For if one is going abroad for six months, all that is necessary to do
is to put out every stick and button you have in the world, and bid the
grand portmanteaux advance. But for ten days or a fortnight surely such
equipment is beyond the mark. Therefore one has to select. Here comes in
the worst of an imaginative mind. One can easily picture circumstances,
even in the course of ten days, in which one will want each single suit
of clothes one possesses. For instance, there may quite easily be a cold
spell of weather, and therefore it is necessary to take one suit of
thick clothes, also to be worn on the night journey. But supposing one
gets caught during this cold spell by a sudden storm? The cold spell
continues, but the thick clothes are wet. Therefore one must take two
suits of thick clothes. However, warm weather is more likely, and there
must be at least two suits of flannels. Four suits. Then for emergencies
of the social kind one must not be found defenceless, and some sort of
tailed apparatus must come. Five suits. Dress-clothes. Six. Also there
is excellent trout-fishing not far from Bayreuth, and I have been
particularly told to bring a rod. That entails knickerbockers and a
Norfolk jacket. Seven suits.
At this point I paused; I was taking seven suits in order to clothe my
unworthy body for a space of ten days in a Bavarian village. Yet where
was the flaw? Of all things in the world I hate to be away from home,
wanting something which I have forgotten to take, and, which is worse,
decided not to take. Time was when it was so simple to put in that
article, but the opportunity is mine no longer, and I sigh for the
undenuded wardrobes.
I scorn to reproduce more of these indecisions; I would sooner reproduce
French as spoken in the hot bath, and it will suffice to say that,
having spent hours which will never return in process of careful
selection, I eventually discarded selection altogether, and filled all
the portmanteaux I possess. However, for the future I shall waste no
more time in thinking what I shall want on short journeys, for I know I
shall end in taking all I have, and it saves trouble to begin with that.
* * * * *
I do not know whether we are all descended from gipsies, but certainly
in most people something of the instinct which loves to wander, to make
a journey merely for the joy of going, survives. True it is that
punctual trains (the South-Eastern, however, has a good deal of
admirable romance and uncertainty about it) and well-appointed
steamboats, which leave stone-jettied ports at regular and ascertainable
times, have sucked much of the unknown from travel, and so robbed this
instinct of its fruition, but they cannot quite starve it. Even though
you travel in a Pullman car, and sit on plush with your head among
voluptuous gildings, and gaze into looking-glasses which show you the
country and the telegraph-posts reeling giddily backwards, yet you still
travel; and, at any rate, if you are going where you have never been
before, something new and unknown waits for you behind the advancing
line of the horizon. Thus, the one thing I never need on a journey is a
book; it is sufficient entertainment for me merely to look out
of the window and see new country--vale and glen or plain and
mountain-peak--come up to greet me in endless procession. So swiftly one
moves that it is hardly possible to weary of what one sees before it is
gone, and every bend in the line may show something admirable. But above
all things the headlong passage through the station of a large town
delights me. First comes a mile of sordid house-backs built on to the
line; then a short tunnel at which the engine screams; then a wider
glance of the town, with perhaps a gray cathedral tower watching over it
all; then close against the window slanting lines of people, like rain,
on the gray, tapering platform, the name of the station hidden, like a
plum in a bun from its refreshment-room, in plasters of advertisement;
the signal-box with its rows of gleaming semaphores; the mile of sordid
house-roofs again; and out into the green fields. Then at a stile giving
on to the line there wait a couple of children, whom in all human
probability you will never see again, waving their hats at the gay
express. For a glimpse only you saw them, but they have their lives in
front of them, fraught with momentousness to themselves at least, and
perhaps to others. It is even possible that in years to come the lines
of your life may cross theirs--that tragedy or comedy is already weaving
the ropes that will bind you together in love or death or laughter. For
of all phrases ‘a chance meeting’ is the most illogical. If chance
exists at all, nothing exists except chance. Your most careful plan may
be spoiled ‘by chance,’ as you will say. Then, your careful plan was
chance, too, since chance can wreck it.
