No More Learning

Carried away from himself, he seems to be sus-
pended in a mysterious fiery element; he ceases to
understand himself, the standard of everything has
fallen from his hands; everything stereotyped and
fixed begins to totter; every object seems to acquire
a strange colour and to tell us its tale by means of
new symbols ;-one would need to be a Plato in
order to discover, amid this confusion of delight


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH.
155
and h.
lem; b. and ach
and fear, how he accomplishes the feat, and to say
to the dramatist: “Should a man come into our
midst who possessed sufficient knowledge to simu-
late or imitate anything, we would honour him as
something wonderful and holy; we would even
anoint him and adorn his brow with a sacred
diadem; but we would urge him to leave our
circle for another, notwithstanding. " It may be
that a member of the Platonic community would
have been able to chasten himself to such conduct:
we, however, who live in a very different community,
long for, and earnestly desire, the charmer to come
to us, although we may fear him already,--and we
only desire his presence in order that our society
and the mischievous reason and might of which it
is the incarnation may be confuted. A state of
human civilisation, of human society, morality,
order, and general organisation which would be
able to dispense with the services of an imitative
artist or mimic, is not perhaps so utterly incon-
ceivable; but this Perhaps is probably the most
daring that has ever been posited, and is equivalent
to the gravest expression of doubt. The only man
who ought to be at liberty to speak of such a
possibility is he who could beget, and have the
presentiment of, the highest phase of all that is to
come, and who then, like Faust, would either be
obliged to turn blind, or be permitted to become
so. For we have no right to this blindness; whereas
Plato, after he had cast that one glance into the
ideal Hellenic, had the right to be blind to all
Hellenism. For this reason, we others are in much
greater need of art; because it was in the presence


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150
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
its means of expression in drawing all arts to it for
one great dramatic display. But then one would
also have to assume that the most powerful
musician, owing to his despair at having to appeal
to people who were either only semi-musical or not
musical at all, violently opened a road for himself
to the other arts, in order to acquire that capacity
for diversely communicating himself to others, by
which he compelled them to understand him, by
which he compelled the masses to understand him.
However the development of the born dramatist
may be pictured, in his ultimate expression he is a
being free from all inner barriers and voids: the
real, emancipated artist cannot help himself, he
must think in the spirit of all the arts at once, as
the mediator and intercessor between apparently
separated spheres, the one who reinstalls the unity
and wholeness of the artistic faculty, which cannot
be divined or reasoned out, but can only be revealed
by deeds themselves. But he in whose presence
this deed is performed will be overcome by its
gruesome and seductive charm: in a flash he will
be confronted with a power which cancels both
resistance and reason, and makes every detail
of life appear irrational and incomprehensible.
Carried away from himself, he seems to be sus-
pended in a mysterious fiery element; he ceases to
understand himself, the standard of everything has
fallen from his hands; everything stereotyped and
fixed begins to totter; every object seems to acquire
a strange colour and to tell us its tale by means of
new symbols ;-one would need to be a Plato in
order to discover, amid this confusion of delight


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH.
151
and fear, how he accomplishes the feat, and to say
to the dramatist: “Should a man come into our
midst who possessed sufficient knowledge to simu-
late or imitate anything, we would honour him as
something wonderful and holy; we would even
anoint him and adorn his brow with a sacred
diadem; but we would urge him to leave our
circle for another, notwithstanding. " It may be
that a member of the Platonic community would
have been able to chasten himself to such conduct:
we, however, who live in a very different community,
long for, and earnestly desire, the charmer to come
to us, although we may fear him already,—and we
only desire his presence in order that our society
and the mischievous reason and might of which it
is the incarnation may be confuted. A state of
human civilisation, of human society, morality,
order, and general organisation which would be
able to dispense with the services of an imitative
artist or mimic, is not perhaps so utterly incon-
ceivable ; but this Perhaps is probably the most
daring that has ever been posited, and is equivalent
to the gravest expression of doubt. The only man
who ought to be at liberty to speak of such a
possibility is he who could beget, and have the
presentiment of, the highest phase of all that is to
come, and who then, like Faust, would either be
obliged to turn blind, or be permitted to become
so. For we have no right to this blindness; whereas
Plato, after he had cast that one glance into the
ideal Hellenic, had the right to be blind to all
Hellenism. For this reason, we others are in much
greater need of art; because it was in the presence


