Life of Wagner

by Ludwig Nohl

This misunderstood assertion gave rise to the term, “music of the future,” first used by a would-be professor, L. Bischoff in Cologne, and immediately repeated everywhere by the thoughtless multitude. In the first pamphlet he assailed the governments which only sought their own particular advantage. In the second, likewise misunderstood, he irritated all the artists. His fiercest indignation was expended upon the born arch-enemies of our art and culture in the same year, 1850, when he published “Judaism in Music,” under the name of “Freigedank.” “What the heroes of the fine arts have wrested in the course of two thousand unhappy years of strenuous and persistent efforts, from the demon hostile to art, the Jew to-day converts into drafts on art-merchandise. Who would imagine that this great work has been cemented with the sweat and toil of genius for two thousand years,” he exclaims in the exasperation of his soul at these flippant time-servers who dominated in the concert-hall and on the stage. Naturally the legion of their followers did not become his friends. They controlled the press, and it is due to this, that his most important writings are known even to-day only by his friends.

About this time he wrote the poetry to “Wiland der Schmied.” It was in Paris he showed the Germans how dire necessity contrives the wings with which to escape from bondage and regain sweet liberty. Under the peculiar constraint which work, foreign to his nature, imposed upon him and which made him sick in body and soul, his eyes one day fell upon the score of “Lohengrin.” Two words to Liszt and the reply determined him upon its performance. It occurred, August 28, 1850. It was in fact a fresh protest against a false art-world and in 1870, when the German people stood arrayed in arms against our foreign enemy everyone exclaimed in astonishment, “Lohengrin!” This selection for the celebration of Goethe’s birthday was worthy of his memory, for Wagner, as great a poet as he was musician, had invested the work with every charm of tragic beauty, both in the text and poetical construction as well as in the ingenious design of its dramatic situations. The work marks a notable era in the history of German music.

Wagner now fully explained in his book, “Opera and Drama,” published in 1861, the object of his art-revolution. The opera hitherto, as he said, was not even the germ, how much less the fruit of the art-work he purposed. On the contrary, the methods hitherto applied must be completely changed. Music must be made the essential and highest method of expression of poetry and the drama; but not the principal theme to which words and situations are subordinated. In this he unfolded all his artistic experience and claimed that whoever failed to understand him now, did so because he was determined not to understand. This can be found more fully treated in the “Allgemeine Musikgeschichte.” To his real friends he presented in the autumn of the same year that “Communication” which reveals to us his manhood and is a biography of the soul without parallel.

The high purpose, perceivable from afar, whither his endeavors tended, appears in the real work of our artist taken up again at last. The noble and affectionate regard of the family of the rich merchant Wesendonck, in Zurich, provided him with a pleasant place of rest and needed support. The performance of “Lohengrin” was a summons to new deeds. He resumed the Nibelungen poem, and we shall see its powerful influence upon the national spirit and national art.

“Man receives his first impressions from surrounding nature, and in it no effect is so strong as that of light.” Thus he begins in the “Wibelungen” of 1850. The day, the sun, appears as the very condition of life. Praise and adoration are bestowed upon it in contrast with the dark night which breeds terror. Thus light becomes the cause of all existence, Father, God. The day-break appears as the victory of light, and naturally there grow out of it at last moral impressions. This influence of nature is the foundation of all conceptions of divinity, the division into distinct religions depending upon the character of different tribes. The tribal tradition of the Franks, as the noblest type of the Germans, has the advantage of a steady development from its ancient origin into historic life. It likewise shows us in the far distant past the individual God of light as he slays the monster of the chaotic night—Siegfried’s struggle with the dragon.

