Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" Part 1

Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.

by George Ainslie Hight.

PREFACE

The following pages contain little if anything that is new, or that would be likely to interest those who are already at home in Wagner's work. They are intended for those who are beginning the study of Wagner. In spite of many books, I know of no Wagner literature in English to which a beginner can turn who wishes to know what Wagner was aiming at, in what respect his works differ from those of the operatic composers who preceded him. Some sort of Introduction appears to me a necessary preliminary to the study of Wagner, not because his works are artificial or unnatural, but because our minds have become perverted by the highly artificial products of the Italian and French opera, so that a work of Wagner at first appears to us very much as _Paradise Lost_ or a tragedy of Sophokles would appear to a person who had never read anything but light French novels. He must entirely change the att.i.tude of his mind, and the change, although it be a return to nature and truth, is not easy to make.

Those who wish fully to understand Wagner's aims must read his own published works. I have not attempted to give his views in a condensed form, being convinced that any such attempt could only end in failure.

Whenever it has been made, the result has been a caricature; you cannot separate a man's work from his personality. All that I could do was to endeavour to lay some of the problems involved, as I conceive them, before the reader in my own words.

SAMER, PAS DE CALAIS, _May_, 1912.

CHAPTER I

ON WAGNER CRITICISM

A new work on Wagner requires some justification. It might be urged that, since the _Meister_ has been dead for some decades and the violence of party feeling may be a.s.sumed to have somewhat abated, we are now in a position to form a sober estimate of his work, to review his aims, and judge of his measure of success.

Such, however, is not my purpose in the following pages. I conceive that the endeavour to _estimate_ an artist's work involves a misconception of the nature of art. We can estimate products of utility, things expressible in figures, the weight of evidence, a Bill for Parliament, a tradesman's profits. But a work of art is written for our pleasure, and all that we can attempt is to understand it.

True, we must judge in a certain sense, we must weigh and estimate before we can arrive at understanding; but it is one thing to meditate in the privacy of one's own mind, quite another to publish these constructive processes as an end in themselves, to set up critical "laws" and expect that poets are going to conform to them.

Art, says Ruskin, is a language, a vehicle of thought, in itself nothing. Plato's teaching in the third book of his _Republic_ is the same, and the idea of the secondary nature of art, of its value only as the expression of something else, of a human or moral purpose only fully expressible in the drama, is the nucleus of all Wagner's theoretical writing. In private conversation and in his letters he often spoke very emphatically. "I would joyfully sacrifice and destroy everything that I have produced if I could hope thereby to further freedom and justice."[1]

[Footnote 1: The episode which gave rise to this remark is too long to relate in the text, but is highly characteristic and instructive for Wagner's att.i.tude towards art. It will be found in the sixth volume of Glasenapp's biography, p. 309.]

Let us clearly keep in mind the distinction here involved between the two elements of every work of art: matter and form, substance and technique, [Greek: onta] and [Greek: gignomena], Brahm and Maya, Wille und Vorstellung, the emotional and the intellectual life of man, or, untechnically, what he feels and his communication of those feelings to others as a social being. With the first of these the critic has nothing to do; the matter is given; all he has to consider is whether it has found adequate expression--that is, to try to understand the language, that when he has mastered it he may help others to do so according to his ability. I do not say that the matter is one to which we are indifferent. On the contrary, it is far the more important of the two, since the thing expressed is prior to its expression. Only it is no concern of the critic, because we may fairly a.s.sume that if the technical expression is correct and intelligible the artist has already told us what he wishes to convey in the most perfect language of which that idea is susceptible, and that any attempt to put it into the lower and more prosy language of the critic would only weaken and distort the thought.