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152 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
of the realistic that our eyes began to see, and we
require the complete dramatist in order that he
may relieve us, if only for an hour or so, of the
t insufferable tension arising from our knowledge
of the chasm which lies between our capabilities
and the duties we have to perform. With him we
ascend to the highest pinnacle of feeling, and only
then do we fancy we have returned to nature's
unbounded freedom, to the actual realm of liberty.
From this point of vantage we can see ourselves
and our fellows emerge as something sublime from
an immense mirage, and we see the deep meaning
in our struggles, in our victories and defeats; we
begin to find pleasure in the rhythm of passion and
in its victim in the hero's every footfall we
distinguish the hollow echo of death, and in its
proximity we realise the greatest charm of life:
thus transformed into tragic men, we return again
to life with comfort in our souls. We are conscious
of a new feeling of security, as if we had found
a road leading out of the greatest dangers, excesses,
and ecstasies, back to the limited and the familiar:
there where our relations with our fellows seem to
partake of a superior benevolence, and are at all
events more noble than they were. For here,
everything seemingly serious and needful, which
appears to lead to a definite goal, resembles only
detached fragments when compared with the path
we ourselves have trodden, even in our dreams,—
detached fragments of that complete and grand
experience whereof we cannot even think without
a thrill. Yes, we shall even fall into danger and
be tempted to take life too easily, simply because


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 153
in art we were in such deadly earnest concern-
ing it, as Wagner says somewhere anent certain
incidents in his own life. For if we who are but
the spectators and not the creators of this display
of dithyrambic dramatic art, can almost imagine
a dream to be more real than the actual experiences
of our wakeful hours, how much more keenly
must the creator realise this contrast! There he
stands amid all the clamorous appeals and impor-
tunities of the day, and of the necessities of life;
in the midst of Society and State—and as what does
he stand there? Maybe he is the only wakeful
one, the only being really and truly conscious,
among a host of confused and tormented sleepers,
among a multitude of deluded and suffering people.
He may even feel like a victim of chronic insomnia,
and fancy himself obliged to bring his clear,
sleepless, and conscious life into touch with som-
nambulists and ghostly well-intentioned creatures.
Thus everything that others regard as common-
place strikes him as weird, and he is tempted to
meet the whole phenomenon with haughty mockery.
But how peculiarly this feeling is crossed, when
another force happens to join his quivering pride,
the craving of the heights for the depths, the
affectionate yearning for earth, for happiness and
for fellowship—then, when he thinks of all he
misses as a hermit-creator, he feels as though he
ought to descend to the earth like a god, and bear
all that is weak, human, and lost," in fiery arms up
to heaven," so as to obtain love and no longer
worship only, and to be able to lose himself
Completely in his love. But it is just this contra-


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154 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
diction which is the miraculous fact in the soul of
the dithyrambic dramatist, and if his nature can
be understood at all, surely it must be here. For
his creative moments in art occur when the
antagonism between his feelings is at its height,
and when his proud astonishment and wonder at
the world combine with the ardent desire to
approach that same world as a lover. The glances
he then bends towards the earth are always rays
of sunlight which " draw up water," form mist, and
gather storm-clouds. Clear-sighted and prudent,
loving and unselfish at the same time, his glance is
projected downwards; and all things that are
illumined by this double ray of light, nature con-
jures to discharge their strength, to reveal their
most hidden secret, and this through bashfulness.
It is more than a mere figure of speech to say that
he surprised Nature with that glance, that he caught
her naked; that is why she would conceal her
shame by seeming precisely the reverse. What has
hitherto been invisible, the inner life, seeks its
salvation in the region of the visible; what has
hitherto been only visible, repairs to the dark
ocean of sound: thus Nature, in trying to conceal
herself, unveils the character of her contradictions.
In a dance, wild, rhythmic and gliding, and with
ecstatic movements, the born dramatist makes
known something of what is going on within him,
of what is taking place in nature: the dithyrambic
quality of his movements speaks just as eloquently
of quivering comprehension and of powerful pene-
tration as of the approach of love and self-renun-
ciation. Intoxicated speech follows the course of


