It were strange if what a man did best and most liked to do could not
be traced in the general outline of his life, and in the case of those
who are remarkably endowed there is all the more reason for supposing
that their life will present not only the counterpart of their
character, as in the case of every one else, but that it will present
above all the counterpart of their intellect and their most individual
tastes. The life of the epic poet will have a dash of the Epos in
it--as from all accounts was the case with Goethe, whom the Germans
very wrongly regarded only as a lyrist--and the life of the dramatist
will probably be dramatic.
The dramatic element in Wagner's development cannot be ignored, from
the time when his ruling passion became self-conscious and took
possession of his whole being. From that time forward there is an end
to all groping, straying, and sprouting of offshoots, and over his
most tortuous deviations and excursions, over the often eccentric
disposition of his plans, a single law and will are seen to rule, in
which we have the explanation of his actions, however strange this
explanation may sometimes appear. There was, however, an ante-dramatic
period in Wagner's life--his childhood and youth-- which it is
impossible to approach without discovering innumerable problems. At
this period there seems to be no promise yet of himself, and what one
might now, in a retrospect, regard as a pledge for his future
greatness, amounts to no more than a juxtaposition of traits which
inspire more dismay than hope; a restless and excitable spirit,
nervously eager to undertake a hundred things at the same time,
passionately fond of almost morbidly exalted states of mind, and ready
at any moment to veer completely round from calm and profound
meditation to a state of violence and uproar. In his case there were
no hereditary or family influences at work to constrain him to the
sedulous study of one particular art. Painting, versifying, acting,
and music were just as much within his reach as the learning and the
career of a scholar; and the superficial inquirer into this stage of
his life might even conclude that he was born to be a dilettante. The
small world within the bounds of which he grew up was not of the kind
we should choose to be the home of an artist. He ran the constant risk
of becoming infected by that dangerously dissipated attitude of mind
in which a person will taste of everything, as also by that condition
of slackness resulting from the fragmentary knowledge of all things,
which is so characteristic of University towns. His feelings were
easily roused and but indifferently satisfied; wherever the boy turned
he found himself surrounded by a wonderful and would-be learned
activity, to which the garish theatres presented a ridiculous
contrast, and the entrancing strains of music a perplexing one. Now,
to the observer who sees things relatively, it must seem strange that
the modern man who happens to be gifted with exceptional talent should
as a child and a youth so seldom be blessed with the quality of
ingenuousness and of simple individuality, that he is so little able
to have these qualities at all. As a matter of fact, men of rare
talent, like Goethe and Wagner, much more often attain to
ingenuousness in manhood than during the more tender years of
childhood and youth. And this is especially so with the artist, who,
being born with a more than usual capacity for imitating, succumbs to
the morbid multiformity of modern life as to a virulent disease of
infancy. As a child he will more closely resemble an old man. The
wonderfully accurate and original picture of youth which Wagner gives
us in the Siegfried of the Nibelungen Ring could only have been
conceived by a man, and by one who had discovered his youthfulness but
late in life. Wagner's maturity, like his adolesence, was also late in
making its appearance, and he is thus, in this respect alone, the very
reverse of the precocious type.
