No More Learning

The national drama, or as Wagner called it, true
German art, was to be the highest expression of the culture and art-
istic capabilities of the German people; and this art work, Wagner,
by his own unaided genius, stood ready to create. A self-confidence
so colossal moved to astonishment and scornful laughter; but the
battle has been won, and the only echoes of the days of strife are
the self-apologetic phrases of the former scoffers, who have slowly
become conscious that the lack lay in them, while the works of the
master exist by their own right and might. They received their con-
secration in the pilgrimage temple of Bayreuth in 1876 and 1882.
That the extravagant theories of Wagner, with their contraven-
tion of artistic limitations and their socialistic coloring, have not been
carried out in their entirety, is perfectly true. The genius of the
artist was superior to the reasoning of the theorizer.
What Wagner
did, viewed from the standpoint of literature, was to create a national
music-drama, based upon ancient Germanic traditions and legends,
about which he threw the gorgeous mantle of his harmonies. In
addition to the beauty of the poetic conceptions, the literary artist
appears in the perfect adaptation of each phrase and word and vowel,
not only to the dramatic expression of the thought but to the needs
of the human voice as well. His method of treating themes asso-
ciates them inseparably with certain thoughts, so that the words
come involuntarily to the mind: and in the midst of all the action,
the orchestra speaks an articulate language; suggests, warns, alarms,
melts, threatens, or moves to tears of sympathy or joy,- produces in
short that “demonic) emotion, the effect beyond all for which the
reason can account, the effect which Goethe considered the highest
achievement of all art. Indeed, the music will not yield the whole
secret of its charm until the words, the poetic thought, and the entire
dramatic conception, have become completely a part of the hearer's
mental equipment. To this quality of Wagner's works the art of the
poet contributed as much as the genius of the composer.
For the material through which to give national expression to the
culture of the German people, Wagner turned, like a true poet of
Romanticism, to the heroic traditions of his race. In the Flying
Dutchman' it is a sombre legend of the sea; in "Tannhäuser' it is
the famous contest of the thirteenth century when the Minnesingers
strove together in song in the hall of the Wartburg; in Lohengrin'
and (Parsifal' it is the mediaval tradition of the Holy Grail; in
(Tristan und Isolde it is the most popular love tale of the Middle
Ages; and finally in Der Ring des Nibelungen' (The Nibelungs'


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RICHARD WAGNER
Ring), Wagner has combined in a colossal work of wonderful unity
and beauty the most ancient poetic legends of the Germanic peoples,
the legends out of which seven centuries before Wagner's time some
unnamed poet created Germany's most national epic,- the Nibe-
lungenlied. To have created anew these splendid conceptions of
the poetic past, is not the least of Wagner's merit. His works, in
addition to their æsthetic value, have a value of the moral sort as
well: in them speaks the deep soul of a historic people, with its moral
earnestness, its childlike love of song and legend, its martial strength
and its manly tenderness.
The central theme of all these poems is love. It is through Sen-
ta's love, faithful unto death, that the curse is removed from the Fly-
ing Dutchman. Through the power of Elizabeth's pure passion and
incessant prayers, Tannhäuser is at last delivered from the bondage
of the Venusberg. In Lohengrin,' love is the manifestation of the
Divine mercy; and a knight of the Holy Grail comes, swan-drawn,
from his inaccessible temple to rescue
a maiden in distress. He
becomes her husband and protector, but Elsa, tempted of evil, puts
the fatal question: her faith was insufficient, and her lord returns to
the service of the Grail.
Tristan und Isolde' is the apotheosis of earthly passion. Into this
Celtic legend, of which Gottfried von Strassburg in the thirteenth
century had made a German epic, Wagner has introduced a modern
psychology; and he has given the poem a new significance. He
has retained the love potion, but he has not made it the cause of
the lover's passion. They loved before, but Tristan is resolutely
faithful to King Mark; and Isolde is wounded to the quick that
Tristan should have wooed her in another's ame.
The potion sym-
bolizes the irresistible power of a love that bears down all obstacles
and stifles all considerations. The triumph, the reconcilement, the
nirvana of their passion, is attained only in death. This work must
be numbered among the greatest love poems of literature.
And so too in the Nibelungen' trilogy, love is not only the theme,
but in the end the force that conquers even in death. In (Rhein-
gold' the power of love is contrasted with the lust for gold; and
here the keynote is struck, and the tragedy set in motion. The love
and faithfulness of Siegmund and Sieglinde in the Walküre' show
Brünnhilde for the first time what love can do; and when Siegfried,
in the idyllic fairy tale that bears his name, awakens her from her
long sleep, she throws aside her Walküren nature for the joy of
human love. Siegfried is the free fate-defying man, triumphing
over the powers of darkness and destiny; to him Wotan, ever seek-
ing guidance from the mother of wisdom, is forced to yield. In the
'Götterdämmerung' the god awaits the fullness of time, while the


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guileless Siegfried falls a victim to the wiles of man. But the end
towards which Wotan blindly strove is attained by Siegfried's death.
Brünnhilde, to whom the counsels of the gods are known, restores
the symbolic ring to the daughters of the Rhine, and in twilight the
ancient reign of the gods comes to an end. The reign of love is
proclaimed as Brünnhilde immolates herself upon Siegfried's funeral
pyre. But the symbolism which it is so easy to find in these operas,
and so easy to exaggerate, is unimportant, if not wholly negligible.
The Nibelung poems are fairy tales; it is the buoyant spirit of the
young German race that revels here in the poetry and legends of its
childhood, and as fairy tales these works should be enjoyed.
Wagner died in Venice on February 13th, 1883. In the preced-
ing year he had seen his life work crowned by the performance
of Parsifal' at Bayreuth. Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzifal, the
finest courtly epic of the Middle Ages, Wagner has wrought into
a music-drama of even greater moral significance and beauty. Wolf-
ram's salvation of Parsifal through self-renunciation, as in Faust,'
has in Wagner's work become the salvation of humanity through all-
saving pity. This is love sublimated into its most unselfish form.
The central thought is announced by an invisible chorus from the
dome of the temple of the Holy Grail:-
“Made wise through pity
The guileless fool:
Wait for him,
My chosen tool. )
ner
And Parsifal, once found wanting, attains at last, through paths of
pain and error, the wisdom of pity. He is the chosen tool of the
Divine power for the salvation of suffering sinners.
One great opera remains to be mentioned, and that which is
probably destined to be Wagner's most popular work, — 'The Master-
singers of Nuremberg. ' This, unless we include (Siegfried,' as Wag-
once did, is his only comic opera; and that in a sense widely
different from the ordinary. "The Mastersingers) gives a wonderful
picture of German life in the early sixteenth century. The humor-
ous and serious elements are so artistically woven around the central
story of Walther's and Eva's love, that as a play this poem must be
pronounced the finest example of Wagner's dramatic power.
a blending of satire and genial appreciation, Wagner has herein set
forth his own theories of musical art and ridiculed the formalists.
Hans Sachs is one of the most winning of all his creations, and
through him the poet expresses his own philosophy. Walther, in his
exquisite song before the Mastersingers in the first act, attempts to
conform to the rules, but the marker scores countless mistakes against


