The Evolution of Love

by Emil Lucka

As the despairing monk of mediaeval times, apparently abandoned by the love of God, turned to Satan and worshipped him, so Tannhäuser, cast out of the Kingdom of Heaven by the words of the Pope, and renounced by Elizabeth, again gives himself up to sensuality, which is here contrasted with spiritual love, and represented as demoniacal. Tannhäuser is not vacillating between the love of two women—a spiritualised and a sensual love; he is wavering between the purely spiritual love of Elizabeth and promiscuous sexuality represented by Venus, not centring on her as an individual, but diffused, as it were, through her whole kingdom. The dualism which rends the whole universe is strongly and uncompromisingly emphasised in text and music, and Wagner himself explained to the opera singer, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, that the main characteristic of the principal part was "the intensest expression of delight and remorse without any intermediate stage of feeling, changing abruptly and decisively." The closing words of the first scene: "My salvation lies in Mary!" are the real turning point of the drama. As abrupt as his desertion of Venus for Mary, is his return to her in the third act. By the side of Mary is placed the more human, the more earthly but yet idealised form of Elizabeth, a figure closely resembling Beatrice and Margaret.

The music of Tannhäuser (more especially the overture) expresses the contrast between the two erotic world-elements with striking abruptness. The harmonious and musically perfect motive of religious yearning (the chorus of the pilgrims) which forms the beginning and the end of the overture, is assailed by the briefer motives of sensuous seduction and ecstasy of the middle; the quivering, tickling passages of the violins play round the sacred music of the chorale like so many seductive elves. The Venusberg music is probably the most perfect expression of pure sensuality which has ever been reached in the world of music; it is the complete translation of sensual craving and sensual rapture into the language of music. In the Venusberg music composed for the performance in Paris, this motive is still more richly elaborated, and the recently published "sketches" for the scene in the Venusberg contain a number of details which were eliminated from the later version. Here bestial and demoniacal sensuality, not content with human couples, nymphs, maenads, sirens and fauns, calls for beings half-brute, half-human, represented by centaurs and sphinxes, for black goats, cats, tigers, panthers, and so on, finally for obscene representations of antique legends, such as Leda and the Swan, Europa and the Bull, symbols and illustrations of the climax of perversion. It is a magnificent, poetico-musical picture of untrammelled sexuality, whose queen is Woman, the priestess of voluptuousness, represented by Venus. Tannhäuser's yearning for humanity and divinely pure love gives to this world a tinge of the demoniacal, for the latter is nothing but natural sensuality regarded from a higher standpoint, in this case from the point of view of spiritual love. Whenever it is opposed to the transcendental, the natural is conceived as dangerous and diabolical. At the moment of the abrupt inner change in Tannhäuser, Venus and her world must vanish like a phantom of the night. "A consuming, voluptuous excitement kept my blood and nerves tingling while I sketched and composed the music of Tannhäuser...." says Wagner in one place, and in another he confesses that sensual pleasure, while attracting and seducing him, filled him with repugnance. He speaks of his longing to "satisfy my craving in a higher, nobler element which, unpolluted by the sensuality so characteristic of modern life and art, appears to me as something pure, something chaste and virginal, unapproachable and intangible. What else can this longing for love, the noblest feeling I am capable of, be, than the yearning to leave this world of facts behind me and become absorbed in an element of infinite, transcendental love, to which death would be the gate...."

The dualism in the music of Tannhäuser is consistently maintained. The two elements war against each other without ever merging into one. Those parts of the music which characterise Elizabeth are full of noble pathos and a little sentimental. At the beginning of the second act she is not yet herself; she can still laugh like a light-hearted girl, but when she again succumbs to Tannhäuser's unearthly (and to her fatal) charm, and realises how irrevocably he has surrendered himself to Venus, she rises to true greatness and resolutely faces the swords unsheathed to punish the offender. Before our eyes she is transformed into the saint who realises her mission and is ready to take her burden upon her; more heroic than Beatrice or Margaret, she points to him "who laughingly stabbed her heart," the road to salvation. Like her two predecessors Elizabeth prays to Mary for the salvation of her lover—the prayer for the beloved has ever been woman's truest and most fervent prayer.

