No More Learning

" Meanwhile Wagner's "success" in
the kind of drama which he most disliked steadily
increased; so much so, indeed, that the largest


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170 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
theatres began to subsist almost entirely upon
the receipts which Wagner's art, in the guise of
operas, brought into them. This growing passion
on the part of the theatre-going public bewildered
even some of Wagner's friends; but this man,
who had endured so much, had still to endure
the bitterest pain of all—he had to see his
friends intoxicated with his "successes" and
"triumphs" everywhere where his highest ideal
was openly belied and shattered. It seemed
almost as though a people otherwise earnest and
reflecting had decided to maintain an attitude of
systematic levity only towards its most serious
artist, and to make him the privileged recipient of
all the vulgarity, thoughtlessness, clumsiness, and
malice of which the German nature is capable.
When, therefore, during the German War, a current
of greater magnanimity and freedom seemed to
run through every one, Wagner remembered the
duty to which he had pledged himself, namely, to
rescue his greatest work from those successes and
affronts which were so largely due to misunder-
standings, and to present it in his most personal
rhythm as an example for all times. Thus he
conceived the idea of Bayreuth. In the wake of
that current of better feeling already referred to,
he expected to notice an enhanced sense of duty
even among those with whom he wished to entrust
his most precious possession. Out of this two-
fold duty, that event took shape which, like a glow
of strange sunlight, will illumine the few years that
lie behind and before us, and was designed to bless
that distant and problematic future which to


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 171
our time and to the men of our time can be little
more than a riddle or a horror, but which to the
few who are allowed to assist in its realisation is
a foretaste of coming joy, a foretaste of love in a
higher sphere, through which they know themselves
to be blessed, blessing and fruitful, far beyond their
span of years; and which to Wagner himself is
but a cloud of distress, care, meditation, and grief, a
fresh passionate outbreak of antagonistic elements,
but all bathed in the starlight of selfless fidelity,
and changed by this light into indescribable joy.
It scarcely need be said that it is the breath of
tragedy that fills the lungs of the world. And
every one whose innermost soul has a presentiment
of this, every one unto whom the yoke of tragic
deception concerning the aim of life, the distortion
and shattering of intentions, renunciation and
purification through love, are not unknown things,
must be conscious of a vague reminiscence of
Wagner's own heroic life, in the masterpieces
with which the great man now presents us. We
shall feel as though Siegfried from some place far
away were relating his deeds to us: the most blissful
of touching recollections are always draped in the
deep mourning of waning summer, when all nature
lies still in the sable twilight


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172 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
IX.
All those to whom the thought of Wagner's
development as a man may have caused pain
will find it both restful and healing to reflect upon
what he was as an artist, and to observe how his
ability and daring attained to such a high degree
of independence. If art mean only the faculty
of communicating to others what one has oneself
experienced, and if every work of art confutes itself
which does not succeed in making itself under-
stood, then Wagner's greatness as an artist would
certainly lie in the almost demoniacal power of his
nature to communicate with others, to express
itself in all languages at once, and to make known
its most intimate and personal experience with
the greatest amount of distinctness possible. His
appearance in the history of art resembles nothing
so much as a volcanic eruption of the united artistic
faculties of Nature herself, after mankind had
grown to regard the practice of a special art as a
necessary rule. It is therefore a somewhat moot
point whether he ought to be classified as a poet,
a painter, or a musician, even using each these
words in its widest sense, or whether a new word
ought not to be invented in order to describe him.
Wagner's poetic ability is shown by his thinking
in visible and actual facts, and not in ideas; that
is to say, he thinks mythically, as the people have
always done. No particular thought lies at the
bottom of a myth, as the children of an artificial


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 173
culture would have us believe; but it is in itself a
thought: it conveys an idea of the world, but
through the medium of a chain of events, actions,
and pains. The Ring of the Nihelung is a huge
system of thought without the usual abstractness
of the latter. It were perhaps possible for a
philosopher to present us with its exact equivalent
in pure thought, and to purge it of all pictures
drawn from life, and of all living actions, in which
case we should be in possession of the same thing
portrayed in two completely different forms—the
one for the people, and the other for the very
reverse of the people; that is to say, men of
theory. But Wagner makes no appeal to this last
class, for the man of theory can know as little
of poetry or myth as the deaf man can know
of music; both of them being conscious only of
movements which seem meaningless to them. It
is impossible to appreciate either one of these
completely different forms from the standpoint of
the other: as long as the poet's spell is upon one,
one thinks with him just as though one were
merely a feeling, seeing, and hearing creature; the
conclusions thus reached are merely the result of
the association of the phenomena one sees, and
are therefore not logical but actual causalities.
If, therefore, the heroes and gods of mythical
dramas, as understood by Wagner, were to express
themselves plainly in words, there would be a
danger (inasmuch as the language of words might
tend to awaken the theoretical side in us) of our
finding ourselves transported from the world of
myth to the world of ideas, and the result would


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174 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
be not only that we should fail to understand with
greater ease, but that we should probably not
understand at all. Wagner thus forced language
back to a more primeval stage in its development,
a stage at which it was almost free of the abstract
element, and was still poetry, imagery, and feeling;
the fearlessness with which Wagner undertook this
formidable mission shows how imperatively he
was led by the spirit of poetry, as one who must
follow whithersoever his phantom leader may direc
him. Every word in these dramas ought to allow
of being sung, and gods and heroes should make
them their own—that was the task which Wagner
set his literary faculty. Any other person in like
circumstances would have given up all hope; for
our language seems almost too old and decrepit
to allow of one's exacting what Wagner exacted
from it; and yet, when he smote the rock, he
brought forth an abundant flow. Precisely owing
to the fact that he loved his language and exacted
a great deal from it, Wagner suffered more than
any other German through its decay and enfeeble-
ment, from its manifold losses and mutilations of
form, from its unwieldy particles and clumsy con-
struction, and from its unmusical auxiliary verbs.
All these are things which have entered the
language through sin and depravity. On the
other hand, he was exceedingly proud to record
the number of primitive and vigorous factors still
extant in the current speech; and in the tonic
strength of its roots he recognised quite a
wonderful affinity and relation to real music, a
quality which distinguished it from the highly


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 175
evolved and artificially rhetorical Latin languages.
Wagner's poetry is eloquent of his affection for
the German language, and there is a heartiness
and candour in his treatment of it which are
scarcely to be met with in any other German
writer, save perhaps Goethe. Forcibleness of
diction, daring brevity, power and variety in
rhythm, a remarkable wealth of strong and
striking words, simplicity in construction, an
almost unique inventive faculty in regard to fluctu-
ations of feeling and presentiment, and there-
withal a perfectly pure and overflowing stream of
colloquialisms—these are the qualities that have
to be enumerated, and even then the greatest and
most wonderful of all is omitted. Whoever reads
two such poems as Tristan and the Meistersingers
consecutively will be just as astonished and
doubtful in regard to the language as to the
music; for he will wonder how it could have been
possible for a creative spirit to dominate so
perfectly two worlds as different in form, colour,
and arrangement, as in soul. This is the most
wonderful achievement of Wagner's talent; for
the ability to give every work its own linguistic
stamp and to find a fresh body and a new sound
for every thought is a task which only the great
master can successfully accomplish. Where this
rarest of all powers manifests itself, adverse
criticism can be but petty and fruitless which con-
fines itself to attacks upon certain excesses and
eccentricities in the treatment, or upon the more
frequent obscurities of expression and ambiguity
of thought. Moreover, what seemed to electrify


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176 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
and scandalise those who were most bitter in their
criticism was not so much the language as the
spirit of the Wagnerian operas—that is to say, his
whole manner of feeling and suffering. It were
well to wait until these very critics have acquired
another spirit themselves; they will then also speak
a different tongue, and, by that time, it seems to
me things will go better with the German language
than they do at present.
In the first place, however, no one who studies
Wagner the poet and word-painter should forget
that none of his dramas were meant to be read, and
that it would therefore be unjust to judge them
from the same standpoint as the spoken drama.
The latter plays upon the feelings by means of
words and ideas, and in this respect it is under the
dominion of the laws of rhetoric. But in real life
passion is seldom eloquent: in spoken drama it
perforce must be, in order to be able to express
itself at all. When, however, the language of a
people is already in a state of decay and deteriora-
tion, the word-dramatist is tempted to impart an
undue proportion of new colour and form both to
his medium and to his thoughts; he would elevate
the language in order to make it a vehicle capable
of conveying lofty feelings, and by so doing he
runs the risk of becoming abstruse. By means of
sublime phrases and conceits he likewise tries to
invest passion with some nobility, and thereby runs
yet another risk, that of appearing false and arti-
ficial. For in real life passions do not speak in
sentences, and the poetical element often draws
suspicion upon their genuineness when it departs


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. I77
too palpably from reality. Now Wagner, who was
the first to detect the essential feeling in spoken
drama, presents every dramatic action threefold:
in a word, in a gesture, and in a sound. For, as a
matter of fact, music succeeds in conveying the
deepest emotions of the dramatic performers direct
to the spectators, and while these see the evidence
of the actors' states of soul in their bearing and
movements, a third though more feeble confirma-
tion of these states, translated into conscious will,
quickly follows in the form of the spoken word.
All these effects fulfil their purpose simultaneously,
without disturbing one another in the least, and
urge the spectator to a completely new understand-
ing and sympathy, just as if his senses had suddenly
grown more spiritual and his spirit more sensual,
and as if everything which seeks an outlet in him,
and which makes him thirst for knowledge, were
free and joyful in exultant perception. Because
every essential factor in a Wagnerian drama is
conveyed to the spectator with the utmost clear-
ness, illumined and permeated throughout by music
as by an internal flame, their author can dispense
with the expedients usually employed by the
writer of the spoken play in order to lend light
and warmth to the action. The whole of the
dramatist's stock in trade could be more simple,
and the architect's sense of rhythm could once
more dare to manifest itself in the general propor-
tions of the edifice; for there was no more need of
the deliberate confusion and involved variety of
styles, whereby the ordinary playwright strove in
the interests of his work to produce that feeling of
M


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I78 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
wonder and thrilling suspense which he ultimately
enhanced to one of delighted amazement. The
impression of ideal distance and height was no
more to be induced by means of tricks and arti-
fices. Language withdrew itself from the length
and breadth of rhetoric into the strong confines
of the speech of the feelings, and although the
actor spoke much less about all he did and felt
in the performance, his innermost sentiments, which
the ordinary playwright had hitherto ignored for
fear of being undramatic, was now able to drive the
spectators to passionate sympathy, while the ac-
companying language of gestures could be restricted
to the most delicate modulations. Now, when pas-
sions are rendered in song, they require rather more
time than when conveyed by speech; music pro-
longs, so to speak, the duration of the feeling, from
which it follows, as a rule, that the actor who is
also a singer must overcome the extremely un-
plastic animation from which spoken drama suffers.
He feels himself incited all the more to a certain
nobility of bearing, because music envelopes his
feelings in a purer atmosphere, and thus brings
them closer to beauty.
The extraordinary tasks which Wagner set his
actors and singers will provoke rivalry between
them for ages to come, in the personification of
each of his heroes with the greatest possible amount
of clearness, perfection, and fidelity, according to
that perfect incorporation already typified by the
music of drama. Following this leader, the eye
of the plastic artist will ultimately behold the
marvels of another visible world, which, previous


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 179
to him, was seen for the first time only by the
creator of such works as the Ring of the Nibelung
—that creator of highest rank, who, like ^Eschylus,
points the way to a coming art. Must not jealousy
awaken the greatest talent, if the plastic artist ever
compares the effect of his productions with that of
Wagnerian music, in which there is so much pure
and sunny happiness that he who hears it feels as
though all previous music had been but an alien,
faltering, and constrained language; as though in
the past it had been but a thing to sport with in
the presence of those who were not deserving of
serious treatment, or a thing with which to train and
instruct those who were not even deserving of play?
In the case of this earlier kind of music, the joy
we always experience while listening to Wagner's
compositions is ours only for a short space of time,
and it would then seem as though it were over-
taken by certain rare moments of forgetfulness,
during which it appears to be communing with its
inner self and directing its eyes upwards, like
Raphael's Cecilia, away from the listeners and
from all those who demand distraction, happiness,
or instruction from it
.
In general it may be said of Wagner the
Musician, that he endowed everything in nature
which hitherto had had no wish to speak with the
power of speech: he refuses to admit that anything
must be dumb, and, resorting to the dawn, the
forest, the mist, the cliffs, the hills, the thrill of
night and the moonlight, he observes a desire
common to them all — they too wish to sing
their own melody. If the philosopher says it