It does not seem to me that pa.s.sions have abated very much, or judgments have become much more sober, since Wagner has left us. In England at least the ignorance and indifference which prevail among the ordinary public are still profound. In truth the seed which he sowed has fallen upon evil soil; his fate has been a cruel one. He, the most sincere and transparent of men, whose only wish was to be seen as he actually was, has perhaps more than any other great man been the victim of misrepresentation, alike from his senseless persecutors and from his equally senseless adulators. While he lived, every imaginable calumny, plausible and unplausible, was invented to besmirch his character and his art. Now it is, in Germany at least, no longer safe to revile him on the ground of his technical artistic style. The days are long past when the terms "charlatan," "amateur,"

"artistic anarchist" could be applied to him with impunity, and it is fully recognized by all who have any t.i.tle to speak that Wagner, so far from being a revolutionary destroyer, was, like all true reformers--Luther, for example, or Jeremiah or Sokrates--an extreme conservative. Those who like Walt Whitman preach libertinism in the name of democracy do not want reform; they are satisfied with things as they are. Wagner battled, both in music and in literature, for _der reine Satz_--purity of diction as against the untidy licence which was then and still is fas.h.i.+onable among weak-kneed artists and a thoughtless public.[2]

[Footnote 2: It is perhaps still necessary to produce some warrant for these statements. The deep-rooted conservatism of Wagner's character is a prominent feature of all his literary work, and especially noticeable in his educational schemes, as, for example; the report on a proposed Munich school of music, with its text: "The business of a Conservatory is to conserve." On his musical diction the testimony of Prof. S. Jada.s.sohn will probably be considered sufficient by most people. He writes: "Wagner's harmonies are clear and pure; they are never arbitrary, nor coa.r.s.e nor brutal, but throughout conscientious and clean according to the strict rules of pure diction (_des reinen Satzes_). Consequently the sequences and combinations of the chords and the course of the modulation are easily followed by those who know harmony. Similarly, his polyphonic style is easily intelligible to the trained contrapuntist"--and more to the same effect, Jada.s.sohn is here only expressing what every competent musician knows. Before the first performance at Bayreuth in 1876 Wagner's last word to the artists was: _Deutlichkeit_--"clearness"--a word which sums up all his technical teaching throughout his life.]

Mr. Hadow has truly observed that we have not yet learned to treat genius frankly, and either starve it with censure or smother it with irrational excess of enthusiasm. If the malicious misrepresentations and persecutions which Wagner endured during his lifetime were the outcome of ignorance, a.s.suredly the hysterical raving of our day is no less ignorant and contemptible. I hear it said that in England "Wagnerism" is an att.i.tude, and can only reply that it is so in Germany too. Among the cosmopolitan audiences who crowd the theatres of Dresden and Munich on a Wagner night and greet his works with thundering applause, there is probably not one person in a hundred who really knows what he sees and hears. Not that these people are not perfectly sincere; _something_ they have undoubtedly taken in; the marvellous euphony and balance of Wagner's orchestra under the conductors we now have, the exquisite grace of the melodic and harmonic structure, and the lyric beauty of so many scenes are apparent to all, and will always awaken the boundless enthusiasm of those who go only to be diverted. But these are only the ornaments of the drama; to understand the drama itself requires a serious effort on the part of the hearer which few are prepared to make, a moral sympathy with the composer and receptive understanding of his aims of which few are capable.

We in England seem content to remain in darkness. I am not, of course, referring to the many competent men who have given serious attention to the works of Wagner; I am speaking of the general public. The English people has plenty of poetry in its heart, but our att.i.tude towards German literature and art is not creditable to us as a nation.

