In reading through this German version of my book in the Manuscript of
my friend Siegfried Trebitsch, I was struck by the inadequacy of the
merely negative explanation given by me of the irrelevance of Night
Falls On The Gods to the general philosophic scheme of The Ring. That
explanation is correct as far as it goes; but, put as I put it, it now
seems to me to suggest that the operatic character of Night Falls On
The Gods was the result of indifference or forgetfulness produced by the
lapse of twenty-five years between the first projection of the work and
its completion. Now it is clear that in whatever other ways Wagner may
have changed, he never became careless and he never became indifferent.
I have therefore inserted a new section in which I show how the
revolutionary history of Western Europe from the Liberal explosion of
1848 to the confused attempt at a socialist, military, and municipal
administration in Paris in 1871 (that is to say, from the beginning of
The Niblung's Ring by Wagner to the long-delayed completion of Night
Falls On The Gods), demonstrated practically that the passing away of
the present order was going to be a much more complicated business than
it appears in Wagner's Siegfried. I have therefore interpolated a new
chapter which will perhaps induce some readers of the original English
text to read the book again in German.
For some time to come, indeed, I shall have to refer English readers to
this German edition as the most complete in existence.
My obligation to Herr Trebitsch for making me a living German author
instead of merely a translated English one is so great that I am bound
to point out that he is not responsible for my views or Wagner's, and
that it is as an artist and a man of letters, and not as a propagandist,
that he is conveying to the German speaking peoples political criticisms
which occasionally reflect on contemporary authorities with a European
reputation for sensitiveness. And as the very sympathy which makes his
translations so excellent may be regarded with suspicion, let me hasten
to declare I am bound to Germany by the ties that hold my nature most
strongly. Not that I like the average German: nobody does, even in his
own country. But then the average man is not popular anywhere; and as
no German considers himself an average one, each reader will, as an
exceptional man, sympathize with my dislike of the common herd. And if
I cannot love the typical modern German, I can at least pity and
understand him. His worst fault is that he cannot see that it is
possible to have too much of a good thing. Being convinced that duty,
industry, education, loyalty, patriotism and respectability are
good things (and I am magnanimous enough to admit that they are not
altogether bad things when taken in strict moderation at the right
time and in the right place), he indulges in them on all occasions
shamelessly and excessively. He commits hideous crimes when crime is
presented to him as part of his duty; his craze for work is more ruinous
than the craze for drink; when he can afford secondary education for his
sons you find three out of every five of them with their minds lamed
for life by examinations which only a thoroughly wooden head could go
through with impunity; and if a king is patriotic and respectable (few
kings are) he puts up statues to him and exalts him above Charlemagne
and Henry the Fowler. And when he meets a man of genius, he
instinctively insults him, starves him, and, if possible, imprisons and
kills him.
Now I do not pretend to be perfect myself. Heaven knows I have to
struggle hard enough every day with what the Germans call my
higher impulses. I know too well the temptation to be moral, to be
self-sacrificing, to be loyal and patriotic, to be respectable and
well-spoken of. But I wrestle with it and--as far as human fraility will
allow--conquer it, whereas the German abandons himself to it without
scruple or reflection, and is actually proud of his pious intemperance
and self-indulgence. Nothing will cure him of this mania. It may end
in starvation, crushing taxation, suppression of all freedom to try
new social experiments and reform obsolete institutions, in snobbery,
jobbery, idolatry, and an omnipresent tyranny in which his doctor and
his schoolmaster, his lawyer and his priest, coerce him worse than
any official or drill sergeant: no matter: it is respectable, says the
German, therefore it must be good, and cannot be carried too far;
and everybody who rebels against it must be a rascal. Even the
Social-Democrats in Germany differ from the rest only in carrying
academic orthodoxy beyond human endurance--beyond even German endurance.
