And now the passing years have brought a confirmation in belief of the statement made by Franz Liszt, "Richard Wagner is the one true musical genius of his age."
Wagner's admirers should, for him, plead guilty to the worst that can be said: he is everything that his most bitter critics say, but he is so much more that his faults and follies sink into ashes before the divine fire of his genius, and we still have the gold. Inconsistent, paradoxical, preposterous—why, yes, of course! Still he is the greatest poet of passion the world has ever seen—don't cavil—passion's consistency consists in being inconsistent.
"Every sentence must have a man behind it," and so we might say, "Every bar of music must have a man behind it." That harmony only can live which once had its dwelling-place in a great and tender heart.
The province of art is to impart a sublime emotion, and that which affects to be an emotion, no matter how subtly launched, can never live as classic art. Honesty here, as elsewhere, must have its reward. Be yourself, though all the world laugh.
I will not say that Wagner was—he is. The man himself in life was often worn to the quick by the deprivations he had to endure, or the stupid misunderstandings he encountered, so at times he was impatient, erratic, possibly perverse. But all that is gone—his mistakes have been washed in the blood of Time—only the good survives. The best that this great and godlike man ever thought, or felt, or knew, is ours—he lives immortal in his Art.
PAGANINI