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 155
this rhythm ; melody resounds coupled with speech,
and in its turn melody projects its sparks into the
realm of images and ideas. A dream-apparition,
like and unlike the image of Nature and her wooer,
hovers forward; it condenses into more human
shapes; it spreads out in response to its heroically
triumphant will, and to a most delicious collapse
and cessation of will:—thus tragedy is born; thus
life is presented with its grandest knowledge—
that of tragic thought; thus, at last, the greatest
charmer and benefactor among mortals—the
dithyrambic dramatist—is evolved.
VIII.
Wagner's actual life—that is to say, the gradual
evolution of the dithyrambic dramatist in him—
was at the same time an uninterrupted struggle
with himself, a struggle which never ceased until
his evolution was complete. His fight with the
opposing world was grim and ghastly, only
because it was this same world—this alluring
enemy—which he heard speaking out of his
own heart, and because he nourished a violent
demon in his breast—the demon of resistance.
When the ruling idea of his life gained ascendancy
over his mind—the idea that drama is, of all arts,
the one that can exercise the greatest amount of
influence over the world — it aroused the most
active emotions in his whole being. It gave him
no very clear or luminous decision, at first, as to
what was to be done and desired in the future;


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156 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
for the idea then appeared merely as a form of
temptation—that is to say, as the expression of his
gloomy, selfish, and insatiable will, eager for power
and glory. Influence—the greatest amount of
influence—how? over whom? —these were hence-
forward the questions and problems which did not
cease to engage his head and his heart. He
wished to conquer and triumph as no other artist
had ever done before, and, if possible, to reach that
height of tyrannical omnipotence at one stroke
for which all his instincts secretly craved. With a
jealous and cautious eye, he took stock of every-
thing successful, and examined with special care
all that upon which this influence might be brought
to bear. With the magic sight of the dramatist,
which scans souls as easily as the most familiar
book, he scrutinised the nature of the spectator and
the listener, and although he was often perturbed
by the discoveries he made, he very quickly found
means wherewith he could enthral them. These
means were ever within his reach: everything that
moved him deeply he desired and could also
produce; at every stage in his career he under-
stood just as much of his predecessors as he
himself was able to create, and he never doubted
that he would be able to do what they had done.
In this respect his nature is perhaps more
presumptuous even than Goethe's, despite the
fact that the latter said of himself: "I always
thought I had mastered everything; and even had
I been crowned king, I should have regarded the
honour as thoroughly deserved. " Wagner's ability,
his taste and his aspirations—all of which have


## p. 157 (#261) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 157
ever been as closely related as key to lock—grew
and attained to freedom together; but there was a
time when it was not so. What did he care about
the feeble but noble and egotistically lonely feeling
which that friend of art fosters, who, blessed with a
literary and aesthetic education, takes his stand
far from the common mob! But those violent
spiritual tempests which are created by the crowd
when under the influence of certain climactic
passages of dramatic song, that sudden bewildering
ecstasy of the emotions, thoroughly honest and
selfless—they were but echoes of his own experi-
ences and sensations, and filled him with glowing
hope for the greatest possible power and effect.
Thus he recognised grand opera as the means
whereby he might express his ruling thoughts;
towards it his passions impelled him; his eyes
turned in the direction of its home. The larger
portion of his life, his most daring wanderings, and
his plans, studies, sojourns, and acquaintances are
only to be explained by an appeal to these passions
and the opposition of the outside world, which
the poor, restless, passionately ingenuous German
artist had to face. Another artist than he knew
better how to become master of this calling, and
now that it has gradually become known by
means of what ingenious artifices of all kinds
Meyerbeer succeeded in preparing and achieving
every one of his great successes, and how
scrupulously the sequence of "effects" was taken
into account in the opera itself, people will begin
to understand how bitterly Wagner was mortified
when his eyes were opened to the tricks of the