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RICHARD WAGNER
him; it is only under the instruction of Hans Sachs in the last act
that he really composes his master-song.
And as through this opera the golden age of Nuremberg has been
made to live again, so have the ancient gods and heroes and myth-
ical happenings of early German legend been impressed upon the
modern imagination, as not all the critical texts of the original poems,
nor all the efforts of the other Romantic poets, have been able to
impress them. They have passed not into the national consciousness
only, but these fine old fairy tales and mediæval pictures have be-
come an indispensable part of the culture of the world. If this be
to create a national art, Wagner has accomplished his purpose. There
is an inscription under a bust of the poet-composer in Leipzig, which
in the old alliterative form that he used in the Nibelungenring'
sums up the genius which has wrought a greater artistic revolution
than any other force of this century:-
«Denker und Dichter
Gewaltigen Willens,
Durch Worte und Werke
Wecker und Meister
Musischer Kunst. »
(Thinker and poet of powerful will, by words and by works awakener and
master of musical art. )
Chauttruung
BESIDE THE HEARTH
B
ESIDE the hearth, when days were short,
And snow shut in the castle court;
How spring once smiled on mead and brake,
And how she soon would reawake-
A book I read, of ancient make,
Which these good tidings brought me:
Sir Walther of the Vogelweid',
He was the master who taught me.
Then when the snow has left the plain,
And summer days are come again,


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RICHARD WAGNER
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What I on winter nights have read,
And all my ancient book hath said,
That echoed loud in forest glade,-
I heard it clearly ringing:
In woodlands on the Vogelweid',
'Twas there I learnt my singing.
What winter night,
What forest bright,
What book and woodland told me;
What through the poet's magic might
So subtly did infold me,-
The tramp of horse
In battle course,
The merry dance
In war's romance, -
I heard in music ringing:
But now the stake is life's best prize,
Which I must win by singing;
The words and air, if 't in me lies,
And genius shall but speed me,
As mastersong I'll improvise:
My masters, pray you, heed me.
Translated by Charles Harvey Genung.
THE FUNCTION OF THE ARTIST
From the Opera and Drama)
T°
RAISE the strangely potent language of the orchestra to
such a height, that at every instant it may plainly manifest
to feeling the unspeakable of the dramatic situation,- to do
this, as we have already said, the musician inspired by the poet's
aim has not to haply practice self-restraint; no, he has to sharpen ·
his inventiveness to the point of discovering the most varied
orchestral idioms, to meet the necessity he feels of a pertinent,
a most determinate expression. So long as this language is in-
capable of a declaration as individual as is needed by the infinite
variety of the dramatic motives themselves; so long as the mes-
sage of the orchestra is too monochrome to answer these motives'
individuality,- so long may it prove a disturbing factor, because
not yet completely satisfying: and therefore in the complete
XXVI-970


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RICHARD WAGNER
-
drama, like everything that is not entirely adequate, it would
divert attention toward itself. To be true to our aim, however,
such an attention is absolutely not to be devoted to it; but
through its everywhere adapting itself with the utmost close-
ness to the finest shade of individuality in the dramatic motive,
the orchestra is irresistibly to guide our whole attention away
from itself, as a means of expression, and direct it to the subject
expressed. So that the very richest dialect of the orchestra is
to manifest itself with the artistic object of not being noticed, -
in a manner of speaking, of not being heard at all; to wit, not
heard in its mechanical but only in its organic capacity, wherein
it is one with the drama.
How must it. discourage the poet-musician, then, were he to
see his drama received by the public with sole and marked
attention to the mechanism of his orchestra, and to find himself
rewarded with just the praise of being a “very clever instru-
a "
mentalist " ! How must he feel at heart,- he whose every
shaping was prompted by the dramatic aim,-if art-literarians
should report on his drama, that they had read a text-book and
had heard, to boot, a wondrous music-ing by flutes and fiddles
and trumpets, all working in and out?
But could this drama possibly produce any other effect, under
the circumstances detailed above ?
And yet! are we to give up being artists ?
!
Or are we to
abandon all necessary insight into the nature of things because
we can draw no profit thence? Were it no profit then to be
not only an artist, but a man withal; and is an artificial know-
nothingness, a womanish dismissal of knowledge, to bring us
more profit than a sturdy consciousness, which, if only we put
all seeking-of-self behind us, will give us cheerfulness, and hope,
and courage above all else, for deeds which needs must rejoice
ourselves, how little soever they be crowned with an outward
success ?
For sure! Even now, it is only knowledge that can prosper
us; whilst ignorance but holds us to a joyless, divided, hypochon-
driacal, scarcely will-ing and never can-ing make-believe of art,
whereby we stay unsatisfied within, unsatisfying without.
Look round you, and see where ye live, and for whom ye
make your art! That our artistic comrades for the representment
of a dramatic art work are not forthcoming, we must recognize at
once, if we have eyes the least whit sharpened by artistic will.


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Yet how greatly we should err, if we pretended to explain this
by a demoralization of our opera-singers due entirely to their
own fault; how we should deceive ourselves if we thought neces-
sary to regard this phenomenon as accidental, and not as condi-
tioned by a broad, a general conjuncture! Let us suppose for an
instant that in some way or other we acquired the power of so
working upon performers and performance, from the standpoint
of artistic intelligence, that a highest dramatic aim should be
fully carried out,- then for the first time we should grow actively
aware that we lacked the real enabler of the art work: a public
to feel the need of it, and to make its need the all-puissant
fellow-shaper. The public of our theatres has no need for art
work: it wants to distract itself, when it takes its seat before the
stage, but not to collect itself; and the need of. the seeker after
distraction is merely for artificial details, but not for an artistic
unity. If we gave it a whole, the public would be blindly driven
to tear that whole to disconnected fragments, or in the most
fortunate event it would be called upon to understand a thing
which it altogether refuses to understand; wherefore, in full
consciousness, it turns its back on any such artistic aim. From
this result we should only gain a proof why such a performance
is absolutely out of the question at present, and why our opera
singers are bound to be exactly what they are and what they
cannot else be.
To account to ourselves for this attitude of the public towards
the performance, we must necessarily pass to a judgment on this
public itself.
If we cast a look at earlier ages of our theatric
history, we can only regard this public as involved in an advan-
cing degradation. The excellent work, the pre-eminently fine work
that has been done already in our art, we surely cannot consider
as dropped upon us from the skies; no, we must conclude that it
was prompted withal by the taste of those before whom it was
produced. We meet this public of fine taste and feeling at its
most marked degree of active interest in art production, in the
period of the Renaissance. Here we see princes and nobles not
only sheltering art, but so engrossed with its finest and its bold-
est shapings that the latter must be taken as downright sum-
moned into being by their enthusiastic need. This noble rank,-
nowhere attacked in its position; knowing nothing of the mis-
ery of the thralls whose life made that position possible; holding
itself completely aloof from the industrial and commercial spirit of