We who possess the finest literature ever produced by any people, whose Chaucers and Shakespeares and Popes and Byrons are the models on which the poets of other nations endeavour to form their style, scarcely think their literature worthy of serious consideration. A German boy when he leaves school has generally a pretty close acquaintance with Shakespeare, and knows at least something of other English authors and poets. An English boy at the same stage of his education has perhaps heard of Goethe and Schiller, but has rarely read any of their works. At the Universities it is no better. I really believe that in England Gounod's _Faust_ is better known than Goethe's! It would be impossible that such travesties of _Faust_ as appear from time to time upon the English stage would be endured if our scholars and intellectuals were better informed. Towards ancient languages, except the two which are fas.h.i.+onable, we are just as indifferent. It was no less a person than Sir Richard Maine who a.s.serted that, except the blind forces of nature, nothing exists in the world which is not Greek in its origin! Truly more things are dreamed of in our philosophy than are in heaven and earth! When great scholars make such statements as this it is scarcely surprising that ordinary people should care little for the origins of their own language. The parents of modern English are not Greek but Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian or Icelandic. Both these languages have a literature of the very highest rank, but are little studied in this country. The eighth-century English lyrics are amongst the finest in the language.

As for Scandinavian, not every one in England is aware that the Icelanders are, and have been for a thousand years, the most literary people in the world;[3] that in one important branch of literature, that of story-telling, they are absolutely without a rival, except in the Old Testament. From these Scandinavian sources we have received the heritage which has grown into our magnificent language and literature, but we trouble our heads little about them and leave them to foreigners to study. Ignorance may perhaps be excusable; what is wholly inexcusable is the habit of some Englishmen of criticising and censuring the work of foreigners which they dislike because they cannot understand it. There is a certain section of the English people who seem to think that it shows patriotism and a becoming national pride to belittle the work of other nations and speak of it in an insolent tone of contempt. They habitually misrepresent the achievements of foreigners in order to make them appear ridiculous.

Over twenty years ago a writer in one of our high-cla.s.s magazines informed an astonished world that "the Wagner-bubble has burst!" and the preposterous nonsense has been repeated again and again in one form or another ever since. Quite recently we read in one of our leading English dailies the following sentences: "... Among many of the best-known critics there is a general consensus of opinion that with the completion of Strauss' important work [_Elektra_], Wagnerism will diminish in popularity.... For years and years vain attempts have been made to get away from Richard Wagner. Creative musicians have long felt that Wagner's great and never-to-be-forgotten art no longer suited modern times"! One feels inclined to ask whether the writer looks upon musical composers as racehorses to be pitted against each other, or as religious creeds which must destroy their rivals in order to live.

[Footnote 3: Feeling some doubt as to whether this statement were not an exaggeration, I have submitted it before publication to my friend Mr. Eirikr Magnusson of Cambridge, whose profound knowledge of European literature, ancient and modern, needs no attestation from me.

He replies that, except for the two centuries succeeding the Black Death in 1402-4, the statement in the text is quite correct. With that reservation therefore I allow it to stand.]

There is another and a graver charge to be brought against some writers whose works are popularly read in England, to which it will be my duty to return. I have said enough here to show the state of Wagner criticism in this country. Abroad it is little better. Wagner is indeed fas.h.i.+onable. His works are regularly performed in every capital in Europe, and he has probably saved the existence of the costly _Hoftheater_ in Germany. But success, in the sense in which he understood it, he has not yet achieved. It is very questionable whether his influence has on the whole been for good, either upon musicians and dramatists, or upon the public. It is not his fault.

