No More Learning



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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAVREUTH. 105
And as for us, the disciples of this revived art,
we shall have time and inclination for thoughtful-
ness, deep thoughtfulness. All the talk and noise
about art which has been made by civilisation
hitherto must seem like shameless obtrusiveness;
everything makes silence a duty with us—the quin-
quennial silence of the Pythagoreans. Which of
us has not soiled his hands and heart in the disgust-
ing idolatry of modern culture? Which of us can
exist without the waters of purification? Who
does not hear the voice which cries, " Be silent and
cleansed "? Be silent and cleansed! Only the merit
of being included among those who give ear to this
voice will grant even us the lofty look necessary
to view the event at Bayreuth; and only upon this
look depends the great future of the event.
When on that dismal and cloudy day in May
1872, after the foundation stone had been laid on
the height of Bayreuth, amid torrents of rain, and
while Wagner was driving back to the town with
a small party of us, he was exceptionally silent,
and there was that indescribable look in his eyes
as of one who has turned his gaze deeply inwards.
The day happened to be the first of his sixtieth
year, and his whole past now appeared as but a long
preparation for this great moment. It is almost a
recognised fact that in times of exceptional danger,
or at all decisive and culminating points in their
lives, men see the remotest and most recent events
of their career with singular vividness, and in one
rapid inward glance obtain a sort of panorama of
a whole span of years in which every event is faith-
fully depicted. What, for instance, must Alexander


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106 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
the Great have seen in that instant when he caused
Asia and Europe to be drunk out of the same
goblet? But what went through Wagner's mind on
that day—how he became what he is, and what he
will be—we only can imagine who are nearest to
him, and can follow him, up to a certain point, in
his self-examination; but through his eyes alone
is it possible for us to understand his grand work,
and by the help of this understanding vouch for
its fruitfulness.
II.
It were strange if what a man did best and most
liked to do could not be traced in the general out-
line of his life, and in the case of those who are
remarkably endowed there is all the more reason
for supposing that their life will present not only
the counterpart of their character, as in the case of
every one else, but that it will present above all the
counterpart of their intellect and their most in-
dividual tastes. The life of the epic poet will have
a dash of the Epos in it—as from all accounts was
the case with Goethe, whom the Germans very
wrongly regarded only as a lyrist—and the life of
the dramatist will probably be dramatic.
The dramatic element in Wagner's development
cannot be ignored, from the time when his ruling
passion became self-conscious and took possession
of his whole being. From that time forward there
is an end to all groping, straying, and sprouting of
offshoots, and over his most tortuous deviations
and excursions, over the often eccentric disposition


## p. 107 (#205) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 107
of his plans, a single law and will are seen to rule,
in which we have the explanation of his actions,
however strange this explanation may sometimes
appear. There was, however, an ante-dramatic
period in Wagner's life—his childhood and youth—
which it is impossible to approach without discover-
ing innumerable problems. At this period there
seems to be no promise yet of himself, and what
one might now, in a retrospect, regard as a pledge
for his future greatness, amounts to no more than
a juxtaposition of traits which inspire more dismay
than hope; a restless and excitable spirit, nervously
eager to undertake a hundred things at the same
time, passionately fond of almost morbidly exalted
states of mind, and ready at any moment to veer
completely round from calm and profound medita-
tion to a state of violence and uproar. In his case
there were no hereditary or family influences at
work to constrain him to the sedulous study of one
particular art. Painting, versifying, acting, and
music were just as much within his reach as the
learning and the career of a scholar; and the super-
ficial inquirer into this stage of his life might even
conclude that he was born to be a dilettante. The
small world within the bounds of which he grew
up was not of the kind we should choose to be the
home of an artist. He ran the constant risk of
becoming infected by that dangerously dissipated
attitude of mind in which a person will taste of
everything, as also by that condition of slackness
resulting from the fragmentary knowledge of all
things, which is so characteristic of University
towns. His feelings were easily roused and but


## p. 108 (#206) ############################################

108 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
indifferently satisfied; wherever the boy turned,
he found himself surrounded by a wonderful and
would-be learned activity, to which the garish
theatres presented a ridiculous contrast, and the
entrancing strains of music a perplexing one. Now,
to the observer who sees things relatively, it must
seem strange that the modern man who happens
to be gifted with exceptional talent should as a
child and a youth so seldom be blessed with the
quality of ingenuousness and of simple individuality,
that he is so little able to have these qualities at
all. As a matter of fact, men of rare talent, like
Goethe and Wagner, much more often attain to
ingenuousness in manhood than during the more
tender years of childhood and youth. And this is
especially so with the artist, who, being born with
a more than usual capacity for imitating, succumbs
to the morbid multiformity of modern life as to a
virulent disease of infancy. As a child he will
more closely resemble an old man. The wonder-
fully accurate and original picture of youth which
Wagner gives us in the Siegfried of the Nibelungen
Ring could only have been conceived by a man,
and by one who had discovered his youthfulness
but late in life. Wagner's maturity, like his adol-
esence, was also late in making its appearance, and
he is thus, in this respect alone, the very reverse
of the precocious type.
The appearance of his moral and intellectual
strength was the prelude to the drama of his
soul. And how different it then became! His
nature seems to have been simplified at one terrible
stroke, and divided against itself into two instincts


## p. 109 (#207) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 109
or spheres. From its innermost depths there gushes
forth a passionate will which, like a rapid mountain
torrent, endeavours to make its way through all
paths, ravines, and crevices, in search of light and
power. Only a force completely free and pure
was strong enough to guide this will to all that is
good and beneficial. Had it been combined with 1
a narrow intelligence, a will with such a tyrannical j
and boundless desire might have become fatal; in
any case, an exit into the open had to be found for
it as quickly as possible, whereby it could rush into
pure air and sunshine. Lofty aspirations, which .
continually meet with failure, ultimately turn to »
evil. The inadequacy of means for obtaining suc-
cess may, in certain circumstances, be the result of
an inexorable fate, and not necessarily of a lack of
strength; but he who under such circumstances
cannot abandon his aspirations, despite the inade-
quacy of his means, will only become embittered,
and consequently irritable and intolerant. He may
possibly seek the cause of his failure in other people;
he may even, in a fit of passion, hold the whole
world guilty; or he may turn defiantly down secret
byways and secluded lanes, or resort to violence.
In this way, noble natures, on their road to the
most high, may turn savage. Even among those
who seek but their own personal moral purity,
among monks and anchorites, men are to be found
who, undermined and devoured by failure, have
become barbarous and hopelessly morbid. There
was a spirit full of love and calm belief, full of
goodness and infinite tenderness, hostile to all
violence and self-deterioration, and abhorring the