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180 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
is will that struggles for existence in animate and
inanimate nature, the musician adds: And this will,
wherever it manifests itself, yearns for a melodious
existence.
Before Wagner's time, music for the most part
moved in narrow limits: it concerned itself with
the permanent states of man, or with what the
Greeks call etlws. And only with Beethoven did
it begin to find the language of pathos, of passion-
ate will, and of the dramatic occurrences in the
souls of men. Formerly, what people desired was
to interpret a mood, a stolid, merry, reverential, or
penitential state of mind, by means of music; the
object was, by means of a certain striking uni-
formity of treatment and the prolonged duration
of this uniformity, to compel the listener to grasp
the meaning of the music and to impose its mood
upon him. To all such interpretations of mood or
atmosphere, distinct and particular forms of treat-
ment were necessary: others were established by
convention. The question of length was left to
the discretion of the musician, whose aim was not
only to put the listener into a certain mood, but
also to avoid rendering that mood monotonous by
unduly protracting it. A further stage was reached
when the interpretations of contrasted moods were
made to follow one upon the other, and the charm
of light and shade was discovered; and yet another
step was made when the same piece of music was
allowed to contain a contrast of the ethos—for.
instance, the contest between a male and a female
theme. All these, however, are crude and primi-
tive stages in the development of music. The fear


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. l8l
of passion suggested the first rule, and the fear of
monotony the second; all depth of feeling and
any excess thereof were regarded as "unethical. "
Once, however, the art of the ethos had repeatedly
been made to ring all the changes on the moods
and situations which convention had decreed as
suitable, despite the most astounding resourceful-
ness on the part of its masters, its powers were
exhausted. Beethoven was the first to make music
speak a new language — till then forbidden — the
language of passion; but as his art was based
upon the laws and conventions of the ethos, and
had to attempt to justify itself in regard to them,
his artistic development was beset with peculiar
difficulties and obscurities. An inner dramatic
factor — and every passion pursues a dramatic
course—struggled to obtain a new form, but the
traditional scheme of " mood music" stood in its
way, and protested — almost after the manner in
which morality opposes innovations and immorality.
It almost seemed, therefore, as if Beethoven had
set himself the contradictory task of expressing
pathos in the terms of the ethos. This view does
not, however, apply to Beethoven's latest and
greatest works; for he really did succeed in dis-
covering a novel method of expressing the grand
and vaulting arch of passion. He merely selected
certain portions of its curve; imparted these with
the utmost clearness to his listeners, and then left
it to them to divine its whole span. Viewed super-
ficially, the new form seemed rather like an aggre-
gation of several musical compositions, of which
every one appeared to represent a sustained situa-


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182 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
tion, but was in reality but a momentary stage in
the dramatic course of a passion. The listener
might think that he was hearing the old " mood"
music over again, except that he failed to grasp the
relation of the various parts to one another, and
these no longer conformed with the canon of the
law. Even among minor musicians, there flourished
a certain contempt for the rule which enjoined har-
mony in the general construction of a composition,
and the sequence of the parts in their works still
remained arbitrary. Then, owing to a misunder-
standing, the discovery of the majestic treatment
of passion led back to the use of the single move-
ment with an optional setting, and the tension
between the parts thus ceased completely. That
is why the symphony, as Beethoven understood it,
is such a wonderfully obscure production, more
especially when, here and there, it makes faltering
attempts at rendering Beethoven's pathos. The
means ill befit the intention, and the intention is,
on the whole, not sufficiently clear to the listener,
because it was never really clear, even in the mind
of the composer. But the very injunction that
something definite must be imparted, and that this
must be done as distinctly as possible, becomes
ever more and more essential, the higher, more
difficult, and more exacting the class of work
happens to be.
That is why all Wagner's efforts were concen-
trated upon the one object of discovering those
means which best served the purpose of distinct-
ness, and to this end it was above all necessary for
him to emancipate himself from all the prejudices


## p. 183 (#287) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 183
and claims of the old "mood" music, and to give
his compositions—the musical interpretations of
feelings and passion — a perfectly unequivocal
mode of expression. If we now turn to what he
has achieved, we see that his services to music are
practically equal in rank to those which that
sculptor-inventor rendered to sculpture who intro-
duced "sculpture in the round. " All previous
music seems stiff and uncertain when compared
with Wagner's, just as though it were ashamed and
did not wish to be inspected from all sides. With
the most consummate skill and precision, Wagner
avails himself of every degree and colour in the
realm of feeling; without the slightest hesitation
or fear of its escaping him, he seizes upon the most
delicate, rarest, and mildest emotion, and holds it
fast, as though it had hardened at his touch, de-
spite the fact that it may seem like the frailest
butterfly to every one else. His music is never
vague or dreamy; everything that is allowed to
speak through it, whether it be of man or of nature,
has a strictly individual passion; storm and fire
acquire the ruling power of a personal will in his
hands. Over all the clamouring characters and the
clash of their passions, over the whole torrent of
contrasts, an almighty and symphonic understand-
ing hovers with perfect serenity, and continually
produces concord out of war. Taken as a whole,
Wagner's music is a reflex of the world as it was
understood by the great Ephesian poet—that is to
say, a harmony resulting from strife, as the union
of justice and enmity. I admire the ability which
could describe the grand line of universal passion


## p. 183 (#288) ############################################

182
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
tion, but was in reality but a momentary stage in
the dramatic course of a passion. The listener
might think that he was hearing the old "mood”
music over again, except that he failed to grasp the
relation of the various parts to one another, and
these no longer conformed with the canon of the
law. Even among minor musicians, there flourished
a certain contempt for the rule which enjoined har-
mony in the general construction of a composition,
and the sequence of the parts in their works still
remained arbitrary. Then, owing to a misunder-
standing, the discovery of the majestic treatment
of passion led back to the use of the single move-
ment with an optional setting, and the tension
between the parts thus ceased completely. That
is why the symphony, as Beethoven understood it,
is such a wonderfully obscure production, more
especially when, here and there, it makes faltering
attempts at rendering Beethoven's pathos. The
means ill befit the intention, and the intention is,
on the whole, not sufficiently clear to the listener,
because it was never really clear, even in the mind
of the composer. But the very injunction that
something definite must be imparted, and that this
must be done as distinctly as possible, becomes
ever more and more essential, the higher, more
difficult, and more exacting the class of work
happens to be.
That is why all Wagner's efforts were concen-
trated upon the one object of discovering those
means which best served the purpose of distinct-
ness, and to this end it was above all necessary for
him to emancipate himself from all the prejudices


