“The God, who in my breast resides,
He can not change external forces.”
This longing grew until it seemed as if self-annihilation alone could bring relief, and then appeared to him the image of Him whose death brought salvation to mankind. He conceived the idea of picturing a human “Jesus of Nazareth,” to represent the universal rejection, in all its malignity and rancor, to which Jesus fell a victim. The reflection, however, that he certainly could not secure a representation of his work under existing circumstances, and the additional fact that after the Revolution, which seemed bound to destroy every favorable condition, such a declaration of internal struggle would have counted for nothing, induced him to leave the plan unexecuted. Besides, in this year (1848), he had already finished “Siegfried’s Death,” in its poetic form, and had even sketched some of the musical thoughts connecting with that new world, to which he had looked forward with such buoyant hope. At last came also the complete rupture with the world that surrounded him, even while he was devoting the best endeavors of his life to it. Wagner himself informs us of the clear insight he had gained into the nature of the political movement. Either the old state of things must remain intact or the new must sweep it entirely away. He recognized the approach of the catastrophe which was certain to engulf every one who was in earnest and unselfish enough to desire a change of the deplorable conditions so generally felt. The ancient spirit of a decayed past had outlived itself and openly and insolently offered defiance to the existing and ruling conditions. Knowing well the unavoidable decision which he would have to form, he ceased all productive activity. Every stroke of the pen appeared ridiculous, inasmuch as he could no longer deceive himself in regard to his prospects. He spent these May-days of 1849 in the open air, basking in the sunshine of the awakening spring and casting away all egoistic desires.
At this time the revolt in Dresden occurred, which, as a sort of forlorn hope, he thought might be the beginning of a general uprising in Germany. “After what has been said, who could be so blind as not to see that I had now no choice but to turn my back upon a world, to which no ties of sympathy bound me,” he says, thus clearly indicating his active participation in the May-revolt. It was not long before the Prussians appeared, who had only waited the signal from Dresden. With many others Wagner had to take to flight. A long, sad banishment followed, but out of its necessities and privations rose the full man and artist who restored to his nation its ideals, or rather first established the ideal in its perfection. How this conception came to him is disclosed in the last words he uttered about the men and circumstances which combined to wickedly conceal it. It is as bold as it is inspiring, and it is only the deepest solicitude for our most sacred treasures that could give utterance to such words. It reads:
“There is nothing with which to compare the sensation of pleasure I experienced after the first painful impressions had been overcome, when I felt myself free, free from a world of tormenting, ever unsatisfied desires, free from conditions in which my aspirations had been my sole absorbing nourishment. When I, persecuted and proscribed, was no longer bound by any considerations to resort to a deception of any kind; when I had given up every hope and desire, and with unconstrained candor could say openly and plainly that I, the artist, hated from the bottom of my heart this hypocritical world which pretended to be interested in art and culture; when I could say to it that not one drop of artist’s blood flowed in all its veins, that it had not one spark of manly culture or manly beauty,—then for the first time in my life I felt myself completely free, happy, and joyous, although I sometimes did not know where to conceal myself the next day that I might still breathe the free air of heaven.”
These are words such as a Siegfried might have spoken. From this time on he did not rest until the Siegfried-deed was done and the sword was thrust into the dragon’s heart.
The preparations for it were conducted with untiring energy and great wisdom. The works of art which he had already forged were the sword. The true and noble art, which had begun with Goethe, was now introduced in the various European centres of culture “with considerate speed,” and finally inspired in Germany, the very centre of this culture and art, an understanding of their real elements. In the modest Zurich where the banishment began, in London—Paris had rejected it—in Petersburg, in Vienna, in Munich, and at last also in Berlin, which at that time did not appear to have “one drop of artist’s blood in all its veins” the world’s attention was aroused anew by actual representations, though often only in parts, to the fact, that the latter-day art of the last generation had removed us a great distance from our ideals. And finally he succeeded, at first in Munich, subsequently in Baireuth, in securing for the art of the stage a proper representation, and with it an awakening of the age to a correct perception of art as expressive of the ideal which stimulates the whole world. The thrust which pierced the heart of the dragon of the modern theatres was his “Parsifal,” and the Siegfried, who dealt the blow, gained with his art the slumbering bride, the re-awakening heart of the nation and mankind.
Who is there to-day who will doubt that Faust denial of the curse and the prophetic presentment of a new world? Is it not true that the governing powers of the present time have seized upon the ideas in politics and society, which were the kernel of the movement of 1848 and 1849? Whenever they shall understand the mental strivings of the nation, as well as the political and military, then art and religion will gain the dignity and the right to which they are entitled. The revolt of Wagner was the revolt of the better soul of the nation which had been estranged from itself. Thirty years of deeds have shown that his word was the truth. We now come to their recital.