In Wagner, Nietzsche felt that at last he had found the Moses who would
lead the people out of captivity, into the Promised Land of Celestial
Art.
Nietzsche came and heard the Wagnerian music and was caught as flotsam
in its whirling eddies. He read everything that Wagner had written, and
having come within the gracious sunshine of the great man's presence, he
rushed to his garret and in white heat wrote the most appreciative
criticism of Wagner and his work that has ever, even yet, been penned.
This booklet, "Wagner at Bayreuth," is a masterpiece of insight and
erudition, written by a man of imagination, who saw and felt, and knew
how to mold his feelings into words--words that burn. It is a rhapsody
of appreciation.
Art is more a matter of heart than of head.
The book had a wide circulation, helped on, they do say, by the Master
himself, who confessed that in the main the work rang true.
The publication of the book sort of linked these two men, Wagner and
Nietzsche. The disciple sat at the feet of the elder man, and vowed he
would be in literature what Wagner was in music. He gazed on him, fed on
him, quoted him, waiting in patience for the pearls of thought.
Now Wagner was a natural man--a natural son of God. He had the desires,
appetites and ambitions of a man. If he voiced great thoughts and wrote
great scores, he did these things in a mood--and never knew how. At
times he was coarse, perverse, irritable.
The awful, serious, sober ways of Nietzsche began to pall on Wagner--he
would run away when he saw him coming, for Nietzsche had begun to give
advice about how Wagner should regenerate the race, and also conduct
himself. Now Richard Wagner had no intention of setting the world
straight--he wanted to express himself, that was all, and to make enough
money so he could be free to come and go as he chose.
Once, at a picnic, Wagner climbed a tree and cawed like a crow; then
hooted like an owl; he ate tarts out of a tin dish with a knife; a
little later he stood on his head and yelled like a Congo chief. When
Nietzsche tearfully interposed, Wagner told him to go and get
married--marry the first woman who was fool enough to have him--she
would relieve him of some of his silliness.
Shortly after this, the great Wagner festival came on, and Bayreuth was
filled with visitors who had read Nietzsche's book, and bought
excursion-tickets to Bayreuth.
Wagner was over his ears in work--an orchestra of three hundred players
to manage, new music to arrange, besides the humdrum, but necessary,
work of feeding and housing and caring for the throng. Of course he did
not do all the work, but the responsibility was his.
In this rush of work, Nietzsche was dropped out of sight--there was no
time now for long conferences on the Over-Soul and Music of the Future.
Nietzsche was snubbed. He went off to his garret and wrote a scathing
criticism on the work of Richard Wagner. This divine music was not for
the intellectual few at all--it was getting popular and it was getting
bad. Wagner was insincere--commercial--a charlatan.
Nietzsche was no longer interested in Wagner--he was interested only in
Nietzsche.
Literary men do not quarrel more than other men--it only seems as if
they did. This is because your writer uses his kazoo in getting even
with his supposed enemy--he flings the rhetorical stinkpot with
precision, and his grievances come into a prominence all out of keeping
with their importance.
In Eighteen Hundred Eighty-eight, Nietzsche issued his little book, "The
Fall of Wagner."
After a person has greatly praised another, and wishes to say something
particularly unkind about him, one horn of the dilemma must be taken. If
you admit you were wrong in the first conclusion, you lay yourself open
to the suspicion that you are also wrong in the second--that you are one
who makes snap judgments. The safer way then is to cling close to the
presumption of your own infallibility, without, of course, actually
stating it, and claim that your idol has changed, backslidden--fallen.
This then lends an aura of virtue to your action, as it shows a
wholesome desire on your part not to associate with the base person,
and also an altruistic wish to warn the world so it shall not be undone
by him.
Of all the bitter, unkind and malicious things ever uttered against
Wagner, none contains more free alkali than the booklet by Nietzsche.