The backwaters of life, like the backwaters of streams, have an enormous
fascination for me, for both are extraordinarily pleasing to the eye and
restful to the mind. The great stream of progress hurries by them, while
they revolve gently under shelter in sedate eddies, and sometimes sticks
and straws from the stream get flung aside into them, and at once they
join that slow, unhurrying circle. Such a backwater is Bayreuth; a
tram-line and an advertisement of Sunlight Soap are the only touches of
modernity I noticed in the town, for the theatre stands apart from it, a
mile away beneath the pine-woods of the pleasant Bavarian hills. But
otherwise it is a backwater of the purest type, not ancient and not
modern, any more than is a backwater in a stream, but merely existent
and unhurrying.
The inhabitants, we must suppose, buy and sell things from each other;
some are richer than others, but apparently not much, and none, I should
think, are either very rich or very poor. Some also are better-looking
than others, but not much; some rather wider-awake, but all seem to have
set as a seal on their foreheads a ruminating mediocrity in all points
and qualities which the human mind is able to conceive. Apart from the
festival, it is impossible to imagine being either very happy or very
unhappy in Bayreuth; ‘very,’ in fact, is a word which is without meaning
there.
Yet here, by a strange irony of fate, is planted the cult of perhaps the
most ‘very’ mind that ever existed, for the brick theatre on the
hill-side is the casket which holds that heart of flame and song.
Critics have beggared dictionaries to express their feelings about
Wagner, and whether it is synonyms for ‘charlatan’ they have searched
for, or synonyms for ‘sublime,’ none have yet thought of levelling at
him the charge of dulness or mediocrity. Indeed, to discuss him at all
seems to imply that you are not in that calm frame of mind in which
alone can discussion be profitable, and the violence which marks his
music and drama seem at once to infect the mind of his critic. Strangest
of all, even Tolstoi--who of all great writers seems to be almost
utterly devoid of any sense of beauty, though in matters of sordidness
and ugliness the skill of his art is worthy to stand by
Shakespeare’s--has allowed himself to be drawn into the mad circle, and
has given us in his volume on Art a dozen pages which for sheer
ineptitude of criticism, complete ignorance of his subject, and utter
incompetence to deal with it, must rank for ever with the colossal
failures of the world, such as the Panama Canal and the fall of
Napoleon. But the calm frame of mind deserts me; discussion is not
profitable.
* * * * *
It was after the second act of ‘Parsifal,’ and from the cool darkness of
the theatre we streamed silently out into the brilliant sunshine of the
late afternoon. The sun was near to its setting, and the whole plain
below us was steeped and stupefied in the level rays. A blue haze of
heat-mist lay over the further hills, emphasizing the enlacement of
their ridges, which stood out like the muscles of some strong arm.
Above the theatre rose the quiet pine-woods, hardly whispering, so still
was the evening, and it was to them that my friend and I turned, for the
poisonous enchantment of Klingsor’s garden had to be expelled, and we
neither of us cared to join in shrill discussions about the exquisite
phrasing of Kundry, since it was the seduction of her phrases that more
occupied us. For an hour the evil flowers had bloomed, and that evil was
not of the foul sort that makes one turn from it, but of the seemingly
innocent welcome of maidens that wear flowers, and of an evil woman who
spoke not of evil things, but of sacred things--a mother’s love, and her
own love for him who was pure.
So we sat in the pine-woods, and let the fermenting vat of sin lose its
effervescence, and waited till the sour-smelling bubbles broke no more
on its iridescent surface. And the sun sank till it touched the hills,
and where it touched they changed to semi-transparent amber, and a
crescent moon rose in the east, and one bird fluted in the bush. Then
the first trumpet from below sounded the _motif_ of the ‘Love-feast,’
and down we went. From the mad fires of the sunset we passed into the
cool gloom of the theatre, and the doors were shut, and soon the curtain
rose on the last act.
* * * * *
So were the wanderings of Parsifal accomplished, yet he remained still
the pure youth who once, in ignorance of suffering, had shot a swan as
it circled above a lake, wantonly and without thought. Yet when he saw
it dead, then for the first time had pity knocked a little on the door
of his heart. Since then had years sped by, and temptations hideous and
beautiful and strong and subtle had been ever about his path and about
his bed. Yet he was still without guile, nor was there spot or stain on
his virgin soul. Albeit he was very weary, and for years had he been
very weary, and sometimes he had prayed that he might die, not knowing
what he prayed, for the flesh was weak. But the Sacred Spear which he
bore ever with him, that spear which had pierced the side of our Blessed
Lord, was his strength and his firm defence, as it had ever been since
he had won it from Klingsor the magician, unarmed except for the armour
of his pure heart.