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RICHARD WAGNER
.
the burgher life; living away its life of pleasure in its palaces,
of courage on the field of battle, - this nobility had trained its
eyes and ears to discern the beautiful, the graceful, nay, even the
characteristic and energetic; and at its commands arose those
works of art which signal that epoch as the most favored art-
istic period since the downfall of Greek art.
The infinite grace
and delicacy in Mozart's tone-modelings — which seem so dull and
tedious to a public bred to-day on the grotesque — were delighted
in by the descendants of that old nobility; and it was to Kaiser
Joseph that Mozart appealed, from the mountebankish shameless-
ness of the singers of his 'Figaro. ' Nor will we look askance at
those young French cavaliers whose enthusiastic applause at the
Achilles aria in Gluck's “Iphigenia in Tauris turned the waver-
ing balance in favor of that work; and least of all will we
forget that whilst the greater courts of Europe had become
the political camps of intriguing diplomats, in Weimar a German
royal family was listening with rapt attention to the loftiest and
most graceful poets of the German nation.
But the rulership of public taste in art has passed over to the
person who now pays the artists' wages, in place of the nobil. '
ity which erstwhile recompensed them; to the person who orders
the art work for his money, and insists on ever novel variations
of his one beloved theme, but at no price a new theme itself:
and this ruler and this order-giver is — the Philistine. As this
Philistine is the most heartless and the basest offspring of our
civilization, so is he the most domineering, the cruelest and
foulest, of art's bread-givers. True, that everything comes aright
to him; only, he will have nothing to do with aught that might
remind him that he is to be a man,- either on the side of
beauty, or on that of nerve. He wills to be base and common,
and to this will of his has art to fit herself; for the rest — why!
nothing comes to him amiss. Let us turn our look from him as
quickly as may be!
Are we to make bargains with such a world ? No, no! For
even the most humiliating terms would leave us sheer outside
the pale.
Hope, faith, and courage can we only gain, when we recognize
even the modern State Philistine not merely as a conditioning,
but likewise as a conditioned, factor of our civilization; when we
search for the conditionments of this phenomenon, too, in a con-
juncture such as that we have just examined in the case of art.


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15509
ness.
For we
We shall not win hope and nerve until we bend our ear to the
heart-beat of history, and catch the sound of that sempiternal
vein of living waters, which, however buried under the waste-
heap of historic civilization, yet pulses on in all its pristine fresh-
Who has not felt the leaden murk that hangs above us in
the air, foretelling the near advent of an earth upheaval ? And
we who hear the trickling of that well-spring, shall we take
affright at the earthquake's sound ? Believe me, no!
know that it will only tear aside the heap of refuse, and pre-
pare for the stream that bed in which we soon shall even see its
living waters flow.
Where now the statesman loses hope, the politician sinks his
hands, the socialist beplagues his brain with fruitless systems,
yea, even the philosopher can only hint, but not foretell, - since
all that looms before us can only form a series of un-willful hap-
penings, whose physical show no mortal man may pre-conceive,
- there it is the artist whose clear eye can spy out shapes that
reveal themselves to a yearning which longs for the only truth,
the human being The artist has the power of seeing before-
hand a yet unshapen world, of tasting beforehand the joys of a
world as yet unborn, through the stress of his desire for growth.
But his joy is in imparting; and if only he turns his back on the
senseless herds who browse upon the grassless waste-heap, and
clasps the closer to his breast the cherished few who listen with
him to the well-spring, so finds he too the hearts — ay, finds the
senses to whom he can impart his message. We are older
men and younger: let the elder not think of himself, but love
the younger for sake of the bequest he sinks into his heart for
new increasing;- the day will come when that heirloom shall be
opened for the weal of brother men throughout the world!
We have seen the poet driven onward by his yearning for a
perfect emotional expression, and seen him reach the point where
he found his verse reflected on the mirror of the sea of harmony,
as musical melody: unto this sea was he compelled to thrust; only
the mirror of this sea could show him the image of his yearning:
and this sea he could not create from his own will; but it was
the Other of his being, that wherewith he needs must wed him-
self, but which he could not prescribe from out himself, nor sum-
mon into being. So neither can the artist prescribe from his own
will, nor summon into being, that life of the future which once
shall redeem him: for it is the Other, the antithesis of himself,


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15510
for which he yearns, toward which he is thrust; that which, when
brought him from an opposite pole, is for the first time pres-
ent for him, first takes his semblance up into it, and knowably
reflects it back. Yet again, this living ocean of the future can-
not beget that mirror image by its unaided self: it is a mother
element, which can bear alone what it has first received. This
fecundating seed, which in it alone can thrive, is brought it by
the poet,-ie. , the artist of the present: and this seed is the
quintessence of all rarest life-sap which the past has gathered
up therein, to bring it to the future as its necessary, its fertiliz-
ing germ; for this future is not thinkable, except as stipulated
by the past.
Now the melody which appears at last upon the water-mirror
of the harmonic ocean of the future, is the clear-seeing eye
wherewith this life gazes upwards from the depth of its sea abyss
to the radiant light of day. But the verse, whose mere mirror-
image it is, is the own-est poem of the artist of the present,
begotten by his most peculiar faculty, engendered by the fullness
of his yearning. And just as this verse, will the prophetic art
work of the yearning artist of the present once wed itself with
the ocean of the life of the future. In that life of the future,
will this art work be what to-day it yearns for, but cannot actu-
ally be as yet; for that life of the future will be entirely what it
can be, only through its taking up into its womb this art work.
The begetter of the art work of the future is none other than
the artist of the present, who presages that life of the future, and
yearns to be contained therein. He who cherishes this longing
within the inmost chamber of his powers, he lives already in a
better life; but only one can do this thing,—the artist.
Translation of William Ashton Ellis.
FROM THE ART WORK OF THE FUTURE)
WIN
THERESOEVER the folk made poetry, - and only by the folk, or
in the footsteps of the folk, can poetry be really made, -
there did the poetic purpose rise to life alone upon the
shoulders of the arts of dance and tone, as the head of the full-
fledged human being. The lyrics of Orpheus would never have
been able to turn the savage beasts to silent, placid adoration, if
the singer had but given them forsooth some dumb and printed


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>
verse to read: their ears must be enthralled by the sonorous
notes that came straight from the heart; their carrion-spying eyes
be tamed by the proud and graceful movements of the body,- in
such a way that they should recognize instinctively in this whole
man no longer a mere object for their maw, no mere objective
for their feeding powers, but for their hearing and their seeing
powers, - before they could be attuned to duly listen to his moral
sentences.
Neither was the true folk-epic by any means a mere recited
poem: the songs of Homer, such as we now possess them, have
issued from the critical siftings and compilings of a time in
which the genuine epos had long since ceased to live. When
Solon made his laws and Pisistratus introduced his political
régime, men searched among the ruins of the already fallen epos
of the folk, and pieced the gathered heap together for reading
service,- much as in the Hohenstaufen times they did with the
fragments of the lost Nibelungenlieder. But before these epic
songs became the object of such literary care, they had flourished
mid the folk, eked out by voice and gesture, as a bodily enacted
art work; as it were, a fixed and crystallized blend of lyric song
and dance, with predominant lingering on portrayal of the action
and reproduction of the heroic dialogue. These epic-lyrical per-
formances form the unmistakable middle stage between the genu-
ine older lyric and tragedy,- the normal point of transition from
the one to the other.
Tragedy was therefore the entry of the art work of the folk
upon the public arena of political life; and we may take its
appearance as an excellent touchstone for the difference in pro-
cedure between the art creating of the folk and the mere literary-
historical making of the so-called cultured art world. At the
very time when live-born Epos became the object of the critical
dilettanteism of the court of Pisistratus, it had already shed its
blossoms in the people's life: yet not because the folk had lost
its true afflatus; but since it was already able to surpass the old,
and from unstanchable artistic sources to build the less perfect
art work up, until it became the more perfect. For while those
pedants and professors in the prince's castle were laboring at the
construction of a literary Homer, pampering their own unproduct-
ivity with their marvel at their wisdom, by aid of which they
yet could only understand the thing that long had passed from
life, -- Thespis had already slid his car to Athens, had set it up