## p. 110 (#208) ############################################

110 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
sight of a soul in bondage. And it was this spirit
which manifested itself to Wagner. It hovered over
him as a consoling angel, it covered him with its
wings, and showed him the true path. At this
stage we bring the other side of Wagner's nature
into view: but how shall we describe this other
side?
The characters an artist creates are not himself,
but the succession of these characters, to which it
is clear he is greatly attached, must at all events
reveal something of his nature. Now try and
recall Rienzi, the Flying Dutchman and Senta,
Tannhauser and Elizabeth, Lohengrin and Elsa,
Tristan and Marke, Hans Sachs, Woden and
Brunhilda, — all these characters are correlated
by a secret current of ennobling and broadening
morality which flows through them and becomes
ever purer and clearer as it progresses. And at
this point we enter with respectful reserve into
the presence of the most hidden development in
Wagner's own soul. In what other artist do we
meet with the like of this, in the same proportion?
Schiller's characters, from the Robbers to Wallen-
stein and Tell, do indeed pursue an ennobling
course, and likewise reveal something of their
author's development; but in Wagner the. standard
is higher and the distance covered is much greater.
In the Nibelungen Ring, for instance, where Brun-
hilda is awakened by Siegfried, I perceive the most
moral music I have ever heard. Here Wagner attains
to such a high level of sacred feeling that our mind
unconsciously wanders to the glistening ice- and
snow-peaks of the Alps, to find a likeness there;—


## p. 111 (#209) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. Ill
so pure, isolated, inaccessible, chaste, and bathed
in love-beams does Nature here display herself,
that clouds and tempests — yea, and even the
sublime itself — seem to lie beneath her. Now,
looking down from this height upon Tannhauser
and the Flying Dutchman, we begin to perceive
how the man in Wagner was evolved: how rest-
lessly and darkly he began; how tempestuously he
strove to gratify his desires, to acquire power and
to taste those rapturous delights from which he
often fled in disgust; how he wished to throw off
a yoke, to forget, to be negative, and to renounce
everything. The whole torrent plunged, now into
this valley, now into that, and flooded the most
secluded chinks and crannies. In the night of
these semi-subterranean convulsions a star ap-
peared and glowed high above him with melan-
choly vehemence; as soon as he recognised it, he
named it Fidelity—unselfish fidelity. Why did this
star seem to him the brightest and purest of all?
What secret meaning had the word " fidelity " to his
whole being? For he has graven its image and
problems upon all his thoughts and compositions.
His works contain almost a complete series of the
rarest and most beautiful examples of fidelity:
that of brother to sister, of friend to friend, of
servant to master; of Elizabeth to Tannhauser,
of Senta to the Dutchman, of Elsa to Lohengrin, ,
of Isolde, Kurvenal, and Marke to Tristan, of
Brunhilda to the most secret vows of Woden—and
many others. It is Wagner's most personal and
most individual experience, which he reveres like
a religious mystery, and which he calls Fidelity;


## p. 112 (#210) ############################################

112 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
he never wearies of breathing it into hundreds of
different characters, and of endowing it with the
sublimest that in him lies, so overflowing is his
gratitude. It is, in short, the. recognition of the
fact that the two sides of his nature remained
faithful to each other, that out of free and unselfish
love, the creative, ingenuous, and brilliant side
kept loyally abreast of the dark, the intractable, and
the tyrannical side.
III.
The relation of the two constituent forces to
each other, and the yielding of the one to the other
was the great requisite by which alone he could
remain wholly and truly himself. At the same
time, this was the only thing he could not control,
and over which he could only keep a watch, while
the temptations to infidelity and its threatening
dangers beset him more and more. The uncer-
tainty derived therefrom is an overflowing source
of suffering for those in process of development.
Each of his instincts made constant efforts to attain
to unmeasured heights, and each of the capacities
he possessed for enjoying life seemed to long to
tear itself away from its companions in order to
seek satisfaction alone; the greater their exuber-
ance the more terrific was the tumult, and the more
bitter the competition between them. In addition,
accident and life fired the desire for power and
splendour in him; but he was more often tor-
mented by the cruel necessity of having to live at
all, while all around him lay obstacles and snares


## p. 113 (#211) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. II3
How is it possible for any one to remain faithful
here, to be completely steadfast? This doubt often
depressed him, and he expresses it, as an artist
expressed his doubt, in artistic forms. Elizabeth,
for instance, can only suffer, pray, and die; she
saves the fickle and intemperate man by her
loyalty, though not for this life. In the path of
every true artist, whose lot is cast in these modern
days, despair and danger are strewn. He has
many means whereby he can attain to honour and
might; peace and plenty persistently offer them-
selves to him, but only in that form recognised
by the modern man, which to the straightforward
artist is no better than choke-damp. In this
temptation, and in the act of resisting it, lie the
dangers that threaten him—dangers arising from
his disgust at the means modernity offers him of
acquiring pleasure and esteem, and from the indig-
nation provoked by the selfish ease of modern
society. Imagine Wagner's filling an official posi-
tion, as for instance that of bandmaster at public
and court theatres, both of which positions he has
held: think how he, a serious artist, must have
struggled in order to enforce seriousness in those
very places which, to meet the demands of modern
conventions, are designed with almost systematic
frivolity to appeal only to the frivolous. Think
how he must have partially succeeded, though only
to fail on the whole. How constantly disgust
must have been at his heels despite his repeated
attempts to flee it, how he failed to find the haven
to which he might have repaired, and how he had
ever to return to the Bohemians and outlaws of our
H


## p. 113 (#212) ############################################

II2
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
he never wearies of breathing it into hundreds of
different characters, and of endowing it with the
sublimest that in him lies, so overflowing is his
gratitude. It is, in short, the recognition of the
fact that the two sides of his nature remained
faithful to each other, that out of free and unselfish
love, the creative, ingenuous, and brilliant side
kept loyally abreast of the dark, the intractable, and
the tyrannical side.
III.
The relation of the two constituent forces to
each other, and the yielding of the one to the other
was the great requisite by which alone he could
remain wholly and truly himself. At the same
time, this was the only thing he could not control,
and over which he could only keep a watch, while
the temptations to infidelity and its threatening
dangers beset him more and more. The uncer-
tainty derived therefrom is an overflowing source
of suffering for those in process of development.
Each of his instincts made constant efforts to attain
to unmeasured heights, and each of the capacities
he possessed for enjoying life seemed to long to
tear itself away from its companions in order to
seek satisfaction alone; the greater their exuber-
ance the more terrific was the tumult, and the more
bitter the competition between them. In addition,
accident and life fired the desire for power and
splendour in him; but he was more often tor-
mented by the cruel necessity of having to live at
all, while all around him lay obstacles and snares


