The Art-Work Of The Future

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that it should have been written when the Darwinian theory of the influence of environment upon evolution was as yet unpublished, if even formed.-TR.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 not, 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.

(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.)