RICH A RD WA GXFR. 



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into the expression of family life. Is lie politi- 

 cal ? He creates the state. Is he thoughtful aud 

 imaginative? He evolves literature, science, and 

 the arts. Is he spiritual ? Ilis soul passes into 

 the religions of the world. 



It is quite obvious that life is here seized, not 

 from the intellectual, but from the emotional side. 

 The intellect is used to fathom, to formulate, to 

 economize, and represent, in their most impres- 

 sive forms, the feelings which would otherwise be 

 wasted and misspent; but the intellect, which 

 has played so important a part In Wagner's sys- 

 tem, is always the second, never the first factor, 

 and its function has been to analyze the various 

 expressional media of the past and present, and 

 to create some form or combination more exhaus- 

 tive and powerful than all the rest. 



Wagner wa>s willing to be led. But he could 

 not help feeling that an artist now is the heir of 

 all the ages, that now for the first time he can 

 stand and gauge the creations of the past in poe- 

 try, painting, drama, and music, and ask himself 

 how far, through these, has the inner world of 

 the mind found utterance. Wagner had the un- 

 conscious but inflexible hardihood to take up 

 each art in turn, weigh it, and find it wanting. 

 Each fell short of the whole reality in some re- 

 spect. Painting leaves out motion and solidarity, 

 sculpture possesses solidarity without motion, and 

 usually without color. Poetry without drama ap- 

 peals to the senses chiefly through the imagina- 

 tion ; in itself it has neither sound, color, nor 

 solidarity. The spoken drama lacks the inten- 

 sity which it is the unique function of musical 

 sound to give ; while mere pantomime, whether 

 of dance or drama, lacks the indefinite power of 

 sound as well as the definite suggestion of words ; 

 and, lastly, musical sound alone provokes the 

 eternal "why?" which can only be answered 

 by associating the emotion raised with thought, 

 for music alone is without solidarity, color, or 

 thought, while possessing motion and sound in 

 the highest perfection. 



It will be said, " Yes, but each art is complete 

 in itself." True, but not complete as a means of 

 expressing thought and feeling. You urge : " But 

 the power of art lies often in its suggestiveness. 

 I read a poem and shut my eyes, and the vision 

 is more splendid than anything that could be 

 presented outwardly." Yes, indirectly, because 

 you have imagination ; the vision was beautiful, 

 but its quality depended on you, not on the art. 

 Art is for expression, and that art is best which 

 expresses most. Do not confuse the effects of 

 imagination and association with the effects of 



art. A barrel organ or a daub may serve to set 

 agoing imagination and memory, but art has to 

 do with expression, and is defective qud art just 

 where it begins to make these demands upon 

 imagination and memory. 



Those who have traced Wagner's career from 

 boyhood know how patiently he has questioned 

 every art how passionately he has surrendered 

 himself to it, for a time ; how willing he would 

 have been to rest, how inexorably experience and 

 feeling have urged him on until, like the hardy 

 navigators of old, he broke at last iuto a new and 

 undiscovered ocean. 



At the age of eleven he had read Shakespeare. 

 Surely dramatic expression of thought and feel- 

 ing could go no further. But he would test it as 

 a form of art by experiment, and see how it 

 worked. He immediately constructed a drama, 

 horrible and thorough — a cross between " Ham- 

 let" and "King Lear." Forty-two characters 

 suffered death in the first four acts, so that in 

 the fifth, in order to people his stage at all, most 

 of them had to reappear as ghosts. The Shake- 

 spearean method was closely adhered to, and for 

 several years he continued to brood over it lov- 

 ingly. 



Here was a form intensely individual, self- 

 conscious — in which man explored the depths of 

 his own nature. On that rough wooden stage of 

 the Globe Theatre so vivid were the characters, 

 so rapid and complex the feelings, so perfect and 

 expressive the pantomime, that the want of stage- 

 trappings and accessories was hardly felt. Still 

 it was a restrained expression ; it was too mo- 

 saic; the individuals lacked a universal element 

 in which to live and move and have their being: 

 we sit fascinated and bewildered with the subtile 

 analysis and changing episodes ; but the charac- 

 ters do not run up into universal types, they are 

 too entirely absorbed by their own thoughts and 

 feelings. The contest here is not with Fate and 

 Time, as on the Greek stage, but with self and 

 society. 



Excited but oppressed by the complex inner 

 life of the Shakespearean drama, Wagner still 

 felt the need of wedding the personal life to some 

 larger ideal types, and intensifying the emotional 

 element by the introduction of musical sound. 

 Then the cramped wooden stage of the Globe 

 Theatre vanished, and in its place rose the mar- 

 ble amphitheatre, open to the sky, imbedded in 

 the southern slope of the Athenian Acropolis. 



In the classical drama nothing was individual 

 — the whole life of Greece was there, but all was 

 summed up in large and simple types. The act- 



