The Art-Work Of The Future Read online

  Since the poor Israelites have led me thus into the region of the fairest of all poetry, the ever fresh and ever truthful poems of the Folk, I will take my leave-by way of moral-with the outline of a glorious Saga which long ago the raw, uncultured Folk of oldtime Germany indited for no other reason than that of inner, free Necessity.

  Wieland the Smith, out of very joy in his handiwork, forged cunning trinkets for himself, and weapons keen and fair to see. One day as he was bathing on the shore, he saw a Swan-maiden (Schwanenjungfrau) come flying with her sisters through the air and, putting off her swan-apparel, plunge down into the sea. Aflame with sudden love, he rushed into the deeper waters; he wrestled with, and won the wondrous woman. Love, too, broke down her pride; in tender care for one another, they lived in blissful union.

  A ring the Swan-maid gave to Wieland: this must he never let her win back from him; for greatly as she loved him, she had not lost her yearning for her ancient Freedom, for wind-borne passage to her happy island home; and this ring it was, that gave her strength to wing her flight. So Wieland wrought a goodly store of rings alike to that his Swan-wife gave him, and strung them on a hempen cord against his wall: amongst them all she should not recognise her own.

  He came home once from journeying. Alack! There lay his house in ruins; his wife had flown away to farthest distance!

  There was a King, Neiding (Envy) by name, who had heard much talk of Wieland's skill; he burned to trap the Smith, that thenceforth he might work for him alone. He found at last a valid pretext for such a deed of violence: the vein of gold which Wieland wrought into his smitheries belonged to Neiding's ground and soil; thus Wieland's art was a robbery of the royal possessions.-It was he who burst into the smithy; and now he fell upon the Smith himself; bound him with chains, and bore him off

  Set down in Neiding's court, Wieland must hammer for the King all kinds of objects, useful, strong, and durable: harness, tools, and armour, by aid of which the King might broaden-out his realm. But since, for such a labour, Neiding must loose the captive's bonds, his care was how to leave his body free to move, yet hinder him from flight: and so he craftily bethought him of severing the sinews of poor Wieland's feet. For he rightly guessed that the Smith had only need of hands, and not of feet, to do his work.

  Thus sate he then, in all his misery, the art-rich Wieland, the one-time blithesome wonder-smith: crippled, behind his anvil, at which he now must slave to swell his master's wealth; limping, lamed, and loathly, whene'er he strove to stand erect! Who might measure all his suffering, when he thought back to his Freedom, to his Art,-to his beloved wife! Who fathom all his grudge against this King, who had wrought him such an untold shame!

  From his forge he gazed above to Heaven's blue, through which the Swan-maid once had flown to him; this air was her thrice-happy realm, through which she soared in blissful 'freedom, the while he breathed the smithy's stench and fume-all for the service of King Neiding's use! The shamed and self-bound man, should he never find his wife again!

  Ha! since he was doomed to wretchedness for ever, since nevermore should joy or solace bloom for him,-if he yet might gain at least one only thing: Revenge, revenge upon this Neiding, who had brought him to this endless sorrow for his own base use! If it were only possible to sweep this wretch and all his brood from off the earth !-

  Fearsome schemes of vengeance planned he; day by day increased his misery; and day by day grew ranker the desperate longing for revenge.-But how should he, the halting cripple, make ready for the battle that should lay his torturer low? One venturous forward step; and he must fall dishonoured to the ground, the plaything for his foeman's scorn!

  "Thou dearest, distant wife! Had I thy wings! Had I thy wings, to wreak my vengeance, and swing myself aloft from out this shame ! "-

  Then Want itself bent down its mighty pinions above the tortured Wieland's breast, and fanned its inspiration about his thoughtful brow. From Want, from terrible, all-powerful Want, the fettered artist learnt to mould what no man's mind had yet conceived. Wieland found it: found how to forge him WINGS. Wings whereon to mount aloft to wreak revenge on his tormentor,- Wings, to soar through Heaven's distance to the blessed island of his Wife!-

  He did it: he fulfilled the task that utmost Want had set within him. Borne on the work of his own Art, he flew aloft; he rained his deadly shafts into King Neiding's heart ;-he swung himself in blissful, daring flight athwart the winds, to where he found the loved one of his youth.-

  O sole and glorious Folk ! This is it, that thou thyself hast sung. Thou art thyself this Wieland ! Weld thou thy wings, and soar on high !