## p. 183 (#289) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH.
183
and claims of the old “mood” music, and to give
his compositions—the musical interpretations of
feelings and passion – a perfectly unequivocal
mode of expression. If we now turn to what he
has achieved, we see that his services to music are
practically equal in rank to those which that
sculptor-inventor rendered to sculpture who intro-
duced “sculpture in the round. ” All previous
music seems stiff and uncertain when compared
with Wagner's, just as though it were ashamed and
did not wish to be inspected from all sides. With
the most consummate skill and precision, Wagner
avails himself of every degree and colour in the
realm of feeling ; without the slightest hesitation
or fear of its escaping him, he seizes upon the most
delicate, rarest, and mildest emotion, and holds it
fast, as though it had hardened at his touch, de-
spite the fact that it may seem like the frailest
butterfly to every one else. His music is never
vague or dreamy; everything that is allowed to
speak through it, whether it be of man or of nature,
has a strictly individual passion; storm and fire
acquire the ruling power of a personal will in his
hands. Over all the clamouring characters and the
clash of their passions, over the whole torrent of
contrasts, an almighty and symphonic understand-
ing hovers with perfect serenity, and continually
produces concord out of war. Taken as a whole,
Wagner's music is a reflex of the world as it was
understood by the great Ephesian poet—that is to
say, a harmony resulting from strife, as the union
of justice and enmity. I admire the ability which
could describe the grand line of universal passion


## p. 184 (#290) ############################################

184 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
out of a confusion of passions which all seem to be
striking out in different directions: the fact that
this was a possible achievement I find demon-
strated in every individual act of a Wagnerian
drama, which describes the individual history of
various characters side by side with a general
history of the whole company. Even at the very
beginning we know we are watching a host of cross
currents dominated by one great violent stream;
and though at first this stream moves unsteadily
over hidden reefs, and the torrent seems to be torn
asunder as if it were travelling towards different
points, gradually we perceive the central and
general movement growing stronger and more
rapid, the convulsive fury of the contending waters
is converted into one broad, steady, and terrible
flow in the direction of an unknown goal; and
suddenly, at the end, the whole flood in all its
breadth plunges into the depths, rejoicing demoniac-
ally over the abyss and all its uproar. Wagner is
never more himself than when he is overwhelmed
with difficulties and can exercise power on a large
scale with all the joy of a lawgiver. To bring rest-
less and contending masses into simple rhythmic
movement, and to exercise one will over a bewilder-
ing host of claims and desires—these are the tasks
for which he feels he was born, and in the perform-
ance of which he finds freedom. And he never
loses his breath withal, nor does he ever reach his
goal panting. He strove just as persistently to
impose the severest laws upon himself as to lighten
the burden of others in this respect. Life and art
weigh heavily upon him when he cannot play with


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 185
their most difficult questions. If one considers the
relation between the melody of song and that of
speech, one will perceive how he sought to adopt as
his natural model the pitch, strength, and tempo
of the passionate man's voice in order to transform 1
it into art; and if one further considers the task
of introducing this singing passion into the general
symphonic order of music, one gets some idea of
the stupendous difficulties he had to overcome. In
this behalf, his inventiveness in small things as in
great, his omniscience and industry are such, that
at the sight of one of Wagner's scores one is
almost led to believe that no real work or effort
had ever existed before his time. It seems almost
as if he too could have said, in regard to the hard-
ships of art, that the real virtue of the dramatist
lies in self-renunciation. But he would probably
have added, There is but one kind of hardship—
that of the artist who is not yet free: virtue and
goodness are trivial accomplishments.
Viewing him generally as an artist, and calling
to mind a more famous type, we see that Wagner
is not at all unlike Demosthenes: in him also we
have the terrible earnestness of purpose and that
strong prehensile mind which always obtains a
complete grasp of a thing; in him, too, we have the
hand's quick clutch and the grip as of iron. Like
Demosthenes, he conceals his art or compels one to
forget it by the peremptory way he calls attention
. to the subject he treats; and yet, like his great
predecessor, he is the last and greatest of a whole
line of artist-minds, and therefore has more to
conceal than his forerunners: his art acts like


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186 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
nature, like nature recovered and restored. Unlike
all previous musicians, there is nothing bombastic
about him; for the former did not mind playing
at times with their art, and making an exhibition
of their virtuosity. One associates Wagner's art
neither with interest nor with diversion, nor with
Wagner himself and art in general. All one is
conscious of is of the great necessity of it all. No
one will ever be able to appreciate what severity,
evenness of will, and self-control the artist required
during his development, in order, at his zenith, to
be able to do the necessary thing joyfully and
freely. Let it suffice if we can appreciate how, in
some respects, his music, with a certain cruelty
towards itself, determines to subserve the course of
the drama, which is as unrelenting as fate, whereas
in reality his art was ever thirsting for a free ramble
in the open and over the wilderness.
X.
An artist who has this empire over himself sub-
jugates all other artists, even though he may not
particularly desire to do so. For him alone there
lies no danger or stemming-force in those he has
subjugated—his friends and his adherents; whereas
the weaker natures who learn to rely on their
friends pay for this reliance by forfeiting their
independence. It is very wonderful to observe how
carefully, throughout his life, Wagner avoided any-
thing in the nature of heading a party, notwith-
standing the fact that at the close of every phase
in his career a circle of adherents formed, pre-


## p. 187 (#293) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 187
sumably with the view of holding him fast to his
latest development. He always succeeded, how-
ever, in wringing himself free from them, and never
allowed himself to be bound; for not only was the
ground he covered too vast for one alone to keep
abreast of him with any ease, but his way was so
exceptionally steep that the most devoted would
have lost his breath. At almost every stage in
Wagner's progress his friends would have liked to
preach to him, and his enemies would fain have
done so too—but for other reasons. Had the
purity of his artist's nature been one degree less
decided than it was, he would have attained much
earlier than he actually did to the leading position
in the artistic and musical world of his time. True,
he has reached this now, but in a much higher
sense, seeing that every performance to be
witnessed in any department of art makes its
obeisance, so to speak, before the judgment-
stool of his genius and of his artistic temperament.
He has overcome the most refractory of his con-
temporaries; there is not one gifted musician among
them but in his innermost heart would willingly
listen to him, and find Wagner's compositions more
worth listening to than his own and all other
musical productions taken together. Many who
wish, by hook or by crook, to make their mark,
even wrestle with Wagner's secret charm, and
unconsciously throw in their lot with the older
masters, preferring to ascribe their "independence"
to Schubert or Handel rather than to Wagner.
But in vain! Thanks to their very efforts in con-
tending against the dictates of their own con-


