, the abode of the gods, next ap- 
 pears to us, and there we find Wotan, king of 
 the gods, and his wife Fricka. Wotan has 
 promised Freia, goddess of youth and beauty, 
 to the giants Fasolt and Fafner, who come to 
 claim her. Through Loge, the fire-god, it is 
 learned that the Nibelung, Alberich, has stolen 
 the gold of the Rhine. Wotan, in his turn, re- 
 linquishes love along with Freia, for the sake 
 of obtaining the gold. The giants depart, tak- 
 ing Freia with them. All nature becomes dark- 
 ened. Loge, the flame which flickers here and 
 
170 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 there, advises Wotan to follow him to the 
 Nibelung's forge. 
 
 From the stolen gold, Alberich has had made 
 Tarnhelm, the helmet that renders its wearer 
 invisible, the sword Nothung, and the ring 
 which renders its possessor master of the uni- 
 verse. The astute Loge flatters the dwarf 
 Alberich and asks him whether it is true that 
 he can assume at will the form of any animal 
 whatever. Alberich metamorphoses himself 
 into a dragon, and then into a toad. 
 
 He is seized and fettered. Finding himself 
 a prisoner, Alberich consents to yield up his 
 treasures, hoping that he can keep the ring. 
 But Wotan snatches it from him. Vanquished, 
 the Nibelung utters the baleful malediction of 
 the ring which is destined to overhang all the 
 personages in the trilogy. 
 
 Warned by the primeval mother of all be- 
 ings, Erda, soul of the world, Wotan yields the 
 ring to the giants who have brought back Freia. 
 The giants quarrel. Fafner kills Fasolt with a 
 blow from a club. The gods triumph as the 
 
A GOSPEL IN MUSIC 171 
 
 sky clears. The appearance of a rainbow suc- 
 ceeds the tumult of the storm. The gods re- 
 turn, two by two, to the motiv of Walhalla. 
 But the daughters of the Rhine lament and will 
 continue to lament so long as the sparkle of 
 the gold is missing from the waters of the 
 Rhine. Who will pay the penalty for the 
 crime? Who will be the redeemer? Wotan 
 ponders as he hears the clarion notes of the 
 sword motiv. 
 
 It should be noted that all the motivs of 
 the triple drama here appear in their first bare 
 simplicity. 
 
 We have lived with the gods; now we are 
 going to live chiefly with heroes. 
 
 As we follow in thought the noble prelude of 
 the Walkyrie, the admirable language of the 
 double basses and violoncellos, and the motiv 
 of the Magic fire begun by the bass tubas, and 
 taken up by the trombones and cornets, we 
 must needs know or remember that Wotan, 
 having become the God-wolf, hunted by dogs, 
 begot twins, Siegmund and Sieglinde. From 
 
172 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 his union with Erda he had his favorite 
 daughter, Brunnhilde; she has been brought 
 up with the Walkyries, whose function is to 
 receive the souls of heroes, in order to trans- 
 port them to Walhalla. 
 
 We are now in the presence of a barbarous 
 stage of humanity, but nearer to reality than 
 what has gone before. In a cabin in the depths 
 of the forest dwells Sieglinde; here she receives 
 a stranger clad in the skins of beasts; it is 
 Siegmund. She is the wife of Hunding, who is 
 of the race of hunters, while Siegmund belongs 
 to the race of wolves. Nevertheless, Hundling 
 respects the laws of hospitality, since his ene- 
 my is his guest. Siegmund sleeps and dreams 
 of the sword which will give him dominion. 
 Sieglinde comes to him and shows where the 
 promised sword is hidden. The pair confess 
 their love, in a glorification of youth and 
 spring-time. 
 
 The incestuous love between brother and 
 sister has not failed to give bitter offense. But 
 are we not in the realm of myth and legend, 
 
A GOSPEL IN MUSIC 173 
 
 almost apart from time and space? Far from 
 resenting this idyll of Siegmund and Sieglinde, 
 who seeks to be saved from the dog, Hunding, 
 one Wagnerian critic has lauded the beauty of 
 the symbolism; a god incarnated in his chil- 
 dren in order to atone for his own sin, and then 
 compelled himself to decree their death and to 
 see every hope of salvation die with them. 
 
 Wo tan is gloomy ; his ancient sin will not be 
 expiated until the gold is returned to the 
 daughters of the Rhine. Now, it is the will of 
 destiny that Siegmund shall not be the savior; 
 he is not the looked-for hero. He is destined 
 to fall under the blows of the hunter Hunding. 
 This is what Wotan announces to his daughter, 
 the Valkyrie, and his words give the key to the 
 drama: 
 
 "Announce to the hero Siegmund," he tells 
 her, "that this evening he will enter into Wal- 
 halla! For the purpose of begetting a son who 
 should be the savior of the divine race, I 
 have wandered upon earth, I have become a 
 beast of the woods, a wolf-god hunted by dogs. 
 
174 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Yet today my son Siegmund, who, armed with 
 the sword, was to have returned the gold to the 
 daughters of the Rhine and expiated the sin for 
 which I am torn with remorse, Siegmund, alas, 
 must die!" 
 
 Brunnhilde appears to Siegmund, who is 
 fleeing through the solitudes, accompanied by 
 Sieglinde. The Valkyrie announces his destiny 
 to him, but on beholding the affection of the 
 pair for each other, Brunnhilde is stirred to 
 pity. Accordingly, when the duel takes place, 
 she herself turns aside Hunding's sword with 
 her silver shield. Hereupon Wotan, who is 
 the instrument of highest Destiny, breaks 
 Siegmund's sword with his own all powerful 
 spear, and Siegmund is pierced through the 
 heart. Then follows the cavalcade of the 
 Valkyries, with their clamors, their songs, 
 their furious stampede. 
 
 Brunnhilde saves Sieglinde, who must hide 
 the broken fragments of the sword in the for- 
 est. And there in the forest Sieglinde bears a 
 son to the dead hero, who is ordained by the 
 
A GOSPEL IN MUSIC 175 
 
 fates to achieve the salvation of the gods. The 
 motiv of Siegfried, radiant and victorious, in- 
 forms us of this hope. 
 
 But the rebellious Brunnhilde must be pun- 
 ished. Wotan himself is obliged to pass sen- 
 tence on his favorite daughter. 
 
 "You shall sleep," the god tells her, "until a 
 man finds you and awakens you, and you shall 
 become his wife." 
 
 What humiliation for the proud virgin god- 
 dess of Walhalla! But at least let this man be 
 a hero, let her retreat be surrounded with a 
 wall of flame. Wotan, himself in despair, con- 
 sents, and we witness their leave-taking. The 
 motiv of Brunnhilde's justification is followed 
 by the motiv of sleep in the bosom of nature. 
 
 Accordingly, the free and joyous hero, who 
 is destined to recover the ring and to awaken 
 the Valkyrie, is Siegfried, son of Siegmund and 
 Sieglinde. Wotan reveals to us his regrets and 
 his aspirations, and initiates us into the general 
 significance of the work: Siegfried is a splen- 
 did poem of youth, strong, beautiful, nai've, sin- 
 
176 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 cere, unspoiled by civilization, and in full pos- 
 session of its irresistible and sublime spon- 
 taneity. 
 
 Siegfried has been brought up by Alberich's 
 brother, the crafty dwarf Mime, who is schem- 
 ing to avail himself of the youth's courage to 
 destroy the dragon. Then he himself can ob- 
 tain possession of the ring, and with it uni- 
 versal power. The naivete of the youth seems 
 to guarantee the success of these dark designs. 
 
 Meanwhile, Siegfried welds the broken frag- 
 ments of the sword Nothung. He is destined 
 to triumph over the craftiness of the dwarf, as 
 well as over the unchained forces of the ele- 
 ments. The symphony of the forest seems to 
 proclaim the grandeur of his destiny. He is 
 the incarnation of new humanity, in the heart 
 of nature* He watches the beasts of the for- 
 est, he has inborn powers of domination. The 
 dragon, Fafner, who in spite of flames and 
 smoke fails to alarm us seriously, fails equally 
 to alarm Siegfried. Having slain the dragon, 
 he listens to the bird of the wood, echo of our 
 
A GOSPEL IN MUSIC 177 
 
 thoughts, enters Fafner's cave and places the 
 ring upon his finger. 
 
 "He alone who has never known fear shall 
 awaken Brunnhilde." Such is the decree of 
 destiny, and Siegfried is the appointed one. 
 Wotan is obliged to allow him to pass, and 
 from that moment foresees the downfall of the 
 gods. 
 
 Siegfried advances and penetrates with- 
 in the circle of flames, and this passage through 
 the fire is expounded by magnificent cadences 
 upon the harp. He discovers a woman asleep, 
 a majestic and supreme revelation of Love and 
 Beauty. And then comes the incomparable 
 awakening of Brunnhilde. She salutes the 
 light of day. She strives to repulse Siegfried, 
 yet she cannot help loving him because of his 
 triumphant youth and strength. Henceforth 
 the gods may perish, since love has been 
 granted her. 
 
 Accordingly, the Tetralogy closes with the 
 Gotterdammerung, the Twilight of the Gods, 
 which is expounded to us in the prelude. Once 
 
178 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 again we hear the horn of Siegfried, blending 
 with the motiv of the primeval elements. 
 The hero Siegfried cannot remain inactive. 
 Like the demi-god of Greek mythology, he 
 must accomplish his mission in the world. 
 
 The daughters of the Rhine continue to la- 
 ment. Siegfried, in the course of his wander- 
 ings, is received by Gunther and his sister 
 Gutrune, the latter of whom makes him drink 
 the philter of forgetfulness. And in conse- 
 quence oblivion invades his soul. He asks 
 Gutrune in marriage, and agrees to bring 
 Brunnhilde to be Gunther's bride. In vain 
 Brunnhilde urges her claim upon Siegfried. 
 He is not to remember his love for her until 
 during the hunt, when Hagen makes him drink 
 of a new philter which destroys the effect of the 
 first. Siegfried is relating the story of his 
 youth and his exploits, when he is stricken 
 down by a treacherous blow from Hagen and 
 expires, evoking the memory of Brunnhilde. 
 And the motiv of Siegfried's death seems like 
 the chant of universal mourning. Hagen and 
 
A GOSPEL IN MUSIC 179 
 
 Gunther quarrel over the possession of the 
 ring, when Brunnhilde appears. She consults 
 destiny and must succumb to the ordained fate 
 of death. And she must give back the ring 
 to the daughters of the Rhine. Redemption 
 through love forms the majestic conclusion to 
 this great epic tragedy. 
 
 What interpretation are we to give it? Is the 
 Ring socialistic, anarchistic, Christian or pessi- 
 mistic? It seems best to regard the legend as 
 the exposition of eternal ideas and emotions, a 
 summing-up of human attributes and passions, 
 from Siegfried's youthful daring to Wotan's 
 abdication. And above all it is important to 
 recognize it as the embodiment of the Wag- 
 nerian system in all its splendor, as well as in 
 its austere and somewhat oppressive complex- 
 ity. The lyric and dramatic elements are here 
 profoundly intermingled. The theory of the 
 drama, as opposed to the old conventional 
 opera, robbed of all fioritura, consecrated 
 wholly to the exposition, through the blended 
 words and music, of superhuman deeds, is here 
 
180 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 freely developed, broadly, powerfully, and in 
 definitive manner. 
 
 Let us not mar the beauty of this immense 
 myth by abstruse dialectics or vain esoteric 
 commentary, but let us be content to accept 
 it as a sublime song of joy and sorrow mag- 
 nified by the dreams and the genius of an 
 artist who is also prodigious from the tech- 
 nical point of view. Better than anywhere 
 else, we may follow his method as it is suc- 
 cinctly expounded by Gasperini: 
 
 "When Wagner has created a melodic idea, 
 it recurs under a thousand forms, modified by 
 the most delicate processes of modulation, by 
 infinite evolutions of the rhythm, it is devel- 
 oped to a point at which it seems exhausted, 
 it is enriched by unforeseen episodes that sud- 
 denly flow forth, it is prolonged in magnificent 
 amplifications, and then little by little it loses 
 its color, is stripped of its sharp characteris- 
 tics, becomes diluted, melts away, dies out, 
 unrecognizable in one final burst of harmony." 
 
 As may well be imagined, the Tetralogy, like 
 
A GOSPEL IN MUSIC 181 
 
 all the rest of Wagner's works, became a target 
 for the humorists. In Germany, quite as much 
 as in France, the spirit of satire expended it- 
 self freely upon the Ring of the Nibelung. M. 
 Grand-Carteret has shown no little cleverness 
 and erudition in gathering together a collec- 
 tion of these amusing pleasantries. Here, for 
 example, is the manner in which two Berlinese, 
 Schultze and Muller, have simplified the li- 
 bretto of the Ring, in order to reduce it to the 
 dimensions required for a parlor edition, — 
 and heaven knows that parlor gossip usurped 
 the task of attending to Wagner's reputation 
 and defended it with jealous care, especially 
 after it had practically ceased to be attacked! 
 
 Seven characters and seven scenes; a spec- 
 tacle accompanied by full orchestra, playing 
 variations upon the air, "There were seven who 
 wanted a ring." 
 
 Scene 1st. The Daughters of the Rhine, 
 while dancing in a circle, lose their golden 
 ring. Alberich arrives and takes possession of 
 it, saying, "With your permission!" 
 
182 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Scene 2d. Alberich, well satisfied with 
 "what the waves have brought him," ascends 
 to Walhalla; it is already late, and the palace 
 will be shut if he arrives after dark; but sud- 
 denly the god Wotan appears and saying po- 
 litely, "with your permission," takes possession 
 of the ring found on his territory. 
 
 Scene 3d. Wotan and the giants, who have 
 come to demand either Freia or his treasure. 
 As the god proves somewhat stubborn, they 
 say to him, "We want this ring and we are, 
 going to have it!" adding, "with your permis- 
 sion, of course." But since there are two of 
 them, it occurs to Fafner that they cannot 
 both wear one ring, so he forthwith dismisses 
 Fasold into the next world. 
 
 Scene Ifth. Fafner, transformed into a 
 dragon, through fear of thieves, is standing 
 guard over his treasure, when Siegfried arrives. 
 
 "Let me tell you, Fafner, how much your 
 ring pleases me!" 
 
 "Be off with you," cries papa Fafner, "or it 
 
A GOSPEL IN MUSIC 183 
 
 will be the worse for you! You can easily find 
 a ring just like it at any jeweler's." 
 
 "No, yours is the one I must have." 
 
 "Look out, or I will make it hot for you!" 
 
 But Siegfried runs the dragon through, and 
 then says politely, 
 
 "Now you will have to do as you are told! 
 With your permission ! " 
 
 Scene 5th. Siegfried and Brunnhilde love 
 each other tenderly and are exchanging vows. 
 
 "Give me your ring," says Brunnhilde caress- 
 ingly. "It will look well on my finger, and in 
 exchange I will let you have my horse, Grane. 
 What, do you hesitate? Then you don't love 
 me! Perhaps you are in love with some other 
 girl! I may take it, mayn't I? With your 
 permission?" 
 
 Scene 6th. "Brunnhilde, give me back that 
 ring ! " 
 
 And he snatches it from her. 
 
 Scene 7th. Siegfried is dead, and a certain 
 Hagen has come to steal the ring. But dead 
 
184 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 though he is, he can still move his ring finger 
 andTvill not permit the much disputed treasure 
 to be removed from it. 
 
 Finally Brunnhilde ascends the funeral pyre 
 beside Siegfried and restores to the Rhine- 
 maidens the much traveled ring. 
 
 All of which shows how a whole trilogy can 
 be hung, like the stage curtain, upon a ring. 
 
 There could be nothing simpler, could there? 
 
 As may be well imagined, there were a cer- 
 tain number of more or less clever parodies of 
 the Tetralogy, all of which are now quite 
 forgotten. We may cite as examples Rhine- 
 gold-Keingold, "Gold of the Rhine that is no 
 Gold at all," a parody given in 1869 at the 
 Theater of Marionettes at Munich ; Der Tiefe 
 Trunk zu Schweigelsheim oder die Walkuren, 
 "The deep Dive at Schweigelsheim or the 
 Walkyries," a grand opera performed by the 
 Society of Artists at Vienna, in 1876 and 1879; 
 100,000 Florins und meine Tochter, "A hun- 
 dred thousand Florins and my Daughter," a 
 farce at the Josephstadttheater; and in 1881 
 
A GOSPEL IN MUSIC 185 
 
 two other parodies of the Ring, given in Berlin. 
 
 In the Ring of the Nibelung we witnessed 
 the redemption of the universe through the 
 restitution of the accursed gold to the Daugh- 
 ters of the Rhine. In Parsifal, a profoundly- 
 religious work, in spite of the fact that Wagner 
 adhered to no special sect in writing this artis- 
 tic and metaphysical confession of faith, we 
 are initiated into the redemption of the world 
 through a "guileless fool." 
 
 Amfortas, king of the Grail, has fallen into 
 the snares of the magician, Klingsor. He has 
 yielded to the charms of Kundry, the temptress, 
 infernal and divine, slave of evil and servant 
 of good. During his sleep, Klingsor has struck 
 him with the sacred spear, and the wound 
 bleeds ceaselessly. Who will atone for the 
 sin? 
 
 A young and surly lad approaches. The in- 
 stinct of nature possesses him at first, as it did 
 Siegfried. He wounds a swan, but at the sight 
 of the blood he learns to feel pity. This guile- 
 
186 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 less fool is destined to be the conqueror of 
 Klingsoiv 
 
 In spite of his innocence, we see him pro- 
 tecting himself against the exquisite and dan- 
 gerous sorceries of the Flower-Women. The 
 enchantress Kundry, who is in league with 
 Klingsor, succeeds only in inspiring him with 
 a hatred for evil. In vanquishing this rose of 
 the inferno he has conquered desire, has torn 
 aside the veil of illusion, and is ripe for the 
 sacred task of redemption. 
 
 And now we see Parsifal on Good Friday, 
 in the valley of Montsalvat. He saves Kundry 
 and baptizes her. It is the hour of the Last 
 Supper. Amfortas is unable to pay the last 
 rites to Titurel, who is dead. Parsifal touches 
 the thigh of Amfortas with the recovered spear. 
 He stands revealed as the Saviour and Kundry 
 dies at his feet. With the return of the king- 
 dom of God upon earth, we have the apothe- 
 osis of Wagner's work. 
 