## p. 113 (#213) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH.
113
How is it possible for any one to remain faithful
here, to be completely steadfast? This doubt often
depressed him, and he expresses it, as an artist
expressed his doubt, in artistic forms. Elizabeth,
for instance, can only suffer, pray, and die; she
saves the fickle and intemperate man by her
loyalty, though not for this life. In the path of
every true artist, whose lot is cast in these modern
days, despair and danger are strewn. He has
many means whereby he can attain to honour and
might; peace and plenty persistently offer them-
selves to him, but only in that form recognised
by the modern man, which to the straightforward
artist is no better than choke-damp. In this
temptation, and in the act of resisting it, lie the
dangers that threaten him-dangers arising from
his disgust at the means modernity offers him of
acquiring pleasure and esteem, and from the indig-
nation provoked by the selfish ease of modern
society. Imagine Wagner's filling an official posi-
tion, as for instance that of bandmaster at public
and court theatres, both of which positions he has
held: think how he, a serious artist, must have
struggled in order to enforce seriousness in those
very places which, to meet the demands of modern
conventions, are designed with almost systematic
frivolity to appeal only to the frivolous. Think
how he must have partially succeeded, though only
to fail on the whole. How constantly disgust
must have been at his heels despite his repeated
attempts to flee it, how he failed to find the haven
to which he might have repaired, and how he had
ever to return to the Bohemians and outlaws of our
H


## p. 114 (#214) ############################################

114 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
society, as one of them. If he himself broke loose
from any post or position, he rarely found a better
one in its stead, while more than once distress was
all that his unrest brought him. Thus Wagner
changed his associates, his dwelling-place and
country, and when we come to comprehend the
nature of the circles into which he gravitated, we
can hardly realise how he was able to tolerate
them for any length of time. The greater half of
his past seems to be shrouded in heavy mist; for a
long time he appears to have had no general hopes,
but only hopes for the morrow, and thus, although
he reposed no faith in the future, he was not driven
to despair. He must have felt like a nocturnal
traveller, broken with fatigue, exasperated from
want of sleep, and tramping wearily along be-
neath a heavy burden, who, far from fearing the
sudden approach of death, rather longs for it as
something exquisitely charming. His burden,
the road and the night—all would disappear 1
The thought was a temptation to him. Again and
again, buoyed up by his temporary hopes, he
plunged anew into the turmoil of life, and left
all apparatus behind him. But his method of
doing this, his lack of moderation in the doing,
betrayed what a feeble hold his hopes had upon
him; how they were only stimulants to which he
had recourse in an extremity. The conflict be-
tween his aspirations and his partial or total
inability to realise them, tormented him like a thorn
in the flesh. Infuriated by constant privations, his
imagination lapsed into the dissipated, whenever
the state of want was momentarily relieved. Life


## p. 115 (#215) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. US
grew ever more and more complicated for him;
but the means and artifices that he discovered in
his art as a dramatist became evermore resourceful
and daring. Albeit, these were little more than
palpable dramatic makeshifts and expedients,
which deceived, and were invented, only for the
moment. In a flash such means occurred to his
mind and were used up. Examined closely and
without prepossession, Wagner's life, to recall one
of Schopenhauer's expressions, might be said to
consist largely of comedy, not to mention burlesque.
And what the artist's feelings must have been,
conscious as he was, during whole periods of his
life, of this undignified element in it,—he who
more than any one else, perhaps, breathed freely
only in sublime and more than sublime spheres,—
the thinker alone can form any idea.
In the midst of this mode of life, a detailed de-
scription of which is necessary in order to inspire the
amount of pity, awe, and admiration which are its
due, he developed a talent for acquiring knowledge, /
which even in a German—a son of the nation learned
above all others—was really extraordinary. And
with this talent yet another danger threatened
Wagner—a danger more formidable than that in-
volved in a life which was apparently without either
a stay or a rule, borne hither and thither by disturb-
ing illusions. From a novice trying his strength
Wagner became a thorough master of music and
of the theatre, as also a prolific inventor in the pre-
liminary technical conditions for the execution of
art . No one will any longer deny him the glory of
having given us the supreme model for lofty artistic


## p. 116 (#216) ############################################

Il6 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
execution on a large scale. But he became more
than this, and in order so to develop, he, no less
than any one else in like circumstances, had to
reach the highest degree of culture by virtue of his
studies. And wonderfully he achieved this end!
It is delightful to follow his progress. From all
sides material seemed to come unto him and into
him, and the larger and heavier the resulting struc-
ture became, the more rigid was the arch of the
ruling and ordering thought supporting it. And
yet access to the sciences and arts has seldom been
made more difficult for any man than for Wagner;
so much so that he had almost to break his own
road through to them. The reviver of the simple
drama, the discoverer of the position due to art in
true human society, the poetic interpreter of by-
ljgone views of life, the philosopher, the historian, the
Nesthete and the critic, the master of languages, the
mythologist and the myth poet, who was the first to
include all these wonderful and beautiful products
of primitive times in a single Ring, upon which
he engraved the runic characters of his thoughts—
what a wealth of knowledge must Wagner have
accumulated and commanded, in order to have be-
come all that! And yet this mass of material was
just as powerless to impede the action of his will
as a matter of detail—however attractive—was to
draw his purpose from its path. For the excep-
tional character of such conduct to be appreciated
fully, it should be compared with that of Goethe,—
he who, as a student and as a sage, resembled
nothing so much as a huge river-basin, which
does not pour all its water into the sea, but spends