## p. 188 (#294) ############################################

188 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
sciences, they become ever meaner and smaller
artists; they ruin their own natures by forcing them-
selves to tolerate undesirable allies and friends.
And in spite of all these sacrifices, they still find,
perhaps in their dreams, that their ear turns atten-
tively to Wagner. These adversaries are to be
pitied: they imagine they lose a great deal when
they lose themselves, but here they are mistaken.
Albeit it is obviously all one to Wagner whether
musicians compose in his style, or whether they
compose at all, he even does his utmost to dis-
sipate the belief that a school of composers should
now necessarily follow in his wake; though, in so
far as he exercises a direct influence upon musicians,
he does indeed try to instruct them concerning the
art of grand execution. In his opinion, the evolu-
tion of art seems to have reached that stage when
the honest endeavour to become an able and
masterly exponent or interpreter is ever so much
more worth talking about than the longing to be a
creator at all costs. For, at the present stage of art,
universal creating has this fatal result, that inas-
much as it encourages a much larger output, it
tends to exhaust the means and artifices of genius
by everyday use, and thus to reduce the real
grandeur of its effect. Even that which is good
in art is superfluous and detrimental when it
proceeds from the imitation of what is best. Wag-
nerian ends and means are of one piece: to per-
ceive this, all that is required is honesty in art
matters, and it would be dishonest to adopt his
means in order to apply them to other and less
significant ends.


## p. 189 (#295) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 189
If, therefore, Wagner declines to live on amid a
multitude of creative musicians, he is only the
more desirous of imposing upon all men of talent
the new duty of joining him in seeking the law of
style for dramatic performances. He deeply feels
the need of establishing a traditional style for his
art, by means of which his work may continue to
live from one age to another in a pure form, until
it reaches that future which its creator ordained
for it.
Wagner is impelled by an undaunted longing
to make known everything relating to that founda-
tion of a style, mentioned above, and, accordingly,
everything relating to the continuance of his art.
To make his work—as Schopenhauer would say—
a sacred depository and the real fruit of his life, as
well as the inheritance of mankind, and to store it
for the benefit of a posterity better able to appreci-
ate it,—these were the supreme objects of his life,
and for these he bore that crown of thorns which,
one day, will shoot forth leaves of bay. Like the
insect which, in its last form, concentrates all its
energies upon the one object of finding a safe
depository for its eggs and of ensuring the future
welfare of its posthumous brood,—then only to
die content, so Wagner strove with equal deter-
mination to find a place of security for his works.
This subject, which took precedence of all others
with him, constantly incited him to new dis-
coveries; and these he sought ever more and
more at the spring of his demoniacal gift of
communicability, the more distinctly he saw him-
self in conflict with an age that was both perverse


## p. 190 (#296) ############################################

I90 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
and unwilling to lend him its ear. Gradually,
however, even this same age began to mark his
indefatigable efforts, to respond to his subtle
advances, and to turn its ear to him. Whenever
a small or a great opportunity arose, however
far away, which suggested to Wagner a means
wherewith to explain his thoughts, he availed
himself of it: he thought his thoughts anew into
every fresh set of circumstances, and would make
them speak out of the most paltry bodily form.
Whenever a soul only half capable of comprehend-
ing him opened itself to him, he never failed to
implant his seed in it. He saw hope in things
which caused the average dispassionate observer
merely to shrug his shoulders; and he erred again
and again, only so as to be able to carry his point
against that same observer. Just as the sage, in
reality, mixes, with living men only for the
purpose of increasing his store of knowledge, so
the artist would almost seem to be unable to
associate with his contemporaries at all, unless they
be such as can help him towards making his work
eternal. He cannot be loved otherwise than with
the love of this eternity, and thus he is conscious
only of one kind of hatred directed at him, the
hatred which would demolish the bridges bearing
his art into the future. The pupils Wagner
educated for his own purpose, the individual
musicians and actors whom he advised and
whose ear he corrected and improved, the small
and large orchestras he led, the towns which
witnessed him earnestly fulfilling the duties of his
calling, the princes and ladies who half boastfully


## p. 191 (#297) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 191
and half lovingly participated in the framing of
his plans, the various European countries to which
he temporarily belonged as the judge and evil
conscience of their arts,—everything gradually
became the echo of his thought and of his indefatig-
able efforts to attain to fruitfulness in the future.
Although this echo often sounded so discordant as
to confuse him, still the tremendous power of his
voice repeatedly crying out into the world must in
the end call forth reverberations, and it will soon
be impossible to be deaf to him or to misunder-
stand him. It is this reflected sound which even
now causes the art-institutions of modern men
to shake: every time the breath of his spirit blew
into these coverts, all that was overripe or
withered fell to the ground; but the general
increase of scepticism in all directions speaks more
eloquently than all this trembling. Nobody any
longer dares to predict where Wagner's influence
may not unexpectedly break out.
He is quite
unable to divorce the salvation of art. from any
other salvation or damnation: wherever modern
life conceals a danger, he, with the discriminating
eye of mistrust, perceives a danger threatening art.
In his imagination he pulls the edifice of modern
civilisation to pieces, and allows nothing rotten,
no unsound timber-work to escape: if in the
process he should happen to encounter weather-
tight walls or anything like solid foundations, he
immediately casts about for means wherewith he
can convert them into bulwarks and shelters for
his art. He lives like a fugitive, whose will is not
to preserve his own life, but to keep a secret—


## p. 192 (#298) ############################################

192 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
like an unhappy woman who does not wish to
save her own soul, but that of the child lying
in her lap: in short, he lives like Sieglinde, "for
the sake of love. "
For life must indeed be full of pain and shame
to one who can find neither rest nor shelter in
this world, and who must nevertheless appeal to
it, exact things from it, contemn it, and still be
unable to dispense with the thing contemned,
—this really constitutes the wretchedness of the
artist of the future, who, unlike the philosopher,
cannot prosecute his work alone in the seclusion
of a study, but who requires human souls as
messengers to this future, public institutions as a
guarantee of it, and, as it were, bridges between
now and hereafter. His art may not, like the
philosopher's, be put aboard the boat of written
documents: art needs capable men, not letters and
notes, to transmit it. Over whole periods in
Wagner's life rings a murmur of distress — his
distress at not being able to meet with these
capable interpreters before whom he longed to
execute examples of his work, instead of being
confined to written symbols; before whom he
yearned to practise his art, instead of showing a
pallid reflection of it to those who read books, and
who, generally speaking, therefore are not artists.
In Wagner the man of letters we see the
struggle of a brave fighter, whose right hand has,
as it were, been lopped off, and who has continued
the contest with his left. In his writings he is
always the sufferer, because a temporary and in-
superable destiny deprives him of his own and the