So it came about that on the dawning of that day on which our Blessed
Lord was crucified his wanderings led him back to that place from which
they had started, ere yet he had confounded the sorcerer Klingsor, and
in the garden of seduction had resisted the wiles of Kundry, who laughed
at our Blessed Lord what time He bore the cross of our redemption to
Calvary, and thus henceforth could never weep, but by her laughter lured
the souls of men to hell. Weary beyond all speech was he with his
wanderings, in which he ever fought against the powers of evil, and he
wot not whither he had come, nor that it was the Blessed Friday on which
he had come thither, for, in that he did ever his dear Lord’s work, that
it was now the day on which He suffered on the cross for our redemption
was less to him than the work of salvation which he himself daily
accomplished. Nor saw he the brightness of the meadows, nor read the
joyous message that Spring wrote on the blossoming hawthorn and on the
green places of the earth. For the turning Year had put on her fresh
mantle, and like some fair maiden had dressed herself against the coming
of her lover. The brooks all down the valley of Monsalvat--for to
Monsalvat he was come again--were no more thick or tainted with the
melted snows, nor had summer yet made them run low or less melodiously;
but they brimmed through the meadows, combing the waving grasses that
leaned to them and drank of their coolness, and over their pebbly beds
they glanced and sparkled like young things at play. Between the stems
of the trees were strown carpets of hyacinths and wind-blossoms, and
from thicket to thicket the merry thrush glanced in and out, and filled
his throbbing throat and sang of love and of summer. From morn till
night did all God’s creatures thank Him for the beautiful days He had
given them, and at eve the nightingale made the song which is as old as
time and as young as when time itself was young.
Yet for very weariness did Parsifal reck naught o the spring music, but
he only journeyed on, steadfast in the might of the Spear; for he knew
that at the appointed time would his Gracious Lord guide his steps back
to Monsalvat, his heart enlightened by pity, by which, though he hated
sin, he ever loved the sinner. And even on this very morning his perfect
work was done, and in naught had he brought shame upon the Holy Spear
which shed the precious blood of his dear Lord, and wrought our
salvation; and so had God guided him back to the vale of Monsalvat,
though as yet he knew not whither he had come. Once, indeed, he had seen
a swan wheeling in blue heaven above him, and a faint chord of memory
twanged in his heart and was silent again. Yet he had inward peace,
which he would not have exchanged for the wealth of the world nor for
the wisdom of Solomon, for it was passing knowledge.
Yet, though all Nature held high festival and rejoiced, little did the
brethren of the Holy Grail rejoice with her. For King Titurel, who for
long years had lived but in the chapel of the Grail, wondrously kept
alive by the feast of Love which our Saviour instituted, was dead, and
even on this day was to be his burial. And his son, King Amfortas, was
also nigh to death, for the grievousness of the wound wherewith years
agone the magician Klingsor had wounded him; for Amfortas had yielded to
sin and to sleep, and while he slept in Klingsor’s garden of sorceries
the magician had thrust at him with the Sacred Spear, and only by the
touch of the Spear could his wound be healed. And as often as Amfortas
would essay to unveil to the knights the radiance of the Holy Grail did
the wound break out afresh, and thus for long time had they been without
that strengthening and refreshing of their souls for the lack of which
the King Titurel, starved of that spiritual meat and holy drink, had
died.
Very early on this morning came the old knight Gurnemanz from his
hermit’s hut nigh the sacred spring to look with dim eyes on the beauty
of the dawning springtime; and as he looked on the flowering meadows he
heard, so he thought, the cry of some wounded animal. ‘Yet animal,’ said
he to himself, ‘it can scarcely be; for what four-footed thing grieves
like that?’ Then searched he in the thicket by the spring, and found no
animal, but the witch-woman Kundry who for long time had not set foot in
the kingdom of the Holy Grail. And something of the spring moved in his
old bones, and he said to her, ‘Awake, Kundry, awake! for the winter is
over and past, and spring is here.’ Yet she moved not; and when she lay
so still he wondered if she were dead, and his soul was sorry for her,
since the curse of laughter was still not removed from her. But soon, in
answer to his ministrations of pity, she moved and stirred; and when she
had come to herself, she got up very quietly, saying only: ‘I serve, I
serve.’ Then she busied herself in his hermit’s hut, and fetched fresh
water, and plucked rushes for his floor. And he wondered, for he knew
not how in the garden of sorceries she had tempted the young lad who
came thither, and how he had resisted her wiles, and how from that
moment there had entered into her heart the sweet and bitter pain which
men call remorse, and which, indeed, is naught else but the voice of our
humble Saviour speaking low and lovingly to our hard hearts.