The thought of achieving a man's salvation through a great and steadfast love, is the subject of the Flying Dutchman, and plays, as is well known, an important part with Wagner. Strange to say he has for this very reason frequently been scoffed at by those who call themselves admirers of Goethe. Dante-Goethe's great problem of salvation is represented in Tannhäuser with the utmost lucidity. The essence of it is that love can positively intervene in the life of a man whose soul is turned towards it, but who is confused and beset by temptations. His vacillating heart feels the love which is brooding over him and ultimately abandons itself to it, to be saved by its unswerving loyalty. Maybe this is as much a miracle as "grace," but it is also a psychical fact, because the love which yearns for the sinner awakens and increases not only his faith in its power to help, but also in his own strength; darkness and evil dismay him and he turns towards the light. In Tannhäuser this spiritual condition, which is of such primary importance in the last scene of Faust, is clearly expressed; his love for Elizabeth has been strong enough to kill desire kindled in his heart again and again by Venus; yet again he is on the point of succumbing to his senses. The vision of Venus appears before his eyes, but at Wolfram's exclamation, "Elizabeth!" he realises in a flash that Elizabeth has been praying for him day and night, and has given her life to save him. Before this sudden illumination the power of Venus sinks into nothing; divine love falls into his darkness like a ray of light—"Oh, sacred love's eternal power!"—it quickens his own love which is striving upwards, and with the words: "Saint Elizabeth, pray for me!" he sinks to the ground. His way, like Faust's, although one-sidedly emotional, leads from chaos and sin to pure love and salvation, not through his own strength but by the help vouchsafed to him in the love of his glorified mistress.

By the side of the struggling, suffering Tannhäuser, tossed hither and thither between God and the devil, between Elizabeth and Venus, stands Wolfram, the untempted woman-worshipper. The two extremes clash upon each other in the contest of the minnesingers. Tannhäuser, at war with himself, exasperated by the calm, matter-of-fact way in which Wolfram sings the praise of spiritual love, rushes to the other extreme and bursts into rapturous praise of the goddess of love and the pleasure of the senses. I need not lay stress on the fact that at that time of his life Wagner's own heart was the arena in which the conflict was fought out; a work like Tannhäuser is not made, it is conceived in the innermost soul of its creator. Every one of Wagner's great works bears the unmistakable stamp of sincerity and intensity, while with Goethe, on the other hand, it is not difficult to distinguish the genuine ones, that is to say, those which were written under the pressure of a compelling impulse, from those which owed their existence to the intellect rather than to the soul.

Tannhäuser immortalises the adolescence of the European races of mankind; the third stage is not even anticipated.

Lohengrin, the principal interest of which is other than erotic, represents a transitional phase between the second and the third stage; body and soul are no longer regarded as warring against each other; a greater harmony beyond either is dimly divined. Lohengrin has set out from a distant, transcendental kingdom to find earthly happiness in Elsa's love—but he is doomed to disappointment. I will not analyse the theme, but rather quote a few passages from Wagner: "Lohengrin is seeking the woman who is ready to believe in him; who will not ask him who he is and whence he comes, but love him as he is and because he is so.... Lohengrin's only desire is for love, to be loved, to be understood through love. In spite of the superior development of his senses, in spite of his intense consciousness, he desires nothing more than to live the life of an ordinary citizen of this earth, to love and be loved—to be a perfect specimen of humanity." Wagner further speaks of his longing to find "the woman"; the female principle, quite simply, for ever appearing to him under new forms; the woman for whom the Flying Dutchman longed in his unfathomable distress; the woman who, like a radiant star, guided Tannhäuser from the voluptuous caverns of the Venusberg to the pure regions of the spirit, and drew Lohengrin from his dazzling heights to the warm bosom of the earth. We find here the new form of love, not yet fully comprehended but desired and anticipated in art.

In Tristan and Isolde it is attained completely and in its highest perfection. We possess in Wagner's letters to Matilda Wesendonk, and in the diary written for her, the documents of the personal experience out of which Tristan grew, and which unfold one of the most touching love-stories. As I have already discussed Tristan and Isolde in a previous chapter, I will here only quote a passage from a letter written by Wagner and addressed to Liszt at the time of his first meeting with Matilda; it fully expresses the harmony of the third stage. "Give me a heart, a mind, a woman's love in which I can plunge my whole being—who will fully understand me—how little else I should need in this world!"

It is very significant that side by side with Tristan we have Die Meistersinger, composed a little later on. Here the third stage of love is realised in its idyllic possibility; the synthesis has been given the shape of middle-class matter-of-factness, that is to say, the fulfilment of love in marriage: "I love a maid and claim her hand!" For this reason the work, although the fundamental idea is not erotic, is entitled to be placed by the side of Tristan with its demand for the absolute metaphysical consummation of love.

It is an amazing fact that the same genius should have experienced and portrayed both stages so perfectly. Doubtless Tannhäuser and Tristan are the most personal self-revelations of the great lover, pulsating with passion, and far remote from the colossal objective world of the Niebelungs, the lofty serenity of Lohengrin and the wisdom of Parsifal.