  NOTES

  (1)The above sentences, whose peculiar epigrammatic force it is welnigh impossible to convey in a translation, are of the highest significance as bearing upon the much debated question whether Wagner's philosophy was self-originated or derived from that of Schopenhauer. In our opinion, they and the following sections of this chapter give most positive answer in the former sense. Except that Wagner does not employ the term "Will," but rather "Necessity," the whole scheme is Schopenhauerian from beginning to end, and the gradual evolution of the "Will's" manifestation, from elementary force to Intellect and Spirit, might have been written by that greatest philosopher of the century. It is unnecessary to draw special attention to individual sentences; but an attentive perusal of this pregnant chapter cannot fall to bring home to those conversant with Schopenhauer's "Wille und Vorstellung" the remarkable fact that two cognate minds have developed an almost identical system of philosophy. For it must not be forgotten that R. Wagner was at the period of writing this essay, and long after, completely ignorant-as indeed was almost the whole world-of even the existence of the sage of Frankfort (vide Wagner's letters to Liszt). Another curious reflection aroused by this chapter is, that it should have been written when the Darwinian theory of the influence of environment upon evolution was as yet unpublished, if even formed.-TR.

  (2) I.e. Art in general, or the Art of the Future in particular. -R. WAGNER.- The word 'Science' (Wissenschaft), also, must be understood in the broad sense in which it is employed in the next section (2).-TR.

  (3) For who can nurse less hopes of the success of his reforming efforts, than he who acts therein with greatest honesty ?-R. WAGNER.

  (4) The slap at Meyerbeer's Huguenots, Prophète, etc, is obvious. -TR.

  (5) " Verdichtete" = "condensed"; but the mere English equivalent will not convey the hidden allusion-worked out later on-to "Dichtkunst" (Poetry), which is thus shown to be the condensation into spoken words of the nebulous ideas of fancy .-TR.

  (6) "Reinmenschliche," lit. "purely human. "-TR.

  (7) It must be distinctly understood that by "Dance" Wagner does not refer to the Ballet, or anything approaching it; it is the grace of gesture and of motion which he sums up in this terse and comprehensive term.-TR.

  The verb "unterscheiden" is here used in so many different shades of its meaning that it is impossible to do justice in a translation to the philosophical play of words. Literally it means: "to cleave asunder," and hence, "to separate, to distinguish, to discern, to discriminate, to differentiate." There being no one English word that will embrace the varying sense in which the term is here employed, I have been forced to replace it by varying expressions.-TR.

  (9) Compare Carlyle On Heroes:-"King, Könning, which means Can-ning , Able-man. . .. Find me the true Könning, King, or Able-man, and he has a divine right over me."-TR

  (10) The German equivalent for "compact" is "dicht"; the term seems to have been purposely chosen by the author, in order to bring out the true meaning of "Dichtkunst," "The art of Poetry," as a crystallisation-so to say-of ideas and emotions only vaguely felt before.-TR.

  (11) Compare Tristan u. Isolde, Act 3, "Sehnen! Sehnen-im Sterben mich zu sehnen, vor Sehnsucht nicht zu sterben ! "-a passage which has more than any other been ascribed to Schopenhauer's influence, but which is almost a literal reproduction of the words used in the present instance.-TR.

>   (12) See Wagner's Letters to Uhlig (Letter 67,-July, 1852). "E. D. defends music against me. Is not that delicious? He appeals to 'harmonies of the spheres,' and 'groanings and sighings of the soul !' Well, I have got a pretty millstone hung about my neck ! "-TR.

  (13) Amid the solemn-striding rhythm of the second section, a secondary theme uplifts its wailing, yearning song; to that rhythm, which shows its firm-set tread throughout the entire piece, without a pause, this longing melody clings like the ivy to the oak, which without its clasping of the mighty bole would trail its crumpled, straggling wreaths upon the soil, in forlorn rankness; but now, while weaving a rich trapping for the rough oak-rind, it gains for itself a sure and undishevelled outline from the stalwart figure of the tree. How brainlessly has this deeply significant device of Beethoven been exploited by our modern instrumental-composers, with their eternal "subsidiary themes "-R. WAGNER.

