For the rest, it may be mentioned that Wagner was in private life a most kindly man, albeit at times quick-tempered, a great lover of children and animals. His philosophy was a somewhat variable quantity; he fell under the influence first of Feuerbach, then of Schopenhauer, and to some extent possibly of Nietzsche. But still, throughout all his works runs the doctrine of the Free Individual, of which Siegfried and Parsifal are perhaps the most striking impersonations.
Like Browning, Wagner believed in redemption by means of sacrifice. In his richness and strength Wagner typified the abounding vitality of the new Germany. To the Fatherland he is what Shakespeare is to England. One may apply to him the noble words Milton wrote of Shakespeare:
"Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thyself a livelong monument.
......
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die."
H. P. M. J.
I found among my son's papers a sketch in manuscript of Wagner's life and work. It begins with some observations on Romanticism and Classicism.
Whereas in the Classical style the spirit is held in restraint by certain forms, in the Romantic it refuses to acknowledge these forms and breaks away to give the soul entirely free play. It necessarily follows that the Romantic style makes the wider appeal, for it touches chords of the heart that the Classical cannot. Also the Romantic is rather more definite and less purely intellectual than the Classical, though the ideal may be equally high in the one as in the other. In short, the Romantic style is human in its appeal, while the Classical is superhuman. The best examples of men great in these two forms of art are Shakespeare in the Romance and Milton in the Classic.
Returning to music, he thought that Bach, "immortal though many of his works are," was fettered by his servitude to rules.
The Classical may become too cold, may lose all connection with the warmth of humanity. Such a fate does Haydn seem to have met in many of his works. Beethoven, the mightiest classicist, also to some extent Mozart, saw that the soul must not hold entirely aloof from humanity. Hence it is that Beethoven broke deliberately several, though not indeed very many, of Bach's more enchaining rules, while Mozart, in his operas at least, had a large amount of Romance worked into his music. On the other hand, by its very nature the Romance style is occasionally apt to slip into what is pre-eminently Classicism.
He confutes the argument that because base things have to be expressed in the Romantic style therefore that style degrades Art, for "base things handled artistically excite pure emotions of anger or indignation."
Wagner, though he broke every rule set up by Bach, though he abolished all the ideas of Classicism, produced with his later works (i.e., The Ring, Die Meistersinger, Tristan, and Parsifal) music which reveals infinitudes of art to quite as great an extent as any classicist has done.... Wagner gives us Nature's message, Beethoven the message of the incomprehensible Empyrean, and it is for no one to say that the one message is any greater or less than the other.