 It is worth while in connection with this 
 supreme achievement and one of such rare 
 
A GOSPEL IN MUSIC 187 
 
 religious intensity, to recall the fact that the 
 Master of Bayreuth dwelt at length, in My 
 Life, upon the character of his mother: 
 
 "She was," he tells us, "deeply religious. She 
 often preached veritable sermons to us, full of 
 pathos and emotion, in regard to God and the 
 divine element in man. She used to gather 
 the whole family around her bed every morn- 
 ing. She had her coffee-and-milk brought to 
 her, but she never touched it until one of us 
 had read a psalm from the prayer-book." 
 
 In precisely the same way that it helps us 
 to explain the philosophical evolution of Kant, 
 if we carefully consider the influence of his 
 pietistic education, so in the case of Wagner 
 we find a curious interest in studying the early 
 impressions of his childhood in regard to re- 
 ligion. His anxiety, his fears and his fervor, 
 following upon periods of indifference, to which 
 he also confesses in My Life, through very val- 
 uable side-lights upon the religious intensity of 
 Parsifal: 
 
 "At my confirmation, which took place on 
 
188 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Easter, 1827, the spirit of insubordination re- 
 vealed itself by the scant respect which the 
 outward forms of the ceremony aroused in me. 
 The child who a few years earlier had cast 
 glances of painful ecstasy at the altar of the 
 Kreutzkirche in Leipzig and formulated a 
 prayer, in his mystical transports, that Be 
 might be allowed to be crucified in place of the 
 Redeemer, this same child no longer felt the 
 respect due to the paster who was conducting 
 the confirmation. He did not hesitate to join 
 in with other lads who were making sport of 
 the minister, and he even went so far as to 
 spend on sweetmeats part of the money in- 
 tended for the contribution box, in company 
 with a band of young rascals who all met to- 
 gether for the same purpose. Nevertheless, at 
 the moment of my communion I realized my 
 state of mind and was almost terrified by it. 
 While the communicants, of whom I was one, 
 advanced in a procession towards the altar, 
 the organ swelled forth and the voices of the 
 choir soared upward. My emotion as I re- 
 
A GOSPEL IN MUSIC 189 
 
 ceived the bread and the wine was so intense 
 that it has remained with me unforgettably 
 ever since. It is for this reason that I have 
 never again, from that time onward, partaken 
 of the communion, for I have always feared 
 that I should be unable to experience the same 
 sensations as before. Such a renunciation was 
 possible in my case, because Protestants do not 
 believe that repeated communion is obliga- 
 tory." 
 
 It would undoubtedly be rash to take these 
 passages, or other similar ones, as a basis for 
 any sort of a thesis intended to define the re- 
 ligious convictions of Wagner. Instead of los- 
 ing ourselves in all sorts of hypotheses, it is 
 best to avoid all formulas, and merely recog- 
 nize that his mysticism rests upon certain early 
 impressions and harmonizes well with the de- 
 velopment of his creative mind. The creator 
 is greater in his art than in his dogmatism. 
 
 We must not demand rigoreus precision from 
 poets and prophets. It is so pleasant at times 
 to live in the midst of their enchantment and 
 
190 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 serene radiance. We are quite at liberty later 
 to return to reality and cultivate our garden 
 with much care and prosaic attention. 
 
 After having poetically expounded the sym- 
 bols contained in the mystic drama of Parsifal, 
 Catulle Mendes concluded as follows: 
 
 "The intellectual life of Richard Wagner 
 attained its zenith in that work of sacred 
 purity and angelic faith. Having attained the 
 highest pinnacles of religious dreams, how could 
 he have descended from them? How could he 
 have returned among men, after having been 
 so near to God? To Richard Wagner's tor- 
 tured heart, haunted perhaps by repentance for 
 past hatreds, the grace was given that he should 
 die in the midst of prayer." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE "WAGNERIAN CULT — THOSE FOR AND THOSE 
 AGAINST IT — THE INITIATED AND THE PRO- 
 FANE — WAGNER IN THE JUDGMENT OF POS- 
 TERITY 
 
 WAGNER has at last taken a glorious 
 place in the art, the social life, the 
 civilization of France. Although he has not 
 succeeded in effecting a radical and absolute 
 change in contemporary musical drama, and 
 although the enlightened public still has the 
 good taste to be eclectic, no one any longer 
 dreams of denying the bigness of his attempt 
 and the importance of his personality and the 
 part he played in the history of music and the 
 drama. 
 
 It would be necessary to review an entire 
 epoch of contemporary history, in order to un- 
 derstand thoroughly the influence of Wagner 
 
 191 
 
192 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 in France. And how hard it is to be impartial ! 
 
 But it is not our province to re-try the case, 
 nor to analyze in detail the struggle that lasted 
 for nearly half a century between the Wag- 
 nerians and anti-Wagnerians. And, strange as 
 it now seems, this struggle was fierce, violent, 
 even savage. As we read over the criticisms, 
 the attacks and rejoinders, as we acquaint our- 
 selves with all the documents both for and 
 against Wagner, the greater part of which have 
 been carefully collected by M. G. Servier, we 
 find ourselves utterly amazed. 
 
 How far off it all seems, almo§t as far off 
 as the quarrel between the supporters of Gluck 
 and Piccini in the eighteenth century! And 
 yet it was really very close to our day. 
 
 We have among us Wagnerians dating from 
 the first hour or the second, hesitating, timor? 
 ous souls of earlier times who have become 
 converts, former bitter adversaries of the mas- 
 ter of Bayreuth, now more or less disarmed by 
 his success, and Wagnerians of yesterday and 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 193 
 
 the day before who deserve no credit whatever 
 for defending a fame that is already conse- 
 crated. 
 
 All of these indulge in extravagant trans- 
 ports and are as fanatical in their own way as 
 the most rabid adversaries of the German com- 
 poser are in theirs. They allow no one to touch 
 their idol. Wagner's glory has no need of such 
 excesses of either zeal or insult. 
 
 Let us examine the passions which swayed 
 the two parties. All sorts of elements must be 
 considered in studying the history of the intro- 
 duction of Wagnerian drama into France. 
 
 In the first place, we have the morose and 
 intolerant character of Wagner himself, whom 
 his reverses, his unpopularity, his failure to be 
 understood had all tended to embitter. That 
 many people took too literally the proud ca- 
 prices and mordant aphorisms of a romantic 
 artist of uneven temper, profoundly impulsive 
 and excessively nervous, is undeniable. From 
 the time of his first sojourn in Paris, his mis- 
 
194 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 fortunes, according to the opinion of a con- 
 temporary, made him "peevish, sullen and in- 
 solent." 
 
 On the other hand it was certainly not to 
 the interest of the musicians who had already 
 found favor with the public to burn incense 
 before an innovator whose whole thought they 
 could hardly grasp all at once, and who threat- 
 ened to dethrone them. Such was the case of 
 Meyerbeer, who had already triumphed, and of 
 Berlioz, impatient for a well deserved recog- 
 nition. 
 
 Nor is it astonishing to see Rossini somewhat 
 troubled by Wagner's cr^ed. It is related that 
 the celebrated author of the Barber of Seville 
 was as much afraid of journalists as he was of 
 catching cold. He blamed these knights of the 
 pen, hard up for copy, for many an ironic para- 
 graph in connection with the composer of 
 Tannhauser, such, for instance, as the follow- 
 ing: 
 
 At a certain big dinner, an excellent sauce 
 was served, and the mistress of the house was 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 195 
 
 greatly distressed because the turbot had not 
 been brought in. 
 
 "Well," Rossini is reported to have observed, 
 "is not that precisely the trouble with Wag- 
 ner's music? Good sauce, but no turbot, no 
 melody." 
 
 In his Personal Souvenirs, M. Michette tells 
 of an interview between Rossini and Wagner, 
 and he adds that, although they did not meet 
 again, they continued to hold each other in 
 high esteem. 
 
 Nevertheless, Wagner did not hesitate to 
 ridicule some of the musicians who then en- 
 joyed the highest repute. In his intimate talks 
 with his friends, in the Rue Lord Byron, he 
 said in reference to this same Rossini, that he 
 was filled to overflowing, not with music but 
 with sausage. Auber, on the other hand, im- 
 pressed him as a true Parisian, brilliant and 
 scintillating. 
 
 The music of Halevy's operas was, he held, 
 merely for surface show: "I admired sincerely 
 when I was young," he added, "I was some- 
 
196 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 thing of a fool, as we are all apt to be at that 
 naive age." 
 
 It is quite true also that Wagner found 
 Halevy himself cold, pretentious and uncon- 
 genial. 
 
 In Gounod he saw an exalted artist, and a 
 charming conversationalist, but lacking in 
 breadth and depth, and capable only of skim- 
 ming the surface of these qualities, without 
 really attaining them. To the great poet-mu- 
 sician of Tristan Gounod's Faust presented 
 only a surface sentimentality, barely skin-deep, 
 "as superficial as a pair of gloves, not to men- 
 tion rice powder." And Wagner, while hum- 
 ming the "insipid" air of the Jewel Song, ad- 
 mitted that Gounod had real talent, but was 
 incapable of rising to the height of certain 
 subjects. 
 
 This vivacity which Wagner showed, both in 
 his conversation and in his writings, some of 
 which impress us, not merely as pamphlets but 
 as searching investigations, explain a host of 
 things. And when Wagner proposed simul- 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 197 
 
 taneously a new theater and a new worship of 
 the Beautiful, he could not fail to be received 
 with open arms by the initiated, and with 
 hatred by the great majority of the profane. 
 