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RICHARD WAGNER
.
-
beside the palace walls, dressed out his stage, and stepping from
the chorus of the folk, had 'trodden its planks; no longer did he
shadow forth the deeds of heroes, as in the epos, but in these
heroes' guise enacted them.
With the folk, all is reality and deed; it does, and then
rejoices in the thought of its own doing. Thus the blithe folk of
Athens, inflamed by persecution, hunted out from court and city
the melancholy sons of Pisistratus; and then bethought it how,
by this its deed, it had become a free and independent people.
Thus it raised the platform of its stage, and decked itself with
tragic masks and raiment of some god or hero, in order itself to
be a god or hero: and tragedy was born; whose fruits it tasted
;
with the blissful sense of its own creative force, but whose meta-
physical basis it handed, all regardless, to the brain-racking specu-
lation of the dramaturgists of our modern court-theatres.
Tragedy flourished for just so long as it was inspired by the
spirit of the folk, and as this spirit was a veritably popular, -
i. e. , a communal one. When the national brotherhood of the folk
was shivered into fragments, when the common bond of its
religion and primeval customs was pierced and severed by the
sophist needles of the egoistic spirit of Athenian self-dissection,
- then the folk's art work also ceased: then did the professors
and the doctors of the literary guilds take heritage of the ruins
of the fallen edifice, and delved among its beams and stones; to
pry, to ponder, and to rearrange its members. With Aristo-
phanian laughter, the folk relinquished to these learned insects
the refuse of its meal, threw art upon one side for two millen-
nia, and fashioned of its innermost necessity the history of the
world; the while those scholars cobbled up their tiresome history
of literature by order of the supreme court of Alexander.
The career of poetry, since the breaking-up of tragedy, and
since her own departure from community with mimetic dance
and tone, can be easily enough surveyed, despite the monstrous
claims which she has raised. The lonely art of poetry prophe-
sied no more: she no longer showed, but only described; she
merely played the go-between, but gave naught from herself:
she pieced together what true seers had uttered, but without the
living bond of unity; she gave the catalogue of a picture gallery,
but not the paintings. The wintry stem of speech, stripped of
its summer wreath of sounding leaves, shrank to the withered,
toneless signs of writing; instead of to the ear, it dumbly now


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-
»
addressed the eye; the poet's strain became a written dialect, --
the poet's breath the penman's scrawl.
There sate she then, the lonely, sullen sister, behind her reek-
ing lamp in the gloom of her silent chamber,-a female Faust,
who, across the dust and mildew of her books, from out the un-
contenting warp and woof of thought, from off the everlasting
rack of fancies and of theories, yearned to step forth into actual
life; with flesh and bone, and spick and span, to stand and go
'mid real men, a genuine human being. Alas! the poor sister had
cast away her flesh and bone in over-pensive thoughtlessness; a
disembodied soul, she could only now describe that which she
lacked, as she watched it from her gloomy chamber, through
the shut lattice of her thought, living and stirring its limbs amid
the dear but distant world of sense: she could only picture, ever
picture, the beloved of her youth; "so looked his face, so swayed
his limbs, so glanced his eye, so rang the music of his voice. "
But all this picturing and describing, however deftly she at-
tempted to raise it to a special art, how ingeniously soever she
labored to fashion it by forms of speech and writing, for art's
consoling recompense, - it stifl was but a vain, superfluous labor,
-
the stilling of a need which only sprang from a failing that her
own caprice had bred; it was nothing but the indigent wealth of
alphabetical signs, distasteful in themselves, of some poor mute.
The sound and sturdy man, who stands before us clad in pan-
oply of actual body, describes not what he wills and whom he
loves; but wills and loves, and imparts to us by his artistic organs
the joy of his own willing and his loving. This he does with
the highest measure of directness in the enacted drama. But it
is only to the straining for a shadowy substitute, an artificially
objective method of description,- on which the art of Poetry,
now loosed from all substantiality, must exercise her utmost
powers of detail, - that we have to thank this million-membered
mass of ponderous tomes, by which she still, at bottom, can only
trumpet forth her utter helplessness. This whole impassable
waste of stored-up literature - despite its million phrases and
centuries of verse and prose, without once coming to the living
Word -- is nothing but the toilsome stammering of aphasia-smitten
Thought, in its struggle for transmutation into natural articulate
utterance.
This Thought - the highest and most conditioned faculty of
artistic man - had cut itself adrift from fair warm Life, whose


## p. 15514 (#468) ##########################################

RICHARD WAGNER
15514
yearning had begotten and sustained it, as from a hemming, fet.
tering bond that clogged its own unbounded freedom: so deemed
the Christian yearning, and believed that it must break away
from physical man, to spread in heaven's boundless æther to
freest waywardness. But this very severance was to teach that
thought and this desire how inseparable they were from human
nature's being: how high soever they might soar into the air,
they still could do this in the form of bodily man alone. In
sooth, they could not take the carcass with them, bound as it
was by laws of gravitation; but they managed to abstract a
vapory emanation, which instinctively took on again the form and
bearing of the human body. Thus hovered in the air the poet's
Thought, like a human-outlined cloud that spread its shadow
over actual, bodily earth-life, to which it evermore looked down;
and into which it needs must long to shed itself, just as from
earth alone it sucked its steaming vapors. The natural cloud
dissolves itself in giving back to earth the conditions of its
being: as fruitful rain it sinks upon the meadows, thrusts deep
into the thirsty soil, and steeps the panting seeds of plants,
which open then their rich luxuriance to the sunlight, — to that
light which had erstwhile drawn the lowering cloud from out the
fields. So should the poet's thought once more impregnate life;
no longer spread its idle canopy of cloud 'twixt life and light.
What Poetry perceived from that high seat was after all but
life: the higher did she raise herself, the more panoramic became
her view; but the wider the connection in which she was now
enabled to grasp the parts, the livelier arose in her the longing
to fathom the depths of this great whole. Thus Poetry turned
to science, to philosophy. To the struggle for a deeper knowl-
edge of nature and of man, we stand indebted for that copious
store of literature whose kernel is the poetic musing [gedanken.
haftes Dichten] which speaks to us in human and in natural his-
tory, and in philosophy. The livelier do these sciences evince
the longing for a genuine portrayal of the known, so much the
nearer do they approach once more the artist's poetry; and
the highest skill in picturing to the senses the phenomena of the
universe must be ascribed to the noble works of this depart-
ment of literature. But the deepest and most universal science
can, at the last, know nothing else but life itself; and the sub-
stance and the sense of life are naught but man and nature.
Science therefore can only gain her perfect confirmation in the


## p. 15515 (#469) ##########################################

RICHARD WAGNER
15515
.
work of art; in that work which takes both man and nature,
in so far as the latter, attains her consciousness in man,- and
shows them forth directly. Thus the consummation of Knowl-
edge is its redemption into Poetry; into that poetic art, however,
which marches hand in hand with her sister arts towards the
perfect Art work; and this art work is none other than the
drama.
'. Drama is only conceivable as the fullest expression of a joint
artistic longing to impart; while this longing, again, can only
parley with a common receptivity. Where either of these factors
lacks, the drama is no necessary, but merely an arbitrary, art
product. Without these factors being at hand in actual life, the
poet, in his striving for immediate presentation of the life that
he had apprehended, sought to create the drama for himself
alone; his creation therefore fell, perforce, a victim to all the
faults of arbitrary dealing. Only in exact measure as his own
proceeded from a common impulse, and could address itself to a
common interest, do we find the necessary conditions of drama
fulfilled, - since the time of its recall to life --- and the desire to
answer those conditions rewarded with success.
A common impulse toward dramatic art work can only be at
hand in those who actually enact the work of art in common;
these, as we take it, are the fellowships of players. At the end
of the Middle Ages, we see that those who later overmastered
them and laid down their laws from the standpoint of absolute
poetic art, have earned themselves the fame of destroying root-
and-branch that which the man who sprang directly from such a
fellowship, and made his poems for and with it, had created for
the wonder of all time. From out the inmost, truest nature of
the folk, Shakespeare created [dichete] for his fellow-players that
drama which seems to us the more astounding as we see it rise
by might of naked speech alone, without all help of kindred arts.
One only help it had, the fancy of his audience, which turned
with active sympathy to greet the inspiration of the poet's com-
rades. A genius the like of which was never heard, and a group
of favoring chances ne'er repeated, in common made amends for
what they lacked in common. Their joint creative force how-
ever was need; and where this shows its nature-bidden might,
there man can compass even the impossible to satisfy it: from
poverty grows plenty, from want an overflow; the boorish figure
of the homely folk's-comedian takes on the bearing of a hero,