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158 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
metier which were indispensable to a great
public success. I doubt whether there has ever
been another great artist in history who began his
career with such extraordinary illusions and who
so unsuspectingly and sincerely fell in with the
most revolting form of artistic trickery. And yet
the way in which he proceeded partook of greatness,
and was therefore extraordinarily fruitful. For
when he perceived his error, despair made him
understand the meaning of modern success, of the
modern public, and the whole prevaricating spirit
of modern art. And while becoming the critic of
"effect," indications of his own purification began
to quiver through him. It seems as if from
that time forward the spirit of music spoke to
him with an unprecedented spiritual charm. As
though he had just risen from a long illness and
had for the first time gone into the open, he
scarcely trusted his hand and his eye, and seemed
to grope along his way. Thus it was an almost
delightful surprise to him to find that he was still a
musician and an artist, and perhaps then only for
the first time.
Every subsequent stage in Wagner's develop-
ment may be distinguished thus, that the two
fundamental powers of his nature drew ever more
closely together: the aversion of the one to the
other lessened, the higher self no longer con-
descended to serve its more violent and baser
brother; it loved him and felt compelled to serve him.
The tenderest and purest thing is ultimately—that
is to say, at the highest stage of its evolution—
always associated with the mightiest; the storming


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 159
instincts pursue their course as before, but along
different roads, in the direction of the higher self;
and this in its turn descends to earth and finds its
likeness in everything earthly. If it were possible,
on this principle, to speak of the final aims and
unravelments of that evolution, and to remain
intelligible, it might also be possible to discover
the graphic terms with which to describe the long
interval preceding that last development; but I
doubt whether the first achievement is possible at
all, and do not therefore attempt the second. The
limits of the interval separating the preceding and
the subsequent ages will be described historically
in two sentences: Wagner was the revolutionist
of society; Wagner recognised the only artistic y
element that ever existed hitherto—the poetry of
the people. The ruling idea which in a new form
and mightier than it had ever been, obsessed
Wagner, after he had overcome his share of
despair and repentance, led him to both con-
clusions. Influence, the greatest possible amount
of influence to be exercised by means of the stage!
—but over whom? He shuddered when he
thought of those whom he had, until then, sought
to influence. His experience led him to realise the
utterly ignoble position which art and the artist
adorn; how a callous and hard-hearted community
that calls itself the good, but which is really the
evil, reckons art and the artist among its slavish
retinue, and keeps them both in order to minister
to its need of deception. Modern art is a luxury;
he saw this, and understood that it must stand or
fall with the luxurious society of which it forms


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l6o THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
but a part. This society had but one idea, to use
its power as hard-heartedly and as craftily as
possible in order to render the impotent — the
people—ever more and more serviceable, base and
unpopular, and to rear the modern workman out
of them. It also robbed them of the greatest and
purest things which their deepest needs led them
to create, and through which they meekly
expressed the genuine and unique art within
their soul: their myths, songs, dances, and their
discoveries in the department of language, in
order to distil therefrom a voluptuous antidote
against the fatigue and boredom of its existence—
modern art. How this society came into being,
how it learned to draw new strength for itself from
the seemingly antagonistic spheres of power, and
how, for instance, decaying Christianity allowed
itself to be used, under the cover of half measures
and subterfuges, as a shield against the masses and
as a support of this society and its possessions, and
finally how science and men of learning pliantly
consented to become its drudges—all this Wagner
traced through the ages, only to be convulsed with
loathing at the end of his researches. Through his
■ compassion for the people, he became a revolu-
tionist. From that time forward he loved them
and longed for them, as he longed for his art; for,
alas! in them alone, in this fast disappearing,
scarcely recognisable body, artificially held aloof,
he now saw the only spectators and listeners
worthy and fit for the power of his masterpieces,
as he pictured them. Thus his thoughts con-
centrated themselves upon the question, How do


