SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
decadent side in Wagner
I do not say that there may not be a decadent side in Wagner, revealing super-sensitiveness or even hysteria and other modern nervous affections. And if this side was lacking he would not be representative of his time, and that is what every great artist ought to be. But there is certainly something more in him than decadence; and if women and young men cannot see anything beyond it, it only proves their inability to get outside themselves. A long time ago Wagner himself complained to Liszt that neither the public nor artists knew how to listen to or understand any side of his music but the effeminate side: «They do not grasp its strength,» he said. «My supposed successes,» he also tells us, «are founded on misunderstanding. My public reputation isn’t worth a walnut-shell.» And it is true he has been applauded, patronised, and monopolised for a quarter of a century by all the decadents of art and literature. Scarcely anyone has seen in him a vigorous musician and a classic writer, or has recognised him as Beethoven’s direct successor, the inheritor of his heroic and pastoral genius, of his epic inspirations and battlefield rhythms, of his Napoleonic phrases and atmosphere of stirring trumpet-calls.
Nowhere is Wagner nearer to Beethoven than in Siegfried. In Die Walküre certain characters, certain phrases of Wotan, of Brünnhilde, and, especially, of Siegmund, bear a close relationship to Beethoven’s symphonies and sonatas. I can never play the recitative con espressione e semplice of the seventeenth sonata for the piano (Op. 31, No. 2) without being reminded of the forests of Die Walküre and the fugitive hero. But in Siegfried I find, not only a likeness to Beethoven in details, but the same spirit running through the work–both the poem and the music. I cannot help thinking that Beethoven would perhaps have disliked Tristan, but would have loved Siegfried; for the latter is a perfect incarnation of the spirit of old Germany, virginal and gross, sincere and malicious, full of humour and sentiment, of deep feeling, of dreams of bloody and joyous battles, of the shade of great oak-trees and the song of birds.
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In my opinion, Siegfried, in spirit and in form, stands alone in Wagner’s work. It breathes perfect health and happiness, and it overflows with gladness. Only Die Meistersinger rivals it in merriment, though even there one does not find such a nice balance of poetry and music.
And Siegfried rouses one’s admiration the more when one thinks that it was the offspring of sickness and suffering. The time at which Wagner wrote it was one of the saddest in his life. It often happens so in art. One goes astray in trying to interpret an artist’s life by his work, for it is exceptional to find one a counterpart of the other. It is more likely that an artist’s work will express the opposite of his life–the things that he did not experience. The object of art is to fill up what is missing in the artist’s experience: «Art begins where life leaves off,» said Wagner. A man of action is rarely pleased with stimulating works of art. Borgia and Sforza patronised Leonardo. The strong, full-blooded men of the seventeenth century; the apoplectic court at Versailles (where Fagon’s lancet played so necessary a part); the generals and ministers who harassed the Protestants and burned the Palatinate–all these loved pastorales. Napoleon wept at a reading of Paul et Virginie, and delighted in the pallid music of Paesiello. A man wearied by an over-active life seeks repose in art; a man who lives a narrow, commonplace life seeks energy in art. A great artist writes a gay work when he is sad, and a sad work when he is gay, almost in spite of himself. Beethoven’s symphony To Joy is the offspring of his misery; and Wagner’s Meistersinger was composed immediately after the failure of Tannhäuser in Paris. People try to find in Tristan the trace of some love-story of Wagner’s, but Wagner himself says: «As in all my life I have never truly tasted the happiness of love, I will raise a monument to a beautiful dream of it: I have the idea of Tristan und Isolde in my head.» And so it was with his creation of the happy and heedless Siegfried.
this was: Decadent Side In Wagner
go to next chapter: Revolution of 1848
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