## p. 15516 (#470) ##########################################

15516
RICHARD WAGNER
the raucous clang of daily speech becomes the sounding music
of the soul, the rude scaffolding of carpet-hung boards becomes
a world-stage with all its wealth of scene. But if we take away
this art work from its frame of fortunate conditions, if we set it
down outside the realm of fertile force which bore it from the
need of this one definite epoch, then do we see with sorrow that
the poverty was still but poverty, the want but want; that
Shakespeare was indeed the mightiest poet of all time, but his
art work was not yet the work for every age; that not his
genius, but the incomplete and merely will-ing, not yet can-ing,
spirit of his age's art had made him but the Thespis of the
tragedy of the future. In the same relation as stood the car of
Thespis, in the brief time-span of the flowering of Athenian art,
to the stage of Æschylus and Sophocles - so stands the stage of
Shakespeare, in the unmeasured spaces of the flowering time of
universal human art, to the theatre of the future. The deed
of the one and only Shakespeare, which made of him a universal
man, a very god, is yet but the kindred deed of the solitary
Beethoven, who found the language of the artist-manhood of the
future: only where these twain Prometheuses - Shakespeare and
Beethoven - shall reach out hands to one another; where the
marble creations of Phidias shall bestir themselves in flesh and
blood; where the painted counterfeit of nature shall quit its
cribbing-frame on the warm-life-blown framework of the future
stage,—there first, in the communion of all his fellow-artists, will
the poet also find redemption.
Translation of William Ashton Ellis.


## p. 15517 (#471) ##########################################

15517
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
(1822-)
趣​讀
​(
N 1858, Darwin, acting upon the advice of Sir Charles Lyell,
was writing his views upon natural selection, which was a
new term then for a theory never before advanced.
One
day he received from a friend far away in the Malay Archipelago,
an essay entitled “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefi-
nitely from the Original Type,' which to his great surprise proved
to be a skillful exposition of his own new theory. Darwin was too
noble for petty jealousies. He gave ungrudging credit to the author,
Mr. Wallace, and admitted the value of his
paper. It was read before the Linnæan So-
ciety in July 1858, and later published with
an essay by Darwin, which was a summary
of his great work upon the Origin of
Species,' as far as it was then elaborated.
At the time neither attracted the atten-
tion it merited; for as Darwin wrote, the
critics decided that what was true in them
was old, and that what was not old was
not true.
Darwin never had a more admiring dis-
ciple than Mr. Wallace, from those early
days when their minds thus independently ALFRED R. WALLACE
reached the same conclusion, to the time,
thirty years later, when Wallace published his capable exposition en-
titled Darwinism. In the mean time, the truths once rejected by
scientists themselves had found common acceptation. By his brilliant
essays in English reviews, Wallace did much to popularize the new
methods of thought. Upon minor points he did not always agree
with Darwin, but his faith in natural selection as a universal pass-
key was far firmer than Darwin's own.
Alfred Russel Wallace was born at Usk in Monmouthshire, Jan-
uary 8th, 1822, and received his education at the grammar school of
Hertford. Later he was articled to an elder brother, an architect
and land surveyor, and practiced these professions for some years.
But Mr. Wallace had a great love of nature, combined with scientific
tastes. It was a time when many brilliant minds in England and
elsewhere were roused to an almost passionate investigation of the
material world, and felt themselves on the edge of possible discov-
eries which might explain the universe. Wallace, stimulated by the



## p. 15518 (#472) ##########################################

15518
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
works of Darwin, Hooker, Lyell, Tyndall, and others, gave up all
other business for science in 1845.
Three years later he accompanied Mr. H. W. Bates upon an expe-
dition to South America, an account of which he has given in his
(Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro. ' For four years he lived
on the banks of these rivers, studying all the physical conditions,
and making valuable botanical and ornithological collections; much of
which, however, with important notes, was unfortunately lost at sea.
Many others had written of the beauty and luxuriance of equatorial
forests, until to most readers they seemed an enchanted land of de-
light. Mr. Wallace described them in a spirit of rigorous truth. His
readers felt not only the splendor of color, the lavishness of nature,
but also the monotony of this unchanging maturity, and the hidden
dangers, the wild beasts, the poisonous plants, and the strange sting-
ing insects hardly distinguishable from the plants which harbored
them. In this book, as in his “Tropical Essays, Mr. Wallace desired
to present what was essentially tropical, and thus emphasize the char-
acteristics of the region with their causes.
As he demonstrates in his volume upon Island Life,' the com-
parative isolation of islands results in an abundance of peculiar
species, and renders them particularly valuable for scientific study.
After leaving South America, Mr. Wallace visited the Malay Archi-
pelago, going from island to island, and studying exhaustively geol-
ogy and people, fauna and flora. When after eight years there he
returned to England in 1862, he took back over eight thousand
stuffed birds and ten thousand entomological specimens, including a
number never before known, in addition to abundant notes, - mate-
rial which it took several years to arrange and classify. The col-
lections found a place in the English museums; and in 1869 he
published "The Malay Archipelago, the Land of the Orang-Utan and
the Bird of Paradise,' which is still considered one of the most
delightful books of travel ever written. He excels in showing us
flowers and animals alive and at home. Interspersed with graphic
stories of adventure are the results of his careful and scientific
observation. His style is terse and simple, and his moderation in
describing what is novel carries conviction of his truth.
Nothing appealed to Mr. Wallace more strongly than the cause
and effect of individual variations in all animated beings. His trained
eyes were as quick to note a departure from type as to classify and
grasp relationships.
In 1868 the Royal Society of London bestowed its medal on him;
and two years later he received the gold medal of the Geographi-
cal Society of Paris. Mr. Wallace has had a European reputation;
and in 1876 his work (On the Geographical Distribution of Animals
was issued simultaneously in French, German, and English.


