Gerardo. They would reciprocate that feeling, Sir. These people do count. One must be something. Name me a single famous man who did not count! If one is not a composer, one is something else, that's all, and there's no need of being unhappy about it, either. I was something else myself before I became a Wagner singer—something, my efficiency at which nobody could doubt, and with which I was entirely satisfied. It is not for us to say what we are intended for in this world. If it were, any Tom, Dick, or Harry might come along! Do you know what I was before they discovered me? I was a paperhanger's apprentice. Do you know what that is like! (Indicating by gesture.) I put paper on walls—with paste. I don't conceal my humble origin from anybody. Now just imagine, that as a paperhanger I should have taken it into my head to become a Wagner singer! Do you know what they would have done to me?
Dühring. They would have sent you to the madhouse.
LEO TOLSTOY
Permission Albert Langen, Munich
FROM OLAF GULBRANSSON'S "FAMOUS CONTEMPORARIES"
Gerardo. Exactly, and rightly so. Whoever is dissatisfied with what he is will not get anywhere as long as he lives. A healthy man does that at which he is successful; if he fails, he chooses another calling. You spoke of the judgment of your friends. It does not take much to obtain expressions of approbation and admiration which do not cost those anything who utter them. Since my fifteenth year I have been paid for every labor I've performed and should have considered it a disgrace to be compelled to do something for nothing. Fifty years of fruitless struggling! Can anybody be so stubborn as not to have that convince him of the impossibility of his dreams! What did you get out of your life? You have sinfully wasted it! I have never striven for anything out of the ordinary; but, Sir, I can assure you of one thing: that since my earliest childhood days I have never had enough time left to stand out in the street for a whole week. And if I were to think that in my old days I might be compelled to do that very thing—Sir, I am speaking only for myself now—but I cannot imagine how I could still muster the courage to look people in the face.
Dühring. What? With such an opera in your hands! Remember, I am not doing it for my own sake; I am doing it for art's sake.
Gerardo. You overestimate art. Let me tell you that art is something quite different from what people make themselves believe about it.
Dühring. I know nothing higher on earth!
Gerardo. That's a view shared only by people like yourself to whose interest it is to make this view prevail generally. We artists are merely one of bourgeoisie's luxuries in paying for which they will outbid each other. If you were right, how would an opera like Walküre be possible which deals with things the exposure of which is absolutely abhorrent to the public. Yet when I sing the part of Siegmund, the most solicitous mothers will not hesitate to bring in their thirteen or fourteen year old daughters. And indeed, as I am standing on the stage, I know for certain that not one person in the audience any longer pays the slightest attention to the action itself. If they did they would get up and out. That's what they actually did when the opera was still new. Now they have accustomed themselves to ignoring it. They notice it as little as they notice the air separating them from the stage. That, you see, is the meaning of what you call art! To this you have sacrificed fifty years of your life! Our real duty as artists is to produce ourselves to the paying public night after night under one pretense or another. Nor is its interest limited to such exhibitions; it fastens itself as tenaciously upon our private life. One belongs to the public with every breath one draws; and because we submit to this for money, people never know which they had better do most, idolize us or despise us. Go and find out how many went to the theatre yesterday to hear me sing and how many came to gape at me as they would gape at the emperor of China if he were to come to town tomorrow. Do you know what the public is after in its pursuit of art? To shout bravos, to throw flowers and wreaths upon the stage, to have something to talk about, to be seen by others, to say Ah and Oh, once in a while to take a hand in unhitching a performer's horses—these are the public's real wants, and I satisfy them. If they pay me half a million, I in return furnish a living to a legion of cabmen, writers, milliners, florists, tavernkeepers. The money is made to circulate. People's blood is made to circulate. Young girls become engaged, old maids get married, wives fall victims to their husbands' friends, and grandmothers get no end of topics for gossip. Accidents and crimes are made to happen. At the ticket office a child is trampled to death, a lady is robbed of her pocketbook, a gentleman in the audience becomes insane during a performance. That creates business for physicians, lawyers ... (he is seized by a fit of coughing.) And to think in this condition I am to sing Tristan tomorrow!—I am not telling you these things out of vanity but to cure you of your delusion. The standard by which to judge a man's importance in this world is the world itself and not some fixed conviction one may have acquired through years of brooding meditation. I did not put myself in the market either; they discovered me. There are no unappreciated, neglected geniuses. We are not the makers and masters of our own fate; man is born a slave!