But as Gurnemanz stood and wondered, behold, there drew near a knight
clad in armour from head to foot. In his hand he held a spear, and his
feet went wearily. Then did Gurnemanz tell him--for he knew not who it
was--that this was the holy and peaceful kingdom of the Grail, where
none went armed. And the strange knight answered him not, but he put off
his armour, and the spear he set upright in the ground, and knelt down
in prayer, raising his eyes to it. Then slowly to the old man came
recognition, and he knew what spear that was, and he knew him who bore
it--Parsifal.
So when Parsifal had prayed, he rose, and told Gurnemanz of his
wanderings and of that sacred thing he bore, and how pity had
enlightened him, so that he loved the sinner, yet hated the sin. And now
to the kingdom of the Grail he had come again. Then, in turn, he heard
of the long sorrows of the knights, and how the strength had gone from
them now that they no more beheld the Holy Grail, and that for lack of
the sight thereof the old King Titurel was dead. And when he heard that,
pity for the sin of the world so seized him that he staggered where he
stood, and he lay in swoon near the spring. Then did the old knight
Gurnemanz minister to his faintness; and from his hut came Kundry, who
knew Parsifal’s helm, and she knew him--that it was he whom she had
tempted in Klingsor’s garden. But now he rebuffed her not, and she
loosened his armour also, and laid it by; and she washed his feet in the
spring, and with the hair of her head she dried them. Then Gurnemanz
anointed him on the head, and when she had dried his feet Kundry
anointed them also, and he rose, and saw the woman, who she was; and
Christ Jesus spoke to his heart, and told him that her redemption was
near, for her heart was sorry at last. So with water from the spring he
baptized her, and bade her trust in her Redeemer. And as he spoke the
ice and the laughter in her breast were melted, and with her hair she
made a darkness for her eyes, and she wept.
Then, too, were Parsifal’s eyes opened, and he looked on the beauty of
the spring-time, and talked with Gurnemanz awhile, that even on the day
on which the Blessed Lord was crucified it was very fit that all Nature
should rejoice, because her trespasses were pardoned, and that since
the great Intercessor Himself pleaded, not the pity of the sacrifice,
but the peace which passed understanding, was chiefly shed on the earth.
Yet across the joyous day there now sounded the funeral bells for the
King Titurel, and soon the new-anointed King of the Grail took the
Sacred Spear and went through the blossoming woods to the chapel of the
Grail. There were all the knights assembled; but little gladness was
theirs, for they starved for the spiritual meat and holy drink, and for
the sight of the Holy Grail, which Amfortas for his wound could not
reveal to them. And they cried aloud to him to show them the mystery,
and for very agony he could not, but called on them to kill him. Then
was brought in for burial the body of Titurel, and for a moment sorrow
smote them silent.
And while they were silent there entered one who bore a spear, and there
followed him the old knight Gurnemanz and a woman. He went to the couch
where Amfortas lay, and with the spear he touched his wound, and the
wound was healed. Then turned he to those who bore the curtained Grail
and bade them unveil it; and he took the Holy Grail in his hand, and
with his other hand he held the Sacred Spear, and the chapel grew dark,
and from the Grail shone out the Salutation of the Lord.
But in the darkness the woman Kundry had crept to his feet, and as the
radiance from the Grail grew bright she lifted her eyes to it, and her
redemption was accomplished, and she died.
