such a man aside for the benefit of an interlojier
who had certahi new-fangled notions as to how
actors should act, and singers should sing, and
players play, appeared to him simply monstrous.
By the light of those days all this was reasonable
enough ; so is Philistinism always reasonable when
it is satisfied with existing things, and declines to
make a leap in the dark. And yet how reasonable
in a higlier sense, and how simple are the demands
which true genius makes, and which Wagner made
on this occasion. All he asked for at the Philhar-
monic Society was that the musicians should play
intelligently, and in the spirit in which the composer
had written ; and this, he pointed out, was impos-
sible when a long programme of heterogeneous
pieces had to be gone tlirough in a single rehearsal.
All that he expected of operatic singers at Berlin
and elsewhere was that they should think before
they spoke, and speak distinctly before they sang ;
that they should, in short, identify themselves with
the charactei's they represented, and address their
declarations of hate or of love to the parties more
immediately concerned, instead of shouting them at
the upper gods. Against this shouting, the harangue,
as he called it, he waged war during all his life,
and might have waged war for a centuiy without
producing the slightest effect.
In short, the much talked of reform of Wagner
consists only in applying the most primitive and
natural laws of nature to the writing and acting of
operas.
How reasonable all this, how almost too obvious
to require explanation, and yet how impossible to
achieve ! The great cause of nature versus conven-
tionalism will be continued, the tragic life-drama of
genius will be repeated, ad irifimtum, as long as men
are the products of custom, the blind worshippers
of formulas and of things which, having once been
vital, have long lost their vitality. There is indeed
no doubt that the established rules and conventions
which Wagner and other light-givers try to pierce
and devour as with a flame of fire, are as necessary
as the lies and hypocrisies of polite society are. If,
after the manner of Rousseau's ideal savages, we
were all to speak the truth, and tell our neighbours
exactly what we thought of them, every dinner-
party would become a stricken field of battle. In
the same sense, if every man would follow his own
sweet will, and despise the example of the persons a
trifle wiser than himself who have set the fashion,
how unbearably eccentric and absurd and ugly the
world would become ! Fortunately genius does not
know this. Conscious of its own strength, it looks
upon wholesome safeguards as unbearable shackles ;
it rolls the stone of Sisyphus up the hill, and is
astonished when the solid mass, following the law
of gravity, rolls down again, and perchance buries
poor genius under its overwhelming weight. For-
tunately, I say, for in this battering of walls and
this rolling of inert stones the highest faculties of
the human mind are manifested and developed.
I have called Wagner's life-drama, as revealed in
this correspondence with Liszt, a tragedy. That
that tragedy had, so to speak, a happy ending, that
he lived to see his enemies worsted and his music
extolled to the skies, that in his latter days lie had
plenty of money and abundance of fame, makes very
little difference in the matter. I remember well
when, after the first performance of the Nlbelungrii
at Bayreuth, AVagner came before the curtain and
said to his patrons, ' You have to-day placed me
in a position which no artist before me ever occupied.'
Quite true, I said to myself; the position is unique
of its kind, unequalled for its splendour and for
its hopelessness. The great lesson taught by the
Festival plays will be listened to by a generation,
may be by two ; after that the impulse will slacken
and things will return very much to what they were
before ; perhaps they are returning at this very
moment even at Bayreuth.
In a second article I propose to consider the
cliaracter of Liszt as shown in these letters.
THE PLACE OF POETRY IN A MUSIC-DRAMA.
IN the recent extraordinary article on Wagnerism
by Mr. Rowbotham in the Nineteenth Century,
for which well-meiited castigation was administered
in the last number of this Revieio, there is one ques-
tion raised which deserves more special attention
than it has received in any of the replies. It is of
no moment what Mr. Rowbotliam's opinion of
Wagner's capacity as a poet may be, but as in his
deliverance on this matter he is echoing what has
been expressed by abler thinkers than himself, ami
as the adverse criticism has never been adequately
met, it seems worth while to examine the grounds
on which it rests, especially as on the decision
depends the answer to the general question of the
place which the dramatic poet is to fill in the future,
when his work is to be combined with the work of
the musical composer.
This answer to the general question will, I believe.
Page:Scottishartrevie01unse.djvu/235
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
WAGNER AND LISZT IN THEIR CORRESPONDENCE
197
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Scottishartrevie01unse.djvu/page235-1024px-Scottishartrevie01unse.djvu.jpg)