  (14) Whosoever may undertake to write the special history of instrumental music since Beethoven, will undoubtedly have to take account of isolated phenomena which are of such a nature as to merit a particular and close attention. He who regards the history of Art, however, from so wide-reaching a point of view as here was necessary, can only keep to its decisive moments; he must leave unconsidered whatever lies aside from these 'moments,' or is merely their derivative. But the more undeniably is great ability evinced by such detached phenomena, so much the more strikingly do they themselves prove, by the barrenness of all their art-endeavour, that in their peculiar art-province somewhat may have yet been left to discover in respect of technical treatment, but nothing in respect of the living spirit, now that that has once been spoken which Beethoven spoke through Music. In the great universal Art-work of the Future there will ever be fresh regions to discover; but not in the separate branch of art, when once the latter-as Music, by Beethoven. has already been led to universalism but yet would linger in her solitary round.-R. WAGNER.

  (15) The original sentence is somewhat too forcible for English notions "nachdem er geholfen hat, drei vorangehende Instrumentalsätze so geschickt wie möglich zu Stande zu bringen." The reference is, of course, to Mendelssohn's "Lobgesang." -TR.

  (16) However lengthily I have here expressed myself upon the nature of Music, in comparison with what I have said upon the other branches of Art (my reasons lying in both the highly individual character of Music and its special and eventful evolutionary course, proceeding from this individuality), yet I am well aware of the countless gaps in my recital. But it would need not one book but an entire library, to lay hare the whole unseemliness, the flabbiness and ignominy of the bonds uniting our modern music with our modern life ; to penetrate the piteous, over-sentimental idiosyncracy of our art of Tone, which makes her the object of the speculation of our educational "Folk-improvers," who would trickle drops of Music's honey upon the acid sweat of ill-used factory.hands as the only possible alleviation of their sufferings (very much as our sages of the State and Bourse are all agog to stuff their pliant patches of religion between the gaping rents of the police-officials' tender care of men); and finally to explain the mournful psychological phenomenon, that a man may be not only base and bad, but also dull-without these qualities hindering him from being a quite respectable musician.-R. WAGNER.

  (17) Stabreim and Alliteration.-A fuller explanation of this form of 'rhyme' will be found in "Opera and Drama" (Part II., chap. vi. and Part III., chap. ii.), which work will form the second volume of this series of translations. Meanwhile a few words of elucidation may not be found amiss, -The English equivalent, "Alliteration," does not convey the full force of this method of versification, as may be seen at once by the oft-quoted specimen from Churchill, "with apt alliteration's artful aid," for therein one of the fundamental rules is violated in such a manner as to show how little the true principle of this 'rhyme' is now understood in England; the rule in question being, that if vowels are employed for this artifice, they must be of different sound; as in Wagner's own lines "Unheilig | acht' ich den Eid" (the stabreim being here reduplicated in the immediately following line: "der U nliebende ei nt"). The simple rule, as given in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, is that this rhyme is "indifferent as to the number of syllables in a couplet; but imperative as to the number of accented syllables, of which there must be four (two in each half), the first three beginning with the same letter" (in the case of consonants), the writer adducing the lines from Piers the Ploughman: "I was weary of wandering I and went me to rest" &c. In Brockhaus' Conversations-lexikon, however, it is stated that the original rule was: that in a couplet the first half should contain one or two rhyming initials, the second only one-in each case the rhyme being borne by the strongly accented syllable; but that this rule was extended to allow of the use of two rhymes also in the second half, but never more. This authority cites a couplet from the 9th Century Saxon poem "Hêliand," which runs thus: "so l erda he tho thea L iudi | l iot hon wordon"; and adds that the word "Stabreim" is an abbreviation from "Buchstabenreim" (lit. = "spelling-rhyme"); that the first verse-half of the couplet ("Langzeile" or "Liedstäbe") was called "Stollen," the second: "Hauptstab," or principal rhyme. -a circumstance emphasised by Wagner above. In his great tetralogy, the Ring des Nibelungen, the poet-composer has made almost exclusive use of this form of versification, amplifying its rules much in the same way as he amplified those of Music, from that plastic power of genius which melts all rules into new moulds. But the great characteristic of the Stabreim proper, he has almost invariably preserved, viz.:-the marking thereby of the accented, i.e. the root word, and the commencing of the line by a strong (or 'long') syllable. As a perfect specimen may he instanced: "L achend muss ich dich lieben; | lachend will ich erblinden" (Siegfried,- last Scene) ; while a rich example of doubled and re-doubled Stabreim is found at the end of the Götterdämmerung: "N icht Gut, nicht Gold, | noch Göttliche Pracht; | nicht Haus, nicht Hof, | noch herrischer Prunk: "-These specimens, taken at ramdom from the Ring, must suffice for the present purpose.-TR.