## p. 117 (#217) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 117
as much of it on its way there, and at its various
twists and turns, as it ultimately disgorges at its
mouth. True, a nature like Goethe's not only
has, but also engenders, more pleasure than any
other; there is more mildness and noble profligacy
in it; whereas the tenor and tempo of Wagner's
pCwer at times provoke both fear and flight. But
let him fear who will, we shall only be the more
courageous, in that we shall be permitted to come
face to face with a hero who, in regard to modern
culture, " has never learned the meaning of fear. "
But neither has he learned to look for repose in
history and philosophy, nor to derive those subtle
influences from their study which tend to paralyse
action or to soften a man unduly. Neither the
creative nor the militant artist in him was ever
diverted from his purpose by learning and culture.
The moment his constructive powers direct him,
history becomes yielding clay in his hands. His
attitude towards it then differs from that of every
scholar, and more nearly resembles the relation of
the ancient Greek to his myths; that is to say, his
subject is something he may fashion, and about
which he may write verses. He will naturally do
this with love and a certain becoming reverence,
but with the sovereign right of the creator notwith-
standing. And precisely because history is more
supple and more variable than a dream to him, he
can invest the most individual case with the char-
acteristics of a whole age, and thus attain to a
vividness of narrative of which historians are quite
incapable. In what work of art, of any kind, has
the body and soul of the Middle Ages ever been


## p. 118 (#218) ############################################

Il8 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
so thoroughly depicted as in Lohengrin? And
will not the Meistersingers continue to acquaint
men, even in the remotest ages to come, with the
nature of Germany's soul? Will they not do more
than acquaint men of it? Will they not represent
its very ripest fruit — the fruit of that spirit
wJhich ever wishes to reform and not to overthrow,
and which, despite the broad couch of comfort on
which it lies, has not forgotten how to endure the
noblest discomfort when a worthy and novel deed
has to be accomplished?
And it is just to this kind of discomfort that
Wagner always felt himself drawn by his study of
history and philosophy: in them he not only found
arms and coats of mail, but what he felt in their
presence above all was the inspiring breath which
is wafted from the graves of all great fighters,
sufferers, and thinkers. Nothing distinguishes a
Sman more from the general pattern of the age
than the use he makes of history and philosophy.
According to present views, the former seems to
have been allotted the duty of giving modern man
breathing-time, in the midst of his panting and
strenuous scurry towards his goal, so that he may,
for a space, imagine he has slipped his leash.
What Montaigne was as an individual amid the
turmoil of the Reformation—that is to say, a
creature inwardly coming to peace with himself,
serenely secluded in himself and taking breath,
as his best reader, Shakespeare, understood him,
—this is what history is to the modern spirit to-
day. The fact that the Germans, for a whole
century, have devoted themselves more particularly


## p. 119 (#219) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 119
to the study of history, only tends to prove that
they are the stemming, retarding, and becalming
force in the activity of modern society—a circum-
stance which some, of course, will place to their
credit. On the whole, however, it is a dangerous
symptom when the mind of a nation turns with
preference to the study of the past. It is a sign of
flagging strength, of decline and degeneration; it r
denotes that its people are perilously near to falling
victims to the first fever that may happen to be rife
—the political fever among others. Now, in the
history of modern thought, our scholars are an
example of this condition of weakness as opposed
to all reformative and revolutionary activity. The
mission they have chosen is not of the noblest;
they have rather been content to secure smug
happiness for their kind, and little more. Every
independent and manly step leaves them halting
in the background, although it by no means out-
strips history. For the latter is possessed of vastly
different powers, which only natures like Wagner
have any notion of; but it requires to be written
in a much more earnest and severe spirit, by much
more vigorous students, and with much less op-
timism than has been the case hitherto. In fact, it
requires to be treated quite differently from the way
German scholars have treated it until now. In all
their works there is a continual desire to embellish,
to submit and to be content, while the course of
events invariably seems to have their approbation.
It is rather the exception for one of them to imply
that he is satisfied only because things might have
turned out worse; for most of them believe, almost


## p. 120 (#220) ############################################

120 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
as a matter of course, that everything has been for
the best simply because it has only happened once.
Were history not always a disguised Christian
theodicy, were it written with more justice and
fervent feeling, it would be the very last thing on
earth to be made to serve the purpose it now serves,
namely, that of an opiate against everything sub-
versive and novel. And philosophy is in the
same plight: all that the majority demand of it is,
that it may teach them to understand approxi-
mate facts—very approximate facts—in order that
they may then become adapted to them. And
even its noblest exponents press its soporific and
comforting powers so strongly to the fore, that
all lovers of sleep and of loafing must think that
their aim and the aim of philosophy are one. For
my part, the most important question philosophy
has to decide seems to be, how far things have
acquired an unalterable stamp and form, and, once
this question has been answered, I think it the
duty of philosophy unhesitatingly and courage-
ously to proceed with the task of improving that
part of the world which has been recognised as still
susceptible to change. But genuine philosophers do,
as a matter of fact, teach this doctrine themselves,
inasmuch as they work at endeavouring to alter
the very changeable views of men, and do not keep
their opinions to themselves. Genuine disciples of
genuine philosophies also teach this doctrine; for,
like Wagner, they understand the art of deriving
a more decisive and inflexible will from their
master's teaching, rather than an opiate or a
sleeping draught. Wagner is most philosophical


## p. 121 (#221) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 121
where he is most powerfully active and heroic. It
was as a philosopher that he went, not only r
through the fire of various philosophical systems
without fear, but also through the vapours of
science and scholarship, while remaining ever true
to his highest self. And it was this highest self
which exacted from his versatile spirit works as
complete as his were, which bade him suffer and
learn, that he might accomplish such works.
IV.
The history of the development of culture since
the time of the Greeks is short enough, when we
take into consideration the actual ground it covers,
and ignore the periods during which man stood
still, went backwards, hesitated or strayed. The
Hellenising of the world—and to make this pos-
sible, the Orientalising of Hellenism—that double
mission of Alexander the Great, still remains the
most important event: the old question whether
a foreign civilisation may be transplanted is still
the problem that the peoples of modern times are
vainly endeavouring to solve. The rhythmic play
of those two factors against each other is the force
that has determined the course of history hereto-
fore. Thus Christianity appears, for instance, as
a product of Oriental antiquity, which was thought
out and pursued to its ultimate conclusions
by men, with almost intemperate thoroughness.
As its influence began to decay, the power of
Hellenic culture was revived, and we are now


