ON WAGNER CRITICISM
A new work on Wagner requires some justification. It might be urged that, since the Meister has been dead for some decades and the violence of party feeling may be assumed to have somewhat abated, we are now in a position to form a sober estimate of his work, to review his aims, and judge of his measure of success.
Such, however, is not my purpose in the following pages. I conceive that the endeavour to estimate an artist's work involves a misconception of the nature of art. We can estimate products of utility, things expressible in figures, the weight of evidence, a Bill for Parliament, a tradesman's profits. But a work of art is written for our pleasure, and all that we can attempt is to understand it. True, we must judge in a certain sense, we must weigh and estimate before we can arrive at understanding; but it is one thing to meditate in the privacy of one's own mind, quite another to publish these constructive processes as an end in themselves, to set up critical "laws" and expect that poets are going to conform to them.
Art, says Ruskin, is a language, a vehicle of thought, in itself nothing. Plato's teaching in the third book of his Republic is the same, and the idea of the secondary nature of art, of its value only as the expression of something else, of a human or moral purpose only fully expressible in the drama, is the nucleus of all Wagner's theoretical writing. In private conversation and in his letters he often spoke very emphatically. "I would joyfully sacrifice and destroy everything that I have produced if I could hope thereby to further freedom and justice."[[1]]
[1.] The episode which gave rise to this remark is too long to relate in the text, but is highly characteristic and instructive for Wagner's attitude towards art. It will be found in the sixth volume of Glasenapp's biography, p. 309.
Let us clearly keep in mind the distinction here involved between the two elements of every work of art: matter and form, substance and technique, [Greek: onta] and [Greek: gignomena], Brahm and Mâyâ, Wille und Vorstellung, the emotional and the intellectual life of man, or, untechnically, what he feels and his communication of those feelings to others as a social being. With the first of these the critic has nothing to do; the matter is given; all he has to consider is whether it has found adequate expression--that is, to try to understand the language, that when he has mastered it he may help others to do so according to his ability. I do not say that the matter is one to which we are indifferent. On the contrary, it is far the more important of the two, since the thing expressed is prior to its expression. Only it is no concern of the critic, because we may fairly assume that if the technical expression is correct and intelligible the artist has already told us what he wishes to convey in the most perfect language of which that idea is susceptible, and that any attempt to put it into the lower and more prosy language of the critic would only weaken and distort the thought.
It does not seem to me that passions have abated very much, or judgments have become much more sober, since Wagner has left us. In England at least the ignorance and indifference which prevail among the ordinary public are still profound. In truth the seed which he sowed has fallen upon evil soil; his fate has been a cruel one. He, the most sincere and transparent of men, whose only wish was to be seen as he actually was, has perhaps more than any other great man been the victim of misrepresentation, alike from his senseless persecutors and from his equally senseless adulators. While he lived, every imaginable calumny, plausible and unplausible, was invented to besmirch his character and his art. Now it is, in Germany at least, no longer safe to revile him on the ground of his technical artistic style. The days are long past when the terms "charlatan," "amateur," "artistic anarchist" could be applied to him with impunity, and it is fully recognized by all who have any title to speak that Wagner, so far from being a revolutionary destroyer, was, like all true reformers--Luther, for example, or Jeremiah or Sokrates--an extreme conservative. Those who like Walt Whitman preach libertinism in the name of democracy do not want reform; they are satisfied with things as they are. Wagner battled, both in music and in literature, for der reine Satz--purity of diction as against the untidy licence which was then and still is fashionable among weak-kneed artists and a thoughtless public.[[2]]
[2.] It is perhaps still necessary to produce some warrant for these statements. The deep-rooted conservatism of Wagner's character is a prominent feature of all his literary work, and especially noticeable in his educational schemes, as, for example; the report on a proposed Munich school of music, with its text: "The business of a Conservatory is to conserve." On his musical diction the testimony of Prof. S. Jadassohn will probably be considered sufficient by most people. He writes: "Wagner's harmonies are clear and pure; they are never arbitrary, nor coarse nor brutal, but throughout conscientious and clean according to the strict rules of pure diction (des reinen Satzes). Consequently the sequences and combinations of the chords and the course of the modulation are easily followed by those who know harmony. Similarly, his polyphonic style is easily intelligible to the trained contrapuntist"--and more to the same effect, Jadassohn is here only expressing what every competent musician knows. Before the first performance at Bayreuth in 1876 Wagner's last word to the artists was: Deutlichkeit--"clearness"--a word which sums up all his technical teaching throughout his life.