## p. 193 (#299) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 193
correct way of conveying his thoughts—that is to
say, in the form of apocalyptic and triumphant
examples. His writings contain nothing canonical
or severe: the canons are to be found in his works
as a whole. Their literary side represents his
attempts to understand the instinct which urged
him to create his works and to get a glimpse of
himself through them. If he succeeded in trans-
forming his instincts into terms of knowledge, it
was always with the hope that the reverse process
might take place in the souls of his readers—it
was with this intention that he wrote. Should it
ultimately be proved that, in so doing, Wagner
attempted the impossible, he would still only share
the lot of all those who have meditated deeply on
art; and even so he would be ahead of most of
them in this, namely, that the strongest instinct for
all arts harboured in him. I know of no written
aesthetics that give more light than those of
Wagner; all that can possibly be learnt con-
cerning the origin of a work of art is to be found in
them. He is one of the very great, who appeared
amongst us a witness, and who is continually
improving his testimony and making it ever
clearer and freer; even when he stumbles as a
scientist, sparks rise from the ground. Such tracts
as "Beethoven," " Concerning the Art of Conduct-
ing," "Concerning Actors and Singers," "State
and "Religion," silence all contradiction, and, like
sacred reliquaries, impose upon all who approach
them a calm, earnest, and reverential regard.
Others, more particularly the earlier ones, in-
cluding "Opera and Drama," excite and agitate
N


## p. 193 (#300) ############################################

192
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
like an unhappy woman who does not wish to
save her own soul, but that of the child lying
in her lap: in short, he lives like Sieglinde, “for
the sake of love. "
For life must indeed be full of pain and shame
to one who can find neither rest nor shelter in
this world, and who must nevertheless appeal to
it, exact things from it, contemn it, and still be
unable to dispense with the thing contemned,
—this really constitutes the wretchedness of the
artist of the future, who, unlike the philosopher,
cannot prosecute his work alone in the seclusion
of a study, but who requires human souls as
messengers to this future, public institutions as a
guarantee of it, and, as it were, bridges between
now and hereafter. His art may not, like the
philosopher's, be put aboard the boat of written
documents : art needs capable men, not letters and
notes, to transmit it. Over whole periods in
Wagner's life rings a murmur of distress — his
distress at not being able to meet with these
capable interpreters before whom he longed to
execute examples of his work, instead of being
confined to written symbols ; before whom he
yearned to practise his art, instead of showing a
pallid reflection of it to those who read books, and
who, generally speaking, therefore are not artists.
In Wagner the man of letters we see the
struggle of a brave fighter, whose right hand has,
as it were, been lopped off, and who has continued
the contest with his left. In his writings he is
always the sufferer, because a temporary and in-
superable destiny deprives him of his own and the


## p. 193 (#301) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH.
correct way of conveying his thoughts—that is to
say, in the form of apocalyptic and triumphant
examples. His writings contain nothing canonical
or severe: the canons are to be found in his works
as a whole. Their literary side represents his
attempts to understand the instinct which urged
him to create his works and to get a glimpse of
himself through them. If he succeeded in trans-
forming his instincts into terms of knowledge, it
was always with the hope that the reverse process
might take place in the souls of his 'readers—it
was with this intention that he wrote. Should it
ultimately be proved that, in so doing, Wagner
attempted the impossible, he would still only share
the lot of all those who have meditated deeply on
art; and even so he would be ahead of most of
them in this, namely, that the strongest instinct for
all arts harboured in him. I know of no written
æsthetics that give more light than those of
Wagner; all that can possibly be learnt con-
cerning the origin of a work of art is to be found in
them. He is one of the very great, who appeared
amongst us a witness, and who is continually
improving his testimony and making it ever
clearer and freer ; even when he stumbles as a
scientist, sparks rise from the ground. Such tracts
as “Beethoven,” “Concerning the Art of Conduct-
ing,” “Concerning Actors and Singers," “State
and Religion," silence all contradiction, and, like
sacred reliquaries, impose upon all who approach
them a calm, earnest, and reverential regard.
Others, more particularly the earlier ones, in-
cluding “Opera and Drama,” excite and agitate


## p. 194 (#302) ############################################

194 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
one; their rhythm is so uneven that, as prose,
they are bewildering. Their dialectics is con-
stantly interrupted, and their course is more
retarded than accelerated by outbursts of feeling;
a certain reluctance on the part of the writer seems
to hang over them like a pall, just as though the
artist were somewhat ashamed of speculative dis-
cussions. What the reader who is only imperfectly
initiated will probably find most oppressive is the
general tone of authoritative dignity which is
peculiar to Wagner, and which is very difficult to
describe: it always strikes me as though Wagner
were continually addressing enemies; for the
style of all these tracts more resembles that of
the spoken than of the written language, hence
they will seem much more intelligible if heard read
aloud, in the presence of his enemies, with whom
he cannot be on familiar terms, and towards whom
he must therefore show some reserve and aloofness.
The entrancing passion of his feelings, however,
constantly pierces this intentional disguise, and
then the stilted and heavy periods, swollen with
accessary words, vanish, and his pen dashes off
sentences, and even whole pages, which belong to
the best in German prose. But even admitting
that while he wrote such passages he was address-
ing friends, and that the shadow of his enemies
had been removed for a while, all the friends and
enemies that Wagner, as a man of letters, has,
possess one factor in common, which differentiates
them fundamentally from the "people" for whom
he worked as an artist. Owing to the refining and
fruitless nature of their education, they are quite


## p. 195 (#303) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 195
devoid of the essential traits of the national character,
and he who would appeal to them must speak
in a way which is not of the people—that is to say,
after the manner of our best prose-writers and
Wagner himself; though that he did violence to
himself in writing thus is evident. But the strength
of that almost maternal instinct of prudence in
him, which is ready to make any sacrifice, rather
tends to reinstall him among the scholars and men
of learning, to whom as a creator he always
longed to bid farewell. He submits to the
language of culture and all the laws governing
its use, though he was the first to recognise its
profound insufficiency as a means of communication.
For if there is anything that distinguishes his
art from every other art of modern times, it is that
it no longer speaks the language of any particular
caste, and refuses to admit the distinctions
"literate" and "illiterate. " It thus stands as a
contrast to every culture of the Renaissance,
which to this day still bathes us modern men in
its light and shade. Inasmuch as Wagner's art
bears us, from time to time, beyond itself, we are
enabled to get a general view of its uniform
character: we see Goethe and Leopardi as the
last great stragglers of the Italian philologist-poets,
Faust as the incarnation of a most unpopular
problem, in the form of a man of theory thirsting
for life; even Goethe's song is an imitation of the
song of the people rather than a standard set
before them to which they are expected to attain,
and the poet knew very well how truly he spoke
when he seriously assured his adherents: "My