 It was in the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury that the name of Wagner began to pene- 
 trate into France and to be uttered in artistic 
 circles. Gerard de Nerval, having attended a 
 performance of Lohengrin given at the inaugu- 
 ration of the statue of Herder, made no mistake 
 as to the importance of such a revelation. 
 
 "An original and daring talent has re- 
 vealed itself to Germany, and has so far spoken 
 only its first words." 
 
 It was at this epoch that Fetis, with ill con- 
 sidered zeal, denounced Wagner as the enemy 
 of sane traditions, in a libel which Charles 
 Baudelaire openly qualified as "undigested and 
 abominable." Fetis accused the German mu- 
 sician of subordinating music to poetry. What 
 was the course of his system? he asked: 
 
 "Because Wagner is without inspiration, be- 
 cause he has no ideas, because he is conscious 
 
198 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 of his own weakness in this respect, and is 
 trying to hide it." 
 
 At the time of Napoleon Ill's visit to Stutt- 
 gart (1857), an opportunity was officially given 
 to the French journalists to hear Tannhauser. 
 Theophile Gautier, great artist that he was, 
 though in point of fact more interested in 
 painting than in music, concluded his criti- 
 cism in the Moniteur in the following terms: 
 
 "We should like to see Tannhauser exe- 
 cuted in Paris, at the Grand Opera." 
 
 We have already seen under what conditions 
 it was destined to be . . . executed a few years 
 later. 
 
 Reyer, correspondent for the Courrier de 
 Paris, while not assuming the role of a neo- 
 phyte, could not hide his very real enthusiasm: 
 
 "I felt electrified," he confessed, "by the 
 magnificent love duet sung by the Knight 
 Tannhauser and Elizabeth, at the beginning of 
 the second act. And at the end of that act the 
 composer has risen to the most sublime heights 
 of dramatic art." 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 199 
 
 Thus, the two camps were forming little by 
 little. It was not to be long before they would 
 come to blows. Meanwhile the debate re- 
 mained fairly pacific. His theories were freely 
 discussed. At all events, he was taken under 
 consideration, and fashion paid him a more or 
 less ironic tribute. 
 
 Thus, for example, in the Carnaval des Re- 
 vues, an operetta with words by Grange and 
 Gille, and music by Offenbach, the "composer 
 of the future" was seen to rise from a group of 
 musicians of the past, and end by falling head 
 over heels over the prompter's box into the 
 arms of the perturbed conductor! 
 
 M. Servieres has collected a good deal of curi- 
 ous testimony from various sources regarding 
 the concerts given by Wagner in Paris. We 
 must at least cite this opinion, by one of 
 the boldest champions of the author of 
 Lohengrin: 
 
 "Wagner has learned how to be great, elo- 
 quent, impassioned, impressive, with the sim- 
 plest of means; his free and penetrating orches- 
 
200 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 tration fills the auditorium. The attention is 
 not distracted by any individual instrument, 
 they are all harmoniously blended into a single 
 whole." 
 
 Hector Berlioz, who was at first regarded as 
 more or less a disciple of Wagner's and who 
 suffered from being so far misunderstood, nev- 
 ertheless added his tribute of praise to Lohen- 
 grin: 
 
 "It is as smooth and harmonious as it is 
 fine and strong and sonorous. In my opinion 
 it is a masterpiece." 
 
 But the music of the future had the faculty 
 of kindling his anger, and seemed to awaken in 
 him a personal resentment. Hence his tone 
 was acrid and full of needless rancor. 
 
 Wagner replied this time with great dignity, 
 in a letter which was published in the Debats, 
 and in which he expressed astonishment at 
 having been so ill treated by an eminent art- 
 ist and an intelligent, cultured and sincere 
 critic, whose friendship he himself had valued. 
 He sought for some ground for conciliation and 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 201 
 
 complained in his turn of that ridiculous catch- 
 phrase, "the music of the future." 
 
 We need not dwell further at this point on 
 these famous performances of Tannhauser at 
 the Opera. In his brilliant work on Wagner, 
 Catulle Mendes has characterized them in ex- 
 cellent Wagnerian terms: 
 
 "Cries, hisses, howls, boxes rising in revolt, 
 galleries suffocated with laughter behind their 
 fans, orchestra chairs bounding with anger . . . 
 
 " 'Where has he come from? Who is this 
 new man who dares to change everything? 
 What, not a single cavatina? We especially 
 want roulades, trills, arias, and other small 
 diversions. And we want ballets, oh ! we abso- 
 lutely insist on ballets!' 
 
 "And, augmenting from scene to scene, from 
 act to act, interrupting the performance, dis- 
 organizing the orchestra, terrifying the actors, 
 the clamors of the hostile crowd, which had 
 begun to laugh and scream and howl even be- 
 fore the curtain was raised, produced an im- 
 mense charivari, a continual rough-house 
 
202 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 which could not be drowned out by the searing 
 harmonies of the violins nor by the impas- 
 sioned cries of the courageous Marie Sasse." 
 
 Mendes had good reason for using the word 
 charivari. The periodical of that name had 
 been persistent in its attacks, through the press 
 of Pierre Veren and the nimble pencil of Cham, 
 upon Wagner and the "composer of the fu- 
 ture." 
 
 They extended their attacks to the partizans 
 of this noise-loving composer and cheerfully 
 consigned them all to Charenton; they pro- 
 posed that the extract of Wagneriate should be 
 substituted for valerianate of potash, and they 
 urgently advised the dentists to replace the 
 customary drugs employed for allaying pain, 
 with music boxes equipped with selections from 
 Wagner! 
 
 While Albert Wolff, after a period of inde- 
 cision, opened a fierce attack against Wagner, 
 and Auber defined him as a Berlioz without 
 poetry and asserted that Tannhauser produced 
 the sensation of reading without drawing 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 203 
 
 breath, a work without punctuation, Prosper 
 Merimee declared in his Correspondence: 
 
 "One last disappointment, but a colossal one, 
 was Tannhauser. It seems to me that I could 
 write something very like it tomorrow, by 
 drawing my inspiration from my cat walking 
 up and down the key-board of my piano." 
 
 The fiasco of Tannhauser at the Opera did 
 not fail to evoke a deluge of witticisms at 
 Paris, some more clever than others, but not 
 calculated on the whole to give a very high 
 impression of that type of humor. Is it to be 
 wondered at that such parodies as Panne aux 
 Airs, by Clairville and Barbier at the Dejazet 
 Theater, and Yameinherr by Thiboust and 
 Delacourt, with music by V. Cheri, at the Va- 
 rietes, had the short-lived success which they 
 merited? 
 
 Oscar Comettant placed himself at the head 
 of Wagner's detractors, in a veritable frenzy 
 that unsparingly included Schumann and Liszt. 
 He proclaimed : 
 
 "Wagner thought that he was going to cause 
 
204 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 a revolution at the Opera, but he caused noth- 
 ing but a riot." 
 
 Paul de Saint- Victor talked of musical chaos, 
 and Gozlan blithely insisted that there had not 
 been a musician of such power . . . since 
 Robespierre! 
 
 The offended Berlioz continued, as Wagner 
 himself did in only too many cases, to sacri- 
 fice justice to his passions, and made the mis- 
 take of declaring himself superbly avenged. 
 Scudo also, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 
 made a savage assault upon the innovator. 
 
 Wagner was defended, however, by J. Weber 
 in the Temps, and by Franck-Marie in the 
 Patrie, while in Baudelaire, whose death he de- 
 plored later as much as that of Gasperini, he 
 found a clear-minded and eloquent champion. 
 Baudelaire's study of Wagner, which appeared 
 in the Revue Europeenne, and was afterwards 
 reprinted in L'Art Romantique, was a revela- 
 tion to a great many artists and men of letters. 
 
 Another man who showed an admirable con- 
 stancy and devotion, as well as a fine and dis- 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 205 
 
 interested discrimination, was Pasdeloup. In 
 spite of incredulous smiles, disapprobation and 
 storms of hisses, he devoted himself for more 
 than twenty years (1861-1883) to the heavy, 
 complex, redoubtable task of making Wagner 
 known and understood. Thanks to his ob- 
 scure, but persevering and highly artistic ef- 
 forts, Pasdeloup successively won a hearing for 
 the March from Tannhauser and the Overture 
 to the Flying Dutchman. Little by little, he 
 compelled the attention both of music lovers 
 and of the general public. 
 
 It was impossible to dispute the interest of 
 such efforts, and besides, their success seemed 
 in a certain measure to justify them. That is 
 why another musician of considerable merit, 
 Charles Lamoureux, followed in the same path. 
 Without wishing to disparage his zeal, we must 
 recognize that he probably profited largely 
 from the initiative taken by Pasdeloup. 
 
 While Lamoureux was winning applause for 
 the Pilgrims' Chorus jrom Tannhauser and the 
 Lohengrin Wedding March, Pasdeloup was 
 
206 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 making his plans for producing Rienzi at the 
 Theatre Lyrique. It was at this epoch that 
 Catulle Mendes, one of the most ardent propa- 
 gandists of Wagner and the musical drama, 
 went to Switzerland to pay a visit to the mas- 
 ter. Wagner was undoubtedly on the point of 
 triumphing over prejudice, the ignorance of 
 some and the malevolence of others, when the 
 Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 broke out. 
 We have already seen that Wagner's chief 
 preoccupation was to make his work a sort of 
 monument to the German fatherland, and to 
 lay the foundations of a truly national art. 
 As early as 1868 he published an essay in which 
 he formulated his revolutionary theories, en- 
 thusiastically, immoderately, exclusively Ger- 
 manic. Although he did not follow the exam- 
 ple of a large number of German musicians, 
 after the defeat of France, and write an ode to 
 the army, a solemn triumphal march for the 
 victors, he did at least make the mistake of 
 writing a stupid and coarse comedy entitled 
 The Capitulation, in which, with rather absurd 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 207 
 
 pomposity, he chiefly attacked the Government 
 of National Defense. 
 
