Richard Wagner: The Art-Work of the Future (1849): Part II Chapter 6
Derrick Everett
Three Types of Human Art
In our general survey of the demeanour of each of the three purely-
human (rein menschlich) arts after its severance from their original
unity, we could plainly see that exactly where the one variety
touched on the province of the next, and where the faculty of the
second stepped-in to replace the faculty of the first, there the first
one also found its natural bounds. Beyond these bounds, it might
stretch over from the second art-variety to the third; and through this
third, again, back to itself, back to its own self, but only in
accordance with the natural laws of love, of self-sacrifice for the
common good motivated by love. As man by love sinks his whole nature in
that of woman, in order to pass over through her into a third being,
the child, and yet finds but himself again in all the loving trinity,
though in this self a widened, filled, and finished whole: so may each
of these individual arts find its own self again in the perfect,
throughly liberated art-work -- nay, look upon itself as grown into
this art-work -- so soon as, on the path of genuine love and by sinking
of itself within the kindred arts, it returns upon itself and finds the
wage of its love in the perfect work of art to which it knows itself
expanded. Only that art-variety, however, which wills the common
art-work, reaches by that willing the highest fill of its own
particular nature; whereas that art which merely wills itself, its own
exclusive fill of self; stays empty and unfree; for all the luxury that
it may heap upon its solitary semblance. But the will to form the
common artwork arises in each branch of art by instinct and
unconsciously, so soon as it reaches its own bounds, and it gives
itself to the answering art, rather than merely striving to take from
it. It only remains itself, when it gives itself away completely:
whereas it must become its very opposite, if it should only feed upon
the other: "whose bread I eat, his song I'll sing." But when it gives
itself entirely to the second, and stays entirely enclosed therein, it
is then able to pass on entirely into the third; and so become once
more entirely itself in highest fullness, in the associate art-work.
(Of all these arts not one so sorely needed to marry with another, as
that of Tone; for her peculiar character is that of a fluid
nature-element poured out betwixt the more defined and individualised
substances of the two other arts.) Only through the rhythm of Dance, or
as bearer of the word, could she brace her deliquescent being to
definite and characteristic corporeality. But neither of the other arts
could bring herself to plunge, in love without reserve, into the
element of Tone: each drew from it so much stuff as seemed expedient
for her own precise and egoistic aims; each took from Tone, but gave
not in return; so that poor Tone, who of her life-need stretched out
her hands in all directions, was forced at last herself to take for
very means of maintenance. Thus she engulfed the word at first, to make
of it what suited best her pleasure: but while she disposed of this
word as her wilful feeling listed, in Catholic music, she lost its bony
framework -- so to say -- of which, in her desire to become a human
being, she stood in need to bear the liquid volume of her blood, and
round which she might have crystallised a sinewy flesh. A new and
energetic handling of the word, in order to gain shape therefrom, was
shown by Protestant church-music; which, in the "Passion-music,"
pressed on towards an ecclesiastical drama, wherein the word was no
longer a mere shifting vehicle for the expression of feeling, but
embodied thoughts depicting action. In this church-drama, Music, while
still retaining her predominance and building everything else into her
own pedestal, almost compelled Poetry to behave in earnest and like a
man towards her. But coward Poetry appeared to dread this challenge;
she deemed it as well to cast a few neglected morsels to - swell the
meal of this mightily waxing monster, Music, and thus to pacify it;
only, however, to regain the liberty of staying undisturbed within her
own peculiar province, the egoistic sphere of literature. It is to this
selfish, cowardly bearing of Poetry toward Tone that we stand indebted
for that unnatural abortion the oratorio, which finally transplanted
itself from the church into the concert-hall. The oratorio would give
itself the airs of drama; but only precisely in so far as it might
still preserve to Music the unquestioned right of being the chief
concern, the only leader of the drama's 'tone.'
Where Poetry fain would reign in solitude, as in the spoken play, she
took Music into her menial service, for her own convenience; as, for
instance, for the entertainment of the audience between the acts, or
even for the enhancement of the effect of certain dumb transactions,
such as the entry of a cautious burglar, and matters of that sort Dance
did the selfsame thing, when she leapt proudly on to saddle, and
graciously condescended to allow Music to hold the stirrup. Exactly so
did Tone behave to Poetry in the oratorio: she merely let her pile the
heap of stones, from which she might erect her building as she fancied.
But Music at last capped all this ever-swelling arrogance, by her
shameless insolence in the opera. Here she claimed tribute of the art
of Poetry down to its utmost farthing: it was no longer to merely make
her verses, no longer to merely suggest dramatic characters and
sequences, as in the oratorio, in order to give her a handle for her
own distention but it was to lay down its whole being and all its
powers at her feet, to offer up complete dramatic characters and
complex situations, in short the entire ingredients of drama; in order
that she might take this gift of homage and make of it whatever she
fancied.
