VII
The years 1848 to 1852 were for Wagner a long spell of intellectual and spiritual indigestion; his too receptive brain was taking into itself more impressions of all kinds than it could assimilate. Art and life, opera and politics, called clamorously to him, and all at the same time, deafening and confusing him. With Lohengrin his second great creative epoch, that had commenced with the Flying Dutchman, had come to its perfect end. New ideas of music and drama were ripening in him, but as yet he had no clear conception of their drift. He had gradually become profoundly disgusted with the theatre, yet saw no possible reformation of it except by way of a reformation of man and society as a whole. So he became a revolutionist,—not for politics' sake but for art's sake. To cooler heads than his own he seemed to be drifting towards destruction. Minna saw clearly enough that his views on politics were too idealistic to have any real bearing on the practicalities of the day; and other sympathisers no doubt regretted that the artist in him should be in danger of being ruined by the politician.[330]
At first he thought it possible to reform the theatre from the inside: and apparently nothing could surpass the zeal he showed in his work at the opera house, or the sincerity of his desire to raise the music of the town to the highest possible efficiency. In February 1846 he drafted a scheme for the improvement of the orchestra, that runs to nearly sixty pages of close print in the Gesammelte Schriften, and leaves not the smallest practical detail untouched.[331] Two years later he worked out his admirable scheme for the organisation of a German National Theatre for the Kingdom of Saxony. Here again one is struck by the practical nature of his genius.[332] But once more his appeal fell on deaf ears.
His failure to interest the theatre authorities in his schemes for the regeneration of the drama and music drove him deeper into politics. Only from a new humanity, a new relationship between man and the State, could come a clean and healthy and art-loving civilisation. In June 1848 he made his famous "Vaterlandsverein" speech, that created so many new enemies for him at the Court.[333] In February 1849 he wrote an article on "Man and Existing Society"[334] for Roeckel's Volksblätter, and in April one on "The Revolution" for the same journal.[335] Each of these is a passionate cry of welcome to the new era that he thought was dawning. "In the year 1848 began the war of man's fight against existing society." For society as at present constituted "is an attack on man: the ordering of existing society is inimical to the destiny, the right of man.... Man's destiny is, through the ever higher perfecting of his mental, moral, and bodily faculties, to attain an ever higher, purer happiness. Man's right is, through the ever higher perfecting of his mental, moral and bodily faculties, to achieve the enjoyment of a constantly increasing, purer happiness." But this can only be done by the union of all, not by the unit. "Men therefore are not only entitled but bound to demand of society that it shall lead them to ever higher, purer happiness through the perfecting of their mental, moral and bodily faculties." The second of the essays chants a dithyramb to the coming revolution. Volcano rumblings are to be heard beneath the soil of all Europe; soon the great upheaval will come. "The old world is crumbling to ruin; a new world will be born from it." The artist burns with sympathy for the poor, the suffering, the oppressed, and looks forward to a new civilisation, in which man will be free and have joy of his labour. It is impossible not to be moved to this day by the eloquence and passionate sincerity of his cry, and the purity of his hopes.
But the end was near,—a very different end from the one anticipated by this ardent soul. All hope of success faded before the Prussian rifles, and on the 9th May the disillusioned idealist was in flight.
It was long, however, before the hopes and dreams of 1848 and 1849 finally forsook him. From his Swiss and Parisian exile he sent forth two treatises—Art and Revolution (written in June 1849), and the Art-Work of the Future (written in October of the same year),—in which he voices once more his aspirations for a new humanity and a new art.