 There were a good many people who could 
 not forgive Wagner for this. attitude, and they 
 chose, with childish acrimony, to hold his music 
 answerable for his capricious temper, and to 
 accuse him of all manner of misdeeds, thus 
 displaying a futile patriotism which caused 
 even Francisque Sarcey to express astonish- 
 ment, notwithstanding his small sympathy with 
 innovations and mysticism. 
 
 Such intolerance was unworthy of the French 
 nation. Mozart's glory is undimmed in France, 
 notwithstanding that he called Frenchmen 
 fools and clowns, and slandered French women 
 who avenged themselves for his insults in no 
 other way than by applauding Don Juan and 
 the Marriage of Figaro, and listening devoutly 
 to those exquisite masterpieces. 
 
 At all events, in spite of his mistakes and 
 narrow-mindedness, in spite of the sometimes 
 lamentable results of his pride and his blind 
 hatred, Richard Wagner could not deceive him- 
 
208 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 self as to the necessity of winning the sup- 
 port of the enlightened public in France. And 
 after all he was capable of being just and 
 reasonable. For instance, he once wrote as 
 follows to Gabriel Monod: 
 
 "My productions at Bayreuth have been 
 more fairly and intelligently judged by the 
 French and the English than by the greater 
 part of the German press." 
 
 On the other hand, he declared to M. de 
 Fourcaud, editor of the Gaulois, in 1879: 
 
 "It is true that I am not produced, and for 
 sad and trivial reasons ! But let us say no more 
 about it, it is a thing of the past. ... I am 
 supposed to bear malice, malice! Why should 
 I? Because Tannhauser was hissed? But are 
 they sure that they ever heard Tannhauser as 
 it really is? As for the press, I have not so 
 much to complain of as has been said. I did 
 not pay calls on the critics as I did on Meyer- 
 beer; but Baudelaire, Champfleury and Schure 
 have none the less written the finest things 
 that have yet been said of my dramas. Even 
 
RICHARD WAGNER'S MONUMENT AT BERLIN 
 This monument, erected in the Tiergarten in Berlin, by the 
 sculptor Elberlem, is worthy of his universal and colossal glory 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 209 
 
 today the most flattering appreciations come 
 to me from your country. In short, you see 
 that I have no reason to be so dissatisfied as has 
 been claimed. And neither am I." 
 
 As may well be imagined, Wagner's ancient 
 adversaries, far from disarming, had mustered 
 up new weapons against him, and found much 
 satisfaction in exerting considerable clever- 
 ness and some rather questionable humor in 
 fostering the public antagonism towards the 
 German composer. The bitterest enemies of 
 the author of the Tetralogy were not content 
 to describe him in Tissot's terms, unflattering 
 as the latter's portrait is: 
 
 "He has the head of a dragoon: his gestures 
 are as brusque as rapier strokes, and his speech 
 has retained the volubility of a mill-wheel." 
 
 Nor did it satisfy their malice to see Wagner 
 depicted in profile, in an ironic caricature, as a 
 hooded falcon, or as a large-headed American 
 woodpecker. They resorted freely to open 
 insults, they denounced the enemy by return- 
 ing such verdicts as the following: 
 
210 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 "Wagner's music reveals the pig rather than 
 the angel." 
 
 It is purposeless to cite further amenities of 
 this sort, for they add nothing, and merely 
 demonstrate that music is not always a refiner 
 of manners. 
 
 The French composers all suffered, more or 
 less, from this condition of things, regardless 
 of their individual tendencies and their origi- 
 nality. The accusation of Wagnerianism was 
 made, not only against Saint-Saens and Lalo, 
 but even against Massenet, and at that epoch 
 this was a serious accusation. 
 
 Meanwhile, since 1$72, Wagner reigned su- 
 preme at Bayreuth. Although he was not yet 
 understood as he desired to be, although finan- 
 cial success still remained problematic because 
 of the heavy expenses, although there was 
 ground, and always would be, for discussing 
 theories and systems, it was impossible not to 
 recognize the worth and the splendor of his 
 immense achievement. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding the brilliance of the 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 211 
 
 performances of the Ring of the Nibelung, dur- 
 ing the summer of 1876, and the ovation which 
 greeted them, they still failed to placate the 
 hostility of certain grim-visaged and stubborn 
 critics from Paris. But there was at least one 
 competent judge among the French envoys, 
 Camille Saint-Saens, who represented the 
 Estafette, and who did not hesitate to express 
 his admiration for Wagner's lofty conceptions, 
 although at the same time he saw no necessity 
 for participating in the full rites of the Wag- 
 nerian cult. 
 
 At the other extreme, Albert Wolff, of the 
 Figaro, continued to indulge in sarcasms that 
 were sadly lacking in philosophy: 
 
 "Wagner's poetry," he wrote, "makes most 
 indigestible reading. No one but a man who 
 has trained himself for a week on a diet of 
 American lobster and other notoriously heavy 
 dishes can survive such reading." 
 
 Meanwhile, in Paris, M. Pasdeloup, ably sec- 
 onded by M. A. Jullien, had renewed his gen- 
 erous efforts. Nevertheless, the splendid Fu- 
 
212 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 neral March from Siegfried was hissed at the 
 Cirque d'Hiver, in 1876, the same year in which 
 Lohengrin was given at the Theatre de la Mon- 
 naie in Brussels. Admirable side-light on 
 Parisian standards, especially when we remem- 
 ber that the snobbish element gladly accepted 
 Parsifal after its almost religious production at 
 Bayreuth in 1882. 
 
 On the other hand, while Oscar Comettant 
 still obstinately strove to prove that the Wag- 
 nerian drama was a monstrosity, and while 
 even the sudden death of Wagner had failed 
 to suspend hostilities that were so injurious to 
 the real interests of musical art, the Revue 
 Wagnerienne gathered together the adepts of 
 doctrines oftentimes abstruse, and celebrated 
 the glory of the master by a sonnet competi- 
 tion, in which the triumphant cadences proved 
 to be . . . the decadent ones of Mallarme and 
 Verlaine! 
 
 It would have been far more profitable to 
 have brought the Parisians into the presence of 
 Wagner's own works seriously performed, but 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 213 
 
 the times were not yet ripe. Carvalho discov- 
 ered this when, in 1885, he undertook to pro- 
 duce Lohengrin at the Opera Comique, with 
 such chosen interpreters as Talazac and Bou- 
 vet, Calve and Deschamps. It was the signal 
 for a new campaign against Wagner, and more 
 vehement than ever. They even went so far 
 as to accuse him of having tried to set fire to 
 the city! 
 
 The Wagnerians, nevertheless, by this time 
 made a good showing and included in their 
 ranks musicians of the highest talent, such as 
 Mme. Holmes, Messrs. Chausson and Chabrier,. 
 who passed away all too soon, Gabriel Faure, 
 Messager, and Vincent dTndy, to all of whom 
 the musical art of France is indebted for nu- 
 merous reasons; and writers such as Edouard 
 Rod, Maurice Bouchor, Elemir Bourges, etc. 
 
 A clever writer on the Vie Parisienne has 
 portrayed in the following amusing terms cer- 
 tain significant types among the more fanat- 
 ical Wagnerites of the fair sex: 
 
 "1. The Eccentric Woman. She loves Wag- 
 
214 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 ner because he is noisy, because he is strange, 
 because he gives us the song of dragon and 
 nightingale, of giants and dwarfs, of flowers 
 and stones, of women on horse-back and women 
 in water, . . . because he endows his heroines 
 with phenomenal virtues and pyramidal vices, 
 because he has hidden his orchestra from view, 
 because the world at large cannot all go to 
 Bayreuth, and because she would find it ex- 
 traordinarily pleasant to fall asleep, like the 
 Walkyrie, in the midst of flames. 
 
 "2. The Woman of Wealth. She loves Wag- 
 ner because it is the correct thing, because 
 she thinks it gives her a special artistic air, 
 because it enables her to transport herself to 
 Bayreuth with a retinue of forty-nine servants, 
 seventy-three horses and a hundred and forty- 
 six trunks, and because she wants to applaud 
 Lohengrin in 1885, as a princess applauded 
 Tannhauser in 1861. 
 
 "3. The Up-to-date Woman. She loves 
 Wagner because it is up-to-date, because it is 
 the latest fashion, because it is a sport like 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 215 
 
 any other, because it is 'deliciously decadent' 
 to go on Sunday 'chez Lamoureux,' because it 
 is very select to go to Bayreuth, because it gives 
 her a certain stamp of pure cosmopolitanism, 
 . . . and because it is quite becoming to her, 
 decadent flower of the closing century, to sigh 
 as she thinks of young maidens that have 
 stepped straight out of medieval missals." 
 
 They have not even yet entirely gone out of 
 circulation, these fair Wagnerites. But it is 
 true that they have for the most part become 
 converts to Debussy. 
 
 We know that today Wagner has no diffi- 
 culty in achieving triumphs at the Opera, with- 
 out in any way usurping the place that is due 
 to the French composers. There are Wag- 
 nerian seasons both in Europe and in America, 
 and Wagnerian museums at Bayreuth, Eisen- 
 ach and Vienna. 
 