  (18) Compare Die Meistersinger, Act 3.-"Ob euch gelang ein rechtes Paar zu finden, das zeigt sich jetzt an den Kinden," "If you've had wit to match your pair, that we shall see in their son and heir,"-where Hans Sachs is instructing Walther in the mysteries of the old Meistersingers' 'After-song.'-It is curious also that Wagner should have again hit upon the same thought as Schopenhauer, who explains the love of man to woman as governed by the 'Will-to-live' of their future progeny. -TR.

  (19) "Die einsame Dichtkunst-dichtete nicht mehr."-Again it is impossible to translate "dichten," for lack of an English verb; our "poetise" has a derogatory strain in it; 'compose' and 'indite' will neither of them here take the place of the German original; and we are forced upon a paraphrase, which may perhaps find justification from the analogous term for him who 'prophesies,' namely, 'Seer,'-which Carlyle has so often applied to the true Poet. -TR.

  (20) "O himmel! wie entstellt, wie unkennbar klangen ihm seine, in dichterische Musik gebrachten, Anschauungen entgegen !" Probably Wagner here refers to the opera-texts, such as Proserpina, written by Goethe for the Weimar Court-theatre, the direction of which was entrusted to him by the Duke; for in his article, "Zukunftsmusik" (The "Music of the Future," vol. vii. of the Ges. Schriften) our author writes as follows: "Goethe himself indited several opera-texts (libretti), and, in order to place himself on the level of that genre, he thought right to keep both his invention and his working-out as trivial as possible; so that it is only with regret, that we can see these extremely mawkish pieces numbered in the ranks of his poems. "-As to the allusion to the "poodle" at the end of the present paragraph, it is an absolute statement of fact. In 1817 Goethe, who had long felt the growing impossibility of maintaining the high standard of the Weimar theatrical performances, in face of the favour shown to Kotzebue and his claptrap, finally laid down the reins of direction in consequence of the production, against his express desire, of a piece called the "Hund des Aubry." We cannot discover whether Kotzebue had a hand in this piece or n
ot, for it is merely described in Schaefer's "Life of Goethe" as imported from France; the biographer adds, that in it a rôle was assigned to a trained Poodle !-TR.

  (21) (22) (23)-The same word, "Öffentlichkeit," is used in these three instances; it has seemed, however, impossible to translate this half abstract, half concrete term, excepting by the use of three different expressions, in order to keep touch with the meaning. -TR.

  (24) From all that Wagner has written about Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, it cannot be doubted that it is to her that he here refers. Compare page 9 of the "Autobiographic Sketch," also "A Pilgrimage to Beethoven," the "Communication to my Friends," and "On Actors and Singers."-TR.

  (25) Among these, the masters of the French-school of the beginning of this century should be specially noted.-R. Wagner.-See also p. 16, "Autobiographic Sketch."-TR.

  (26) The title of this chapter, "Der Mensch als künstlerischer Bildner aus natürlichen Stoffen," presents many difficulties to the translator. If we possessed a good equivalent for "Bildner" (from "bilden," to fashion, shape or form, e.g. a picture) that would cover the three different varieties of 'plastic' artist, we should still be short of a generally accepted substitute for "Stoff." The idea of the original is to include in the term "stuff" not only the raw material, as in Architecture or Sculpture, but also the subject-matter, as in Landscape-painting. This being thus, perhaps we may be permitted to employ the word in the sense in which Shakespeare uses it, in the line "We are such stuff as dreams are made on. "-TR.