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122 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
experiencing phenomena so strange that they
would hang in the air as unsolved problems, if it
were not possible, by spanning an enormous gulf
of time, to show their relation to analogous pheno-
mena in Hellenistic culture.
Thus, between Kant
and the Eleatics, Schopenhauer and Empedocles,
^Eschylus and Wagner, there is so much relation-
ship, so many things in common, that one is
vividly impressed with the very relative nature
of all notions of time. It would even seem as
if a whole diversity of things were really all of a
piece, and that time is only a cloud which makes
it hard for our eyes to perceive the oneness of
them. In the history of the exact sciences we
are perhaps most impressed by the close bond
uniting us with the days of Alexander and ancient
Greece. The pendulum of history seems merely
to have swung back to that point from which it
started when it plunged forth into unknown and
mysterious distance. The picture represented by
our own times is by no means a new one: to the
student of history it must always seem as though
he were merely in the presence of an old familiar
face, the features of which he recognises. In our
time the spirit of Greek culture is scattered broad-
cast. While forces of all kinds are pressing one
upon the other, and the fruits of modern art and
science are offering themselves as a means of ex-
change, the pale outline of Hellenism is beginning
to dawn faintly in the distance. The earth which,
up to the present, has been more than adequately
Orientalised, begins to yearn once more for Hellen-
ism. He who wishes to help her in this respect


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 123
will certainly need to be gifted for speedy action
and to have wings on his heels, in order to syn-
thetise the multitudinous and still undiscovered
facts of science and the many conflicting divisions
of talent so as to reconnoitre and rule the whole
enormous field. It is now necessary that a genera-
tion of anti-Alexanders should arise, endowed with
the supreme strength necessary for gathering up,
binding together, and joining the individual threads
of the fabric, so as to prevent their being scattered
to the four winds. The object is not to cut the
Gordian knot of Greek culture after the manner
adopted by Alexander, and then to leave its frayed
ends fluttering in all directions; it is rather to bind
it after it has been loosed. That is our task to-day.
In the person of Wagner I recognise one of these
anti-Alexanders: he rivets and locks together all
that is isolated, weak, or in any way defective; if
I may be allowed to use a medical expression, he
has an astringent power. And in this respect he
is one of the greatest civilising forces of his age.
He dominates art, religion, and folklore, yet he is
the reverse of a polyhistor or of a mere collecting
and classifying spirit; for he constructs with the
collected material, and breathes life into it, and is
a Simplifier of the Universe. We must not be led
away from this idea by comparing the general
mission which his genius imposed upon him with
the much narrower and more immediate one which
we are at present in the habit of associating with
the name of Wagner. He is expected to effect a
reform in the theatre world; but even supposing
he should succeed in doing this, what would then


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124 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
have been done towards the accomplishment of
that higher, more distant mission?
But even with this lesser theatrical reform,
modern man would also be altered and reformed;
for everything is so intimately related in this
world, that he who removes even so small a thing
as a rivet from the framework shatters and destroys
the whole edifice. And what we here assert, with
perhaps seeming exaggeration, of Wagner's activity
would hold equally good of any other genuine
reform. It is quite impossible to reinstate the art
of drama in its purest and highest form without
effecting changes everywhere in the customs of the
people, in the State, in education, and in social
intercourse. When love and justice have become
powerful in one department of life, namely in
art, they must, in accordance with the law of
their inner being, spread their influence around
them, and can no more return to the stiff still-
ness of their former pupal condition. In order
even to realise how far the attitude of the arts
towards life is a sign of their decline, and how
far our theatres are a disgrace to those who build
and visit them, everything must be learnt over
again, and that which is usual and common-
place should be regarded as something unusual
and complicated. An extraordinary lack of clear
judgment, a badly-concealed lust of pleasure, of
entertainment at any cost, learned scruples, as-
sumed airs of importance, and trifling with the
seriousness of art on the part of those who repre-
sent it; brutality of appetite and money-grubbing
on the part of promoters; the empty-mindedness


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 125
and thoughtlessness of society, which only thinks
of the people in so far as these serve or thwart its
purpose, and which attends theatres and concerts
without giving a thought to its duties,—all these
things constitute the stifling and deleterious
atmosphere of our modern art conditions: when,
however, people like our men of culture have
grown accustomed to it, they imagine that it is
a condition of their healthy existence, and would
immediately feel unwell if, for any reason, they
were compelled to dispense with it for a while.
In point of fact, there is but one speedy way of
convincing oneself of the vulgarity, weirdness, and
confusion of our theatrical institutions, and that
is to compare them with those which once
flourished in ancient Greece. If we knew nothing
about the Greeks, it would perhaps be impossible
to assail our present conditions at all, and objec-
tions made on the large scale conceived for the
first time by Wagner would have been regarded
as the dreams of people who could only be at home
in outlandish places. "For men as we now find
them," people would have retorted, "art of this
modern kind answers the purpose and is fitting—
and men have never been different. " But they
have been very different, and even now there are
men who are far from satisfied with the existing
state of affairs—the fact of Bayreuth alone demon-
strates this point. Here you will find prepared
and initiated spectators, and the emotion of men
conscious of being at the very zenith of their
happiness, who concentrate their whole being on
that happiness in order to strengthen themselves


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126 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
for a higher and more far-reaching purpose. Here
you will find the most noble self-abnegation on
the part of the artist, and the finest of all spectacles
—that of a triumphant creator of works which are
in themselves an overflowing treasury of artistic
triumphs. Does it not seem almost like a fairy
tale, to be able to come face to face with such a
personality? Must not they who take any part
whatsoever, active or passive, in the proceedings
at Bayreuth, already feel altered and rejuvenated,
and ready to introduce reforms and to effect
renovations in other spheres of life? Has not
a haven been found for all wanderers on high and
desert seas, and has not peace settled over the face
of the waters? Must not he who leaves these
spheres of ruling profundity and loneliness for the
very differently ordered world with its plains and
lower levels, cry continually like Isolde: "Oh, how
could I bear it? How can I still bear it? " And
should he be unable to endure his joy and his
sorrow, or to keep them egotistically to himself,
he will avail himself from that time forward of
every opportunity of making them known to all.
"Where are they who are suffering under the yoke
of modern institutions? " he will inquire. "Where
are my natural allies, with whom I may struggle
against the ever waxing and ever more oppressive
pretensions of modern erudition? For at present,
at least, we have but one enemy—at present! —and
it is that band of aesthetes, to whom the word
Bayreuth means the completest rout—they have
taken no share in the arrangements, they were
rather indignant at the whole movement, or else