 After the fervent admirers, after the mil- 
 lionaires, aesthetes and snobs, the general pub- 
 lic has acquired a taste for these admirable 
 spectacles and cordially applauds them. 
 
216 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Lohengrin and Tannhduser now form a part 
 of the classic repertory. We are already far 
 removed from the days of the Wagnerian per- 
 formances given by Charles Lamoureux at the 
 Eden Theater, and it is twenty years since 
 Lohengrin, "opera in three acts and four tab- 
 leaux, by Richard Wagner, translation by Ch. 
 Nuitter," with a cast including Rose Caron 
 and Fierens, Van Dyck, Renaud and Delmas, 
 took the Parisian public by storm (Septem- 
 ber 16th, 1891). 
 
 Worthily glorified, misunderstood, and re- 
 viled, Wagner met in other countries much the 
 same fate as in France. He has not failed to 
 be ridiculed, not only as composer and poet, 
 but also as a jack-of-all-trades and master of 
 universal knowledge. It is in this connection 
 that M. J. Grandcarteret cites quite appropri- 
 ately an article which appeared about 1882 in 
 the Berlin Ulk, under the title of "The Vege- 
 tario-Wagnerian Conservatory." It will be 
 seen that the author of Parsifal is treated far 
 from reverentially in the course of it: 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 217 
 
 "Richard Wagner had declared to his fol- 
 lowers that a vegetarian diet is indispensable 
 for the reorganization of humanity, that is to 
 say, for the purpose of making it possible to 
 appreciate the works of the Master. It is quite 
 certain that persons habitually nurtured on 
 roast beef, roast goose, partridges and lobster 
 salad will find it impossible to understand even 
 the smallest part of the charm and greatness 
 of Parsifal. That is why they have under- 
 taken to build a model establishment in the 
 neighborhood of Bayreuth, for the purpose of 
 producing true 'Wagnerians' in accordance with 
 the formula. According to report, the interior 
 organization of the establishment will be as 
 follows: 
 
 "Four o'clock in the morning. The pupils 
 will be roused from their light slumbers exempt 
 from all Wagnerianism by the trumpets of 
 Parsifal. They will all betake themselves to 
 the so-called 'Dissecting hall/ where they will 
 meet Herr Edmund von Hagen, who will 
 promptly proceed to give them a two-hour ad- 
 
218 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 dress on the philosophico-psychologico-meta- 
 physico-transcendental influence of the 'matu- 
 tinal call.' 
 
 "Six o'clock. First repast, an infusion of 
 thistle leaves. This early morning tea will be 
 sweetened by the accompaniment of the Wed- 
 ding March from Lohengrin. 
 
 "At six o'clock Herr Albert Heintz will ap- 
 pear and will render the principal leitmotiv. 
 As a mental drill for the pupils, he will each 
 day have twelve leitmotivs performed simul- 
 taneously on six pianos. From this chaos of a 
 world of tonalities, the separate motivs should 
 emerge one by one. As these separate motivs 
 are successively recognized, they must be dis- 
 sected and minutely analyzed; then they must 
 be learned by heart and played until each 
 pupil is able to sing them without a mistake, 
 sometimes forward and sometimes backward, 
 and even in their sleep. 
 
 "After four hours of this work, the principal 
 repast will take place. The pupils will enter 
 the refectory in time to the resounding chords 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 219 
 
 of the march from Tannhauser and will bow 
 before the life-sized statue of the Master. 
 
 "Then Herr von Hagen will rise and deliver 
 a brief address, lasting one hour, on the sub- 
 ject of Wagner's influence on the question of 
 diet. He will explain that the true Wagnerite 
 should really eat nothing at all, and that each 
 spoonful of soup consumed is prejudicial to the 
 development of true idealo-artistic creations. 
 After this delicate hint not to linger too long 
 at table, he will propose the health of the Mas- 
 ter, and the pupils will intone the Greeting 
 of the People to Hans Sachs (in the third act 
 of the Meister singer). After which the repast 
 will really begin. 
 
 "The menu, as a matter of fact, will consist 
 of only one dish, which however will vary 
 according to the days of the week. Thus, for 
 example, there will sometimes be served sorrel 
 cooked with pickled cabbage and sweet herbs, 
 seasoned with its own broth, or again thistle 
 stalks boiled until tender, or still again renon- 
 cules acres served with sauce Hollandais 
 
220 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 Volant (Flying Dutchman sauce). These re- 
 pasts will be made more satisfying by the per- 
 formance of selections from Wagnerian works, 
 so that every pupil will leave the table with 
 his appetite thoroughly appeased. After this 
 succulent feast a promenade of at least two 
 hours will be required, in order to counteract 
 any danger of anti- Wagnerian corpulence. 
 
 "From three to four o'clock water and warm 
 milk will be served in the reading-room. The 
 only intellectual pabulum furnished will be the 
 Bayreuther Blatter, the contents of which will 
 be read aloud in its entirety not less than four 
 times. An orchestra, hidden after the Wag- 
 nerian manner, will play throughout the read- 
 ing, in view of the fact that these profoundly 
 philosophical theses cannot be understood with- 
 out the accompaniment of music. 
 
 "Thereafter, a musical tea will be served in 
 the reception room. The pupils will execute 
 favorite selections from the most recent works 
 of the Master, meanwhile partaking of an in- 
 fusion of camomile or fennel. 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 221 
 
 "From eight o'clock until eleven, reading at 
 sight from the full score; after which all the 
 pupils will throw themselves down on their 
 beds and be gently lulled to sleep by some of 
 the most brilliant selections in the whole Wag- 
 nerian repertoire." 
 
 So much for Wagner the Vegetarian. Now 
 for Wagner the Anti-vivisectionist. Wagner 
 was a member of the German Anti-vivisection 
 Society. We have noted on several occasions 
 his fondness for animals. When his dog Russ 
 was killed, he was heart-broken and had the 
 beloved animal buried beside the spot reserved 
 for his own tomb, and composed an epitaph for 
 it. Dickens in his country home paid a similar 
 tribute to a favorite bird. 
 
 The Kikeriki of Vienna had no scruples in 
 attacking the composer through the anti-vivi- 
 sectionist. 
 
 "The illustrious Master," it said, "could lend 
 his valuable aid to the protection of animals 
 from the cruelty inflicted on them, not by pub- 
 lishing pamphlets, but by an entirely different 
 
222 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 method; all that he needs to do is to play 
 some selections from his operas in front of the 
 buildings devoted to vivisection, and the 
 studies in vivisection will immediately be aban- 
 doned (1879)." 
 
 Let us borrow once again from M. Grand- 
 carteret's gleanings the following equally sar- 
 donic dialogue between two anti-Wagnerians, 
 which appeared in another issue of the 
 Kikeriki: 
 
 "A marvelous man, that Wagner! I am 
 absolutely captivated by his personal charm." 
 
 "You don't say so? What has happened to 
 change you so radically?" 
 
 "Your asking me that proves that you are 
 not acquainted with his latest work." 
 
 "What do you mean? Is it possible that 
 he has written anything that is free from 
 discords?" 
 
 "It is nothing but a series of cries straight 
 from the heart!" 
 
 "And by Richard Wagner? Incredible! 
 What is the name of this new opera?" 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 223 
 
 "It isn't an opera, it is a pamphlet against 
 vivisection." 
 
 In ways like these, Wagner was singularly 
 ill treated; but on the other hand, he was 
 fortunate in having had a number of biogra- 
 phers of the first rank, whose efforts cannot 
 be too highly praised, no matter from what 
 point of view we look at them; writers such 
 as Adolphe Jullien in France, and elsewhere 
 Glasenapp, Chamberlain and a host of others. 
 At the same time, his personal reputation has 
 had to suffer from certain works of more ques- 
 tionable authority, such as that of the pianist 
 Prager. 
 
 But it seems worth while to dwell especially 
 upon one writer who was the most notorious 
 Wagnerian in all Germany, — and who also 
 seems to have been the most notorious anti- 
 Wagnerian. We refer to the celebrated philoso- 
 pher, Nietzsche. We shall not presume to at- 
 tempt a definite elucidation of what might be 
 called, if one were choosing a title for a volume 
 on this poet-philosopher, The Case of Wagner 
 
224 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 vs. Nietzsche. We shall not even dream of 
 trying to give any lengthy interpretation of the 
 Apocalyptic visions of the author of Thus 
 Spake Zarathustra, nor of involving ourselves 
 in hazy discussions of the question. 
 
 But it is interesting to reconstruct with some 
 exactness this singular episode in the history of 
 contemporary art and, we may add, philosophy. 
 Nothing could be more curious, and certainly 
 nothing could be more essential to an under- 
 standing of Wagner's mind and to an estima- 
 tion of his influence. 
 
 A profoundly original mind, and an artist of 
 a brilliant and incisive style, haunted by his 
 conception of a regenerated humanity, and by 
 strange and lofty dreams which were destined 
 later to cloud his reason, Friedrich Nietzsche, 
 after pursuing a course of serious philological 
 studies, turned his attention to mythology and 
 to Grecian and pagan antiquity. 
 