Mr. Hadow has truly observed that we have not yet learned to treat genius frankly, and either starve it with censure or smother it with irrational excess of enthusiasm. If the malicious misrepresentations and persecutions which Wagner endured during his lifetime were the outcome of ignorance, assuredly the hysterical raving of our day is no less ignorant and contemptible. I hear it said that in England "Wagnerism" is an attitude, and can only reply that it is so in Germany too. Among the cosmopolitan audiences who crowd the theatres of Dresden and Munich on a Wagner night and greet his works with thundering applause, there is probably not one person in a hundred who really knows what he sees and hears. Not that these people are not perfectly sincere; something they have undoubtedly taken in; the marvellous euphony and balance of Wagner's orchestra under the conductors we now have, the exquisite grace of the melodic and harmonic structure, and the lyric beauty of so many scenes are apparent to all, and will always awaken the boundless enthusiasm of those who go only to be diverted. But these are only the ornaments of the drama; to understand the drama itself requires a serious effort on the part of the hearer which few are prepared to make, a moral sympathy with the composer and receptive understanding of his aims of which few are capable.
We in England seem content to remain in darkness. I am not, of course, referring to the many competent men who have given serious attention to the works of Wagner; I am speaking of the general public. The English people has plenty of poetry in its heart, but our attitude towards German literature and art is not creditable to us as a nation. We who possess the finest literature ever produced by any people, whose Chaucers and Shakespeares and Popes and Byrons are the models on which the poets of other nations endeavour to form their style, scarcely think their literature worthy of serious consideration. A German boy when he leaves school has generally a pretty close acquaintance with Shakespeare, and knows at least something of other English authors and poets. An English boy at the same stage of his education has perhaps heard of Goethe and Schiller, but has rarely read any of their works. At the Universities it is no better. I really believe that in England Gounod's Faust is better known than Goethe's! It would be impossible that such travesties of Faust as appear from time to time upon the English stage would be endured if our scholars and intellectuals were better informed. Towards ancient languages, except the two which are fashionable, we are just as indifferent. It was no less a person than Sir Richard Maine who asserted that, except the blind forces of nature, nothing exists in the world which is not Greek in its origin! Truly more things are dreamed of in our philosophy than are in heaven and earth! When great scholars make such statements as this it is scarcely surprising that ordinary people should care little for the origins of their own language. The parents of modern English are not Greek but Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian or Icelandic. Both these languages have a literature of the very highest rank, but are little studied in this country. The eighth-century English lyrics are amongst the finest in the language. As for Scandinavian, not every one in England is aware that the Icelanders are, and have been for a thousand years, the most literary people in the world;[[3]] that in one important branch of literature, that of story-telling, they are absolutely without a rival, except in the Old Testament. From these Scandinavian sources we have received the heritage which has grown into our magnificent language and literature, but we trouble our heads little about them and leave them to foreigners to study. Ignorance may perhaps be excusable; what is wholly inexcusable is the habit of some Englishmen of criticising and censuring the work of foreigners which they dislike because they cannot understand it. There is a certain section of the English people who seem to think that it shows patriotism and a becoming national pride to belittle the work of other nations and speak of it in an insolent tone of contempt. They habitually misrepresent the achievements of foreigners in order to make them appear ridiculous. Over twenty years ago a writer in one of our high-class magazines informed an astonished world that "the Wagner-bubble has burst!" and the preposterous nonsense has been repeated again and again in one form or another ever since. Quite recently we read in one of our leading English dailies the following sentences: "... Among many of the best-known critics there is a general consensus of opinion that with the completion of Strauss' important work [Elektra], Wagnerism will diminish in popularity.... For years and years vain attempts have been made to get away from Richard Wagner. Creative musicians have long felt that Wagner's great and never-to-be-forgotten art no longer suited modern times"! One feels inclined to ask whether the writer looks upon musical composers as racehorses to be pitted against each other, or as religious creeds which must destroy their rivals in order to live.
[3.] Feeling some doubt as to whether this statement were not an exaggeration, I have submitted it before publication to my friend Mr. Eirikr Magnússon of Cambridge, whose profound knowledge of European literature, ancient and modern, needs no attestation from me. He replies that, except for the two centuries succeeding the Black Death in 1402-4, the statement in the text is quite correct. With that reservation therefore I allow it to stand.