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 127
availed themselves effectively of the deaf-ear
policy, which has now become the trusty weapon
of all very superior opposition. But this proves
that their animosity and knavery were ineffectual
in destroying Wagner's spirit or in hindering the
accomplishment of his plans; it proves even more,
for it betrays their weakness and the fact that all
those who are at present in possession of power
will not be able to withstand many more attacks.
The time is at hand for those who would conquer
and triumph; the vastest empires lie at their
mercy, a note of interrogation hangs to the name
of all present possessors of power, so far as pos-
session may be said to exist in this respect. Thus
educational institutions are said to be decaying,
and everywhere individuals are to be found who
have secretly deserted them. If only it were pos-
sible to invite those to open rebellion and public
utterances, who even now are thoroughly dissatis-
fied with the state of affairs in this quarter! If
only it were possible to deprive them of their faint
heart and lukewarmness! I am convinced that
the whole spirit of modern culture would receive its
deadliest blow if the tacit support which these
natures give it could in any way be cancelled.
Among scholars, only those would remain loyal to
the old order of things who had been infected with
the political mania or who were literary hacks in
any form whatever. The repulsive organisation
which derives its strength from the violence and
injustice upon which it relies—that is to say,
from the State and Society—and which sees its
advantage in making the latter ever more evil and


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128 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
unscrupulous,—this structure which without such
support would be something feeble and effete, only
needs to be despised in order to perish. He who
is struggling to spread justice and love among
mankind must regard this organisation as the least
significant of the obstacles in his way; for he will
only encounter his real opponents once he has
successfully stormed and conquered modern culture,
which is nothing more than their outworks.
For us, Bayreuth is the consecration of the dawn
of the combat. No greater injustice could be done
to us than to suppose that we are concerned with art
alone, as though it were merely a means of healing
or stupefying us, which we make use of in order to
rid our consciousness of all the misery that still
remains in our midst. In the image of this tragic
art work at Bayreuth, we see, rather, the struggle
of individuals against everything which seems to
oppose them with invincible necessity, with power,
law, tradition, conduct, and the whole order of
things established. Individuals cannot choose a
better life than that of holding themselves ready
to sacrifice themselves and to die in their fight for
love and justice. The gaze which the mysterious
eye of tragedy vouchsafes us neither lulls nor
paralyses. Nevertheless, it demands silence of us
as long as it keeps us in view; for art does not
serve the purposes of war, but is merely with us to
improve our hours of respite, before and during the
course of the contest, — to improve those few
moments when, looking back, yet dreaming of the
future, we seem to understand the symbolical, and
are carried away into a refreshing reverie when


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 129
fatigue overtakes us. Day and battle dawn to-
gether, the sacred shadows vanish, and Art is once
more far away from us; but the comfort she dis-
penses is with men from the earliest hour of day,
and never leaves them. Wherever he turns, the
individual realises only too clearly his own short-
comings, his insufficiency and his incompetence;
what courage would he have left were he not
previously rendered impersonal by this consecra-
tion! The greatest of all torments harassing him,
the conflicting beliefs and opinions among men,
the unreliability of these beliefs and opinions, and
the unequal character of men's abilities—all these
things make him hanker after art. We cannot be
happy so long as everything about us suffers and
causes suffering; we cannot be moral so long as
the course of human events is determined by
violence, treachery, and injustice; we cannot even
be wise, so long as the whole of mankind does not
compete for wisdom, and does not lead the in-
dividual to the most sober and reasonable form of
life and knowledge. How, then, would it be possible
to endure this feeling of threefold insufficiency if
one were not able to recognise something sublime
and valuable in one's struggles, strivings, and
defeats, if one did not learn from tragedy how to
delight in the rhythm of the great passions, and
in their victim? Art is certainly no teacher or
educator of practical conduct: the artist is never
in this sense an instructor or adviser; the things
after which a tragic hero strives are not necessarily
worth striving after. As in a dream so in art, the
valuation of things only holds good while we are
I


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130 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
under its spell. What we, for the time being, re-
gard as so worthy of effort, and what makes us
sympathise with the tragic hero when he prefers
death to renouncing the object of his desire, this
can seldom retain the same value and energy when
transferred to everyday life: that is why art is the
business of the man who is recreating himself. The
strife it reveals to us is a simplification of life's
struggle; its problems are abbreviations of the
infinitely complicated phenomena of man's actions
and volitions. But from this very fact—that it is
the reflection, so to speak, of a simpler world, a
more rapid solution of the riddle of life—art derives
its greatness and indispensability. No one who
suffers from life can do without this reflection, just
as no one can exist without sleep. The more
difficult the science of natural laws becomes, the
more fervently we yearn for the image of this
^ simplification, if only for an instant; and the
greater becomes the tension between each man's
general knowledge of things and his moral and
spiritual faculties. Art is with us to prevent the
bow from snapping.
The individual must be consecrated to something
impersonal—that is the aim of tragedy: he must
forget the terrible anxiety which death and time
tend to create in him; for at any moment of his
life, at any fraction of time in the whole of his span
of years, something sacred may cross his path
which will amply compensate him for all his
struggles and privations. This means having a
sense for the tragic. And if all mankind must
perish some day—and who could question this!


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 131
—it has been given its highest aim for the future,
namely, to increase and to live in such unity that
it may confront its final extermination as a whole,
with one spirit—with a common sense of the tragic:
in this one aim all the ennobling influences of man
lie locked; its complete repudiation by humanity
would be the saddest blow which the soul of the
philanthropist could receive. That is how I feel
in the matter! There is but one hope and
guarantee for the future of man, and that is that,
his sense for the tragic may not die out. If he ever
completely lost it, an agonised cry, the like of
which has never been heard, would have to be
raised all over the world; for there is no more
blessed joy than that which consists in knowing
what we know—how tragic thought was born again
on earth. For this joy is thoroughly impersonal
and general: it is the wild rejoicing of humanity,
anent the hidden relationship and progress of all
that is human.
V.
Wagner concentrated upon life, past and present,
the light of an intelligence strong enough to em-
brace the most distant regions in its rays. That
is why he is a simplifier of the universe; for the
simplification of the universe is only possible to
him whose eye has been able to master the im-
mensity and wildness of an apparent chaos, and
to relate and unite those things which before had
lain hopelessly asunder. Wagner did this by dis-
covering a connection between two objects which