Nothing would show more convincingly the utter inability of the modern public to appreciate the highest and best in art than the literature which has gathered round the great name of Wagner. In all the vast ma.s.s how much is there which was worth the writing, or can be read with any profit by reasonable people? I think that, putting aside purely technical works on music, stage-management, etc., the number of really good books could be counted on the fingers. The rest is feeble rhapsody on the one hand, malicious misrepresentation on the other. Of works of first-rate importance, works that really add anything solid to our knowledge, I only know one: Nietzsche's _Geburt der TraG.o.die_. Of others the best are mostly in French. Lichtenberger's _R. Wagner_ is admirable so far as it goes, but treats the subject exclusively from the literary standpoint. The small treatise of our marvellous countryman, Mr. H. S. Chamberlain, _Le drame wagnerien_[4] (Paris, 1894), is thoughtful and suggestive, and quite worthy of close attention, as are also the works of Kufferath, Golther, etc. There may be a few more, mostly of small compa.s.s, but not many. Glasenapp's great biography, a work of astounding industry, and invaluable to the student, can scarcely be included among the good books because of its terrible literary style and its fulsome sentimentality. The magnificent work begun by the Hon. Mrs. Burrell, of which there is a copy in the British Museum, would have been a monumental biography had she lived to complete it, but it stops when Wagner is about twenty. Of the rest, the less said the better. Of works against Wagner I know of none that are even worth reading, except Hanslick, to whom I shall have occasion to return. It is much to be regretted that none of Wagner's opponents have ever stated their case fairly and soberly. There is much to be said, but a.s.suredly it has not been said by men of the stamp of Nordau, who cites disgusting accounts from French medical journals in order to show his abhorrence of what he considers Wagner's immorality! Tolstoi is a writer of wide authority among his followers, and might be expected to feel some responsibility for his utterances; yet he thought it right to publish his verdict to the world after having witnessed _one_ very inferior performance of a _portion_ of Siegfried! He is often appealed to as if he were an authority by the opponents of Wagner, but his utterances have no more weight than the thoughtless expressions of a Ruskin or a William Morris, which their biographers have thought fit to drag from the privacy of private letters or conversation and publish as their deliberate judgments. From Nietzsche at least something better might have been expected, but I can find little in his anti-Wagnerian writings except coa.r.s.e vituperation and low scandal. There is no anti-Wagnerian literature worthy of the name.

There are plenty of highly musical and artistic natures who honestly dislike his art, and I am so far able to sympathize with them as to believe that an inestimable benefit would be conferred upon all of us if they would publish their objections in sober and reasoned form. But they do not; or if they do speak, they descend to the slums.

[Footnote 4: Not his _Richard Wagner_, which is a more popular work.]

Such has been the response of the public through its literature to the man who expressly did not wish to be wors.h.i.+pped, but only to be understood. a.s.suredly there is yet plenty of room for good work to be done! The purpose of the following pages is criticism, not as judging, but as selecting. In choosing certain characteristics to show them in a different perspective from an altered point of view the critic may hope to help others to a better understanding of the art. I have endeavoured to do this for English readers in respect of Wagner's dramatic works through one of the most characteristic and representative of them. The problem resolves itself into two. First there is the general technical one, so fully treated by Wagner himself in his theoretical writings, whether music is capable of being used as a means of dramatic expression; and secondly, how far the endeavour has been successful in the particular work selected for ill.u.s.tration.

To treat these problems satisfactorily it will be necessary for me to go far beyond the limits of music and dramatic art, and to enter rather fully into questions of psychology and metaphysics, which I fear may discourage some readers, but which cannot be s.h.i.+rked by those who wish to form a judgment based upon a more solid foundation than their own personal taste. The mistake made by nearly all writers on Wagner hitherto has been to suppose that the mere a.s.sertion of an individual opinion has any value at all, however ill.u.s.trious the person who holds it, however able his exposition. Of what use can be the a.s.sertion that a certain progression of chords is acceptable and pleasing to the healthy ear (even with the usual addition that all who do not think so are blockheads), when some other person equally competent a.s.serts the contrary? Or how am I to persuade my readers that _Tristan und Isolde_ is what I hold it to be, the loftiest paean of pure and holy love ever conceived by a poet, when others see in it only a "story of vulgar adultery," steeped in sensuality? The moral law is the same to all men, and differences of judgment upon moral acts are due to imperfect understanding. But I cannot hope to make my own position clear without descending to the foundations of all art, of all life, without asking: what is drama? what are its aims, and how does it express them? what is human life which it reflects? Wagner felt this very strongly, and soon realized that an ontological basis was required for his own theories; that to reform art he must reform human life. "Oh ye men," he exclaims pa.s.sionately in a letter: "feel rightly, act as you feel! be free!--then we will have art."