SEPTEMBER
The barren, sterile emotions which Art gives us, though they have the
advantage of harmlessness over the emotions of Life itself, that tree of
sweet and bitter fruits, bear with them the inherent defects of their
unreality; and whereas there is hardly an emotion of Life which does not
leave us stronger and more vivified, there is hardly an emotion of Art
where one’s senses are stirred, not by actual events of joy or sorrow,
but the imagined scenes thereof, which does not leave us flat and
unbraced in proportion as the emotion excited has been keen. Love and
death, the two great _motifs_ on which the drama of Life is based,
whether they are whispered on the shivering strings, or piped on remote
flutes, or thundered with the blast of trumpets and the clash of
cymbals, leave us, when such actual experience has touched us, the
richer for it, and stronger and more vivified. But such is not the case
in the reflection of experience which Art gives us; vivid it may be--so
vivid, indeed, that reality after it seems shadow-like and unreal--but
its life is temporary. We thrill with ecstasies that are not really
ours; our soul, in its secret place, sickens with sin or withers with
renunciations which are not its own; and when the mimic spectacle is
over, and we wake from the storms or sunshine of a coloured dream to a
gray morning, and have to take up again the dispiriting thread of
uneventful hours, it is with an intolerable sense of flatness that we at
first look out over the undistinguished landscape of life. For a week,
perhaps, or a fortnight, we have agonized with the throes of Titans;
monstrous joys and sorrows have been our portion, and for the monstrous
we take up again the minute. We have been burning with alien fires and
passions not our own: the temptation of Kundry has shaken us; the sorrow
of Wotan, as wide as the world and as bitter as the sea, has for the
time been ours; we have been laid to sleep on a mountain-top, like
Brunehilde, and, like Siegfried, have dreamed in the green shade of
woods until the voice of Nature has become intelligible, and the
twittering of birds articulate through the murmur of the forest. The
quintessence of human emotion, in all its terror and beauty, has shaken
and enthralled us. Then--then the curtain came down, and we go out again
into the real world, which for the time Art has rendered shadow-like,
where a hundred petty duties await us, in no way refreshed or strung up
for their accomplishment, but impatient, irritated, and bored.
Such, at least, were my own feelings when on a morning I awoke and
remembered (what at first seemed incredible) that there was to be no
opera that day, and that the curtain was down on the stage at Bayreuth
for two years. The little backwater of a town, which on arrival had
seemed so instinct with such sweet repose and tranquillity, was
insupportable: its tranquillity was the stagnation of decay; its repose
a creeping death-trance, with gray nightmare to ride its rest. Instead
of finding that the fiery dreams of the last fortnight had gilded its
streets and woven themselves into its gardens and trellises, it appeared
to me merely the most dismal little sun-baked suburb I had ever seen. A
glorious lamp had burned there, but the lamp was quenched, and instead
of a reflection of its light lingering there, there was only a smell of
oil. But the immediate and vital question was what to do and where to
go. I could not imagine myself finding existence tolerable anywhere, and
least of all, perhaps, could I imagine myself back in England in my own
quiet little house in the country town, since for the time being, at any
rate, all the minute pleasures which had built up that delightful life
and made it so full of happiness were incomprehensible. Not long ago a
quiet morning of work, with glances into the garden to see what new
plant had flowered, a game of golf over the breezy down, the face of a
friend, the hundred details of my life which I have tried to describe in
these pages, were overflowingly sufficient to make me more than content.
But now there was exasperation in the very multitude of them. And all
the time there were, so to speak, images of glorious brightness shut
away in some dark place of my brain. The Valkyries were there and
Parsifal, Hans Sachs, mellow and unembittered, looked on the love of
others and smiled, and Walter sang of spring-time, and everywhere was
melody.
Here, if you please, is egotism _in excelsis_, for I solemnly told
myself that, instead of going back home like a sober and average person,
I was bound--no less--to go somewhere and to do something by which I
could the more fully apprehend and crystallize these images; and the
grounds on which I put this to myself--that is my only excuse--were
genuine. For I believe that one of the main duties of man to God and to
himself is to realize beauty and understand it, and that one of his main
duties to his neighbour is to produce beauty in some shape or form,
moral, mental, or physical--if, indeed, there is any real difference
between them. The last fortnight had given me new material; that part of
me which is capable in its small way of feeling beauty had been shown
wonderful things. If I went back home to the ordinary routine of daily
life, I felt that I should not only do my part in it exceedingly ill,
but also that the monotony and triviality of it would tarnish and dull
the brightness of my new possessions. In other words, I began--a solemn
prig--to think about my artistic temperament, and make plans for its
well-being. And that confession made--in the hope that _Qui s’accuse
s’excuse_ in some small degree--the mind-narrative can go on its way. My
body--after an effusion of telegrams--sped South to the house of a
friend in Capri, where it arrived two days later.
* * * * *