142 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



at no time a very exalted, but still a legitimate, 

 branch of his art, the opera comique ; and, be- 

 sides, Auber was a bon camarade, and liked 

 Wagner, probably without understanding him. 



After months of drudgery, and chiefly penny- 

 a-lining for the Gazette Musicale, Wagner felt the 

 imperious necessity for a return to his own art. 

 He took a little cottage outside Paris, hired a 

 piano, and shut himself up. He had done, for a 

 time, at least, with the mean, frivolous, coarse 

 world of Paris — he did not miss his friends, he 

 did not mind his poverty. He was again on the 

 wild Norwegian coast, beaten about with storms, 

 and listening to the weird tales of mariners, as in 

 broken and abrupt utterances, or with bated 

 breath, they confided to him the legend common 

 in one form or other to seafaring folk in all parts 

 of the world — the legend of the Flying Dutch- 

 man. The tale sprang from the lives and advent- 

 ures of those daring navigators of the fifteenth 

 and sixteenth centuries, and reflects the desper- 

 ate struggle with the elements, the insatiable 

 thirst for the discovery of new lands athwart 

 unknown seas, and it seems to embody forever 

 the avenging vision of men who, resolved to win, 

 had so often dared and lost all. 



A famous captain, mad to double the Cape of 

 Storms, beaten back again and again, at length 

 swears a mighty oath to persevere throughout 

 eternity. The devil takes him at his word. The 

 captain doubles the cape, but is doomed to rove 

 the seas forever from pole to pole — as the Wan- 

 dering Jew to tread the earth — his phantom-ves- 

 sel the terror of all mariners, and the dreadful 

 herald of shipwreck. Here was a legend which 

 needed but one inspired touch of love to make it 

 a grand epitome of seafaring life, with its hard 

 toils, its forlorn hopes, and its tender and ineffa- 

 bly sweet respites. The accursed doom of the 

 Flying Dutchman can be lifted by human love 

 alone. The captain, driven by an irrepressible 

 longing for rest, must land once in seven years, 

 and if he can find a woman who will promise to 

 be his and remain faithful to him for one term 

 of seven years, his trial will be over — he will be 

 saved. 



The legend thus humanized becomes the ve- 

 hicle for the expression of those intense yet sim- 

 ple feelings and situations which popular myth, 

 according to Wagner, has the property of con- 

 densing into universal types. Immense unhappi- 

 ness, drawn by magnetic attraction to immense 

 love, tried by heart-rending doubt and uncertain- 

 ty, and crowned with fidelity and triumphant 

 love, the whole embodied in a clear, simple story, 



summed up in a few situations of terrible strength 

 and inexorable truth — such is Wagner's concep- 

 tion of the drama of " The Flying Dutchman," 

 with its " damnation " motive belonging to the 

 captain and its " salvation " motive given to the 

 bride ; its sailor's subject ; its pilot's song ; its 

 spinning-wheel home-melody; and its stormy 

 " Ho ! e ho ! " chorus ; and the whole, shadowed 

 forth in the magic and tempestuous overture, 

 stands out as this composer's first straightfor- 

 ward desertion of history proper, and adoption 

 of myth as the special medium of the new mu- 

 sical drama. 



Six weeks of ceaseless labor, which to Wae- 

 ner were weeks of spontaneous and joyful pro- 

 duction, sufficed to complete the music of " The 

 Flying Dutchman." The immediate result in 

 Paris was ludicrous. The music was instantly 

 judged to be absurd, and Wagner was forced to 

 sell the libretto, which was handed over to a 

 Frenchman, M. P. Fouche, who could write mu- 

 sic. It appeared with that gentleman's approved 

 setting, under the title of "Le Vaisseau Fan- 

 tome." 



This was enough ! No lower depth could well 

 be reached, and Wagner was preparing to leave 

 Paris to the tender mercies of Rossini, Meyer- 

 beer, and M. P. Fouche, when news reached him 

 from Germany that " Rienzi," flouted in the cap- 

 ital of taste, had been accepted in Berlin and 

 Dresden ! 



VI. 



It was the spring of 1842, and it was also the 

 rapid and wondrous turn of the tide for Wagner. 

 He hurried to Dresden, to find the rehearsals of 

 " Rienzi " already advanced. The opera was 

 produced with that singular burst of enthusiasm 

 which greets the first appreciation of an impor- 

 tant and long-neglected truth, and Wagner, hav- 

 ing become the favorite of the crown-prince, 

 was elected Kapellmeister at Dresden, and found 

 himself for the first time famous. Some might 

 now have rested on their laurels, but, to Wag- 

 ner's imperious development, " Rienzi " was al- 

 ready a thing of the past. He had drunk of the 

 crystalline waters of popular myth, and was still 

 thirsty. " The Flying Dutchman " had opened 

 up a new world to him, more real because more 

 exhaustive of human feelings and character than 

 the imperfect types and broken episodes of real 

 history. He seemed to stand where the fresh 

 springs of inspiration welled up from a virgin 

 soil ; he listened to the childlike voices of primi- 

 tive peoples, inspired from the simple heart of 