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. l6l
the people come into being? How are they
resuscitated?
He always found but one answer: if a large
number of people were afflicted with the sorrow
that afflicted him, that number would constitute
the people, he said to himself. And where the
same sorrow leads to the same impulses and
desires, similar satisfaction would necessarily be
sought, and the same pleasure found in this
satisfaction. If he inquired into what it was that
most consoled him and revived his spirits in his
sorrow, what it was that succeeded best in counter-
acting his affliction, it was with joyful certainty
that he discovered this force only in music and
myth, the latter of which he had already recognised
as the people's creation and their language of
distress. It seemed to him that the origin of
music must be similar, though perhaps more
mysterious. In both of these elements he steeped
and healed his soul; they constituted his most
urgent need:—in this way he was able to ascertain
how like his sorrow was to that of the people, when
they came into being, and how they must arise
anew if many Wagners are going to appear. What
part did myth and music play in modern society,
wherever they had not been actually sacrificed to
it? They shared very much the same fate, a fact
which only tends to prove their close relationship:
myth had been sadly debased and usurped by idle
tales and stories; completely divested of its earnest
and sacred virility, it was transformed into the
plaything and pleasing bauble of children and
women of the afflicted people. Music had kept


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162 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
itself alive among the poor, the simple, and the
isolated; the German musician had not succeeded
in adapting himself to the luxurious traffic of the
arts; he himself had become a fairy tale full of
monsters and mysteries, full of the most touching
omens and auguries—a helpless questioner, some-
thing bewitched and in need of rescue. Here the
artist distinctly heard the command that concerned
him alone—to recast myth and make it virile, to
break the spell lying over music and to make
music speak: he felt his strength for drama
liberated at one stroke, and the foundation of his
sway established over the hitherto undiscovered
province lying between myth and music. His new
masterpiece, which included all the most powerful,
effective, and entrancing forces that he knew, he
now laid before men with this great and painfully
cutting question: "Where are ye all who suffer
and think as I do? Where is that number of souls
that I wish to see become a people, that ye may
share the same joys and comforts with me? In
your joy ye will reveal your misery to me. " These
were his questions in Tannhauser and Lohengrin,
in these operas he looked about him for his equals
—the anchorite yearned for the number.
But what were his feelings withal? Nobody
answered him. Nobody had understood his
question. Not that everybody remained silent:
on the contrary, answers were given to thousands
of questions which he had never put; people
gossipped about the new masterpieces as though
they had only been composed for the express
purpose of supplying subjects for conversation.


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 163
The whole mania of aesthetic scribbling and small
talk overtook the Germans like a pestilence, and
with that lack of modesty which characterises both
German scholars and German journalists, people
began measuring, and generally meddling with,
these masterpieces, as well as with the person
of the artist. Wagner tried to help the compre-
hension of his question by writing about it; but
this only led to fresh confusion and more uproar,
—for a musician who writes and thinks was, at
that time, a thing unknown. The cry arose: "He
is a theorist who wishes to remould art with his
far-fetched notions — stone him! " Wagner was
stunned: his question was not understood, his
need not felt; his masterpieces seemed a message
addressed only to the deaf and blind; his people—
an hallucination. He staggered and vacillated.
The feasibility of a complete upheaval of all things
then suggested itself to him, and he no longer
shrank from the thought: possibly, beyond this
revolution and dissolution, there might be a chance
of a new hope; on the other hand, there might not.
But, in any case, would not complete annihilation
be better than the wretched existing state of affairs?
Not very long afterwards, he was a political exile
in dire distress.
And then only, with this terrible change in his
environment and in his soul, there begins that
period of the great man's life over which as a
golden reflection there is stretched the splendour
of highest mastery. Now at last the genius of
dithyrambic drama doffs its last disguise. He is
isolated; the age seems empty to him; he ceases