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132 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
seemed to exist apart from each other as though in
separate spheres—that between music and life, and
similarly between music and the drama. Not that
he invented or was the first to create this relation-
ship, for they must always have existed and have
been noticeable to all; but, as is usually the case
with a great problem, it is like a precious stone
which thousands stumble over before one finally
picks it up. Wagner asked himself the meaning
of the fact that an art such as music should have
become so very important a feature of the lives of
modern men. It is not necessary to think meanly
of life in order to suspect a riddle behind this
question. On the contrary, when all the great
forces of existence are duly considered, and
struggling life is regarded as striving mightily
after conscious freedom and independence of
thought, only then does music seem to be a riddle
in this world. Should one not answer: Music
could not have been born in our time? What
then does its presence amongst us signify? An
accident? A single great artist might certainly
be an accident, but the appearance of a whole
group of them, such as the history of modern music
has to show, a group only once before equalled on
earth, that is to say in the time of the Greeks,—a
circumstance of this sort leads one to think that
perhaps necessity rather than accident is at the
root of the ^whole phenomenon. The meaning of
this necessity is the riddle which Wagner answers.
He was the first to recognise an evil which is
as widespread as civilisation itself among men;
language is everywhere diseased, and the burden


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 133
of this terrible disease weighs heavily upon the
whole of man's development. Inasmuch as
language has retreated ever more and more frorn^
its true province—the expression of strong feelings,
which it was once able to convey in all their
simplicity—and has always had to strain after the
practically impossible achievement of communicat-
ing the reverse of feeling, that is to say thought,
its strength has become so exhausted by this ex-
cessive extension of its duties during the com-
paratively short period of modern civilisation, that
it is no longer able to perform even that function
which alone justifies its existence, to wit, the assist-
ing of those who suffer, in communicating with
each other concerning the sorrows of existence.
Man can no longer make his misery known unto
others by means of language; hence he cannot
really express himself any longer. And under
these conditions, which are only vaguely felt at
present, language has gradually become a force
in itself which with spectral arms coerces and
drives humanity where it least wants to go. As
soon as they would fain understand one another
and unite for a common cause, the craziness of
general concepts, and even of the ring of modern
words, lays hold of them. The result of this in-
ability to communicate with one another is that
every product of their co-operative action bears the
stamp of discord, not only because it. fails to meet
their real needs, but because of the very emptiness
of those all-powerful words and notions already
mentioned. To the misery already at hand, man
thus adds the curse of convention—that is to say,


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134 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
the agreement between words and actions without
an agreement between the feelings. Just as, during
the decline of every art, a point is reached when
the morbid accumulation of its means and forms
attains to such tyrannical proportions that it
oppresses the tender souls of artists and converts
these into slaves, so now, in the period of the de-
cline of language, men have become the slaves of
words. Under this yoke no one is able to show
himself as he is, or to express himself artlessly,
while only few are able to preserve their individu-
ality in their fight against a culture which thinks
to manifest its success, not by the fact that it ap-
proaches definite sensations and desires with the
view of educating them, but by the fact that it
involves the individual in the snare of "definite
notions," and teaches him to think correctly: as
if there were any value in making a correctly
thinking and reasoning being out of man, before
one has succeeded in making him a creature that
feels correctly. If now the strains of our German
masters' music burst upon a mass of mankind sick
to this extent, what is really the meaning of these
strains? Only correct feeling, the enemy of all
convention, of all artificial estrangement and mis-
understandings between man and man: this music
signifies a return to nature, and at the same time
a purification and remodelling of it; for the need
of such a return took shape in the souls of the
most loving of men, and, through their art, nature
transformed into love makes its voice heard.
Let us regard this as one of Wagner's answers
to the question, What does music mean in our


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 135
time? for he has a second. The relation between
music and life is not merely that existing between
one kind of language and another; it is, besides,
the relation between the perfect world of sound
and that of sight. Regarded merely as a spectacle,)
and compared with other and earlier manifestations
of human life, the existence of modern man is
characterised by indescribable indigence and ex-
haustion, despite the unspeakable garishness at
which only the superficial observer rejoices. If
one examines a little more closely the impression
which this vehement and kaleidoscopic play of
colours makes upon one, does not the whole seem
to blaze with the shimmer and sparkle of innumer-
able little stones borrowed from former civilisations?
Is not everything one sees merely a complex of
inharmonious bombast, aped gesticulations, arro-
gant superficiality? —a ragged suit of motley for
the naked and the shivering? A seeming dance
of joy enjoined upon a sufferer? Airs of overbear-
ing pride assumed by one who is sick to the back-
bone? And the whole moving with such rapidity
and confusion that it is disguised and masked—
sordid impotence, devouring dissension, assiduous
ennui, dishonest distress! The appearance of
present-day humanity is all appearance, and
nothing else: in what he now represents man
himself has become obscured and concealed; and
the vestiges of the creative faculty in art, which
still cling to such countries as France and Italy,
are all concentrated upon this one task of conceal-
ing. Wherever form is still in demand in society,
conversation, literary style, or the relations between


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136 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
governments, men have unconsciously grown to
believe that it is adequately met by a kind of
agreeable dissimulation, quite the reverse of genuine
form conceived as a necessary relation between the
proportions of a figure, having no concern whatever
with the notions "agreeable" or "disagreeable,"
simply because it is necessary and not optional.
But even where form is not openly exacted by
civilised people, there is no greater evidence of this
requisite relation of proportions; a striving after
the agreeable dissimulation, already referred to, is
on the contrary noticeable, though it is never so
successful even if it be more eager than in the first
instance. How far this dissimulation is agreeable at
times, and why it must please everybody to see
how modern men at least endeavour to dissemble,
every one is in a position to judge, according to
the extent to which he himself may happen to be
modern. "Only galley slaves know each other,"
says Tasso, " and if we mistake others, it is only
out of courtesy, and with the hope that they, in
their turn, should mistake us. "
Now, in this world of forms and intentional mis-
understandings, what purpose is served by the
appearance of souls overflowing with music? They
pursue the course of grand and unrestrained rhythm
with noble candour—with a passion more than
personal; they glow with the mighty and peaceful
fire of music, which wells up to the light of day
from their unexhausted depths—and all this to
what purpose?
By means of these souls music gives expression
to the longing that it feels for the company of its