We may learn the true principles of criticism from Wagner himself.

Truthfulness in literature is what correctness is in _Vortrag_.

They are objectivity, the art of seeing things as they really are, clearness of vision, right understanding. The truthful representation of an artist as he really is does not preclude, but rather stimulates, enthusiasm, for we may believe that the true artist and the true work of art as he intended it are superior to the flattering creations of our own fancy.

Lessing observes that of ten objections raised by the critic, nine will probably have occurred to the author; that he himself will read a pa.s.sage twenty times rather than believe that the writer contradicted himself. Some of our critics seem to proceed upon an opposite principle and to reject a thought at once if it does not seem to agree with what they themselves have thought, and they observe little restraint in expressing their authoritative judgment. One critic speaks of Wagner meditating on problems "which any clear-headed schoolboy could quickly have settled for him"; we are not surprised to find the same critic sneering at Kant and Plato! Such writers there will always be, but a nation which tolerates them cannot expect to maintain an honourable place in the intellectual commonwealth.

CHAPTER II

WAGNER AS MAN

The distinction so often made with a genius between the "man" and the "artist" has been justly ridiculed by Wagner himself. For the truest individuality of an artist is in his art, not when he leaves his own proper sphere and enters one that is foreign to him. Beethoven is the writer of symphonies and sonatas, not the suspicious friend and unmannerly plebeian. The _man_ is the same in both relations, _i.e._ his character remains the same, only it manifests itself differently under changed conditions, and the difference lies not in him, but in the point of view from which we regard him. Let us bear this in mind in considering Wagner as he appeared away from his art.

A genius has been aptly likened to an astronomical telescope, which is able to scan the heavens, but is useless for things close at hand. To some extent this is true of Wagner, but less so than with most, and not in the sense in which it has been often a.s.serted. The attacks which have been made upon Wagner's private character show little discrimination, for it is a simple truth that the particular vices of which he has been accused are just those from which he was singularly free. No charge has been more audaciously or persistently brought by ignorant writers or believed by an ill-informed public in England and America than that of morbid sensuality. Just as Wagner's dramas have been called licentious, so his character has been described as sensual, in defiance of easily ascertainable facts. Not long ago the discovery was made that his health had been undermined by loose living when he was young. It is easy to invent such charges, for which there is not a particle of evidence, and unfortunately the reader is not always in a position to verify the authorities, and naturally thinks that the writer must have some ground for what he says. As a rule these statements have originated with Ferdinand Praeger's book _Wagner as I knew him_, a book which I am astonished to see still quoted in England, as if it were an authority. I have not seen it, and do not know what it contains. Its character was exposed by two Englishmen, Mr. H. S. Chamberlain and Mr. Ashton Ellis, soon after its publication in 1892, and it was consequently withdrawn from circulation in Germany by its publishers, Messrs. Breitkopf und Hartel. In England and America it still seems to be widely read, and is, more than any other single work, responsible for the false notions that are abroad about Wagner. Sensuality, that is in the morbidly s.e.xual sense of the term, was no part of Wagner's character, nor could it be of the man who justly claimed that no poet had ever glorified women as he had done. His Sentas, Elsas, Brunnhildes, and I must add his Isoldes, rightly understood, afford the best answer to such accusations.

"But," it is said, "his music is unmistakably sensual." I must defer it to a future chapter to consider how far pure music, that is, music apart from words, is capable of expressing a specific human quality, but may here antic.i.p.ate by saying that the nature of music is to a.s.similate the elements with which it is joined; the hearer may, within certain broad restrictions, put into it whatever he likes, and will therefore hear in it the reflection of himself. This is why different people hear such different things in the same music. If a man hears sensuality in the _music_ of, let us say, the second act of _Tristan und Isolde_, it is his own interpretation.

