The Art-Work Of The Future Read online

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  (27) Compare Götterdämmerung, Act 3, "Der Wecker kam; er küsst dich wach. . . . da lacht ihm Brünnhilde's Lust !"-TR.

  (28) Certainly the provision of the useful, is the first and greatest necessity: but an epoch which can never soar beyond this care nor cast it behind it in order to attain the beautiful, but makes this care the sole prescriptor of every branch of public life and drags it even into Arta-that epoch is in truth barbarian. Yet it is only the most unnatural civilisation, that can produce such absolute barbarism: it is for ever heaping up obstructions to the useful, to give itself the air of for ever taking thought for utility alone.-R. WAGNER.

  (29) It is a political crime to use this word: however, there is none which will better describe the direct antithesis of Egoism. Whosoever is ashamed to-day to pass current as an Egoist-and indeed no one will openly confess himself as such-must allow us to take the liberty of calling him a Communist. -R.WAGNER.

  (30) The redemption of woman into participation in the nature of man is the outcome of christian-Germanic evolution. The Greek remained in ignorance of the psychic process of the ennobling of woman to the rank of man, To him everything appeared under its direct, unmediated aspect,-woman to him was woman, and man was man; and thus at the point where his love to woman was satisfied in accordance with nature, arose the spiritual demand for man.-R. WAGNER.

  (31) One feels almost tempted to concoct a hybrid equivalent for this expressive "ur-hellenisch," and boldly write it down as "ur-hellenic;" but the fear of a literary Mrs Grundy is too powerful for the rash desire. We cannot, however, help envying the Germans their pregnant prefix "ur," a shadow of which we fancy we may still detect in our English "early," "ere -while" or "erst"; again perhaps in our "hoary"; and almost certainly in "yore."-TR.

  (32) The words "Skulptur" and "Architektur" here appear for the first time, in the original. Hitherto these arts have been spoken of under the terms "Baukunst" (the building art) and "Bildhauerkunst" (the image- or likeness.hewer's art); but I have found it more convenient to employ, in general, the equivalents "Sculpture" and "Architecture." Here, however, I have deemed it necessary to use the more exact, though more cumbersome expression "the statuary's art," in the opening of the sentence, in order to reserve the term "Sculpture" to render the more general idea of "carving," in which sense it is evident that Wagner has here employed the Latin noun.-W.A.E.

  (33) The personality of the Zurich exile here peeps out from beneath the robes of the art-philosopher. No one could feel more keenly than Wagner himself, at the time of writing this essay, the insufficiency of the suggested substitute, cut off as he then was from enjoyment of all the higher walks of art.-TR.

  (34) The problem of the Theatrical edifice of the Future can in no wise be considered as solved by our modern stage buildings: for they are laid out in accord with traditional laws and canons which have nothing in common with the requirements of pure Art. Where speculation for gain, on the one side, joinr forces with luxurious ostentation on the other, the absolute interests of Art must be cryingly affected; and thus no architect in the world will be able to raise our stratified and fenced-off auditoria-dictated by the parcelling of our public into the most diverse categories of class and civil station-to conformity with any law of beauty. If one imagine oneself, for a moment, within the walls of the common Theatre of the Future, one will recognise with little trouble, that an undreamt width of field lies therein open for invention.-R. WAGNER.

  (35) It can scarcely be indifferent to the modern landscape-painter to observe by how few his work is really understood to-day, and with what blear-eyed stupidity his nature-paintings are devoured by the Philistine world that pays for them; how the so-called "charming prospect" is purchased to assuage the idle, unintelligent, visual gluttony of those same need-less men whose sense of hearing is tickled by our modern, empty music-manufacture to that idiotic joy which is as repugnant a reward of his performance to the artist as it fully answers the intention of the artisan. Between the "charming prospect" and the "pretty tune" of our modern times there subsists a doleful affinity, whose bond of union is certainly not the musing calm of Thought, but that vulgar slipshod sentimentality which draws back in selfish horror from the sight of human suffering in its surroundings, to hire for itself a private heavenlet in the blue mists of Nature's generality. These sentimentals are willing enough to see and hear everything: only not the actual, undistorted Man, who lifts his warning finger on the threshold of their dreams. But this is the very man whom we must set up in the forefront of our show !-R. WAGNER.

  (36) It is a little difficult to quite unravel this part of the metaphor, for the same word "Boden" is used twice over. I have thought it best to translate it in the first place as "loam," and in the second as "ground"; for it appears as though the idea were, in the former case, that of what agriculturists call a "top-dressing," and thus a substance which could break up the lower soil and make it fruitful. The "it" which occurs after the colon may refer either to the "feeling" or to the "orchestra," for both are neuter nouns. -TR.

