Modern Musical Drift

by W. J. Henderson

Very well. There is absolutely no authority for such a conclusion. It is a bit of mediæval religious mysticism, an adaptation of the fabulous miracles. Wagner, however, has a right to manufacture miracles for a fabulous story. He has as much right to do it in the tale of the Holy Grail as he had in the matter of Hagen's wonder-working beverages in "Götterdämmerung."

But when he tells us that the reason for Parsifal's action is enlightenment by pity, he goes still farther away from the dogmas and doctrines of Christianity and moves through the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer toward the religion of the Buddha. It is a grave error to relegate to a secondary place the influence of Schopenhauer on Wagner and to credit the poet-composer with a direct entry into the teachings of the Gautama. We must bear in mind continually that Wagner got from Schopenhauer two great doctrines, one artistic, and the other ethical.

Schopenhauer propounded as the basis of his æsthetic system the theorem that it is the business of art to represent to us the eternal essence of things by means of prototypes. The conditions of time and place, cause and tendency, must be cleared away, and the naked Eternal Idea underneath disclosed. The discernment and revelation of this Idea are the duty and privilege of art.

Wagner, then, sought to set forth his personages and their actions as symbolical. They were to be visual embodiments of Eternal Ideas. Amfortas is the sinner in the agony of his punishment. Parsifal is the savior, the pure one who can redeem; Klingsor is the evil one, and Kundry the unwilling slave of his power. If here we find ourselves involved in some contradictions, let us be patient. Wagner's logic is that of a poet and a musician. It will not stand the test of the metaphysician.

But to resume. The ethical doctrine which the composer obtained from Schopenhauer was more significant in its results. Schopenhauer's philosophic system need not be set forth here. Suffice it to say that ethically its only possible outcome was negative. The world is so bad that the chief end of man should be to get out of it.

To reach the state of mind in which that end is the chief object, one must rid himself of all desire and yearn to arrive at a complete negation of the will to live. Recall "Tristan und Isolde." The first step toward the negation of the will to live is perfect sympathy with suffering. Then comes asceticism, which leads directly away from life toward a condition of abstraction.

Here the thought touches the monasticism of the early Church and avows a kinship with the Buddhistic doctrine. Withdrawal from the world and safety by absorption into the universal unconsciousness were the Buddhist's hope of peace. But neither Gautama nor Schopenhauer had any definite, positive reason for this. Here the early monk, who was looking out for the salvation of his own precious soul and letting other people's souls take care of themselves, came nearer to the ideals of Wagner as set forth in "Parsifal."

No, Schopenhauer did not teach Wagner the doctrine of "enlightenment by pity," for with Schopenhauer pity was not enlightenment, but the beginning of a personal abstraction. A man was sorry for others because they were in the world, the very worst place a man could inhabit. His sensuous nature made him like the things he found here (such as flower-maidens, for example); and his duty was to mortify the flesh, get rid of all his mortal appetites, live in asceticism, and die as soon as possible. Wagner was fond of grafting his own ideas on the philosophical systems of bigger men than himself. So he invented this doctrine of enlightenment. How he worked out his psychologic plan we shall see presently.

No doubt Wagner had his eye on Buddhism when he wrote "Parsifal." It is history that he once contemplated a Buddhistic drama, called "The Victors," in which he was to preach the doctrine of fleshly renunciation and salvation through the mortification of desire. But he abandoned the scheme. The story was Eastern, and he did some delving in Oriental literature.

How the "Four Sublime Verities" of Gautama, the founder of the Buddhistic religion, must have appealed to him! These were, first, that pain exists; second, that the cause of pain is desire or attachment; third, that pain can be ended by Nirvana; and fourth, how to attain Nirvana.