 As professor in the University of Basel, he 
 had become deeply interested in Wagner's 
 theories and music. In 1869 he paid a visit to 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 225 
 
 Wagner at Triebschen, in the neighborhood of 
 Lucerne, and expressed his enthusiastic admira- 
 tion. Wagner received him eagerly, happy and 
 flattered at this attention. For was not 
 Nietzsche in a position to initiate his fellow 
 citizens into the dogmas of the new drama and 
 the new theory of music made concrete in the 
 form of solemn and picturesque spectacles, des- 
 tined to set the heart of a whole nation to 
 beating? 
 And later Wagner wrote to Nietzsche: 
 "Do not fail to come to see me again, and 
 become better acquainted with my ideas. In- 
 tercourse with my fellow countrymen has been 
 hitherto of little profit to me." (This phrase 
 is worth noting and contrasting with his exalted 
 love of Germany.) "Come to the rescue of my 
 somewhat shame-faced belief in what, together 
 with Goethe and a few others, I call German 
 liberty. Reveal to the world what true phil- 
 ology is, and aid me in accomplishing the great 
 renaissance." 
 We shall see, as Theodor de Wyzewa has ably 
 
226 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 demonstrated, that a sort of misunderstanding 
 was destined to arise between these two in re- 
 gard to this same renaissance, and that this 
 misunderstanding was bound to increase, ag- 
 gravated in Nietzsche's case by the memory of 
 their former friendship and by the cruel an- 
 guish of a soul tormented by its efforts to solve 
 the eternal problems of individual and public 
 morality. 
 
 The Birth of Tragedy was an indirect hymn 
 to Wagner and Wagnerianism (1871). The 
 grateful musician gladly stored it up in his 
 heart, next to his wife, his faithful and fervent 
 protagonist, Lenbach, . . . and his dog. 
 
 Nietzsche, who dreamed of the flowering of 
 a vast and sumptuous Germanic paganism, be- 
 lieved that he had found an ally in Wagner. 
 At the start, the Tetralogy impressed him as a 
 fundamentally anti-Christian conception of the 
 universe and of humanity. But the finished 
 drama of the Ring, which he derisively insisted 
 upon labeling "opera," impressed him as hope- 
 lessly different frOm the pagan and Dyonisiac 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 227 
 
 drama whose glorious birth in Germany it had 
 been his dream to witness. 
 
 As a matter of fact, there could be no greater 
 contrast than that between themes of pity and 
 redemption which Wagner has exalted in the 
 persons of his blameless heroes and the delir- 
 ium of conquest of the Superman, who has 
 emancipated himself from all compassion and 
 all charity. 
 
 When Wagner met Nietzsche again at Sor- 
 rento, and when he had read Man and Super- 
 man, he was able to realize the profundity of 
 their intellectual disagreement. Nevertheless, 
 he sent him the score of Parsifal. 
 
 Accordingly, Nietzsche at last reached the 
 point of scoffing at his former friend, quite sin- 
 cerely and very cruelly, recanting his former 
 profession of faith, and qualifying Wagner with 
 the epithet of mountebank and many another 
 equally expressive. But, as we have already 
 noted, he could not rid himself of the spell of 
 Tristan, and in spite of his hostility and morbid 
 dislike, he could not restrain himself from shed- 
 
228 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 ding tears, — tears of resentment or, more likely, 
 of sentimental and painful regret, — at the mere 
 mention of the name of Richard Wagner. 
 
 In The Case of Wagner Nietzsche wrote with 
 bitter irony: 
 
 "In his works some one always wants to be 
 redeemed, sometimes a little man, and some- 
 times a little woman." 
 
 Another compatriot of Wagner's, Max Nor- 
 dau, found such aspersions far too tolerant. 
 Protesting against the deification of this artist, 
 he openly called him unbalanced, a grapho- 
 maniac with a muddled brain. 
 
 "This phenomenon," he said, "has ended by 
 exerting over the great assemblage of contem- 
 porary fools a force of attraction incomparably 
 more powerful than all its rivals. The name of 
 this phenomenon is Richard- Wagnerism." 
 
 And he declares tempestuously: 
 
 "Richard Wagner represents, in himself 
 alone, a greater quantity of degeneracy than 
 all the other degenerates taken together. . . . 
 In his mental constitution as a whole, he shows 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 229 
 
 the delusion of persecution, megalomania and 
 mysticism; in his instincts we find a vague 
 philanthropy, anarchism, and a mania for re- 
 volt and contradiction." 
 
 And in support of his assertions, Nordau 
 furnishes a number of proofs, the following in 
 particular: 
 
 "Wagner surrounds himself with people who 
 are eccentric, if not mad; such as the Princess 
 von Mettemich, daughter of Count Sandov, 
 and such as Nietzsche and Ludwig II of Ba- 
 varia." 
 
 We need not follow this critic upon grounds 
 that are more or less scientific, nor accuse all 
 Wagnerites of cerebral aberration. We may 
 leave him to bear the full responsibility for his 
 diatribe, without for that reason shutting our 
 eyes to the flaws of genius, or to the element of 
 excess in a cult which surely contains quite 
 as much of nobility as it does of puerility and 
 ignorance. 
 
 At the same time, Nordau himself concedes 
 that Wagner possesses the talent of a historic 
 
230 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 painter of the first order! Is it necessary to 
 remark that an appreciation of that sort is 
 scarcely calculated to satisfy the rest of us? 
 
 Tolstoy is another who is scarcely more in- 
 dulgent towards Wagner's works and person- 
 ality. This need not greatly surprise us. Aside 
 from the fact that the aesthetic judgments of 
 the illustrious Russian novelist are often ex- 
 tremely singular, it is important to bear in 
 mind the nature of his own apostleship and 
 religion. Having returned to a sort of primi- 
 tive evangelism, he despised all manifestations 
 of sumptuous art, and even of any kind of art 
 which did not bear a direct relation to morality. 
 
 The little known pages that he devoted to 
 Wagner's music have been admirably trans- 
 lated into French by M. Halperine-Kaminsky, 
 and constitute a curious and highly entertain- 
 ing document. It is well worth while to quote 
 from them at sufficient length to reveal the 
 elements of a doctrine quite as revolutionary 
 as that of the author of the Tetralogy. 
 
 "Everything in Wagner is calculated for the 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 231 
 
 effect; the monsters and the magic fire, and 
 the scenes enacted at the bottom of a river, 
 and the darkness of the auditorium, and the 
 hidden orchestra, and the unheard-of harmonic 
 combinations. 
 
 "In short, everything is designed to attract. 
 We are not merely interested in the plot: who 
 will kill, who will be killed, who will marry, 
 who is the father, who is the son, and what 
 will come of it all in the end? Curiosity is also 
 aroused by the relationship between the music 
 and the text: the Rhine rolls its waves; how 
 is that going to be translated by the music? 
 The wicked dwarf enters; how is the music 
 going to describe him? How will the music ex- 
 press courage, fire, apples? How will the leit- 
 motiv of the character on the stage combine 
 with those of the characters and objects of 
 which he speaks? The music, too, is attractive 
 in itself: it departs from all the hitherto ac- 
 cepted laws of harmony, and runs into modu- 
 lations wholly new and unexpected (which is 
 very easy in music so utterly disorganized and 
 
232 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 unbalanced); the discords also are new; and 
 all this is interesting. 
 
 "All these things, poetic rubbish, beauty, ef- 
 fect and interest, all these methods, carried to 
 perfection in Wagner's works, take the specta- 
 tor by siege and hypnotize him; he is in the 
 condition of a man who has been listening for 
 hours to the delirious dream of a madman, de- 
 livered with supreme oratorical ability. 
 
 "People will tell me, 'You cannot judge of 
 the works of Wagner, because you have not 
 seen them produced at Bayreuth, in a dark- 
 ened auditorium, with the orchestra hidden, 
 and with an execution, perfected in all its de- 
 tails.' Well, I should answer, there is pre- 
 cisely the proof that it is not a question of art, 
 but clearly of hypnotism. Plunge yourself in 
 darkness for four days, submit your brain to 
 the action of sounds having the most intensely 
 irritating effect on the auditory nerves, and 
 you will certainly arrive at an abnormal state 
 in which you will be ready to applaud enthusi- 
 astically any sort of folly. As for that, four 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 233 
 
 days is too much; the five hours' duration of 
 one day of the Ring, as I saw it in Moscow, is 
 sufficient; even one hour is enough for those 
 who have no clear idea of real art, and who are 
 persuaded in advance that they are going to see 
 something wonderful, and that to show indif- 
 ference or hostility would be to acknowledge 
 themselves uncultured. 
 
 "I carefully studied the audience at the per- 
 formance I attended. The men who took the 
 lead and gave the others their cue were either 
 hypnotized in advance, or else quickly fell back 
 into a hypnotic state with which they were 
 already familiar. These hypnotized people 
 were in a state of complete pathological ecs- 
 tasy. Furthermore, all the art critics, — a class 
 incapable of any artistic emotion, and conse- 
 quently won over in advance to any work 
 which, like Wagner's operas, is purely cerebral, 
 — also approved with an air of importance, of 
 a work which furnished them with such fine 
 material for a dissertation. These two cate- 
 gories of melomaniacs drew in their wake the 
 
234 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 city crowd, with the millionaires and the 
 Maecenases at their head, who, like badly 
 trained hounds, run with the pack that barks 
 the loudest. 
 
 "And if there are some who feel outraged at 
 so much absurdity and falsehood, they keep 
 silent, just as men in full possession of their 
 senses keep silent in a crowd of drunkards. 
 
 "And thus it happens that a work which is 
 false, coarse and absurd, having nothing what- 
 ever in common with art, makes the circuit of 
 the globe, costs millions to stage, and con- 
 stantly corrupts more and more the good taste 
 of the higher classes, and their appreciation of 
 artistic beauty." 
 