Nietzsche, not being satisfied with an attack on Wagner's art, also made
a few flings at his pedigree, and declared that the Master's real name
was not Wagner: this was his mother's name, he being a natural son of
Ludwig Geyer, the poet--the Jew. What this has to do with Tannhauser,
Tristan and Isolde, the Ring, Lohengrin, and Parsifal, Nietzsche does
not explain. In any event, the information about Wagner's birth comes
with very bad grace from an avowed enemy, who practically admits that he
got the facts, in confidence, from Wagner himself. Neither does
Nietzsche, the freethinking radical, recognize that good men have long
ceased taunting other men concerning their parentage, or boasting of
their own.
A man is what he is; and the word "illegitimate" is not in God's
vocabulary, since He smiles on love-children as on none other. If you
know history, you know this: that into their keeping God has largely
given the beauty, talent, energy, strength, skill and power, as well as
that divinity which confuses its possessor with Deity Incarnate.
Wagner might have replied to Nietzsche in kind, and pointed him out as
the product of "tired sheets," to use the phrase of Shakespeare. Wagner
might have said, "Yes, I am a member of that elect class to which belong
William the Conqueror, Leonardo da Vinci, Erasmus, the Empress
Josephine, Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln!" But he didn't--he
did better--he said nothing. Wagner had the pride that scorned a
defense--he realized his priceless birthright, and knew that his mother
and father had dowered him with a divine genius. Let those talk who
could do nothing else: silence was his only answer.
In a year later, Nietzsche was taken to an asylum, dead at the top. He
lingered on until Nineteen Hundred, when his body, too, died, died there
at Weimar, the home of Goethe and the home of Franz Liszt--another of
life's little ironies. It is an obvious thing to say that Friedrich
Nietzsche was insane all the time. The fact is, he was not. He was a
great, sincere and honest soul, intent on living the ideal life. He
wrote thoughts that have passed into the current coin of all the
thinking world. When he praised Wagner to the skies and afterwards
damned him to the lowest depths of perdition, he was sane, and did the
thing that has been done since Cain slew his brother Abel. Take it home
to yourself--haven't the best things and the worst that have ever been
said about you, been expressed by the same person?
The opinion of any one person concerning any man of genius, or any
product of art, is absolutely valueless. Whim, prejudice, personal bias,
and physical condition color our view and tint our opinions, and when we
cease to love a man personally, to condemn his art is an easy and
natural step. What was before pleasing is now preposterous.
Of course, it is all a point of view--a matter of perspective, and most
of us are a trifle out of focus. When we change our opinions we change
our friends.
As a prescription for preserving a just and proper view, and living a
sane life, I would say, climb a tree occasionally, and hoot like an owl
and caw like a crow; stand on your head and yell at times like a
Comanche.
Robert Louis Stevenson says, "A man who has not had the courage to make
a fool of himself has not lived."
The man who does not relax and hoot a few hoots voluntarily, now and
then, is in great danger of hooting hoots and standing on his head for
the edification of the pathologist and trained nurse, a little later on.
The madhouse yawns for the person who always does the proper thing.
Impropriety, in right proportion, relieves congestion, and thus are the
unities preserved. And so here the great Law of Compensation, invented
by Ralph Waldo Emerson, comes in: The sane, healthy man, who
occasionally strips off his dignity and hoots like an owl, or rolls
naked in the snow, will surely be called insane by the self-nominated
elect, but his personal compensation lies in the fact that he knows he
is not.
* * * * *
And now look upon the face of this man! Even so, and upon every face is
written the record of the life the man has led: the loves that were his,
the thoughts, the prayers, the aspirations, the disappointments, all he
hoped to be and was not--all are written there--nothing is hidden, nor
can it be. Here was one born in poverty, nurtured in adversity, and yet
uplifted and sustained by homely friendships and rugged companions who
dumbly guessed the latent greatness of their charge.
With soul athirst he sought for truth, and stubbornly groped his way
alone. Immediate precedent stood to him for little, and his sincerity
and honesty made him the butt of mob and rabble. His ambition to be
himself, to live his life, the desire to express his honest thought, led
straight to deprivation of bread and shelter. He had too much sympathy,
his honesty was not tempered by the graces of a diplomat--a price was
placed upon his head. By the help of that one noble friend, whose love
upheld him to the last, he escaped to a country where freedom of speech
is not a byword. But misunderstanding followed close upon his footsteps,
even his wife doubted his sanity, mistaking his genius for folly, and
died undeceived. Calumny, hate, brutal criticism, the contempt of the
so-called learned class--and all the train of woe that want and debt can
bring to bear were his lot and portion.