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 137
natural ally,gymnastics—that is to say, its necessary
form in the order of visible phenomena. In its
search and craving for this ally, it becomes the
arbiter of the whole visible world and the world
of mere lying appearance of the present day. This
is Wagner's second answer to the question, What
is the meaning of music in our times ? " Help me,"
he cries to all who have ears to hear, " help me to
discover that culture of which my music, as the
rediscovered language of correct feeling, seems to
foretell the existence. Bear in mind that the soul of
music now wishes to acquire a body, that, by means *
of you all, it would find its way to visibleness
in movements, deeds, institutions, and customs! "
There are some men who understand this summons,
and their number will increase; they have also
understood, for the first time, what it means to found
the State upon music. It is something that the
ancient Hellenes not only understood but actually
insisted upon; and these enlightened creatures
would just as soon have sentenced the modern State
to death as modern men now condemn the Church.
The road to such a new though not unprecedented
goal would lead to this: that we should be com-
pelled to acknowledge where the worst faults of
our educational system lie, and why it has failed
hitherto to elevate us out of barbarity: in reality, it
lacks the stirring and creative soul of music; its
requirements and arrangements are moreover the
product of a period in which the music, to which
we seem to attach so much importance, had not
yet been born. Our education is the most anti-
quated factor of our present conditions, and it is so


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138 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
more precisely in regard to the one new educational
force by which it makes men of to-day in advance
of those of bygone centuries, or by which it would
make them in advance of their remote ancestors,
provided only they did not persist so rashly in
hurrying forward in meek response to the scourge
of the moment. Through not having allowed the
soul of music to lodge within them, they have no
notion of gymnastics in the Greek and Wagnerian
sense; and that is why their creative artists are
condemned to despair, as long as they wish to dis-
pense with music as a guide in a new world of
visible phenomena. Talent may develop as much
as may be desired: it either comes too late or too
soon, and at all events out of season; for it is in
the main superfluous and abortive, just as even the
most perfect and the highest products of earlier
times which serve modern artists as models are
superfluous and abortive, and add not a stone to
the edifice already begun. If their innermost con-
sciousness can perceive no new forms, but only the
old ones belonging to the past, they may certainly
achieve something for history, but not for life; for
they are already dead before having expired. He,
however, who feels genuine and fruitful life in him,
which at present can only be described by the one
term " Music," could he allow himself to be deceived
for one moment into nursing solid hopes by this
something which exhausts all its energy in pro-
ducing figures, forms, and styles? He stands above
all such vanities, and as little expects to meet
with artistic wonders outside his ideal world of
sound as with great writers bred on our effete and


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 139
discoloured language. Rather than lend an ear
to illusive consolations, he prefers to turn his
unsatisfied gaze stoically upon our modern world,
and if his heart be not warm enough to feel pity,
let it at least feel bitterness and hate! It were
better for him to show anger and scorn than to
take cover in spurious contentment or steadily to
drug himself, as our " friends of art" are wont to do.
But if he can do more than condemn and despise,
if he is capable of loving, sympathising, and assist-
ing in the general work of construction, he must
still condemn, notwithstanding, in order to prepare
the road for his willing soul. In order that music
may one day exhort many men to greater piety
and make them privy to her highest aims, an end
must first be made to the whole of the pleasure-
seeking relations which men now enjoy with such
a sacred art. Behind all our artistic pastimes—
theatres, museums, concerts, and the like—that afore-
mentioned "friend of art" is to be found, and he it
is who must be suppressed: the favour he now
finds at the hands of the State must be changed
into oppression; public opinion, which lays such
particular stress upon the training of this love of
art, must be routed by better judgment. Mean-
while we must reckon the declared enemy of art as
our best and most useful ally; for the object of
his animosity is precisely art as understood by the
"friend of art,"—he knows of no other kind! Let
him be allowed to call our " friend of art" to account
for the nonsensical waste of money occasioned by
the building of his theatres and public monuments,
the engagement of his celebrated singers and actors,


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140 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
and the support of his utterly useless schools of art
and picture-galleries—to say nothing of all the
energy, time, and money which every family
squanders in pretended "artistic interests. " Neither
hunger nor satiety is to be noticed here, but a dead-
and-alive game is played—with the semblance of
each, a game invented by the idle desire to produce
an effect and to deceive others. Or, worse still, art
is taken more or less seriously, and then it is itself
expected to provoke a kind of hunger and craving,
and to fulfil its mission in this artificially induced
excitement. It is as if people were afraid of
sinking beneath the weight of their loathing and
dulness, and invoked every conceivable evil spirit
to scare them and drive them about like wild cattle.
Men hanker after pain, anger, hate, the flush of
passion, sudden flight, and breathless suspense, and
they appeal to the artist as the conjurer of this
demoniacal host. In the spiritual economy of our
cultured classes art has become a spurious or igno-
minious andundignified need—a nonentity or asome-
thing evil. The superior and more uncommon artist
must be in the throes of a bewildering nightmare
in order to be blind to all this, and like a ghost,
diffidently and in a quavering voice, he goes on
repeating beautiful words which he declares descend
to him from higher spheres, but whose sound he
can hear only very indistinctly. The artist who
happens to be moulded according to the modern
pattern, however, regards the dreamy gropings and
hesitating speech of his nobler colleague with con-
tempt, and leads forth the whole brawling mob of
assembled passions on a leash in order to let them
■


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RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 141
loose upon modern men as he may think fit. For
these modern creatures wish rather to be hunted
down, wounded, and torn to shreds, than to live
alone with themselves in solitary calm. Alone with
oneself! —this thought terrifies the modern soul;
it is his one anxiety, his one ghastly fear.
When I watch the throngs that move and linger
about the streets of a very populous town, and
notice no other expression in their faces than one
of hunted stupor, I can never help commenting to
myself upon the misery of their "condition. For
them all, art exists only that they may be still
more wretched, torpid, insensible, or even more
flurried and covetous. For incorrect feeling governs
and drills them unremittingly. and does not even give
them time to become aware of their misery. Should
they wish to speak, convention whispers their cue
to them, and this makes them forget what they
originally intended to say; should they desire to
understand one another, their comprehension is
maimed as though by a spell: they declare that to
be their joy which in reality is but their doom,
and they proceed to collaborate in wilfully bring-
ing about their own damnation. Thus they have
become transformed into perfectly and absolutely
different creatures, and reduced to the state of
abject slaves of incorrect feeling.


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142 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
VI.
I shall only give two instances showing how
utterly the sentiment of our time has been per-
verted, and how completely unconscious the present
age is of this perversion. Formerly financiers were
looked down upon with honest scorn, even though
they were recognised as needful; for it was gene-
rally admitted that every society must have its
viscera. Now, however, they are the ruling power
in the soul of modern humanity, for they constitute
the most covetous portion thereof. In former times
people were warned especially against taking the
day or the moment too seriously: the nil ad-
mirari was recommended and the care of things
eternal. Now there is but one kind of seriousness
left in the modern mind, and it is limited to the
news brought by the newspaper and the telegraph.