An artist who has this empire over himself subjugates all other
artists, even though he may not particularly desire to do so. For him
alone there lies no danger or stemming-force in those he has
subjugated--his friends and his adherents; whereas the weaker natures
who learn to rely on their friends pay for this reliance by forfeiting
their independence. It is very wonderful to observe how carefully,
throughout his life, Wagner avoided anything in the nature of heading
a party, notwithstanding the fact that at the close of every phase in
his career a circle of adherents formed, presumably with the view of
holding him fast to his latest development He always succeeded,
however, in wringing himself free from them, and never allowed himself
to be bound; for not only was the ground he covered too vast for one
alone to keep abreast of him with any ease, but his way was so
exceptionally steep that the most devoted would have lost his breath.
At almost every stage in Wagner's progress his friends would have
liked to preach to him, and his enemies would fain have done so
too--but for other reasons. Had the purity of his artist's nature been
one degree less decided than it was, he would have attained much
earlier than he actually did to the leading position in the artistic
and musical world of his time. True, he has reached this now, but in a
much higher sense, seeing that every performance to be witnessed in
any department of art makes its obeisance, so to speak, before the
judgment-stool of his genius and of his artistic temperament. He has
overcome the most refractory of his contemporaries; there is not one
gifted musician among them but in his innermost heart would willingly
listen to him, and find Wagner's compositions more worth listening to
than his own and all other musical productions taken together. Many
who wish, by hook or by crook, to make their mark, even wrestle with
Wagner's secret charm, and unconsciously throw in their lot with the
older masters, preferring to ascribe their "independence" to Schubert
or Handel rather than to Wagner. But in vain! Thanks to their very
efforts in contending against the dictates of their own consciences,
they become ever meaner and smaller artists; they ruin their own
natures by forcing themselves to tolerate undesirable allies and
friends And in spite of all these sacrifices, they still find perhaps
in their dreams, that their ear turns attentively to Wagner. These
adversaries are to be pitied: they imagine they lose a great deal when
they lose themselves, but here they are mistaken.
Albeit it is obviously all one to Wagner whether musicians compose in
his style, or whether they compose at all, he even does his utmost to
dissipate the belief that a school of composers should now necessarily
follow in his wake; though, in so far as he exercises a direct
influence upon musicians, he does indeed try to instruct them
concerning the art of grand execution. In his opinion, the evolution
of art seems to have reached that stage when the honest endeavour to
become an able and masterly exponent or interpreter is ever so much
more worth talking about than the longing to be a creator at all
costs. For, at the present stage of art, universal creating has this
fatal result, that inasmuch as it encourages a much larger output, it
tends to exhaust the means and artifices of genius by everyday use,
and thus to reduce the real grandeur of its effect. Even that which is
good in art is superfluous and detrimental when it proceeds from the
imitation of what is best. Wagnerian ends and means are of one piece:
to perceive this, all that is required is honesty in art matters, and
it would be dishonest to adopt his means in order to apply them to
other and less significant ends.
If, therefore, Wagner declines to live on amid a multitude of creative
musicians, he is only the more desirous of imposing upon all men of
talent the new duty of joining him in seeking the law of style for
dramatic performances. He deeply feels the need of establishing a
traditional style for his art, by means of which his work may continue
to live from one age to another in a pure form, until it reaches that
future which its creator ordained for it.
Wagner is impelled by an undaunted longing to make known everything
relating to that foundation of a style, mentioned above, and,
accordingly, everything relating to the continuance of his art. To
make his work--as Schopenhauer would say-- a sacred depository and the
real fruit of his life, as well as the inheritance of mankind, and to
store it for the benefit of a posterity better able to appreciate
it,--these were the supreme objects of his life, and for these he bore
that crown of thorns which, one day, will shoot forth leaves of bay.
Like the insect which, in its last form, concentrates all its energies
upon the one object of finding a safe depository for its eggs and of
ensuring the future welfare of its posthumous brood,--then only to die
content, so Wagner strove with equal determination to find a place of
security for his works.