## p. 164 (#268) ############################################

164 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
to hope; and his all-embracing glance descends
once more into the deep, and finds the bottom:
there he sees suffering in the nature of things, and
henceforward, having become more impersonal, he
accepts his portion of sorrow more calmly. The
desire for great power which was but the inherit-
ance of earlier conditions is now directed wholly
into the channel of creative art; through his art he
now speaks only to himself, and no longer to a
public or to a people, and strives to lend this
intimate conversation all the distinction and other
qualities in keeping with such a mighty dialogue.
During the preceding period things had been
different with his art; then he had concerned
himself, too, albeit with refinement and subtlety,
with immediate effects: that artistic production
was also meant as a question, and it ought to have
called forth an immediate reply. And how often
did Wagner not try to make his meaning clearer
to those he questioned! In view of their inexperi-
ence in having questions put to them, he tried to
meet them half way and to conform with older
artistic notions and means of expression. When
he feared that arguments couched in his own terms
would only meet with failure, he had tried to
persuade and to put his question in a language
half strange to himself though familiar to his
listeners. Now there was nothing to induce him
to continue this indulgence: all he desired now
was to come to terms with himself, to think of
S the nature of the world in dramatic actions, and
to philosophise in music; what desires he still
possessed turned in the direction of the latest


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. l6$
philosophical views. He who is worthy of knowing
what took place in him at that time or what
questions were thrashed out in the darkest holy of
holies in his soul—and not many are worthy of
knowing all this—must hear, observe, and experi-
ence Tristan and Isolde, the real opus metaphysicum
of all art, a work upon which rests the broken look
of a dying man with his insatiable and sweet
craving for the secrets of night and death, far away
from life which throws a horribly spectral morning
light, sharply, upon all that is evil, delusive, and
sundering: moreover, a drama austere in the
severity of its form, overpowering in its simple
grandeur, and in harmony with the secret of which
it treats—lying dead in the midst of life, being one
in two. And yet there is something still more
wonderful than this work, and that is the artist
himself, the man who, shortly after he had accom-
plished it, was able to create a picture of life so
full of clashing colours as the Meistersingers of
Nurnberg, and who in both of these compositions
seems merely to have refreshed and equipped
himself for the task of completing at his ease that
gigantic edifice in four parts which he had long
ago planned and begun—the ultimate result of all
his meditations and poetical flights for over twenty
years, his Bayreuth masterpiece, the Ring of the
Nibelung! He who marvels at the rapid succes-
sion of the two operas, Tristan and the Meister-
singers, has failed to understand one important
side of the life and nature of all great Germans:
he does not know the peculiar soil out of which
that essentially German gaiety, which characterised


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166 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
Luther, Beethoven, and Wagner, can grow, the
gaiety which other nations quite fail to understand,
and which even seems to be missing in the
Germans of to-day — that clear golden and
thoroughly fermented mixture of simplicity, deeply
discriminating love, observation, and roguishness,
which Wagner has dispensed, as the most precious
of drinks, to all those who have suffered deeply
through life, but who nevertheless return to it with
the smile of convalescents. And, as he also turned
upon the world the eyes of one reconciled, he was
more filled with rage and disgust than with sorrow,
and more prone to renounce the love of power than
to shrink in awe from it. As he thus silently
furthered his greatest work and gradually laid
score upon score, something happened which
caused him to stop and listen: friends were coming,
a kind of subterranean movement of many souls
approached with a message for him—it was still
far from being the people that constituted this
movement and which wished to bear him news,
but it may have been the nucleus and first living
source of a really human community which would
reach perfection in some age still remote. For
the present they only brought him the warrant
that his great work could be entrusted to the care
and charge of faithful men, men who would watch
and be worthy to watch over this most magnificent
of all legacies to posterity. In the love of friends
his outlook began to glow with brighter colours;
his noblest care—the care that his work should be
accomplished and should find a refuge before the
evening of his life—was not his only preoccupation.