Another hears something very different, an antic.i.p.ation of eternity, of that world beyond which the lovers are about to enter to be united with each other and with all nature in a higher love of which all earthly love, with its degrading garment of sensuality, is but the debased image. The music by itself will bear either interpretation; each hearer will find in it just that which he looks for and can understand. But when the words are added the meaning is clear. People are not "sensual" when death is right before them, as it is here. I do not wish to be understood as meaning that Wagner excluded sensuality from his works, or that he did not treat the most universal and most ungovernable of human impulses in accordance with its character. The drama must include everything human, and when pa.s.sionate s.e.xuality is a necessary part of the dramatic development, Wagner no more s.h.i.+rks it than did Shakespeare or any other great dramatist. But Wagner always treats it with such consummate grace and refinement that it ceases to be repulsive and appears in its own uncorrupted beauty, as in the _Venus_ music and in the flower-maiden scene in _Parsifal_. Only to the impure are the senses impure.

An unbia.s.sed consideration of all that is known about Wagner's life will acquit him of all the graver vices, unless a propensity for living beyond his income be reckoned as such. Whatever his faults there was nothing dishonourable or mean about them, and he is ent.i.tled to the treatment that is always accorded by one gentleman to another, whether friend or enemy, so long as he does not disgrace himself.

Surely it ought not to be necessary to insist upon this before an English public, but it has not always been observed.

Similar is the charge of "ego-mania," that is, of overrating his own importance, so often heard. There cannot be any notion of his _over_rating his importance, for all are now agreed that his influence, whether for good or for bad, can scarcely be overrated.

Only society requires, very rightly, that a man shall speak of himself and his achievements with a certain reticence, leaving it to others to judge of them. Nowhere that I know of has Wagner offended against this very proper rule. It has so long been the practice to represent Wagner as a man of overweening vanity, a man who tried to exalt himself at the expense of other artists, that some in England will not believe me when I say that there is no foundation whatever for such a.s.sertions. I only ask of those who think there is to read Wagner's own published writings, and to judge from them, not from what is said about him. I do not mean to say that he did not believe with the most intense conviction in his own idea of a new German dramatic art, uniting the separate arts in itself, and did not proclaim it as a thing of the first national importance; every serious reformer believes in himself in that sense. But that is not the same thing as a.s.serting his own powers to realize it. With regard to these he speaks very modestly of himself as a beginner, a pioneer only. In fact the question of his own particular genius is, he says, irrelevant, and has nothing to do with the other one, adding rather cynically that genius is often given to the wrong people.

It is in this sense that I understand the famous words of his speech after the first performance of the _Ring_ at Bayreuth, in 1876, which have been so often quoted in ill.u.s.tration of his arrogance: "You have seen what we can do; it is now for you to will. We now have an art if you will." Namely, thus: "Germany now has for the first time an indigenous drama, not imported from foreigners; if you accept it, try to develop and perfect it." Or shortly: "I and my friends have done what we can; the rest is for you to do." This seems to me the natural meaning of the words, and agrees with all his utterances at other times, namely, that the public must not leave it all to the artist, but must exert itself to cooperate with him. It has latterly become almost a fas.h.i.+on among some German authors to transgress all bounds of modesty in advertising themselves. Nietzsche, for example, leaves us in no doubt whatever as to what he requires us to think about him. But nothing of the kind will be found in Wagner.

The charge of "grapho-mania" is scarcely worth discussion, except to show what slender arguments have to be relied upon by those who try to prove Wagner insane. Ten, not _bulky_ volumes, as Nordau calls them, but volumes of very moderate dimensions, some 30 per cent. of which are accounted for by his dramatic works, are not a very large allowance for a man who lived seventy years, and was often under the necessity of writing to eke out his income. They are scarcely sufficient to be regarded as an indication of insanity. The fact is, that Wagner, either as dramatist or as author, was not a voluminous producer. It is the quality, the intensity, of his work that is important, not its bulk. This is only another instance of the amazing indifference to the most easily ascertainable facts shown by Wagner's a.s.sailants, and of the truth that if you only a.s.sert a thing, however nonsensical, persistently enough, there will always be some who will believe it. I cannot be expected to go through in detail the whole string of aberrations which Nordau finds acc.u.mulated in Wagner. They are all of the same kind, and all equally fanciful.