## p. 15519 (#473) ##########################################

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
15519
Mr. Wallace is an optimist. Through his careful demonstration of
the survival of the fittest runs the conviction that these organisms,
so surrounded by perils, may be termed happy. The struggle for
existence implies satisfaction in that it involves the exercise of
healthy faculties. All forms lower than man escape mental anxiety.
The element of dread eliminated, why should they not be happy ?
For man, Mr. Wallace sees something else. He is a stanch be-
liever in spiritualism as a science not yet mastered, but which event-
ually will explain man's higher nature. The Darwinian theory not
only proves evolution “under the law of natural selection,” he says,
“but also teaches us that we possess intellectual and moral faculties
which could not have been so developed, but must have had another
origin; and for this origin we can only find an adequate cause in the
unseen universe of spirit. ”
HOW THE RAJAH TOOK THE CENSUS
From «The Malay Archipelago
T!
For my
HE rajah of Lombok was a very wise man, and he showed
his wisdom greatly in the way he took the census.
readers must know that the chief revenues of the rajah
were derived from a head-tax of rice, a small measure being paid
annually by every man, woman, and child in the island. There
was no doubt that every one paid this tax, for it was a very
light one, and the land was fertile, and the people well off; but
it had to pass through many hands before it reached the gov-
ernment storehouses. When the harvest was over, the villagers
brought their rice to the kapala kampong, or head of the village:
and no doubt he sometimes had compassion on the poor or sick,
and passed over their short measure, and sometimes was obliged
to grant a favor to those who had complaints against him; and
then he must keep up his own dignity by having his granaries
better filled than his neighbors, and so the rice that he took to
the "waidono” that was over his district was generally a good
deal less than it should have been. And all the “waidonos ” had
of course to take care of themselves, for they were all in debt;
and it was so easy to take a little of the government rice, and
there would still be plenty for the rajah. And the "gustis,” or
princes, who received the rice from the waidonos, helped them-
selves likewise; and so when the harvest was all over, and the


## p. 15520 (#474) ##########################################

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
15520
rice tribute was all brought in, the quantity was found to be less
each year than the one before. Sickness in one district, and
fevers in another, and failure of the crops in a third, were of
course alleged as the cause of this falling-off; but when the
rajah went to hunt at the foot of the great mountain, or went
to visit a “gusti” on the other side of the island, he always saw
the villages full of people, all looking well-fed and happy. And,
he noticed that the krisses of his chiefs and officers were getting
handsomer and handsomer, and the handles that were of yellow
wood were changed for ivory, and those of ivory were changed
for gold, and diamonds and emeralds sparkled on many of them;
and he knew very well which way the tribute-rice went.
But as
he could not prove it he kept silence, and resolved in his own
heart some day to have a census taken, so that he might know
the number of his people, and not be cheated out of more rice
than was just and reasonable.
But the difficulty was how to get this census. He could not
go himself into every village and every house, and count all the
people; and if he ordered it to be done by the regular officers,
they would quickly understand what it was for, and the census
would be sure to agree exactly with the quantity of rice he got
It was evident therefore that to answer his purpose,
one must suspect why the census was taken; and to make
sure of this, no one must know that there was any census taken
at all. This was a very hard problem; and the rajah thought
and thought, as hard as a Malay rajah can be expected to think,
but could not solve it: and so he was very unhappy, and did
nothing but smoke and chew betel with his favorite wife, and
eat scarcely anything; and even when he went to the cock-fight
did not seem to care whether his best birds won or lost. For
several days he remained in this sad state, and all the court
were afraid some evil eye had bewitched the rajah: and an un-
fortunate Irish captain, who had come in for a cargo of rice,
and who squinted dreadfully, was very near being krissed; but
being first brought to the royal presence, was graciously ordered
to go on board, and remain there while his ship stayed in the
port.
One morning, however, after about a week's continuance of
this unaccountable melancholy, a welcome change took place: for
the rajah sent to call together all the chiefs and priests and
princes who were then in Mataram, his capital city; and when
last year.
no


## p. 15521 (#475) ##########################################

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
15521
(
they were all assembled in anxious expectation, he thus addressed
them:
“For many days my heart has been very sick, and I knew
not why; but now the trouble is cleared away, for I have had
a dream. Last night the spirit of the Gunong Agong '- the
great fire-mountain - appeared to me, and told me that I must
go up to the top of the mountain. All of you may come with
me to near the top; but then I must go up alone, and the great
spirit will again appear to me, and will tell me what is of great
importance to me, and to you, and to all the people of the island.
Now go, all of you, and make this known through the island; and
let every village furnish men to make clear a road for us to go
through the forest and up the great mountain. ”
So the news was spread over the whole island that the rajah
must go to meet the great spirit on the top of the mountain;
and every village sent forth its men, and they cleared away
the jungle, and made bridges over the mountain streams, and
smoothed the rough places for the rajah's passage.
And when
they came to the steep and craggy rocks of the mountain, they
sought out the best paths, sometimes along the bed of a tor-
rent, sometimes along narrow ledges of the black rocks; in one
place cutting down a tall tree so as to bridge across a chasm,
in another constructing ladders to mount the smooth face of a
precipice. The chiefs who superintended the work fixed upon
the length of each day's journey beforehand according to the
nature of the road; and chose pleasant places by the banks of
clear streams and in the neighborhood of shady trees, where they
built sheds and huts of bamboo, well thatched with the leaves of
palm-trees, in which the rajah and his attendants might eat and
sleep at the close of each day.
And when all was ready, the princes and priests and chief
men came again to the rajah to tell him what had been done,
and to ask him when he would go up the mountain. And he
fixed a day, and ordered every man of rank and authority to
accompany him, to do honor to the great spirit who had bid him
undertake the journey, and to show how willingly they obeyed
his commands. And then there was much preparation through-
out the whole island. The best cattle were killed, and the meat
salted and sun-dried, and abundance of red peppers and sweet
potatoes were gathered, and the tall pinang-trees were climbed
XXVI–971


## p. 15522 (#476) ##########################################

15522
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
for the spicy betel-nut, the sirih-leaf was tied up in bundles,
and every man filled his tobacco-pouch and lime-box to the brim,
so that he might not want any of the materials for chewing the
refreshing betel during the journey. And the stores of provis-
ions were sent on a day in advance. And on the day before
that appointed for starting, all the chiefs, both great and small,
came to Mataram, the abode of the King, with their horses and
their servants, and the bearers of their sirih-boxes, and their
sleeping-mats, and their provisions. And they encamped under
the tall waringin-trees that border all the roads about Mataram,
and with blazing fires frighted away the ghouls and evil spirits
that nightly haunt the gloomy avenues.
In the morning a great procession was formed to conduct the
rajah to the mountain; and the royal princess and relations of the
rajah mounted their black horses, whose tails swept the ground.
They used no saddle or stirrups, but sat upon a cloth of gay
colors; the bits were of silver, and the bridles of many-colored
cords. The less important people were on small strong horses
of various colors, well suited to a mountain journey; and all
(even the rajah) were bare-legged to above the knee, wearing
only the gay-colored cotton waist-cloth, a silk or cotton jacket,
and a large handkerchief tastefully folded round the head. Every
one was attended by one or two servants bearing his sirih and
betel boxes, who were also mounted on ponies; and great num-
bers more had gone on in advance, or waited to bring up the
rear. The men in authority were numbered by hundreds, and
their followers by thousands, and all the island wondered what
great thing would come of it.
For the first two days they went along good roads, and
through many villages which were swept clean, and where bright
cloths were hung out at the windows; and all the people, when
the rajah came, squatted down upon the ground in respect, and
every man riding got off his horse and squatted down also, and
many joined the procession at every village. At the place where
they stopped for the night, the people had placed stakes along
each side of the roads in front of the houses. These were split
crosswise at the top, and in the cleft were fastened little clay
lamps, and between them were stuck the green leaves of palm-
trees, which, dripping with the evening dew, gleamed prettily
with the many twinkling lights. And few went to sleep that


