Both men hark back to a time when Man and Nature were on friendly terms; when the thought, best exemplified by the early Greeks, of the sacredness of the human body was recognized; when the old medieval feeling of helpful brotherhood yet lingered; and the restless misery of competition and all the train of woe, squalor and ugliness that "civilization" has brought were unknown.
Wagner's music is made up of the sounds of Nature conventionalized. You hear the sighing of the breeze, the song of the birds, the cries of animals, the rush of the storm. Wagner's essay, entitled, "Art and Revolution," is the twin to the lecture, "Art and Socialism," by Morris; and in the "Art-Work of the Future," Wagner works out at length the favorite recurring theme of Morris: work is for the worker, and art is the expression of man's joy in his work.
In Eighteen Hundred Forty-four, when Morris was ten years of age, Wagner wrote:
"I compose for myself; it is just a question between me and my Maker. I grow as I exercise my faculties, and expression is a necessary form of spiritual exercise. How shall I live? Express what I think or feel, or what you feel?
"No, I must be honest and sincere. I must, for the need of myself, live my own life, for work is for the worker, at the last. Each man must please himself, and Nature has placed her approbation on this by supplying the greatest pleasure men ever know as a reward for doing good work. I hate this fast-growing tendency to chain men to machines in big factories and deprive them of all joy in their efforts—the plan will lead to cheap men and cheap products. I set my face against it and plead for the dignity and health of the open air, and the olden time."
This sort of talk led straight to Wagner's arrest in the streets of Dresden on the charge of inciting a riot; and it was the identical line of argument that caused the arrest of Morris in Trafalgar Square, London, when he was taken struggling to the station-house.
Wagner was exiled and Morris merely "cautioned," placed under police surveillance and ostracized. The difference in time explains the difference in punishment. A century earlier and both men would have forfeited their heads.
In all of Wagner's operas the scene is laid at a time when the festivals, games and religious ceremonies were touched with the thought of beauty. Men were strong, plain, blunt and honest. Affectation, finesse, pretense and veneer were unknown. Art had not resolved itself into the possession of a class of idlers and dilettantes who hired long-haired men and fussy girls in Greek gowns to make pretty things for them. All worked with their hands, through need, and when they made things they worked for utility and beauty. They gave things a beautiful form, because men and women worked together, and for each other. And wherever men and women work together we find Beauty. Men who live only with other men are never beautiful in their work, or speech, or lives, neither are women. But at this early time life was largely communal, natural, and Art was the possession of all, because all had a share in its production. Observe the setting of any Wagner opera where Walter Damrosch has his way and get that flavor of bold, free, wholesome, honest Beauty. And yet no stage was ever large enough to quite satisfy Wagner, and all the properties, if he had had his way, would have been works of Art, thought out in detail and materialized for the purpose by human hands.
Now turn to "The Story of the Glittering Plain," "Gertha's Lovers," "News From Nowhere" or "The Hollow Land," by William Morris, and note the same stage-setting, the same majesty, dignity and sense of power. Observe the great underlying sense of joy in life, the gladness of mere existence. A serenity and peace pervades the work of both of these men; they are mystic, fond of folklore and legend; they live in the open, are deeply religious without knowing it, have nothing they wish to conceal, and are one with Nature in all her many moods and manifestations—sons of God!