 What virulence! What cruelty! Would it 
 not almost seem as though we were listening 
 to a Rousseau who had made himself respon- 
 sible for modern opera, and was launching the 
 vials of his wrath against the theater? The 
 prophet of Jasnaia Poliana has been unsparing 
 in his denunciation of the prophet of Bayreuth. 
 Let us, for our part, avoid taking sides in this 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 235 
 
 conflict of doctrines. Since we have the good 
 fortune to be able to read Peace and War and 
 Resurrection, and also to applaud Lohengrin 
 and the Gotterdammerung, let us guard with 
 jealous care the precious possession of our elec- 
 tive tastes. 
 
 The most eminent musicians of France are 
 all in accord to render his due to the German 
 composer and to recognize the unique impor- 
 tance of his personality and his wide influence 
 on the history of the art. Does this mean that 
 after Wagner there will be no further occasion 
 to admire other initiatives and talents of an- 
 other order? Not by any means. 
 
 M. Alfred Bruneau has proved this by exam- 
 ple as well as by precept. Apart from all preju- 
 dice, he has devoted one of the best pages he 
 ever wrote to the subject of Wagner's influence 
 upon music. We may listen to him not only 
 as one of the best informed of critics, but also 
 as the distinguished author of a number of 
 masterpieces. At the time of the fiasco of 
 Tannhauser in 1861, Wagnerianism had al- 
 
236 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 ready taken deep root in the soil of France. 
 Here is what Alfred Bruneau says : 
 
 "By persecuting the creator of such an art, 
 they deified him, they changed that art which 
 there was nothing to prevent people from dis- 
 cussing, into an unassailable religion, to which, 
 little by little, the whole world became con- 
 verted, some through calm and clear-sighted 
 reasoning, others through blind and enthusi- 
 astic snobbishness. And the adversaries of 
 progress and beauty forged upon the anvil of 
 their own stupidity and disloyalty the solid and 
 avenging weapon which was destined to slay 
 them. 
 
 "By uniting the most daring and at the 
 same time most self-assured innovation with 
 the noble tradition of Gluck and Beethoven, 
 a tradition shamefully misunderstood by the 
 Italians of the decadence, and their innumera- 
 ble imitators, Richard Wagner splendidly and 
 gloriously substituted logic for incoherence, 
 truth for falsehood, poetry for platitude, mel- 
 ody for the couplet, singing for vocal gymnas- 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 237 
 
 tics, inspiration for formulas, the orchestra for 
 the guitar, wealth for poverty, life for death. 
 The disciples whom, with such tendencies, he 
 was inevitably bound to have, naturally flocked 
 to him in proportion as his detractors multi- 
 plied." 
 
 This could not have been better said. And 
 M. Bruneau goes on to analyze with extreme 
 subtlety the reasons for the influence exerted 
 by Wagner, its advantages and its dangers: 
 
 "Our public was suddenly taken by storm 
 by the very works which were formerly exe- 
 crated and which finally forced open the doors 
 of our theaters. There ensued a mad craze un- 
 paralleled in the history of music. . . . Some 
 of our composers, dazzled by the prodigious 
 sumptuousness of such conceptions, entered 
 upon an extremely perilous path, and very 
 nearly lost their way and perished. Through 
 constantly worshiping the sovereign master, 
 harkening to his lessons, analyzing his meth- 
 ods, they unconsciously and with the best in- 
 tention in the world, caricature him. From 
 
238 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 that moment, his influence ceases to be good." 
 M. Bruneau adds that this influence, all 
 things considered, is on the wane. He very 
 justly remarks, to speak only of conditions out- 
 side of France, that the composers who are 
 recognized as the heads of the younger schools, 
 such as Richard Strauss in Germany, Puccini 
 in Italy, and Rimsky-Korsakoff in Russia, con- 
 tent themselves with borrowing from Wagner 
 only such elements as will serve for the free 
 development of their thoughts. And the cele- 
 brated composer of the Dream eloquently 
 concludes: 
 
 "Those who saw in the art of Richard Wag- 
 ner a limit to the efforts of the universe, a 
 definitive achievement, blundered in as clumsy 
 a fashion as those who denied the colossal 
 grandeur, the absolute necessity of that art. 
 A radiant star has warmed and regenerated us, 
 and has kindled in our hearts the flame of love 
 and gladness; he has fertilized the vast field of 
 ideas with the seed of future harvests. No 
 one will ever succeed in banishing Wagner from 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 239 
 
 the place he occupies in immortality, between 
 Bach and Weber." 
 
 We subscribe readily to this judgment, which 
 we may supplement with the opinion of M. 
 D. C. Planchet, who is considered by competent 
 judges as one of the composers best entitled 
 to be regarded as leaders of the modern school 
 in France: 
 
 "It is certain, and indeed has become almost 
 a commonplace, that Richard Wagner has 
 transformed musical drama. His influence has 
 been felt, in varying degrees, by all the com- 
 posers who have succeeded him, by those whose 
 temperaments were the most refractory, and 
 even, in a less direct way, by the latest comers, 
 notwithstanding that they claimed to represent 
 a reaction against his tyrannical domination. 
 This influence was exercised not only upon 
 the form of lyric drama, but even upon the 
 very thoughts of his contemporaries and upon 
 their musical expression. This is why we meet 
 with it in all the different forms of the art 
 which have engaged the activity of modern 
 composers. 
 
240 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 "It is true that the melody, the Wagnerian 
 phrase has none of those characteristic for- 
 mulas which are like a sign manual in Men- 
 delssohn, or Gounod or Cesar Franck. It is 
 chiefly by its movement that we identify it, 
 by the accent, and the expression, which at 
 one and the same time is very delicate and very 
 intense. It is through this quality that it has 
 exerted an influence on all contemporary lyric 
 music, broadening and revivifying it. Wagner's 
 music progressively enriched itself through all 
 the special traits of his immediate predeces- 
 sors, Weber, Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann, 
 whom he assimilated, and blended into a mu- 
 sical utterance possessed of a richness, a liberty, 
 an audacity and an unexpectedness that do not 
 suffice in themselves, but which in his hands are 
 the necessary and varied expression of senti- 
 ments and passions. 
 
 "Nor has his influence been any less appar- 
 ent on instrumentation. It is not precisely in 
 picturesque details that his innovations lie, 
 nor in agreeable Mendings of tonal values. 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 241 
 
 From this point of view, Berlioz and Liszt are 
 both his superiors, and what is more, they 
 preceded him. What is peculiarly his own is 
 his full and crowded orchestration, that sur- 
 rounds the action, bathes it, penetrates it, as it 
 were, with a sonorous atmosphere, through 
 which the lives of the characters seem to be 
 enriched and amplified with all the attributes 
 of universal life. 
 
 "Finally, there are certain scenes in the 
 Tetralogy, in Tristan and Parsifal, possessed of 
 such ingenuity, such amplitude and audacity 
 of conception that they have opened up new 
 horizons, even in the domain of pure music. 
 
 "I believe that now we have at last freed 
 ourselves, perhaps through the influence of 
 Russian music, but chiefly thanks to our own 
 national temperament, from whatever was ex- 
 cessive and at the same time transitory in such 
 a dominant force. But we have assimilated 
 from Wagner all that is capable of assimilation 
 by humanity as a whole, all that is stimulating 
 and productive and that now forms part of 
 
242 RICHARD WAGNER 
 
 ourselves, part of our own artistic existence." 
 Let us record further the appreciation of 
 the tenor, Van Dyck; that admirable Wag- 
 nerian interpreter who has successively and 
 magnificently rendered Tannhauser, Lohengrin, 
 Siegmund, Loge and Parsifal: 
 
 "Wagner," he said, "has developed and en- 
 nobled his interpreters. The gesture illustrates 
 the melody, the word commands the gesture. 
 Any conventional attitude henceforward is re- 
 pellent and impossible. We no longer have 
 before us a tenor, a basso, a soprano, mezzo- 
 soprano or contralto, — immutable classification 
 of types! — but personages whose task it is to 
 live the story, and who are obliged to be, 
 neither more nor less than the stage setting 
 which frames them, or the orchestra whose 
 symphonies illustrate and accompany it, the 
 interpreters of a dramatic action, and not 
 merely singers giving a concert in costume." 
 
 This is precious testimony, which sums up 
 the role of Richard Wagner in the history of 
 musical tragedy. 
 
WAGNER AND POSTERITY 243 
 
 Wagner, the great romantic artist, the great 
 creator of the musical drama, appears as an 
 imposing and seductive genius, quite regard- 
 less of what may be the past and the future of 
 Wagnerianism, or the value of his system and 
 aesthetic conceptions. 
 
 It is not easy to escape from the influence 
 of such a personality. He was a religious man. 
 He was great not merely because with one 
 gigantic effort he opened a new and fertile era 
 for music, and presided from the full height of 
 his immense and synthetic genius over the evo- 
 lution of an art, but because he believed that 
 art was religion. He believed that he had not 
 the right to separate the one from the other. 
 He responded with his ringing and prophetic 
 voice to all the voices of nature. He brought 
 to light the mystery whose secret and deep 
 hidden existence we felt within and around us. 
 He intoned the immortal hosannah of Man 
 to the Supreme and Universal. He evoked 
 from the misty darkness of earth some glimpses 
 of a celestial radiance. 
 
 THE END