## p. 15523 (#477) ##########################################

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
15523
>
night till the morning hours; for every house held a knot of
eager talkers, and much betel-nut was consumed, and endless
were the conjectures what would come of it.
On the second day they left the last village behind them, and
entered the wild country that surrounds the great mountain; and
rested in the huts that had been prepared for them on the banks
of a stream of cold and sparkling water. And the rajah's hunt-
ers, armed with long and heavy guns, went in search of deer
and wild bulls in the surrounding woods, and brought home the
meat of both in the early morning, and sent it on in advance
to prepare the midday meal. On the third day they advanced as
far as horses could go, and encamped at the foot of high rocks,
among which narrow pathways only could be found to reach the
mountain-top. And on the fourth morning, when the rajah set
out, he was accompanied only by a small party of priests and
princes, with their immediate attendants; and they toiled wearily
up the rugged way, and sometimes were carried by their serv-
ants, till they passed up above the great trees, and then among
the thorny bushes, and above them again on to the black and
burnt rock of the highest part of the mountain.
And when they were near the summit the rajah ordered
them all to halt, while he alone went to meet the great spirit
on the very peak of the mountain. So he went on with two
boys only, who carried his sirih and betel; and soon reached the
top of the mountain among great rocks, on the edge of the great
gulf whence issue forth continually smoke and vapor. And the
rajah asked for sirih, and told the boys to sit down under a rock
and look down the mountain, and not to move till he returned
to them. And as they were tired, and the sun was warm and
pleasant, and the rock sheltered them from the cold wind, the
boys fell asleep. And the rajah went a little way on under an-
other rock; and he was tired, and the sun was warm and pleas-
ant, and he too fell asleep.
And those who were waiting for the rajah thought him a
long time on the top of the mountain, and thought the great
spirit must have much to say, or might perhaps want to keep
him on the mountain always; or perhaps he had missed his
way in coming down again. And they were debating whether
they should go and search for him, when they saw him coming
down with the two boys. And when he met them he looked
very grave, but said nothing; and then all descended together,


## p. 15524 (#478) ##########################################

15524
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
and the procession returned as it had come; and the rajah went
to his palace, and the chiefs to their villages, and the people to
their houses, to tell their wives and children all that had hap-
pened, and to wonder yet again what would come of it.
And three days afterward the. rajah summoned the priests
and the princes and the chief men of Mataram to hear what the
great spirit had told him on the top of the mountain. And when
they were all assembled, and the betel and sirih had been handed
round, he told them what had happened. On the top of the
mountain he had fallen into a trance, and the great spirit had
appeared to him with a face like burnished gold, and had said,
“O rajah! much plague and sickness and fevers are coming
upon all the earth, - upon men, and upon horses, and upon cat-
tle; but as you and your people have obeyed me and have come
up to my great mountain, I will teach you how you and all the
people of Lombok may escape this plague. ” And all waited
anxiously, to hear how they were to be saved from so fearful a
calamity. And after a short silence, the rajah spoke again, and
told them that the great spirit had commanded that twelve
sacred krisses should be made, and that to make them every vil-
lage and every district must send a bundle of needles,-a needle
for every head in the village. And when any grievous disease
appeared in any village, one of the sacred krisses should be sent
there: and if every house in that village had sent the right
number of needles, the disease would immediately cease; but if
the number of needles sent had not been exact, the kris would
have no virtue.
So the princes and chiefs sent to all their villages and com-
municated the wonderful news; and all made haste to collect the
needles with the greatest accuracy; for they feared that if but
one were wanting, the whole village would suffer.
So one by
one, the head-men of the villages brought in their bundles of
needles; those who were near Mataram came first, and those who
were far off came last: and the rajah received them with his
own hands, and put them away carefully in an inner chamber,
in a camphor-wood chest whose hinges and clasps were of silver;
and on every bundle was marked the name of the village, and
the district from whence it came, so that it might be known that
all had heard and obeyed the commands of the great spirit.
And when it was quite certain that every village had sent in
its bundle, the rajah divided the needles into twelve equal parts,


## p. 15525 (#479) ##########################################

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
15525
ses
and ordered the best steel-worker in Mataram to bring his forge
and his bellows and his hammers to the palace, and to make the
twelve krisses under the rajah's eye, and in the sight of all men
who chose to see it. And when they were finished, they were
wrapped up in new silk, and put away carefully until they might
be wanted.
Now the journey to the mountain was in the time of the east
wind, when no rain falls in Lombok. And soon after the kris-
were made it was the time of the rice harvest, and the
chiefs of the districts and of villages brought in their tax to the
rajah according to the number of heads in their villages. And
to those that wanted but little of the full amount the rajah said
nothing; but when those came who brought only half or a fourth
part of what was strictly due, he said to them mildly, “The nee-
dles which you sent from your village were many more than
came from such a one's village, yet your tribute is less than
his: go back and see who it is that has not paid the tax. ” And
the next year the produce of the tax increased greatly, for they
feared that the rajah might justly kill those who a second time
kept back the right tribute. And so the rajah became very rich,
and increased the number of his soldiers, and gave golden jewels
to his wives, and bought fine black horses from the white-
skinned Hollanders, and made great feasts when his children
were born or were married; and none of the rajahs or sultans
among the Malays were so great or so powerful as the rajah of
Lombok.
And the twelve sacred krisses had great virtue. And when
any sickness appeared in a village, one of them was sent for;
and sometimes the sickness went away, and then the sacred kris
was taken back again with great honor, and the head-men of the
village came to tell the rajah of its miraculous power, and to
thank him. And sometimes the sickness would not go away;
and then everybody was convinced that there had been a mis-
take in the number of needles sent from that village, and there-
fore the sacred kris had no effect, and had to be taken back
again by the head-men with heavy hearts, but still with all
honor - for was not the fault their own ?


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15526
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
LIFE IN THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO
>
From «The Malay Archipelago
A Visit TO THE CHIEF (ORANG KAYA) OF A BORNEO VILLAGE
I
N THE evening the orang kaya came in full dress (a spangled
velvet jacket, but no trousers), and invited me over to his
house, where he gave me a seat of honor under a canopy
of white calico and colored handkerchiefs. The great veranda
was crowded with people; and large plates of rice, with cooked
and fresh eggs, were placed on the ground as presents for me. A
very old man then dressed himself in bright-colored clothes and
many ornaments, and sitting at the door, murmured a long prayer
or invocation, sprinkling rice from a basin he held in his hand,
while several large gongs were loudly beaten, and a salute of
muskets fired off. A large jar of rice wine, very sour, but with
an agreeable flavor, was then handed round, and I asked to see
some of their dances. These were, like most savage perform-
ances, very dull and ungraceful affairs; the men dressing them-
selves absurdly like women, and the girls making themselves as
stiff and ridiculous as possible. A11 the time six or eight large
Chinese gongs were being beaten by the vigorous arms of as
many young men; producing such a deafening discord that I
was glad to escape to the round-house, where I slept very com-
fortably, with half a dozen smoke-dried human skulls suspended
over my head.
THE DURION
The banks of the Sarawak River are everywhere covered
with fruit-trees, which supply the Dyaks with a great deal of
their food. The mangosteen, lansat, rambutan, jack, jambou, and
blimbing, are all abundant; but most abundant and most es-
teemed is the durion,-a fruit about which very little is known
in England, but which both by natives and Europeans in the
Malay Archipelago is reckoned superior to all others. The old
traveler Linschott, writing in 1599, says, “It is of such an excel-
lent taste that it surpasses in flavor all the other fruits of the
world, according to those who have tasted it. ” And Doctor
Paludanus adds, “This fruit is of a hot and humid nature. To
those not used to it, it seems at first to smell like rotten onions,
but immediately they have tasted it they prefer it to all other