But as the day surrenders to the night and summer is followed by winter, so Siegfried finally is conquered and the god is changed into mortal man. Now that he has fallen, he kindles in the human heart a deeper sympathy. As the victim of a struggle that enriches us, he arouses the moral sense of vengeance against the murderer. The primeval struggle in nature is therefore continued by ourselves and its success is seen in the vicissitudes of human life through the ages, moving on from life to death, from joy to grief, and thus in perpetual rejuvenescence clearly discloses the character of man as well as of nature. The embodiment of this constant motion, the active life itself, however, ultimately finds in Wotan (Zeus) as the father of light, its distinct form. Although Zeus reigned supreme as the father of all the gods, yet his origin is due to the advanced knowledge of man while the God of light, Siegfried, is natural and so to speak born with him.

“The most important part of this tribal legend of the Franks is the treasure which Siegfried obtains and which henceforth bears his attributes as opposed to those of the primeval myth. The Scandinavians, for instance, have preserved a Nifelheim as the abode of the black demigods in contrast to the demigods of light. These Niflungars, children of night and of death, search the interior of the earth, discover its hidden treasures and invest them with new life by forging them into weapons and ornaments. The Nibelungs, whom we also find as the Myrmidons accompanying Achilles, the Siegfried of the Greeks—are now with their treasure elevated by the Franks to a moral importance. When Siegfried slew the Nibelungen dragon he gained its treasure. The possession of it increases his power immeasurably inasmuch as he now commands the Nibelungs, but it is at the same time the cause of his death, for the heir of the dragon seeks to regain the treasure and treacherously slays him as night does the day and draws him into the dark realm of death. Siegfried is transformed into a Nibelung! Although the acquisition of the treasure dooms it to death, still each new generation inevitably strives to obtain it. The treasure represents the embodiment of worldly power. It is the earth with all its glory as we see it at dawn, our own sunny property after the night has been driven away which had spread its dragon wings like a horrid spectre over the rich treasures of the world.

“The treasure itself, which the Nibelungs have gathered, is the metal found in the bowels of the earth which enables us to improve the earth, and to fashion weapons and golden crowns, the means of power and its symbols. The divine hero Siegfried, who first obtained it and thus became a Nibelung, left to his race the claim to the treasure. To revenge the slain hero and regain the treasure is the aim of the whole race of the Nibelung-Franks, and by it they are recognized in history as well as in legend.”

Accordingly we find the noblest hero of the “Wibelungen,” Friedrich Barbarossa, of the Hohenstauffen race ruling in the mountain, surrounded by Wotan’s ravens. It is possible that the Franks were the ruling tribe even in the Indo-germanic home; at all events they laid claim to the mastery of the world as soon as they appear in history. Of this impulse or desire Charlemagne must have been conscious when he gathered the old tribal songs which contained the religious ideas of the race. Upon it Napoleon based his claim to the realm of Charlemagne. Is it not even possible that the Hohenzollerns were influenced by the recollection of this Germanic past when they endeavored to regain their old tribal seat in the Hohenstauffen land?

Here we close the intimate connection of the Nibelungen legend with our history. Temporal power, however, is not the highest destiny of a civilizing people. That our ancestors were conscious of this is shown in the fact that the treasure, or gold, and its power, was transformed into the Holy Grail. Worldly aims gave place to spiritual desires. With this interpretation of the Nibelungen myth, Wagner acknowledged the grand and eternal truth that this life is tragic throughout, and that the will which would mould a world to accord with one’s desires can finally lead to no greater satisfaction than to break itself in a noble death. This latter truth, which even the ancient Orient saw clearly when in its history the Lord himself breaks the self-will of Jacob in a dream, moves as a deep consciousness through the Germanic myths, and induced the Germans to accept not only the higher faith developed from such a basis to which alone they owe the preservation of their impetuous activity, but also tended to give this Christian truth itself a wider and deeper significance. In their myths they had already indicated that the possession of this world is not the only thing to be desired. They have the world-devastation, Muspilli, the “Twilight of the Gods.” It is this conquering of the world through the victory of self which Wagner conveys as the highest interpretation of our national myths. As Brunhilde approaches the funeral pyre to sacrifice to the beloved dead, Siegfried, the life—the only tie which still binds her to this earth—she says: