The Art-Work Of The Future

  The Art-Work Of The Future

  Richard Wagner

  RICHARD WAGNER. The Art-Work Of The Future

  TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM ASHTON ELLIS 1895

  Proofed and formatted by JP MOURLON Paris, France

  (DAS KUNSTWERK DER ZUKUNFT)

  (1849)

  I. MAN AND ART, IN GENERAL.

  1. NATURE, MAN, AND ART.

  AS Man stands to Nature, so stands Art to Man. When Nature had developed in herself those attributes which included the conditions for the existence of Man, then Man spontaneously evolved. In like manner, as soon as human life had engendered from itself the conditions for the manifestment of Art-work, this too stepped self-begotten into life.

  Nature engenders her myriad forms without caprice or arbitrary aim ("absichtlos und unwillkürlich"), according to her need ("Bedürfniss"), and therefore of Necessity ("Nothwendigkeit"). This same Necessity is the generative and formative force of human life. Only that which is un-capricious and un-arbitrary can spring from a real need; but on Need alone is based the very principle of Life. (1 )

  Man only recognises Nature's Necessity by observing the harmonious connection of all her phenomena; so long as he does not grasp the latter, she seems to him Caprice.

  From the moment when Man perceived the difference between himself and Nature, and thus commenced his own development as man, by breaking loose from the unconsciousness of natural animal life and passing over into conscious life,-when he thus looked Nature in the face and from the first feelings of his dependence on her, thereby aroused, evolved the faculty of Thought,-from that moment did Error begin, as the earliest utterance of consciousness. But Error is the mother of Knowledge; and the history of the birth of Knowledge out of Error is the history of the human race, from the myths of primal ages down to the present day.

  Man erred, from the time when he set the cause of Nature's workings outside the bounds of Nature's self, and for the physical phenomena subsumed a super-physical, anthropomorphic, and arbitrary cause; when he took the endless harmony of her unconscious, instinctive energy for the arbitrary demeanour of disconnected finite forces. Knowledge consists in the laying of this error, in fathoming the Necessity of phenomena whose underlying basis had appeared to us Caprice.

  Through this knowledge does Nature grow conscious of herself; and verily by Man himself, who only through discriminating between himself and Nature has attained that point where he can apprehend her, by making her his 'object.' But this distinction is merged once more, when Man recognises the essence of Nature as his very own, and perceives the same Necessity in all the elements and lives around him, and therefore in his own existence no less than in Nature's being; thus not only recognising the mutual bond of union between all natural phenomena, but also his own community with Nature.

  If Nature then, by her solidarity with Man, attains in Man her consciousness, and if Man's life is the very activation of this consciousness-as it were, the portraiture in brief of Nature,-so does man's Life itself gain understanding by means of Science, which makes this human life in turn an object of experience. But the activation of the consciousness attained by Science, the portrayal of the Life that it has learnt to know, the impress of this life's Necessity and Truth, is-Art. (2)

  Man will never be that which he can and should be, until his Life is a true mirror of Nature, a conscious following of the only real Necessity, the inner natural necessity, and is no longer held in subjugation to an outer artificial counterfeit,- which is thus no necessary, but an arbitrary power. Then first will Man become a living man; whereas till now he carries on a mere existence, dictated by the maxims of this or that Religion, Nationality, or State.-In like manner will Art not be the thing she can and should be, until she is or can be the true, conscious image and exponent of the real Man, and of man's genuine, nature-bidden life; until she therefore need no longer borrow the conditions of her being from the errors, perversities, and unnatural distortions of our modern life.

  The real Man will therefore never be forthcoming, until true Human Nature, and not the arbitrary statutes of the State, shall model and ordain his Life; while real Art will never live, until its embodiments need be subject only to the laws of Nature, and not to the despotic whims of Mode. For as Man only then becomes free, when he gains the glad consciousness of his oneness with Nature; so does Art only then gain freedom, when she has no more to blush for her affinity with actual Life. But only in the joyous consciousness of his oneness with Nature does Man subdue his dependence on her; while Art can only overcome her dependence upon Life through her oneness with the life of free and genuine Men.

  2. LIFE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

  Whilst Man involuntarily moulds his Life according to the notions he has gathered from his arbitrary views of Nature, and embalms their intuitive expression in Religion: these notions become for him in Science the subject of conscious, intentional review and scrutiny.

  The path of Science lies from error to knowledge, from fancy ("Vorstellung") to reality, from Religion to Nature. In the beginning of Science, therefore, Man stands toward Life in the same relation as he stood towards the phenomena of Nature when he first commenced to part his life from hers. Science takes over the arbitrary concepts of the human brain, in their totality; while, by her side, Life follows in its totality the instinctive evolution of Necessity. Science thus bears the burden of the sins of Life, and expiates them by her own self-abrogation; she ends in her direct antithesis, in the knowledge of Nature, in the recognition of the unconscious, instinctive, and therefore real, inevitable, and physical. The character of Science is therefore finite: that of Life, unending; just as Error is of time, but Truth eternal. But that alone is true and living which is sentient, and hearkens to the terms of physicahity (Sinnlichkeit). Error's crowning folly is the arrogance of Science in renouncing and contemning the world of sense (Sinnlichkeit); whereas the highest victory of Science is her self-accomplished crushing of this arrogance, in the acknowledgment of the teaching of the senses.

  The end of Science is the justifying of the Unconscious, the giving of self-consciousness to Life, the re-instatement of the Senses in their perceptive rights, the sinking of Caprice in the world-Will ("Wollen" ) of Necessity. Science is therefore the vehicle of Knowledge, her procedure mediate, her goal an intermediation; but Life is the great Ultimate, a law unto itself. As Science melts away into the recognition of the ultimate and self-determinate reality, of actual Life itself: so does this avowal win its frankest, most direct expression in Art, or rather in the Work of Art.

  True that the artist does not at first proceed directly; he certainly sets about his work in an arbitrary, selective, and mediating mood. But while he plays the go-between and picks and chooses, the product of his energy is not as yet the Work of Art; nay, his procedure is the rather that of Science, who seeks and probes, and therefore errs in her caprice. Only when his choice is made, when this choice was born from pure Necessity,-when thus the artist has found himself again in the subject of his choice, as perfected Man finds his true self in Nature,-then steps the Art-work into life, then first is it a real thing, a self-conditioned and immediate entity.

  The actual Art-work, i.e. its immediate physical portrayal, in the moment of its liveliest embodiment, is therefore the only true redemption of the artist; the uprootal of the final trace of busy, purposed choice; the confident determination of what was hitherto a mere imagining; the enfranchisement of thought in sense; the assuagement of the life-need in Life itself.

  The Art-work, thus conceived as an immediate vital act, is therewith the perfect reconcilement of Science with Life, the laurel-wreath which the vanquished, redeemed by her defeat, reaches in joyous homage to her acknowledged v
ictor.

  3. THE FOLK AND ART.

  The redemption of Thought and Science and their transmutation into Art-work would be impossible, could Life itself be made dependent upon scientific speculation. Could conscious autocratic Thought completely govern Life, could it usurp the vital impulse and divert it to some other purpose than the great Necessity of absolute life-needs: then were Life itself dethroned, and swallowed up in Science. And truly Science, in her overweening arrogance, has dreamed of such a triumph; as witness our tight-reined State and modern Art, the sexless, barren children of this dream.

  The great instinctive errors of the People-which found their earliest utterance in Religion, and then became the starting-points of arbitrary speculation and system-making, in Theology and Philosophy--have reared themselves, in these Sciences and their coadjutrix and adopted sister, Statecraft, to powers which make no less a claim than to govern and ordain the world and life by virtue of their innate and divine infallibility. Irrevocably, then, would Error reign in destructive triumph throughout eternity: did not the same life-force which blindly bore it, once more effectually annihilate it, by virtue of its innate, natural Necessity; and that so decisively and palpably, that Intellect, with all its arrogant divorce from Life, can see at last no other refuge from actual insanity, than in the unconditional acknowledgment of this only definite and visible force. And this vital force is-The Folk (das Volk).-

  Who is then the Folk ?-It is absolutely necessary that, before proceeding further, we should agree upon the answer to this weightiest of questions.

  "The Folk," was from of old the inclusive term for all the units which made up the total of a commonality. In the beginning, it was the family and the tribe; next, the tribes united by like speech into a nation. Practically, by the Roman world-dominion which engulfed the nations, and theoretically, by the Christian religion which admitted of naught but men, i.e. no racial, but only Christian men- the idea of "the People" has so far broadened out, or even evaporated, that we may either include in it mankind in general, or, upon the arbitrary political hypothesis, a certain, and generally the propertyless portion of the Commonwealth. But beyond a frivolous, this term has also acquired an ineradicable moral meaning; and on account of this it is, that in times of stir and trouble all men are eager to number themselves among the People; each one gives out that he is careful for the People's weal, and no one will permit himself to be excluded from it. Therefore in these latter days also has the question frequently been broached, in the most diverse of senses: Who then is the People? In the sum total of the body politic, can a separate party, a particular fraction of the said body claim this name for itself alone? Rather, are we not all alike "the People," from the beggar to the prince?

  This question must therefore be answered according to the conclusive and world-historical sense that now lies at its root, as follows:-

  The "Folk" is the epitome of all those men who feel a common and collective Want ("gemeinschaftliche Noth"). To it belong, then, all of those who recognise their individual want as a collective want, or find it based thereon; ergo, all those who can hope for the stilling of their want in nothing but the stilling of a common want, and therefore spend their whole life's strength upon the stilling of their thus acknowledged common want. For only that want which urges to the uttermost, is genuine Want; but this Want alone is the force of true Need ("Bedürfniss"); but a common and collective need is the only true Need; but only he who feels within him a true Need, has a right to its assuagement; but only the assuagement of a genuine Need is Necessity; and it is the Folk alone that acts according to Necessity's behests, and therefore irresistibly, victoriously, and right as none besides.

  Who now are they who belong not to this People, and who are its sworn foes?

  All those who feel no Want; whose life-spring therefore consists in a need which rises not to the potence of a Want, and thus is artificial, untrue, and egoistic; and not only is not embraced within a common Need, but as the empty need of preserving superfluity-as which alone can one conceive of need without the force of want-is diametrically opposed to the collective Need.

  Where there is no Want, there is no true Need; where no true Need, no necessary action. But where there is no necessary action, there reigns Caprice; and where Caprice is king, there blossoms every vice, and every criminal assault on Nature. For only by forcing back, by barring and refusing the assuagement of true Need, can the false and artificial need endeavour to assuage itself.

  But the satisfaction of an artificial need is Luxury; which can only be bred and supported in opposition to, and at the cost of; the necessities of others.

  Luxury is as heartless, inhuman, insatiable, and egoistic as the 'need' which called it fortha but which, with all its heaping-up and over-reaching, it never more can still. For this need itself is no natural and therefore satisfiable one; by very reason that, being false, it has no true, essential antithesis in which it may be spent, consumed, and satisfied. Actual physical hunger has its natural antithesis, satiety, in which-by feeding-it is spent: but unwanting need, the need that craves for luxury, is in itself already luxury and superfluity. The error of it, therefore, can never go over into truth; it racks, devours, torments and burns, without an instant's stilling; it leaves brain, heart and sense for ever vainly yearning, and swallows up all gladness, mirth, and joy of life. For sake of one sole, and yet unreachable moment of refreshment, it squanders the toil and life-sweat of a thousand needy wanters; it lives upon the unstilled hunger of a thousand thousand poor, though impotent to satiate its own for but the twinkling of an eye; it holds a whole world within the iron chains of despotism, without the power to momentarily break the golden chains of that arch-tyrant which it is unto itself.