The endeavours to prove Wagner a "degenerate" are professedly made in the name of science, so often a cloak for the most unscientific vagaries, by men who are disciples of the late Professor Lombroso of Florence. Lombroso was a serious man of science, and many of his investigations into the nature and indications of insanity have permanent value, but it is certain that he went much too far, and his views are only very partially accepted by those who are qualified to judge of them.[5] When a theory of insanity is made to include such men as Newton, Goethe, Darwin, and others who are generally supposed to be the very types of sober sanity, a Richard Wagner may well be content to remain in such company. We are reminded of Lombroso's own story of the lunatic's reply to one who asked when he was coming out of the asylum: "When the people outside are sane." In fact the theories when pushed to their extreme consequences become absurd.

There is nothing discreditable to a serious student of science who in the enthusiasm of discovery presses his inferences beyond their valid limits, since all theory must at first be more or less tentative. Very different is the case when these dubious theories are applied by men with very modest scientific acquirements, or with none at all, to injure the reputation of a man whom they dislike. We may then fairly ask, with Lichtenberger, on which side the degeneration is more likely to be. These are the men who bring science into discredit.

[Footnote 5: For a very fair estimate of his work, see an article in the _Times_, October 20, 1909.]

It would not have been worth my while to dwell at such length upon the calumnies of irresponsible writers did I not know that they represent the popular opinion among the less well-informed in England of to-day, as in Germany thirty or forty years ago. They begin with people who ought to know better, and in time find their way into the magazines and popular literature of the day, to be greedily read by a public which, next to a prurient divorce case, likes nothing so well as slander of a great man. We have heard much of late years about the decadence of the English Press, but editors know very well the public for whom they cater.

That Wagner's was one of those serene and universally lovable characters who live at peace with G.o.d and man it is far from me to wish to convey. Such men there are, and women, who seem lifted above the meaner elements of human existence, without envy, without reproach, untouched by its iniquities, unsullied by its vileness. Pure themselves and self-contained they see no guile in others, or if they see it they notice it not. Who has not met with such? who has not felt their power? When such innate purity of soul is united with high intellectual gifts we have the n.o.blest creation of nature, and to have been called "friend" by one such is the highest honour that life has to offer.

But Wagner was not one of these. His was a stormy spirit--"The never-resting soul that ever seeks the new." He likens himself to a wild animal tearing at its cage and exhausting itself with fruitless struggles. He could not make terms with falsehood and sophistry, or leave them to perish naturally, but lived in ceaseless defiance of them. He was a man who inspired intense, devoted love, or intense hatred, according to the people with whom he was dealing. With his moral character in itself we have indeed no concern, but it seems necessary to explain why so many high-minded men who knew him intimately, and loved him pa.s.sionately, at last fell away from him.

The common theory of Wagnerites, that they were actuated by petty motives of jealousy, and the like, cannot be entertained for a moment.

With Nietzsche it may well be that ill-health and drugs had begun their fatal work in 1876; they may account for the violence of his anti-Wagnerian writings, but surely the cause of his aversion lay deeper. Similarly with Joachim. Even the n.o.ble Liszt, who had stood by him and battled so bravely for him through the years of his deepest distress, though he never failed in his admiration of Wagner's art, seems to have cooled towards him personally when he was in prosperity.

His staunch band of Zurich friends one and all became to some extent estranged after his exile was annulled. His acknowledged hasty temper will not account for it; hastiness wounds, but in a generous and ardently loving nature it does not estrange.