This subject, which took precedence of all others with him, constantly
incited him to new discoveries; and these he sought ever more and more
at the spring of his demoniacal gift of communicability, the more
distinctly he saw himself in conflict with an age that was both
perverse and unwilling to lend him its ear. Gradually however, even
this same age began to mark his indefatigable efforts, to respond to
his subtle advances, and to turn its ear to him. Whenever a small or a
great opportunity arose, however far away, which suggested to Wagner a
means wherewith to explain his thoughts, he availed himself of it: he
thought his thoughts anew into every fresh set of circumstances, and
would make them speak out of the most paltry bodily form. Whenever a
soul only half capable of comprehending him opened itself to him, he
never failed to implant his seed in it. He saw hope in things which
caused the average dispassionate observer merely to shrug his
shoulders; and he erred again and again, only so as to be able to
carry his point against that same observer. Just as the sage, in
reality, mixes with living men only for the purpose of increasing his
store of knowledge, so the artist would almost seem to be unable to
associate with his contemporaries at all, unless they be such as can
help him towards making his work eternal. He cannot be loved otherwise
than with the love of this eternity, and thus he is conscious only of
one kind of hatred directed at him, the hatred which would demolish
the bridges bearing his art into the future. The pupils Wagner
educated for his own purpose, the individual musicians and actors whom
he advised and whose ear he corrected and improved, the small and
large orchestras he led, the towns which witnessed him earnestly
fulfilling the duties of ws calling, the princes and ladies who half
boastfully and half lovingly participated in the framing of his plans,
the various European countries to which he temporarily belonged as the
judge and evil conscience of their arts,--everything gradually became
the echo of his thought and of his indefatigable efforts to attain to
fruitfulness in the future. Although this echo often sounded so
discordant as to confuse him, still the tremendous power of his voice
repeatedly crying out into the world must in the end call forth
reverberations, and it will soon be impossible to be deaf to him or to
misunderstand him. It is this reflected sound which even now causes
the art-institutions of modern men to shake: every time the breath of
his spirit blew into these coverts, all that was overripe or withered
fell to the ground; but the general increase of scepticism in all
directions speaks more eloquently than all this trembling. Nobody any
longer dares to predict where Wagner's influence may not unexpectedly
break out. He is quite unable to divorce the salvation of art from any
other salvation or damnation: wherever modern life conceals a danger,
he, with the discriminating eye of mistrust, perceives a danger
threatening art. In his imagination he pulls the edifice of modern
civilisation to pieces, and allows nothing rotten, no unsound
timber-work to escape: if in the process he should happen to encounter
weather-tight walls or anything like solid foundations, he immediately
casts about for means wherewith he can convert them into bulwarks and
shelters for his art. He lives like a fugitive, whose will is not to
preserve his own life, but to keep a secret-- like an unhappy woman
who does not wish to save her own soul, but that of the child lying in
her lap: in short, he lives like Sieglinde, "for the sake of love."
For life must indeed be full of pain and shame to one who can find
neither rest nor shelter in this world, and who must nevertheless
appeal to it, exact things from it, contemn it, and still be unable to
dispense with the thing contemned, --this really constitutes the
wretchedness of the artist of the future, who, unlike the philosopher,
cannot prosecute his work alone in the seclusion of a study, but who
requires human souls as messengers to this future, public institutions
as a guarantee of it, and, as it were, bridges between now and
hereafter. His art may not, like the philosopher's, be put aboard the
boat of written documents: art needs capable men, not letters and
notes, to transmit it. Over whole periods in Wagner's life rings a
murmur of distress--his distress at not being able to meet with these
capable interpreters before whom he longed to execute examples of his
work, instead of being confined to written symbols; before whom he
yearned to practise his art, instead of showing a pallid reflection of
it to those who read books, and who, generally speaking, therefore are
not artists.
In Wagner the man of letters we see the struggle of a brave fighter,
whose right hand has, as it were, been lopped off, and who has
continued the contest with his left. In his writings he is always the
sufferer, because a temporary and insuperable destiny deprives him of
his own and the correct way of conveying his thoughts--that is to say,
in the form of apocalyptic and triumphant examples. His writings
contain nothing canonical or severe: the canons are to be found in his
works as a whole. Their literary side represents his attempts to
understand the instinct which urged him to create his works and to get
a glimpse of himself through them. If he succeeded in transforming his
instincts into terms of knowledge, it was always with the hope that
the reverse process might take place in the souls of his readers--it
was with this intention that he wrote. Should it ultimately be proved
that, in so doing, Wagner attempted the impossible, he would still
only share the lot of all those who have meditated deeply on art; and
even so he would be ahead of most of them in this, namely, that the
strongest instinct for all arts harboured in him. I know of no written
aesthetics that give more light than those of Wagner; all that can
possibly be learnt concerning the origin of a work of art is to be
found in them. He is one of the very great, who appeared amongst us a
witness, and who is continually improving his testimony and making it
ever clearer and freer; even when he stumbles as a scientist, sparks
rise from the ground. Such tracts as "Beethoven," "Concerning the Art
of Conducting," "Concerning Actors and Singers," "State and Religion,"
silence all contradiction, and, like sacred reliquaries, impose upon
all who approach them a calm, earnest, and reverential regard. Others,
more particularly the earlier ones, including "Opera and Drama,"
excite and agitate one; their rhythm is so uneven that, as prose they
are bewildering. Their dialectics is constantly interrupted, and their
course is more retarded than accelerated by outbursts of feeling; a
certain reluctance on the part of the writer seems to hang over them
like a pall, just as though the artist were somewhat ashamed of
speculative discussions. What the reader who is only imperfectly
initiated will probably find most oppressive is the general tone of
authoritative dignity which is peculiar to Wagner, and which is very
difficult to describe: it always strikes me as though Wagner were
continually addressing enemies; for the style of all these tracts more
resembles that of the spoken than of the written language, hence they
will seem much more intelligible if heard read aloud, in the presence
of his enemies, with whom he cannot be on familiar terms, and towards
whom he must therefore show some reserve and aloofness, The entrancing
passion of his feelings, however, constantly pierces this intentional
disguise, and then the stilted and heavy periods, swollen with
accessary words, vanish, and his pen dashes off sentences, and even
whole pages, which belong to the best in German prose. But even
admitting that while he wrote such passages he was addressing friends,
and that the shadow of his enemies had been removed for a while, all
the friends and enemies that Wagner, as a man of letters, has, possess
one factor in common, which differentiates them fundamentally from the
"people" for whom he worked as an artist. Owing to the refining and
fruitless nature of their education, they are quite devoid of the
essential traits of the national character, and he who would appeal to
them must speak in a way which is not of the people--that is to say,
after the manner of our best prose-writers and Wagner himself; though
that he did violence to himself in writing thus is evident. But the
strength of that almost maternal instinct of prudence in him, which is
ready to make any sacrifice, rather tends to reinstall him among the
scholars and men of learning, to whom as a creator he always longed to
bid farewell. He submits to the language of culture and all the laws
governing its use, though he was the first to recognise its profound
insufficiency as a means of communication.
