I
If it had been hinted a quarter of a century ago that in Richard
Wagner’s veins there flowed Semitic blood, roaring laughter would
have streaked critical Europe. The race Wagner reviled in speech and
pamphlet--although he never disdained its financial generosity--the
hated Jew, daring to claim kinship with him, might have set in motion
the mighty spleen of the master, and perhaps the world would be the
poorer for another Das Judenthum in der Musik. Wagner’s hatred of the
chosen race is historical. Benefits ever forgotten, he never lost a
chance to gibe at Meyerbeer, to flout some wealthy Hebrew banker. Yet
gossips have been at work subjecting the Wagnerian pedigree to keen
scrutiny. There is a well-defined legend at Bayreuth, at Leipsic, that
Wagner was the natural son and not the stepson of Ludwig Geyer, his
mother’s second husband. Of course this is not so, for it would make
Wagner a half Jew, the actor Geyer being of Jewish descent. Wagner,
they say, resembled him more in features, tastes and temperament than
he did his putative father, the worthy police magistrate.
A musical authority, whose name I withhold by request, called my
attention to the curious fact that the portrait of Wagner’s father does
not hang upon the walls of Wahnfried. Perhaps as Geyer was the father
Wagner best remembered he did him the honor of placing his picture
in juxtaposition with his mother’s in the Bayreuth home. There is no
other sound evidence that may be pressed into service for this fugitive
theory. Friedrich Nietzsche, after the rupture with Wagner, openly
called him a Jew born in the Judengasse--the ghetto of Leipsic--and
this latter assertion happens to be true. Another hot-headed hunter of
degeneration, Heinrich Pudor, makes the same statement.
In critical circles there seems to be a disposition to avoid
challenging these facts for they asperse the memory of a good mother.
Mr. Krehbiel laughs at the story as silly, summoning as witness the
fact that Wagner’s elder brother resembled him in a striking manner.
I place little credence in the rumor, believing it to have originated
with Nietzsche and revived later by Pudor. There is much in Richard
Wagner’s polemical writings--his almost insane hatred of the Jews--and
in the sensuous glitter and glow of his music that suggests the
imagination of the Oriental. Some of it is certainly unlike any music
made by a German--indeed, to me, with their vibratile rhythms, their
titanic and dramatic characterization, the Wagner plays suggest the
Celt, for the Celt, as Matthew Arnold wrote, has _natural magic_ in
his poetic speech, and magical in their quality are the utterances of
Wagner.
“Was Wagner German at all?” asks Nietzsche, a rabid hater of the
Christ idea, who first threw Schopenhauer overboard, only to do the
same for his Wagner worship. He continues: “We have some reasons
for asking this. It is difficult to discern in him any German trait
whatsoever. Being a great learner he has learned to imitate much
that is German--that is all. His character itself is in opposition
to what has hitherto been regarded as German--not to speak of the
German musician! His father was a stage-player named Geyer. A Geyer is
almost an Adler--Geyer and Adler are both names of Jewish families.
What has hitherto been put into circulation as the ‘Life of Wagner’
is fable convenue, if not worse. I confess my distrust of every point
which rests solely on the testimony of Wagner himself. He had not
pride enough for any truth whatsoever about himself; nobody was less
proud; he remained, just like Victor Hugo, true to himself even in
biographical matters--he remained a stage-player.”
Naturally, all that Nietzsche writes about Wagner may be challenged,
although he is fairer to the great music-dramatist than Max Nordau.
Nordau really borrowed Nietzsche’s denunciatory thunder, and then
abused the sadly stricken philosopher for having assailed the musician.
Altogether a very Nordau-like proceeding.
I should like to believe, but cannot, that Schopenhauer ruined Wagner.
This is one of Nietzsche’s favorite contentions. The fact is, the
artist was stronger than the philosopher in Wagner. The reflective man
in him was generally overcome by the man poetic. Witness Tristan and
Isolde, which was composed, as Wagner confessed, in direct defiance
of his pet theories. Even the pessimism of the Ring never crowds
out the dramatic power of the work. Who would wish to cut from Die
Meistersinger Hans Sachs’ beautiful monologue? It is the passing of
a cloud over the shining sun. All thoughtful humans are pessimistic
at times, but the strong man and woman soon tire of the cui bono and
find work near at hand. Wagner was caught in the currents of his time,
though he really escaped many metaphysical vortices. That he was any
more a Christian than a Schopenhauerian at the end of his life I
doubt. Wagner was primarily an artist and, as an artist, could not
help seeing the artistic possibilities in the superb ceremonial of the
Roman Catholic Church; could not help feeling the magnificent story of
the Christ; could not escape being touched by the beauties of pity, of
redemption, and by the Quietist doctrines of Buddhism filtered through
the hard brain of Arthur Schopenhauer. All these elements he blended
dexterously in Parsifal, and we know with what result.
Keep in your mind that Wagner the artist was a greater man than
Wagner the vegetarian, Wagner the anti-vivisectionist, Wagner the
revolutionist, the Jew hater, the foe of Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn,
and greater than Wagner the philosopher. It is a mistaken partisanship
that attaches to his every word deep significance. He dearly loved
paradox, and his versatility was such that he wore many masks. Not that
I doubt his sincerity, but the enormously emotional nature of the man,
his craving for artistic excitement, his agitated life often led him
to write and speak in misleading terms. Wagner was not a Christian; he
was not a passive Buddhist--far from it; he was no lover of the Jewry,
and his pessimism, like Schopenhauer’s, was thin skinned. Both men were
desperately in earnest and both enjoyed life--one in execrating it, the
other in works of beauty.