No More Learning

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
■


## p. 141 (#241) ############################################

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.


## p. 142 (#242) ############################################

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.
Improve each shining hour, turn it to some account
and judge it as quickly as possible! —one would
think modern men had but one virtue left—presence
of mind. Unfortunately, it much more closely
resembles the omnipresence of disgusting and
insatiable cupidity, and spying inquisitiveness
become universal. For the question is whether
mind is present at all to-day;—but we shall leave
this problem for future judges to solve; they, at
least, are bound to pass modern men through a
sieve. But that this age is vulgar, even we can
see now, and it is so because it reveres precisely
what nobler ages contemned. If, therefore, it loots
all the treasures of bygone wit and wisdom, and


## p. 143 (#243) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. I43
struts about in this richest of rich garments, it only
proves its sinister consciousness of its own vulgarity
in so doing; for it does not don this garb for
warmth, but merely in order to mystify its sur-
roundings. The desire to dissemble and to con-
ceal himself seems stronger than the need of
protection from the cold in modern man. Thus
scholars and philosophers of the age do not have
recourse to Indian and Greek wisdom in order to
become wise and peaceful: the only purpose of
their work seems to be to earn them a fictitious
reputation for learning in their own time. The
naturalists endeavour to classify the animal out-
breaks of violence, ruse and revenge, in the present
relations between nations and individual men,
as immutable laws of nature. Historians are
anxiously engaged in proving that every age has
its own particular right and special conditions,—
with the view of preparing the groundwork of an
apology for the day that is to come, when our gene-
ration will be called to judgment. The science of
government, of race, of commerce, and of juris-
prudence, all have that preparatorily apologetic
character now; yea, it even seems as though the
small amount of intellect which still remains
active to-day, and is not used up by the great
mechanism of gain and power, has as its sole task
the defending and excusing of the present.
Against what accusers? one asks, surprised.
Against its own bad conscience.
And at this point we plainly discern the task
assigned to modern art—that of stupefying or
intoxicating, of lulling to sleep or bewildering.


## p. 144 (#244) ############################################

144 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
By hook or by crook to make conscience un-
conscious! To assist the modern soul over the
sensation of guilt, not to lead it back to innocence!
And this for the space of moments only! To
defend men against themselves, that their inmost
heart may be silenced, that they may turn a deaf
ear to its voice! The souls of those few who
really feel the utter ignominy of this mission and
its terrible humiliation of art, must be filled to the
brim with sorrow and pity, but also with a new
and overpowering yearning. He who would fain
emancipate art, and reinstall its sanctity, now
desecrated, must first have freed himself from all
contact with modern souls; only as an innocent
being himself can he hope to discover the innocence
of art, for he must be ready to perform the stupend-
ous tasks of self-purification and self-consecration.
If he succeeded, if he were ever able to address
men from out his enfranchised soul and by means of
his emancipated art, he would then find himself
exposed to the greatest of dangers and involved
in the most appalling of struggles. Man would
prefer to tear him and his art to pieces, rather than
acknowledge that he must die of shame in presence
of them. It is just possible that the emancipation
of art is the only ray of hope illuminating the
future, an event intended only for a few isolated
souls, while the many remain satisfied to gaze into
the flickering and smoking flame of their art and
can endure to do so. For they do not want to be
enlightened, but dazzled. They rather hate light
—more particularly when it is thrown on them-
selves.


## p. 145 (#245) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 145
That is why they evade the new messenger of
light; but he follows them—the love which gave
him birth compels him to follow them and to
reduce them to submission. "Ye must go through
my mysteries," he cries to them; "ye need to be
purified and shaken by them. Dare to submit
to this for your own salvation, and abandon the
gloomily lighted corner of life and nature which
alone seems familiar to you. I lead you into a
kingdom which is also real, and when I lead
you out of my cell into your daylight, ye will
be able to judge which life is more real, which, in
fact, is day and which night. Nature is much
richer, more powerful, more blessed and more
terrible below the surface; ye cannot divine this
from the way in which ye live. O that ye your-
selves could learn to become natural again, and
then suffer yourselves to be transformed through
mature, and into her, by the charm of my ardour
and love! "
It is the voice of Wagner's art which thus ap-
peals to men. And that we, the children of a
wretched age, should be the first to hear it, shows
how deserving of pity this age must be: it shows,
moreover, that real music is of a piece with fate and
primitive law; for it is quite impossible to attribute
its presence amongst us precisely at the present
time to empty and meaningless chance. Had
Wagner been an accident, he would certainly have
been crushed by the superior strength of the other
elements in the midst of which he was placed.
But in the coming of Wagner there seems to have
been a necessity which both justifies it and makes
K