The appearance of his moral and intellectual strength was the prelude
to the drama of his soul. And how different it then became! His nature
seems to have been simplified at one terrible stroke, and divided
against itself into two instincts or spheres. From its innermost
depths there gushes forth a passionate will which, like a rapid
mountain torrent, endeavours to make its way through all paths,
ravines, and crevices, in search of light and power. Only a force
completely free and pure was strong enough to guide this will to all
that is good and beneficial. Had it been combined with a narrow
intelligence, a will with such a tyrannical and boundless desire might
have become fatal; in any case, an exit into the open had to be found
for it as quickly as possible, whereby it could rush into pure air and
sunshine. Lofty aspirations, which continually meet with failure,
ultimately turn to evil. The inadequacy of means for obtaining success
may, in certain circumstances, be the result of an inexorable fate,
and not necessarily of a lack of strength; but he who under such
circumstances cannot abandon his aspirations, despite the inadequacy
of his means, will only become embittered, and consequently irritable
and intolerant. He may possibly seek the cause of his failure in other
people; he may even, in a fit of passion, hold the whole world guilty;
or he may turn defiantly down secret byways and secluded lanes, or
resort to violence. In this way, noble natures, on their road to the
most high, may turn savage. Even among those who seek but their own
personal moral purity, among monks and anchorites, men are to be found
who, undermined and devoured by failure, have become barbarous and
hopelessly morbid. There was a spirit full of love and calm belief,
full of goodness and infinite tenderness, hostile to all violence and
self-deterioration, and abhorring the sight of a soul in bondage. And
it was this spirit which manifested itself to Wagner. It hovered over
him as a consoling angel, it covered him with its wings, and showed
him the true path. At this stage we bring the other side of Wagner's
nature into view: but how shall we describe this other side?
The characters an artist creates are not himself, but the succession
of these characters, to which it is clear he is greatly attached, must
at all events reveal something of his nature. Now try and recall
Rienzi, the Flying Dutchman and Senta, Tannhauser and Elizabeth,
Lohengrin and Elsa, Tristan and Marke, Hans Sachs, Woden and
Brunhilda,--all these characters are correlated by a secret current of
ennobling and broadening morality which flows through them and becomes
ever purer and clearer as it progresses. And at this point we enter
with respectful reserve into the presence of the most hidden
development in Wagner's own soul. In what other artist do we meet with
the like of this, in the same proportion? Schiller's characters, from
the Robbers to Wallenstein and Tell, do indeed pursue an ennobling
course, and likewise reveal something of their author's development;
but in Wagner the standard is higher and the distance covered is much
greater. In the Nibelungen Ring, for instance, where Brunhilda is
awakened by Siegfried, I perceive the most moral music I have ever
heard. Here Wagner attains to such a high level of sacred feeling that
our mind unconsciously wanders to the glistening ice-and snow-peaks of
the Alps, to find a likeness there;-- so pure, isolated, inaccessible,
chaste, and bathed in love-beams does Nature here display herself,
that clouds and tempests--yea, and even the sublime itself--seem to
lie beneath her. Now, looking down from this height upon Tannhauser
and the Flying Dutchman, we begin to perceive how the man in Wagner
was evolved: how restlessly and darkly he began; how tempestuously he
strove to gratify his desires, to acquire power and to taste those
rapturous delights from which he often fled in disgust; how he wished
to throw off a yoke, to forget, to be negative, and to renounce
everything. The whole torrent plunged, now into this valley, now into
that, and flooded the most secluded chinks and crannies. In the night
of these semi-subterranean convulsions a star appeared and glowed high
above him with melancholy vehemence; as soon as he recognised it, he
named it Fidelity--unselfish fidelity. Why did this star seem to him
the brightest and purest of all? What secret meaning had the word
"fidelity" to his whole being? For he has graven its image and
problems upon all his thoughts and compositions. His works contain
almost a complete series of the rarest and most beautiful examples of
fidelity: that of brother to sister, of friend to friend, of servant
to master; of Elizabeth to Tannhauser, of Senta to the Dutchman, of
Elsa to Lohengrin, of Isolde, Kurvenal, and Marke to Tristan, of
Brunhilda to the most secret vows of Woden--and many others. It is
Wagner's most personal and most individual experience, which he
reveres like a religious mystery, and which he calls Fidelity; he
never wearies of breathing it into hundreds of different characters,
and of endowing it with the sublimest that in him lies, so overflowing
is his gratitude. It is, in short, the recognition of the fact that
the two sides of his nature remained faithful to each other, that out
of free and unselfish love, the creative, ingenuous, and brilliant
side kept loyally abreast of the dark, the intractable, and the
tyrannical side.