## p. 196 (#304) ############################################

I96 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
compositions cannot become popular; he who
hopes and strives to make them so is mistaken. "
That an art could arise which would be so clear
and warm as to flood the base and the poor in
spirit with its light, as well as to melt the haughti-
ness of the learned—such a phenomenon had to be
experienced though it could not be guessed. But
even in the mind of him who experiences it to-day
it must upset all preconceived notions concerning
education and culture; to such an one the veil will
seem to have been rent in twain that conceals a
future in which no highest good or highest joys
exist that are not the common property of all.
The odium attaching to the word "common " will
then be abolished.
If presentiment venture thus into the remote
future, the discerning eye of all will recognise the
dreadful social insanity of our present age, and
will no longer blind itself to the dangers besetting
an art which seems to have roots only in the
remote and distant future, and which allows its
burgeoning branches to spread before our gaze
when it has not yet revealed the ground from
which it draws its sap. How can we protect this
homeless art through the ages until that remote
future is reached? How can we so dam the flood
of a revolution seemingly inevitable everywhere,
that the blessed prospect and guarantee of a better
future—of a freer human life—shall not also be
washed away with all that is destined to perish
and deserves to perish?
He who asks himself this question shares
Wagner's care: he will feel himself impelled with


## p. 197 (#305) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. I97
Wagner to seek those established powers that
have the goodwill to protect the noblest passions
of man during the period of earthquakes and
upheavals. In this sense alone Wagner questions
the learned through his writings, whether they
intend storing his legacy to them—the precious
Ring of his art—among their other treasures.
And even the wonderful confidence which he re-
poses in the German mind and the aims of German
politics seems to me to arise from the fact that he
grants the people of the Reformation that strength,
mildness, and bravery which is necessary in order
to divert "the torrent of revolution into the
tranquil river-bed of a calmly flowing stream of
humanity": and I could almost believe that this
and only this is what he meant to express by
means of the symbol of his Imperial march.
As a rule, though, the generous impulses of the
creative artist and the extent of his philanthropy
are too great for his gaze to be confined within the
limits of a single nation. His thoughts, like those
of every good and great German, are more than
German, and the language of his art does not
appeal to particular races but to mankind in
general.
But to the men of the future.
This is the belief that is proper to him; this is
his torment and his distinction. No artist, of what
past soever, has yet received such a remarkable
portion of genius; no one, save him, has ever been
obliged to mix this bitterest of ingredients with
the drink of nectar to which enthusiasm helped
him. It is not as one might expect, the misunder-


## p. 198 (#306) ############################################

I98 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
stood and mishandled artist, the fugitive of his age,
who adopted this faith in self-defence: success or
failure at the hands of his contemporaries was
unable either to create or to destroy it. Whether
it glorified or reviled him, he did not belong to this
generation: that was the conclusion to which his
instincts led him. And the possibility of any
generation's ever belonging to him is something
which he who disbelieves in Wagner can never be
made to admit. But even this unbeliever may
at least ask, what kind of generation it will be
in which Wagner will recognise his "people," and
in which he will see the type of all those who
suffer a common distress, and who wish to escape
from it by means of an art common to them all.
Schiller was certainly more hopeful and sanguine;
he did not ask what a future must be like if the
instinct of the artist that predicts it prove true; his
command to every artist was rather—
Soar aloft in daring flight
Out of sight of thine own years!
In thy mirror, gleaming bright,
Glimpse of distant dawn appears.
XI.
May blessed reason preserve us from ever
thinking that mankind will at any time discover
a final and ideal order of things, and that happi-
ness will then and ever after beam down upon us
uniformly, like the rays of the sun in the tropics.
Wagner has nothing to do with such a hope; he is


## p. 199 (#307) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 199
no Utopian. If he was unable to dispense with
the belief in a future, it only meant that he
observed certain properties in modern men which
he did not hold to be essential to their nature, and
which did not seem to him to form any necessary
part of their constitution; in fact, which were
changeable and transient; and that precisely
owing to these properties art would find no home
among them, and he himself had to be the pre-
cursor and prophet of another epoch. No golden
age, no cloudless sky will fall to the portion of
those future generations, which his instinct led
him to expect, and whose approximate character-
istics may be gleaned from the cryptic characters
of his art, in so far as it is possible to draw
conclusions concerning the nature of any pain from
the kind of relief it seeks. Nor will superhuman
goodness and justice stretch like an everlasting
rainbow over this future land. Belike this coming
generation will, on the whole, seem more evil than
the present one—for in good as in evil it will be
more straightforward. It is even possible, if its
soul were ever able to speak out in full and
unembarrassed tones, that it might convulse and
terrify us, as though the voice of some hitherto
concealed and evil spirit had suddenly cried out in
our midst. Or how do the following propositions
strike our ears? —That passion is better than
stocism or hypocrisy; that straightforwardness,
even in evil, is better than losing oneself in trying
to observe traditional morality; that the free man
is just as able to be good as evil, but that the
unemancipated man is a disgrace to nature, and


## p. 200 (#308) ############################################

200 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
has no share in heavenly or earthly bliss; finally,
that all who wish to be free must become so
through themselves, and that freedom falls to
nobody's lot as a gift from Heaven. However
harsh and strange these propositions may sound,
they are nevertheless reverberations from that
future world, which is verily in need of art, and
which expects genuine pleasure from its presence;
they are the language of nature—reinstated even in
mankind; they stand for what I have already
termed correct feeling as opposed to the incorrect
feeling that reigns to-day.
But real relief or salvation exists only for nature
not for that which is contrary to nature or which
arises out of incorrect feeling. When all that is
unnatural becomes self-conscious, it desires but one
thing—nonentity; the natural thing, on the other
hand, yearns to be transfigured through love: the
former would fain not be, the latter would fain be
otherwise. Let him who has understood this recall,
in the stillness of his soul, the simple themes of
Wagner's art, in order to be able to ask himself
whether it were nature or nature's opposite which
sought by means of them to achieve the aims just
described.
The desperate vagabond finds deliverance from
his distress in the compassionate love of a woman
who would rather die than be unfaithful to him:
the theme of the Flying Dutchman. The sweet-
heart, renouncing all personal happiness, owing to
a divine transformation of Love into Charity,
becomes a saint, and saves the soul of her loved
one: the theme of Tannhauser. The sublimest