## p. 146 (#246) ############################################

I46 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
it glorious. Observed from its earliest beginnings,
the development of his art constitutes a most
magnificent spectacle, and—even though it was
attended with great suffering—reason, law, and
intention mark its course throughout. Under the
charm of such a spectacle the observer will be led
to take pleasure even in this painful development
itself, and will regard it as fortunate. He will see
how everything necessarily contributes to the wel-
fare and benefit of talent and a nature foreordained,
however severe the trials may be through which
it may have to pass. He will realise how every
danger gives it more heart, and every triumph
more prudence; how it partakes of poison and
sorrow and thrives upon them. The mockery
and perversity of the surrounding world only goad
and spur it on the more. Should it happen to go
astray, it but returns from its wanderings and
exile loaded with the most precious spoil; should
it chance to slumber, "it does but recoup its
strength. " It tempers the body itself and makes
it tougher; it does not consume life, however long
it lives; it rules over man like a pinioned passion,
and allows him to fly just in the nick of time, when
his foot has grown weary in the sand or has been
lacerated by the stones on his way. It can do
nought else but impart; every one must share in
its work, and it is no stinted giver. When it is
repulsed it is but more prodigal in its gifts; ill used
by those it favours, it does but reward them with
the richest treasures it possesses,—and, according
to the oldest and most recent experience, its
favoured ones have never been quite worthy of its


## p. 147 (#247) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. I47
gifts. That is why the nature foreordained'
through which music expresses itself to this world
of appearance, is one of the most mysterious things
under the sun—an abyss in which strength and
goodness lie united, a bridge between self and
non-self. Who would undertake to name the
object of its existence with any certainty? —even
supposing the sort of purpose which it would be
likely to have could be divined at all. But a most
blessed foreboding leads one to ask whether it is
possible for the grandest things to exist for the
purpose of the meanest, the greatest talent for
the benefit of the smallest, the loftiest virtue andi
holiness for the sake of the defective and faulty?
Should real music make itself heard, because
mankind of all creatures least deserves to hear it,
though it perhaps need it most? If one ponder over
the transcendental and wonderful character of this
possibility, and turn from these considerations to
look back on life, a light will then be seen to
ascend, however dark and misty it may have
seemed a moment before.
VII.
It is quite impossible otherwise: the observer
who is confronted with a nature such as Wagner's
must, willy-nilly, turn his eyes from time to time
upon himself, upon his insignificance and frailty,
and ask himself, What concern is this of thine?
Why, pray, art thou there at all? Maybe he will
find no answer to these questions, in which case he


## p. 148 (#248) ############################################

148 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
will remain estranged and confounded, face to
face with his own personality. Let it then suffice
him that he has experienced this feeling; let the
fact that he has felt strange and embarrassed in the
presence of his own soul be the answer to his question.
For it is precisely by virtue of this feeling that he
shows the most powerful manifestation of life in
1 Wagner—the very kernel of his strength—that
demoniacal magnetism and gift of imparting one-
self to others, which is peculiar to his nature, and
by which it not only conveys itself to other beings,
but also absorbs other beings into itself; thus
attaining to its greatness by giving and by taking.
As the observer is apparently subject to Wagner's
exuberant and prodigally generous nature, he
partakes of its strength, and thereby becomes
formidable through him and to him. And every one
who critically examines himself knows that a
certain mysterious antagonism is necessary to the
process of mutual study. Should his art lead us
to- experience all that falls to the lot of a soul
engaged upon a journey, i. e. feeling sympathy with
others and sharing their fate, and seeing the world
through hundreds of different eyes, we are then
able, from such a distance, and under such strange
influences, to contemplate him, once we have lived
his life. We then feel with the utmost certainty
that in Wagner the whole visible world desires to
be spiritualised, absorbed, and lost in the world of
sounds. In Wagner, too, the world of sounds seeks
to manifest itself as a phenomenon for the sight;
it seeks, as it were, to incarnate itself. His art
always leads him into two distinct directions, from


## p. 149 (#249) ############################################

RICHARD WAGNER IN BAYREUTH. 149
the world of the play of sound to the mysterious
and yet related world of visible things, and vice
versd. He is continually forced—and the observer
with him—to re-translate the visible into spiritual
and primeval life, and likewise to perceive the
most hidden interstices of the soul as something
concrete and to lend it a visible body. This con-
stitutes the nature of the dithyrambic dramatist,
if the meaning given to the term includes also
the actor, the poet, and the musician; a concep-
tion necessarily borrowed from ^Eschylus and
the contemporary Greek artists—the only perfect
examples of the dithyrambic dramatist before
Wagner. If attempts have been made to trace
the most wonderful developments to inner obstacles
or deficiencies, if, for instance, in Goethe's case,
poetry was merely the refuge of a foiled talent
for painting; if one may speak of Schiller's
dramas as of vulgar eloquence directed into un-
common channels; if Wagner himself tries to
account for the development of music among the
Germans by showing that, inasmuch as they are
devoid of the entrancing stimulus of a natural
gift for singing, they were compelled to take up
instrumental music with the same profound serious-
ness as that with which their reformers took up
Christianity, — if, on the same principle, it were
sought to associate Wagner's development with an
inner barrier of the same kind, it would then be
necessary to recognise in him a primitive dramatic
talent, which had to renounce all possibility of
satisfying its needs by the quickest and most
trivial methods, and which found its salvation and


## p. 150 (#250) ############################################

ISO 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


## p. 151 (#251) ############################################

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


## p. 151 (#252) ############################################

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


## p. 151 (#253) ############################################

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


## p. 151 (#254) ############################################

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


## p. 151 (#255) ############################################

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


## p. 152 (#256) ############################################

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


## p. 153 (#257) ############################################

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-


## p. 154 (#258) ############################################

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


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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.