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ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
15527
>
food. The natives give it honorable titles, exalt it, and make
verses on it. ” When brought into a house the smell is often so
offensive that some persons can never bear to taste it. This was
my own case when I first tried it in Malacca; but in Borneo I
found a ripe fruit on the ground, and eating it out of doors, I at
once became a confirmed durion eater.
The durion grows on a large and lofty forest-tree, somewhat
resembling an elm in its general character, but with a more
smooth and scaly bark. The fruit is round or slightly oval, about
the size of a large cocoanut, of a green color, and covered all
over with short stout spines, the bases of which touch each other,
and are consequently somewhat hexagonal, while the points are
very strong and sharp. It is so completely armed that if the
stalk is broken off, it is a difficult matter to lift one from the
ground. The outer rind is so thick and tough that from what-
ever height it may fall, it is never broken. From the base to
the apex five very faint lines may be traced, over which the
spines arch a little; these are the sutures of the carpels, and show
where the fruit may be divided with a heavy knife and a strong
hand. The five cells are satiny-white within, and are each filled
with an oval mass of cream-colored pulp, imbedded in which are,
two or three seeds about the size of chestnuts, This pulp is the
eatable part, and its consistence and flavor are indescribable. A
rich butter-like custard highly flavored with almonds gives the
best general idea of it; but intermingled with it come wafts of
flavor that call to mind cream cheese, onion sauce, brown sherry,
and other incongruities. Then there is a rich glutinous smooth-
ness in the pulp, which nothing else possesses, but which adds to
its delicacy. It is neither acid, nor sweet, nor juicy, yet one feels
the want of none of these qualities, for it is perfect as it is. It
produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of
it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat durions is a
new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience.
When the fruit is ripe it falls of itself; and the only way
to eat durions in perfection is to get them as they fall, and the
smell is then less overpowering. When unripe, it makes a very
good vegetable if cooked, and it is also eaten by the Dyaks raw.
In a good fruit season large quantities are preserved salted, in
jars and bamboos, and kept the year round; when it acquires a
most disgusting odor to Europeans, but the Dyaks appreciate it
highly as a relish with their rice. There are in the forest two


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15528
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
varieties of wild durions with much sinaller fruits, one of them
orange-colored inside; and these are probably the origin of the
large and fine durions, which are never found wild. It would
not, perhaps, be correct to say that the durion is the best of all
fruits, because it cannot supply the place of the subacid juicy
kinds, such as the orange, grape, mango, and mangosteen, whose
refreshing and cooling qualities are so wholesome and grateful;
but as producing a food of the most exquisite flavor it is unsui-
passed. If I had to fix on two only as representing the perfec-
tion of the two classes, I should certainly choose the durion and
the orange as the king and queen of fruits.
The durion is however sometimes dangerous. When the fruit
begins to ripen, it falls daily and almost hourly, and accidents
not unfrequently happen to persons walking or working under
the trees. When the durion strikes a man in its fall, it produces
a dreadful wound, the strong spines tearing open the flesh, while
the blow itself is very heavy; but from this very circumstance
death rarely ensues, the copious effusion of blood preventing the
inflammation which might otherwise take place. A Dyak chief
informed me that he had been struck down by a durion falling on
his head, which he thought would certainly have caused his death,
yet he recovered in a very short time.
Poets and moralists, judging from our English trees and
fruits, have thought that small fruits always grew on lofty trees,
so that their fall should be harmless to man, while the large
ones trailed on the ground. Two of the largest and heaviest
fruits known, however,- the Brazil-nut fruit (Bertholletia) and
durion, - grow on lofty forest-trees, from which they fall as soon
as they are ripe, and often wound or kill the native inhabitants.
From this we may learn two things: first, not to draw general
conclusions from a very partial view of nature; and secondly,
that trees and fruits, no less than the varied productions of the
animal kingdom, do not appear to be organized with exclusive
reference to the use and convenience of man.
CAT'S-CRADLE IN BORNEO
I Am inclined to rank the Dyaks above the Malays in mental
capacity, while in moral character they are undoubtedly superior
to them. They are simple and honest, and become the prey
of the Malay and Chinese traders, who cheat and plunder them


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ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
15529
continually. They are more lively, more talkative, less secretive,
and less suspicious, than the Malay, and are therefore pleas-
anter companions. The Malay boys have little inclination for
active sports and games, which form quite a feature in the life
of the Dyak youths; who, besides outdoor games of skill and
strength, possess a variety of indoor amusements.
One wet
day in a Dyak house, when a number of boys and young men
were about me, I thought to amuse them with something new,
and showed them how to make cat's-cradle with a piece of
string. Greatly to my surprise, they knew all about it, and more
than I did; for after Charles and I had gone through all the
changes we could make, one of the boys took it off my hand, and
made several new figures which quite puzzled me. They then
showed me a number of other tricks with pieces of string, which
seemed a favorite amusement with them.
(C
THE TRIAL OF A THIEF IN JAVA
One morning as I was preparing and arranging my speci-
mens, I was told there was to be a trial; and presently four
or five men came in and squatted down on a mat under the
audience-shed in the court. The chief then came in with his
clerk, and sat down opposite them. Each spoke in turn, telling
his own tale; and then I found out that those who first entered
were the prisoner, accuser, policemen, and witness, and that the
prisoner was indicated solely by having a loose piece of cord
twined round his wrists, but not tied. It was a
case of rob.
bery; and after the evidence was given and a few questions had
been asked by the chief, the accused said a few words, and then
sentence was pronounced, which was a fine. The parties then
got up and walked away together, seeming quite friendly; and
throughout there was nothing in the manner of any one present
indicating passion or ill-feeling,-a very good illustration of the
Malayan type of character.
ARCHITECTURE IN THE CELEBES
MY HOUSE, like all bamboo structures in this country, was
a leaning one, the strong westerly winds of the wet season hav-
ing set all its posts out of the perpendicular to such a degree


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15530
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
as to make me think it might some day possibly go over alto-
gether. It is a remarkable thing that the natives of Celebes
have not discovered the use of diagonal struts in strengthening
buildings. I doubt if there is a native house in the country, two
years old, and at all exposed to the wind, which stands upright;
and no wonder, as they merely consist of posts and joists all
placed upright or horizontal, and fastened rudely together with
rattans. They may be seen, in every stage of the process of
tumbling down, from the first slight inclination to such a dan-
gerous slope that it becomes a notice to quit to the occupiers.
The mechanical geniuses of the country have only discovered
two ways of remedying the evil. One is, after it has commenced,
to tie the house to a post in the ground on the windward side
by a rattan or bamboo cable. The other is a preventive; but
how they ever found it out and did not discover the true way is
a mystery. This plan is to build the house in the usual way,
but instead of having all the principal supports of straight posts,
to have two or three of them chosen as crooked as possible. I
had often noticed these crooked posts in houses, but imputed it
to the scarcity of good straight timber; till one day I met some
men carrying home a post shaped something like a dog's hind
leg, and inquired of my native boy what they were going to do
with such a piece of wood. “To make a post for a house,” said
«
he. “But why don't they get a straight one? there are plenty
here,” said I. «Oh,” replied he, “they prefer some like that in
a house, because then it won't fall;" evidently imputing the effect
to some occult property of crooked timber. A little considera-
tion and a diagram will, however, show that the effect imputed
to the crooked post may be really produced by it.