## p. 201 (#309) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 201
and highest thing descends a suppliant among
men, and will not be questioned whence it came;
when, however, the fatal question is put, it sorrow-
fully returns to its higher life: the theme of Lohen-
grin. The loving soul of a wife, and the people
besides, joyfully welcome the new benevolent
genius, although the retainers of tradition and
custom reject and revile him: the theme of the
Meistersingers. Of two lovers, that do not know
they are loved, who believe rather that they are
deeply wounded and contemned, each demands of
the other that he or she should drink a cup of
deadly poison, to all intents and purposes as an
expiation of the insult; in reality, however, as the
result of an impulse which neither of them under-
stands: through death they wish to escape all
possibility of separation or deceit. The supposed
approach of death loosens their fettered souls and
allows them a short moment of thrilling happiness,
just as though they had actually escaped from the
present, from illusions and from life: the theme of
Tristan and Isolde.
In the Ring of the Nibelung the tragic hero is a
god whose heart yearns for power, and who, since
he travels along all roads in search of it, finally
binds himself to too many undertakings, loses his
freedom, and is ultimately cursed by the curse
inseparable from power. He becomes aware of
his loss of freedom owing to the fact that he no
longer has the means to take possession of the
golden Ring—that symbol of all earthly power,
and also of the greatest dangers to himself as long
as it lies in the hands of his enemies. The fear of


## p. 201 (#310) ############################################

200 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
has no share in heavenly or earthly bliss; finally,
that all who wish to be free must become so
through themselves, and that freedom falls to
nobody's lot as a gift from Heaven. However
harsh and strange these propositions may sound,
they are nevertheless reverberations from that
future world, which is verily in need of art, and
which expects genuine pleasure from its presence;
they are the language of nature-reinstated even in
mankind; they stand for what I have already
termed correct feeling as opposed to the incorrect
feeling that reigns to-day.
But real relief or salvation exists only for nature
not for that which is contrary to nature or which
arises out of incorrect feeling. When all that is
unnatural becomes self-conscious, it desires but one
thing-nonentity; the natural thing, on the other
hand, yearns to be transfigured through love: the
former would fain not be, the latter would fain be
otherwise. Let him who has understood this recall,
in the stillness of his soul, the simple themes of
Wagner's art, in order to be able to ask himself
whether it were nature or nature's opposite which
sought by means of them to achieve the aims just
described.
The desperate vagabond finds deliverance from
his distress in the compassionate love of a woman
who would rather die than be unfaithful to him:
the theme of the Flying Dutchman. The sweet.
heart, renouncing all personal happiness, owing to
a divine transformation of Love into Charity,
becomes a saint, and saves the soul of her loved
one: the theme of Tannhäuser. The sublimest


## p. 201 (#311) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH.
201
and highest thing descends a suppliant among
men, and will not be questioned whence it came;
when, however, the fatal question is put, it sorrow-
fully returns to its higher life: the theme of Lohen-
grin. The loving soul of a wife, and the people
besides, joyfully welcome the new benevolent
genius, although the retainers of tradition and
custom reject and revile him : the theme of the
Meistersingers. Of two lovers, that do not know
they are loved, who believe rather that they are
deeply wounded and contemned, each demands of
the other that he or she should drink a cup of
deadly poison, to all intents and purposes as an
expiation of the insult; in reality, however, as the
result of an impulse which neither of them under-
stands: through death they wish to escape all
possibility of separation or deceit. The supposed
approach of death loosens their fettered souls and
allows them a short moment of thrilling happiness,
just as though they had actually escaped from the
present, from illusions and from life: the theme of
Tristan and Isolde.
In the Ring of the Nibelung the tragic hero is a
god whose heart yearns for power, and who, since
he travels along all roads in search of it, finally
binds himself to too many undertakings, loses his
freedom, and is ultimately cursed by the curse
inseparable from power. He becomes aware of
his loss of freedom owing to the fact that he no
longer has the means to take possession of the
golden Ring—that symbol of all earthly power,
and also of the greatest dangers to himself as long
as it lies in the hands of his enemies. The fear of


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202 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
the end and the twilight of all gods overcomes
him, as also the despair at being able only to await
the end without opposing it. He is in need of the
free and fearless man who, without his advice or
assistance—even in a struggle against gods—can
accomplish single-handed what is denied to the
powers of a god. He fails to see him, and just as
a new hope finds shape within him, he must obey
the conditions to which he is bound: with his own
hand he must murder the thing he most loves, and
purest pity must be punished by his sorrow.
Then he begins to loathe power, which bears evil
and bondage in its lap; his will is broken, and he
himself begins to hanker for the end that threatens
him from afar off. At this juncture something
happens which had long been the subject of his
most ardent desire: the free and fearless man
appears, he rises in opposition to everything ac-
cepted and established, his parents atone for
having been united by a tie which was antagonistic
to the order of nature and usage; they perish, but
Siegfried survives. And at the sight of his magnifi-
cent development and bloom, the loathing leaves
Wotan's soul, and he follows the hero's history
with the eye of fatherly love and anxiety. How
he forges his sword, kills the dragon, gets posses-
sion of the ring, escapes the craftiest ruse, awakens
Brunhilda; how the curse abiding in the ring
gradually overtakes him; how, faithful in faithful-
ness, he wounds the thing he most loves, out of
love; becomes enveloped in the shadow and cloud
of guilt, and, rising out of it more brilliantly than
the sun, ultimately goes down, firing the whole


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 203
heavens with his burning glow and purging the
world of the curse,—all this is seen by the god
whose sovereign spear was broken in the contest
with the freest man, and who lost his power through
him, rejoicing greatly over his own defeat: full of
sympathy for the triumph and pain of his victor,
his eye burning with aching joy looks back upon
the last events; he has become free through love,
free from himself.
And now ask yourselves, ye generation of to-day,
Was all this composed for you} Have ye the
courage to point up to the stars of the whole of
this heavenly dome of beauty and goodness and to
say, This is our life, that Wagner has transferred to
a place beneath the stars?
Where are the men among you who are able to
interpret the divine image of Wotan in the light of
their own lives, and who can become ever greater
while, like him, ye retreat? Who among you
would renounce power, knowing and having learned
that power is evil? Where are they who like
Brunhilda abandon their knowledge to love, and
finally rob their lives of the highest wisdom,
"afflicted love, deepest sorrow, opened my eyes "?
and where are the free and fearless, developing and
blossoming in innocent egoism? and where are the
Siegfrieds, among you?
He who questions thus and does so in vain, will
find himself compelled to look around him for signs
of the future; and should his eye, on reaching an un-
known distance, espy just that "people" which his
own generation can read out of the signs contained
in Wagnerian art, he will then also understand


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204 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
what Wagner will mean to this people—something
that he cannot be to all of us, namely, not the
prophet of the future, as perhaps he would fain
appear to us, but the interpreter and clarifier of
the past.


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