There is another and a graver charge to be brought against some writers whose works are popularly read in England, to which it will be my duty to return. I have said enough here to show the state of Wagner criticism in this country. Abroad it is little better. Wagner is indeed fashionable. His works are regularly performed in every capital in Europe, and he has probably saved the existence of the costly Hoftheater in Germany. But success, in the sense in which he understood it, he has not yet achieved. It is very questionable whether his influence has on the whole been for good, either upon musicians and dramatists, or upon the public. It is not his fault. Nothing would show more convincingly the utter inability of the modern public to appreciate the highest and best in art than the literature which has gathered round the great name of Wagner. In all the vast mass how much is there which was worth the writing, or can be read with any profit by reasonable people? I think that, putting aside purely technical works on music, stage-management, etc., the number of really good books could be counted on the fingers. The rest is feeble rhapsody on the one hand, malicious misrepresentation on the other. Of works of first-rate importance, works that really add anything solid to our knowledge, I only know one: Nietzsche's Geburt der Tragödie. Of others the best are mostly in French. Lichtenberger's R. Wagner is admirable so far as it goes, but treats the subject exclusively from the literary standpoint. The small treatise of our marvellous countryman, Mr. H. S. Chamberlain, Le drame wagnérien[[4]] (Paris, 1894), is thoughtful and suggestive, and quite worthy of close attention, as are also the works of Kufferath, Golther, etc. There may be a few more, mostly of small compass, but not many. Glasenapp's great biography, a work of astounding industry, and invaluable to the student, can scarcely be included among the good books because of its terrible literary style and its fulsome sentimentality. The magnificent work begun by the Hon. Mrs. Burrell, of which there is a copy in the British Museum, would have been a monumental biography had she lived to complete it, but it stops when Wagner is about twenty. Of the rest, the less said the better. Of works against Wagner I know of none that are even worth reading, except Hanslick, to whom I shall have occasion to return. It is much to be regretted that none of Wagner's opponents have ever stated their case fairly and soberly. There is much to be said, but assuredly it has not been said by men of the stamp of Nordau, who cites disgusting accounts from French medical journals in order to show his abhorrence of what he considers Wagner's immorality! Tolstoi is a writer of wide authority among his followers, and might be expected to feel some responsibility for his utterances; yet he thought it right to publish his verdict to the world after having witnessed one very inferior performance of a portion of Siegfried! He is often appealed to as if he were an authority by the opponents of Wagner, but his utterances have no more weight than the thoughtless expressions of a Ruskin or a William Morris, which their biographers have thought fit to drag from the privacy of private letters or conversation and publish as their deliberate judgments. From Nietzsche at least something better might have been expected, but I can find little in his anti-Wagnerian writings except coarse vituperation and low scandal. There is no anti-Wagnerian literature worthy of the name. There are plenty of highly musical and artistic natures who honestly dislike his art, and I am so far able to sympathize with them as to believe that an inestimable benefit would be conferred upon all of us if they would publish their objections in sober and reasoned form. But they do not; or if they do speak, they descend to the slums.
[4.] Not his Richard Wagner, which is a more popular work.
Such has been the response of the public through its literature to the man who expressly did not wish to be worshipped, but only to be understood. Assuredly there is yet plenty of room for good work to be done! The purpose of the following pages is criticism, not as judging, but as selecting. In choosing certain characteristics to show them in a different perspective from an altered point of view the critic may hope to help others to a better understanding of the art. I have endeavoured to do this for English readers in respect of Wagner's dramatic works through one of the most characteristic and representative of them. The problem resolves itself into two. First there is the general technical one, so fully treated by Wagner himself in his theoretical writings, whether music is capable of being used as a means of dramatic expression; and secondly, how far the endeavour has been successful in the particular work selected for illustration. To treat these problems satisfactorily it will be necessary for me to go far beyond the limits of music and dramatic art, and to enter rather fully into questions of psychology and metaphysics, which I fear may discourage some readers, but which cannot be shirked by those who wish to form a judgment based upon a more solid foundation than their own personal taste. The mistake made by nearly all writers on Wagner hitherto has been to suppose that the mere assertion of an individual opinion has any value at all, however illustrious the person who holds it, however able his exposition. Of what use can be the assertion that a certain progression of chords is acceptable and pleasing to the healthy ear (even with the usual addition that all who do not think so are blockheads), when some other person equally competent asserts the contrary? Or how am I to persuade my readers that Tristan und Isolde is what I hold it to be, the loftiest paean of pure and holy love ever conceived by a poet, when others see in it only a "story of vulgar adultery," steeped in sensuality? The moral law is the same to all men, and differences of judgment upon moral acts are due to imperfect understanding. But I cannot hope to make my own position clear without descending to the foundations of all art, of all life, without asking: what is drama? what are its aims, and how does it express them? what is human life which it reflects? Wagner felt this very strongly, and soon realized that an ontological basis was required for his own theories; that to reform art he must reform human life. "Oh ye men," he exclaims passionately in a letter: "feel rightly, act as you feel! be free!--then we will have art."
We may learn the true principles of criticism from Wagner himself. Truthfulness in literature is what correctness is in Vortrag. They are objectivity, the art of seeing things as they really are, clearness of vision, right understanding. The truthful representation of an artist as he really is does not preclude, but rather stimulates, enthusiasm, for we may believe that the true artist and the true work of art as he intended it are superior to the flattering creations of our own fancy.
Lessing observes that of ten objections raised by the critic, nine will probably have occurred to the author; that he himself will read a passage twenty times rather than believe that the writer contradicted himself. Some of our critics seem to proceed upon an opposite principle and to reject a thought at once if it does not seem to agree with what they themselves have thought, and they observe little restraint in expressing their authoritative judgment. One critic speaks of Wagner meditating on problems "which any clear-headed schoolboy could quickly have settled for him"; we are not surprised to find the same critic sneering at Kant and Plato! Such writers there will always be, but a nation which tolerates them cannot expect to maintain an honourable place in the intellectual commonwealth.