## p. 167 (#271) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 167
Then something occurred which he could only
understand as a symbol: it was as much as a new
comfort and a new token of happiness to him. A
great German war caused him to open his eyes,
and he observed that those very Germans whom
he considered so thoroughly degenerate and so
inferior to the high standard of real Teutonism, of
which he had formed an ideal both from self-know-
ledge and the conscientious study of other great
Germans in history; he observed that those very
Germans were, in the midst of terrible circum-
stances, exhibiting two virtues of the highest
order—simple bravery and prudence; and with
his heart bounding with delight he conceived the
hope that he might not be the last German, and
that some day a greater power would perhaps
stand by his works than that devoted yet meagre
one consisting of his little band of friends—a
power able to guard it during that long period
preceding its future glory, as the masterpiece of
this future. Perhaps it was not possible to steel
this belief permanently against doubt, more
particularly when it sought to rise to hopes of im-
mediate results: suffice it that he derived a tremend-
ous spur from his environment, which constantly
reminded him of a lofty duty ever to be fulfilled.
His work would not have been complete had he
handed it to the world only in the form of silent
manuscript. He must make known to the world
what it could not guess in regard to his productions,
what was his alone to reveal—the new style for the
execution and presentation of his works, so that he
might set that example which nobody else could


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168 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
set, and thus establish a tradition of style, not on
paper, not by means of signs, but through impres-
sions made upon the very souls of men. This duty
had become all the more pressing with him, seeing
that precisely in regard to the style of their execu-
tion his other works had meanwhile succumbed to
the most insufferable and absurd of fates: they
were famous and admired, yet noone manifested the
slightest sign of indignation when they were mis-
handled. For, strange to say, whereas he renounced
ever more and more the hope of success among his
contemporaries, owing to his all too thorough know-
ledge of them, and disclaimed all desire for power,
both "success" and "power" came to him, or at
least everybody told him so. It was in vain that
he made repeated attempts to expose, with the
utmost clearness, how worthless and humiliating
such successes were to him: people were so unused
to seeing an artist able to differentiate at all
between the effects of his works that even his
most solemn protests were never entirely trusted.
Once he had perceived the relationship existing
between our system of theatres and their success,
and the men of his time, his soul ceased to be
attracted by the stage at all. He had no further
concern with aesthetic ecstasies and the exultation
of excited crowds, and he must even have felt
angry to see his art being gulped down indis-
criminately by the yawning abyss of boredom and
the insatiable love of distraction. How flat and
pointless every effect proved under these circum-
stances—more especially as it was much more a
case of having to minister to one quite insatiable


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 169
than of cloying the hunger of a starving man—
Wagner began to perceive from the following
repeated experience: everybody, even the per-
formers and promoters, regarded his art as nothing
more nor less than any other kind of stage-music,
and quite in keeping with the repulsive style of
traditional opera; thanks to the efforts of culti-
vated conductors, his works were even cut and
hacked about, until, after they had been bereft of
all their spirit, they were held to be nearer the
professional singer's plane. But when people tried
to follow Wagner's instructions to the letter, they
proceeded so clumsily and timidly that they were
not incapable of representing the midnight riot in
the second act of the Meistersingers by a group of
ballet-dancers. They seemed to do all this, how-
ever, in perfectly good faith—without the smallest
evil intention. Wagner's devoted efforts to show,
by means of his own example, the correct and
complete way of performing his works, and his
attempts at training individual singers in the new
style, were foiled time after time, owing only to the
thoughtlessness and iron tradition that ruled all
around him. Moreover, he was always induced to
concern himself with that class of theatricals which
he most thoroughly loathed. Had not even Goethe,
in his time, once grown tired of attending the
rehearsals of his Iphigenia? "I suffer unspeak-
ably," he explained, "when I have to tumble about
with these spectres, which never seem to act as
they should. " 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


## p. 178 (#282) ############################################

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


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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-


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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-


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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.


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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


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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—


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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


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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.