I am a Socialist and a Democrat myself, the hero of a hundred platforms,
one of the leaders of the most notable Socialist organizations in
England. I am as conspicuous in English Socialism as Bebel is in German
Socialism; but do you suppose that the German Social-Democrats tolerate
me? Not a bit of it. I have begged again and again to be taken to the
bosom of my German comrades. I have pleaded that the Super-Proletarians
of all lands should unite. I have pointed out that the German
Social-Democratic party has done nothing at its Congresses for the last
ten years except the things I told them to do ten years before, and that
its path is white with the bones of the Socialist superstitions I and my
fellow Fabians have slain. Useless. They do not care a rap whether I
am a Socialist or not. All they want to know is; Am I orthodox? Am I
correct in my revolutionary views? Am I reverent to the revolutionary
authorities? Because I am a genuine free-thinker they look at me as a
policeman looks at a midnight prowler or as a Berlin bourgeois looks
at a suspicious foreigner. They ask "Do you believe that Marx was
omniscient and infallible; that Engels was his prophet; that Bebel and
Singer are his inspired apostles; and that Das Kapital is the Bible?"
Hastening in my innocence to clear myself of what I regard as an
accusation of credulity and ignorance, I assure them earnestly that
I know ten times as much of economics and a hundred times as much of
practical administration as Marx did; that I knew Engels personally and
rather liked him as a witty and amiable old 1848 veteran who despised
modern Socialism; that I regard Bebel and Singer as men of like passions
with myself, but considerably less advanced; and that I read Das Kapital
in the year 1882 or thereabouts, and still consider it one of the
most important books of the nineteenth century because of its power
of changing the minds of those who read it, in spite of its unsound
capitalist economics, its parade of quotations from books which the
author had either not read or not understood, its affectation of
algebraic formulas, and its general attempt to disguise a masterpiece
of propagandist journalism and prophetic invective as a drily scientific
treatise of the sort that used to impose on people in 1860, when any
book that pretended to be scientific was accepted as a Bible. In those
days Darwin and Helmholtz were the real fathers of the Church; and
nobody would listen to religion, poetry or rhetoric; so that even
Socialism had to call itself "scientific," and predict the date of the
revolution, as if it were a comet, by calculations founded on "historic
laws."
To my amazement these reasonable remarks were received as hideous
blasphemies; none of the party papers were allowed to print any word
of mine; the very Revisionists themselves found that the scandal of my
heresy damaged them more than my support aided them; and I found myself
an outcast from German Social-Democracy at the moment when, thanks to
Trebitsch, the German bourgeoisie and nobility began to smile on me,
seduced by the pleasure of playing with fire, and perhaps by Agnes
Sorma's acting as Candida.
Thus you may see that when a German, by becoming a Social-Democrat,
throws off all the bonds of convention, and stands free from all
allegiance to established religion, law, order, patriotism, and
learning, he promptly uses his freedom to put on a headier set of
chains; expels anti-militarists with the blood-thirstiest martial
anti-foreign ardor; and gives the Kaiser reason to thank heaven that he
was born in the comparative freedom and Laodicean tolerance of Kingship,
and not in the Calvinistic bigotry and pedantry of Marxism.
Why, then, you may ask, do I say that I am bound to Germany by the ties
that hold my nature most strongly? Very simply because I should have
perished of despair in my youth but for the world created for me by that
great German dynasty which began with Bach and will perhaps not end with
Richard Strauss. Do not suppose for a moment that I learnt my art from
English men of letters. True, they showed me how to handle English
words; but if I had known no more than that, my works would never
have crossed the Channel. My masters were the masters of a universal
language: they were, to go from summit to summit, Bach, Handel, Haydn,
Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner. Had the Germans understood any of these
men, they would have hanged them. Fortunately they did not understand
them, and therefore only neglected them until they were dead, after
which they learnt to dance to their tunes with an easy conscience.
For their sakes Germany stands consecrated as the Holy Land of the
capitalist age, just as Italy, for its painters' sakes, is the Holy Land
of the early unvulgarized Renascence; France, for its builders'
sakes, of the age of Christian chivalry and faith; and Greece, for its
sculptors' sakes, of the Periclean age.
These Holy Lands are my fatherlands: in them alone am I truly at home:
all my work is but to bring the whole world under this sanctification.
And so, O worthy, respectable, dutiful, patriotic, brave, industrious
German reader, you who used to fear only God and your own conscience,
and now fear nothing at all, here is my book for you; and--in all
sincerity--much good may it do you!
London, 23rd. October 1907.