  And this fiend, this crack-brained need-without-a-need, this need of Need,-this need of Luxury, which is Luxury itself withal,-is sovereign of the world. It is the soul of that Industry which deadens men, to turn them to machines; the soul of our State which swears away men's honour, the better then to take them back as lieges of its grace; the soul of our deistic Science, which hurls men down before an immaterial God, the product of the sum of intellectual luxury, for his consumption. It is-alas!-the soul, the stipulation, of our-Art!

  Who then will bring to pass the rescue from this baleful state?-

  Want,-which shall teach the world to recognise its own true need; that need which by its very nature admits of satisfaction.

  Want will cut short the hell of Luxury; it will teach the tortured, Need-lacking spirits whom this hell embraces in its bounds the simple, homely need of sheer human, physical hunger and thirst; but in fellowship will it point us to the health-giving bread, the clear sweet springs of Nature; in fellowship shall we taste their genuine joys, and grow up in communion to veritable men. In common, too, shall we close the last link in the bond of holy Necessity; and the brother-kiss that seals this bond, will be the mutual Art-work of the Future. But in this, also, our great redeemer and well-doer, Necessity's vicegerent in the flesh,-the Folk, will no longer be a severed and peculiar class; for in this Art-work we shall all be one,- heralds and supporters of Necessity, knowers of the un conscious, willers of the unwilful, betokeners of Nature,- blissful men.

  4. THE FOLK AS THE FORCE CONDITIONING THE ART-WORK.

  All that subsists, depends on the conditions by which it subsists; nothing, either in Nature or Life, stands shut-off and alone. Everything is rooted in one unending and harmonious whole; and therewith likewise the capricious, unnecessary, and harmful. The harmful practises its might in hindering the necessary; nay, it owes its being and its force to this hindrance and naught else; and thus, in truth, it is nothing but the powerlessness of the necessary. Were this powerlessness to last forever, then must the natural ordering of the world be other than it really is; Caprice would be Necessity, and the necessary would lack its need. But this weakness is but transient, and therefore only seeming; for the force of Necessity shows its living rule even as the sole and ground condition of
the continuance of the arbitrary. Thus the luxury of the rich is built upon the penury of the poor; and it is the very want of the poorer classes that hurls unceasingly fresh fodder to the luxury of the rich; while the poor man, from very need of food for his life-forces, thus offers up his own life-strength unto the rich.

  Thus did the life-force, the life-need, of telluric Nature nurture once those baleful forces-or rather the potentiality of those alliances and, offspring of the elements - which blocked her way in giving true and fitting utterance to the fulness of her vital energy. The reason hereof lay in the great abundance, the swelling overfill of generative force and life-stuff, the inexhaustible supply of matter.-The need of Nature was therefore utmost multiple variety, and she reached the satisfaction of this need herewith: that-so to say-she drew off all her life-force from Exclusiveness, from the monumental singleness that she herself had hitherto fed so full, and resolved it into Multiplicity.-The exclusive, sole, and egoistic, can only take and never give: it can only let itself be born, but cannot bear; for bearing there is need of I and Thou, the passing over of Egoism into Communism. The richest procreative force lies therefore in the utmost multiplicity; and when Earth-nature had emanated to the most manifold variety, she attained therewith the state of saturation, of self-contentment, of self-delight, which she manifests amid her present harmony. She works no longer by titanic, total transformations, for her period of revolutions is foreby; she now is all that she can be, and thus that she ever could have been, and ever must become. She no longer has to lavish life-force on barren impotence; throughout her endless-stretching realm she has summoned multiformity, the Manly and the Womanly, the ever self-renewing and engendering, the ever self-completing and assuaging, into hife,-and in this eternal harmony of parts, she has become forevermore her stable self.