  (37) The modern Playwright will feel little tempted to concede that Drama ought not to belong exclusively to his branch of art, the art of Poesy; above all will he not be able to constrain himself to share it with the Tone-poet,-to wit, as he understands us, allow the Play to be swallowed up by the Opera. Perfectly correct!-so long as Opera subsists, the Play must also stand, and, for the matter of that, the Pantomime too; so long as any dispute hereon is thinkable, the Drama of the Future must itself remain un-thinkable. If, however, the Poet's doubt lie deeper, and consist in this, that he cannot conceive how Song should be entitled to usurp entirely the place of spoken dialogue: then he must take for rejoinder, that in two several regards he has not as yet a clear idea of the character of the Art-work of the Future. Firstly, he does not reflect that Music has to occupy a very different position in this Art-work to what she takes in modern Opera: that only where her power is thefittest, has she to open out her full expanse; while, on the contrary, wherever another power, for instance that of dramatic Speech, is the most necessary, she has to subordinate herself to that; still, that Music possesses the peculiar faculty of, without entirely keeping silence, so imperceptibly linking herself to the thought-full element of Speech that she lets the latter seem to walk abroad alone, the while she still supports it. Should the poet acknowledge this, then he has to recognise in the second place, that thoughts and situations to which the lightest and most restrained accompaniment of Music should seem importunate and burdensome, can only be such as are borrowed from the spirit of our modern Play; which, from beginning to end, will find no inch of breathing-space within the Art-work of the Future. The Man who will portray himself in the Drama of the Future has done for ever with all the prosaic hurly-burly of fashionable manners or polite intrigue, which our modern "poets" have to tangle and to disentangle in their plays, with greatest circumstantiality. His nature-bidden action and his speech are: Yea, yea! and Nay, nay !-and all beyond is evil, i.e. modern and superfluous.-R. WAGNER.

  (38) We must beg to be allowed to regard the Tone-poet as included in the Word-poet,-whether personally or by fellowship, is here a matter of indifference. -R. WAGNER.

  (39) The terms derived from the root "dar-stellen "-to set, or show, forth-- have been used throughout this essay so frequently and so variously, that I deem it necessary to call attention to the fact that in English we have no thoroughly satisfactory equivalent. I have, therefore, been obliged to render this concept by distinct expressions : sometimes as "performer," again as "executant," "actor," "representant," &c. while in the verbal sense I have taken refuge in "portray," "display," "perform," "impersonate," &c.-TR.

  (40) If we substitute "Will" for "Necessity" in this sentence (see footnote on page 69) we shall here obtain a complete summary of Schopenhauer's system of æsthetics; while, even as it stands, it significantly foreshadows E. von Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious. "-TR.

  (41) "Über die als reine Thatsache kein zweifel
mehr vorhanden ist"-to translate this sentence literally, "as a matter of fact," could only be misleading. Taken apart from the context, it might then beread as a confession of faith in the realistic school; whereas the whole passage shows that Wagner went strongly for a search below the incidental surface for the broad principles of life that govern human action. Witness, that, of the two schemes with which he was at this time busied, Barbarossa and Siegfried, he abandoned the historical in favour of the mythical.-TR.

  (42) In the original, the passage runs: "um der entausserten Nothwendigkeit seines Wesens willen"; it is impossible, however, to convey the idea of 'renunciation' connoted by the term "entausserung" (as employed in the next sentence) at like time with that of the-so to speak-' turning inside out' of a man's character.-TR.

  (43) We must not forget that, only a few months before writing this essay, Wagner had prepared a sketch for a tragedy on the subject of Jesus of Nazareth.-TR,

  (44) Whilst we here have only touched upon the Tragic element of the Artwork of the Future, in its evolution out of Life, and by artistic fellowship, we may infer its Comic element by reversing the conditions which bring the Tragic to a natural birth. The hero of the Comedy will he the obverse of the hero of the Tragedy. Just as the one instinctively directed all his actions to his surroundings and his foils-as a Communist, i.e. as a unit who of his inner, free Necessity, and by his force of character, ascends into the Generality-so the other in his rôle of Egoist, of foe to the principle of Generality, will strive to withdraw himself therefrom, or else to arbitrarily direct it to his sole self-interest; hut he will be withstood by this principle of generality in its most multifarious forms, hard pressed by it, and finally subdued. The Egoist will be compelled to ascend into Community; and this will therefore he the virtual enacting, many-headed personality which will ever appear to the action-wishing, but never can.ning, egoist as a capriciously changing Chance; until it fences him around within its closest circle and, without further breathing-space for his self-seeking, hc sees at last his only rescue in the unconditional acknowledgment of its necessity. The artistic Fellowship, as the representative of Generality, will therefore have in Comedy an even directer share in the framing of the poem itself, than in Tragedy.-R. WAGNER.

  (45) And especially our modern Theatrical institutions.-R. WAGNER.

  (46) "Stand-rechten," generally employed to signify a 'court-martial.' The whole group of derivatives from the root-idea of 'standing' reads thus - "das getreue Abbild des modernen Staates, mit semen Ständen, Anstellungen, Stand rechten, stehenden Heeren-und was sonst noch Alles in ihm stehen möge"; the italics being reproduced from the original.-TR.

  (47) See Meistersinger, Act 3.- Walther: "Wie fang ich nach der Regel an? "-Hans Sachs: "Ihr stellt sie selbst, und folgt ihr dann."-TR.

  (48) Whosoever is unable to lift himself above his thraldom to the trivial, unnatural system of our Modern Art, will be sure to pose the vapidest of questions anent these details; to throw out doubts; to decline to understand. That he should answer in advance the myriad possible doubts and questions of this sort, no one, surely, will demand of an author who addresses himself above all to the thinking artist, and not to the thick-headed modern art-industrial- no matter whether the latter's literary calling be critical or creative. -R. WAGNER.

  (49) It would almost seem that the author had caught a slight foreboding of the character of the latest Parisian "Commune."-The Editor. (Tr.- i.e. of the edition of 1872; in other words-Richard Wagner.)

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