For if there is anything that distinguishes his art from every other
art of modern times, it is that it no longer speaks the language of
any particular caste, and refuses to admit the distinctions "literate"
and "illiterate." It thus stands as a contrast to every culture of the
Renaissance, which to this day still bathes us modern men in its light
and shade. Inasmuch as Wagner's art bears us, from time to time,
beyond itself, we are enabled to get a general view of its uniform
character: we see Goethe and Leopardi as the last great stragglers of
the Italian philologist-poets, Faust as the incarnation of a most
unpopular problem, in the form of a man of theory thirsting for life;
even Goethe's song is an imitation of the song of the people rather
than a standard set before them to which they are expected to attain,
and the poet knew very well how truly he spoke when he seriously
assured his adherents: "My compositions cannot become popular; he who
hopes and strives to make them so is mistaken."
That an art could arise which would be so clear and warm as to flood
the base and the poor in spirit with its light, as well as to melt the
haughtiness of the learned--such a phenomenon had to be experienced
though it could not be guessed. But even in the mind of him who
experiences it to-day it must upset all preconceived notions
concerning education and culture; to such an one the veil will seem to
have been rent in twain that conceals a future in which no highest
good or highest joys exist that are not the common property of all.
The odium attaching to the word "common" will then be abolished.
If presentiment venture thus into the remote future, the discerning
eye of all will recognise the dreadful social insanity of our present
age, and will no longer blind itself to the dangers besetting an art
which seems to have roots only in the remote and distant future, and
which allows its burgeoning branches to spread before our gaze when it
has not yet revealed the ground from which it draws its sap. How can
we protect this homeless art through the ages until that remote future
is reached? How can we so dam the flood of a revolution seemingly
inevitable everywhere, that the blessed prospect and guarantee of a
better future--of a freer human life--shall not also be washed away
with all that is destined to perish and deserves to perish?
He who asks himself this question shares Wagner's care: he will feel
himself impelled with Wagner to seek those established powers that
have the goodwill to protect the noblest passions of man during the
period of earthquakes and upheavals. In this sense alone Wagner
questions the learned through his writings, whether they intend
storing his legacy to them--the precious Ring of his art--among their
other treasures. And even the wonderful confidence which he reposes in
the German mind and the aims of German politics seems to me to arise
from the fact that he grants the people of the Reformation that
strength, mildness, and bravery which is necessary in order to divert
"the torrent of revolution into the tranquil river-bed of a calmly
flowing stream of humanity": and I could almost believe that this and
only this is what he meant to express by means of the symbol of his
Imperial march.
As a rule, though, the generous impulses of the creative artist and
the extent of his philanthropy are too great for his gaze to be
confined within the limits of a single nation. His thoughts, like
those of every good and great German, are more than German, and the
language of his art does not appeal to particular races but to mankind
in general.
But to the men of the future.
This is the belief that is proper to him; this is his torment and his
distinction. No artist, of what past soever, has yet received such a
remarkable portion of genius; no one, save him, has ever been obliged
to mix this bitterest of ingredients with the drink of nectar to which
enthusiasm helped him. It is not as one might expect, the
misunderstood and mishandled artist, the fugitive of his age, who
adopted this faith in self-defence: success or failure at the hands of
his contemporaries was unable either to create or to destroy it
Whether it glorified or reviled him, he did not belong to this
generation: that was the conclusion to which his instincts led him.
And the possibility of any generation's ever belonging to him is
something which he who disbelieves in Wagner can never be made to
admit. But even this unbeliever may at least ask, what kind of
generation it will be in which Wagner will recognise his "people," and
in which he will see the type of all those who suffer a common
distress, and who wish to escape from it by means of an art common to
them all. Schiller was certainly more hopeful and sanguine; he did not
ask what a future must be like if the instinct of the artist that
predicts it prove true; his command to every artist was rather--
Soar aloft in daring flight Out of sight of thine own years! In thy
mirror, gleaming bright, Glimpse of distant dawn appears.