Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



599 



THE TRIUMPH OF WAGNERISM. 



Tut ceiitLiiary of Wagner's birlh does not occur 

 till 1913, but then surely we shall witness the celebra- 

 tion of celebrations. Meanwhile \Vagner literature 

 grows apace. Since his death not only has more 

 lieen written about U'agner than about any other 

 composer, but in the amount of literature devoted to 

 him and his music in recent years Wagner runs 

 Shakespeare hard, and indeed almost anyone else in 

 the same period. The Bookman for October, being 

 a double illustrated Wagner number, may be regarded 

 as an "advance " commemorative centenary volume. 

 Mr. Reginald R. Buckley, who writes on the theatre 

 at Bayreuth, says that the ordinary theatre is concerned 

 with Money and the oiiera-house with Society — words 

 which symbolise all that was most loathsome to 

 Wagner. Though Bayreuth is first an e.xpression of 

 Wagner's art, it is, besides, the home of a nation's 

 folk-lore, living again in the art of our own day. The 

 time has come, he adds, for a wider interest in the 

 whole subject of Wagncrism, which may be summed 

 up as a vision of a better earthly life, as a Morris or a 

 Ruskin might conceive it. Dr. William Barry con- 

 tributes an article on the life of Wagner. Referring 

 to the music-dramas, he notes how far U'agner stands 

 out beyond Meyerbeer, Rossini, _^and Verdi. How- 

 different the century would appea'r to us if Wagner 

 had not arisen, or had not moved on from " Rienzi " 

 to the " Ring of the Nibelung," and to " Parsifal" ! 

 The year of " Parsifal " (1882) saw him at the height 

 of his destiny. Europe hailed him king in musical 

 drama, ijoet whose rendering had brought legends 

 from books to life, i)rophet of better hopes than 

 civilised man had yet fulfilled. All this he had done 

 by sheer holding out against a world bent on 

 defeating him. 



A NEW SOURCE OF DANTE. 



In the North Annrican Keviac Mr. Arthur Bening- 

 ton, Vice-President of the Dante Society, announces 

 that Professor Paolo .\maducci, of Rovigo, promises 

 to publish this autumn a book which, he says, will 

 necessitate the revision .of all the commentaries of 

 the " Divina Commedia," as they do not recogni^se 

 the source from which Dante derived the scheme of 

 his trilogy : — 



Professor Ainaducci's theory may be stated briefly as 

 follows :— That Dante's journey, from its beginning in the 

 darlt wood to its end in the Lnipyrean, is an image of the 

 journey of the Children of Israel, from the exodus from Kgypt 

 10 the arrival at the Promised Land ; that the hundred cantos 

 of the "Divina C'a.nmedia," to Ih; properly understood, must 

 be divided Into forty-two marches and stopping-places (" man- 

 sipns"), as was the journey of the Israelites; each march anil 

 resling-place having the same allegorical uicaning that St. I'cter 

 Dainian attributes to those of the Israelites. A synopsis already 

 ]>ublished in // GiornaU fantesco, of Florence, reveals an ixlin- 

 ofdinary parallel l)ctivcen the work of Dante and that of 

 .St. Peter Damian, siiflicicnt. indeed, to make out a strong case 

 fill ih'- |;..vi..., pr..!'..,,... 



ST. rKTER DAMIAN. 



St. Peter Damian, who is thus set forth as the 

 iiispirer of Dante, was born at Ravenna in 1007, and 

 died at Faenza in 1072. He was the bitterest foe of 

 simony and of the married clergy — a man of the type 

 of Hildebrand. The work in which Professor 

 Amaducci believes he found the key to the " Divina 

 Commedia" is addressed by St. Peter Damian to Hil- 

 debrand, the future Gregory VII., and its occasion is 

 the habit of a certain monk to abstain from meat for 

 forty days at other limes than those prescribed by 

 the Church : — 



The saintly author collects biblical references to the numbt-i 

 of forty and its mysteries, and then, symbolically interpreting 

 tlie forty-two places in which the Israelites sojourned in the 

 course of their forty years of wandering on the way to the 

 Promised Land, he demonstrates in the mystical scholastic 

 manner of his day that the allegorical meaning of this journey 

 is the path of life of the Christian man, who arrives at real per- 

 fection and bliss by passing, ,as it were, through a like number 

 of steps or grades of virtue. 



Mr. Benington gives a table showing on one side 

 the names of the forty-two stopping-places, or " man- 

 sions," of the Children of Israel, with their interpreta- 

 tion by St. Peter Damian, and on the other side a 

 synopsis of the passages in the "Divina Commedia" 

 which Professor Amaducci believes to correspond. 

 Mr. Benington confesses that at first sight the relation- 

 ship between the passage in the " Divina Commedia " 

 and the mystical or allegorical meaning of the 

 " mansion " is in many cases not evident, or even 

 apparent. He expects that the promised book will 

 undoubtedly start a tempest of criticism and counter- 

 criticism. 



OFFENCES OF BRITISH TOURISTS. 



Thk November number of C/iamlvrs's Journal 

 returns to the question of the Reform of the British 

 Tourist, and Mr. F. G. .\flalo makes suggestions for 

 the treatment of the otTenders. He complains of the 

 manner of dressing when abroad, behaviour in places 

 of worship and enturtainment, loud talk, ignorant 

 contempt of the manners and customs of other 

 countries, and, occasionally, unaccountable familiarity 

 with the natives and indiscriminate gifts of money 

 or strong drink, not from generosity, but in the 

 spirit of patronage. How could any league or society 

 mend these evils? it may be asked. Quite simply — 

 by ridicule. Every member should be pledged to 

 lose no opportunity of reporting to headquarters the 

 worst cases, with the offender's name whenever it 

 could be ascertained, and Mr. .'\flalo hopes the 

 society would be strong enough to publish a monthly 

 magazine, a section of which would be devoted 10 

 giving publicity to these cases. At all events there 

 would be ample material for the caricaturist where- 

 with to attract the editors of establishctl journals. He 

 is sure actions for libel would be very rare. Ridicule 

 kills extravagance where serious criticism f.tils. 