Still he struggled on, refusing to compromise or parley--he would live
his life, expressing the divinity within, and if fate decreed it so, die
the death, misunderstood, reviled, and be forgotten.
And so he lived, working, praying, hoping, toiling, travailing--but with
days, now and then, when rifts broke the clouds and the sun shone
through, his Other Self giving approbation by saying, "Well done! the
work will live."
More than half a century had passed over his head, and the frost of
years had whitened his locks; his form was bowed from the many burdens
it had borne; the fine face furrowed with lines of care; his eyes grown
dim from weeping--when gradually the critics grew less severe.
Advocates were coming to the front, demanding that brutal hands should
no longer mangle this man: grudgingly pardon came for offenses never
committed, and he was permitted to return to his native land. Strong men
and women placed themselves on his side. They declared their faith, and
said his work was sublime; and they boldly stated the patent fact that
those who had done most to cry Wagner down, had themselves done nothing,
nor added an iota to the wealth or the harmony of the world. People
began to listen, to investigate, and they said, "Why, yes, the music of
Wagner has a distinct style--it has individuality."
Individuality is a departure from a complete type, and so is never
perfect, any more than man is perfect. But Wagner's music is honest and
genuine emotion set to sweet sounds, with words in keeping. It mirrors
the hopes, the disappointments, the aspirations and the love of a great
soul.
As men and women grew to cultivate the hospitable mind and receptive
heart, tears filled their eyes and as they listened they came to
understand. Honesty and genuineness in souls are too rare to flout--when
found men really uncover before them. The people saw at last that they
had been deceived by the savants, blinded by the dust of paid and
prejudiced critics, fooled by those who led the way for a consideration.
They flocked to see the great composer and listen to his matchless
music, and they gave the man and his work their approval. Such sums were
paid to him as he had only read of in books. Adulation, approbation and
crowning fame were his at last.
Then love came that way and gentle, trusting affection, and sweet,
spiritual comradeship, such as he had never known except in dreams--all
these were his. His fame increased, and lavish offers from across the
sea came, proffering him such wealth and honor as were not for any other
living artist.
A theater was built for the presentation of his productions alone; the
lovers of music from every nation made Bayreuth a place of pilgrimage.
When the man died--passed peacefully away, supported by the arms of the
one woman he had loved--the daughter of Liszt--the art-loving world
paid his genius all the tribute that men can offer to the worth of other
men.
And now the passing years have brought a confirmation in belief of the
statement made by Franz Liszt, "Richard Wagner is the one true musical
genius of his age."
Wagner's admirers should, for him, plead guilty to the worst that can be
said: he is everything that his most bitter critics say, but he is so
much more that his faults and follies sink into ashes before the divine
fire of his genius, and we still have the gold. Inconsistent,
paradoxical, preposterous--why, yes, of course! Still he is the greatest
poet of passion the world has ever seen--don't cavil--passion's
consistency consists in being inconsistent.
"Every sentence must have a man behind it," and so we might say, "Every
bar of music must have a man behind it." That harmony only can live
which once had its dwelling-place in a great and tender heart.
The province of art is to impart a sublime emotion, and that which
affects to be an emotion, no matter how subtly launched, can never live
as classic art. Honesty here, as elsewhere, must have its reward. Be
yourself, though all the world laugh.
I will not say that Wagner was--he is. The man himself in life was often
worn to the quick by the deprivations he had to endure, or the stupid
misunderstandings he encountered, so at times he was impatient,
erratic, possibly perverse. But all that is gone--his mistakes have
been washed in the blood of Time--only the good survives. The best that
this great and godlike man ever thought, or felt, or knew, is ours--he
lives immortal in his Art.
[Illustration: PAGANINI]