The opera, as the seeming point of reunion of all the three related
arts, has become the meeting-place of these sisters' most self-seeking
efforts. Undoubtedly Tone claims for herself the supreme right of
legislation therein; nay, it is solely to her struggle -- though led by
egoism -- towards the genuine artwork of the Drama, that we owe the
opera at all. But in degree as Poetry and Dance were bid to be her
simple slaves, there rose amid their egoistic ranks a growing spirit of
rebellion against their domineering sister. The arts of Dance and
Poetry had taken a personal lease of drama in their own way: the
spectacular play and the pantomimic ballet were the two territories
between which opera now deployed her troops, taking from each whatever
she deemed indispensable for the self-glorification of Music. Play and
ballet, however, were well aware of her aggressive self-sufficiency:
they only lent themselves to their sister against their will, and in
any case with the mental reservation that on the first favourable
opportunity they each would clear themselves an exclusive field. So
Poetry leaves behind her feeling and her pathos, the only fitting
garment for opera, and throws her net of modern intrigue around her
sister Music; who, without being able to get a proper hold of it, must
willy-nilly twist and turn the empty cobweb, which none but the nimble
theatre seamstress herself can plait into a tissue: and there she
chirps and twitters, as in the French confectionary-operas, until at
last her peevish breath gives out, and sister Prose steps in to fill
the stage. Dance, on the other hand, has only to espy some breach in
the breath-taking of the tyrannising songstress, some chilling of the
lava-stream of musical emotion, and in an instant she flings her legs
astride the boards; trounces sister Music off the scene, down to the
solitary confinement of the orchestra; and spins, and whirls, and runs
around, until the public can no longer see the wood for the trees, i.e.
the opera for the leg-show.
Thus opera becomes the mutual compact of the egoism of the three
related arts. To rescue her supremacy, Tone contracts with Dance for so
many quarters-of-an-hour which shall belong to the latter alone: during
this period the chalk upon the soles shall trace the regulations of the
stage, and music shall be made according to the system of the leg-, and
not the tone-, vibrations; item, that the singers shall be expressly
forbidden to indulge in any sort of graceful bodily motion; this is to
be the exclusive property of the dancer, whereas the singer is to be
pledged to complete abstention from any fancy for mimetic gestures, a
restriction which will have the additional advantage of conserving his
voice. With Poetry, Tone settles, to the former's highest satisfaction,
that she will not employ her in the slightest on the stage; nay, will
as far as possible not even articulate her words and verses, and will
relegate her instead to the printed text-book, necessarily to be read
after the performance, in literature's decorous garb of black and
white. Thus, then, is the noble bond concluded, each art again itself;
and between the dancing legs and written book, Music once more floats
gaily on through all the length and breadth of her desire. This is
modern freedom in the faithful counterfeit of art!
Yet after such a shameful compact the art of Tone, however brilliantly
she seem to reign in opera, must needs be deeply conscious of her
humiliating dependence. Her life-breath is the heart's affection; and
if this also be centred on itself and its own contentment, then not
only is it as much in need of the wherewithal of this contentment as
are the yearnings of the senses and the understanding, but it feels its
need of that object far more piercingly and vividly than they. The
keenness of this need gives to the heart its courage of self-sacrifice;
and just as Beethoven has spoken out this courage in a valiant deed, so
have tone-poets like Gluck and Mozart expressed by glorious deeds of
love the joy with which the lover sinks himself within his object;
ceasing to be himself, but becoming in reward an infinitely greater
thing. Wherever the edifice of opera -- though originally erected for
the egoistic manifestoes of segregated arts -- betrayed within itself
the trace of a condition for the full absorption of Music into Poetry,
these masters have accomplished the redemption of their art into the
conjoint artwork. But the baleful influence of the ruling evil plight
explains to us the utter isolation of such radiant deeds, together with
the isolation of the very tone-poets who fulfilled them. That which was
possible to the unit under certain fortunate, but almost purely
accidental circumstances, is very far indeed from forming a law for the
great mass of phenomena; and in the latter we can only recognise the
distracted, egoistic oscillations of caprice; whose methods indeed are
those of all mere copying, since it cannot originate anything of
itself. Gluck and Mozart, together with the scanty handful of kindred
tone-poets, serve us only as stars by which to steer on the midnight
sea of operatic music, to point the way to the pure artistic
possibility of the ascension of the richest music into a still richer
dramatic poetry, namely into that poetic art which by this free
surrender of Music to her shall first become an all-effectual dramatic
art. How impossible is the perfect artwork amid the ruling state of
things, is proved by the very fact that, after Gluck and Mozart had
disclosed the highest capabilities of Music, these deeds have yet
remained without the smallest influence on our actual modern art's
demeanour; that the sparks which flew from their genius have only
hovered before our art-world like sputtering fireworks, but have been
absolutely unable to light the fire which must have caught its flame
from them, had the fuel for it been to hand.
But even the deeds of Gluck and Mozart were but one-sided deeds, i.e.
they revealed the capability and the instinctive will of Music without
their being understood by her sister arts, without the latter
contributing towards those deeds from a like-felt genuine impulse to be
absorbed in one another, and in fact without any response from
their side. Only, however, from a balanced and common impulse of all
three
sister arts, can their redemption into the true art-work, and thus this
artwork itself; become a possibility. When at last the pride of all
three arts in their own self-sufficiency shall break to pieces, and
pass over into love for one another; when at last each art can only
love itself when mirrored in the others; when at last they cease to be
separate arts, then will they all have power to create the perfect
artwork; indeed, their own desistence, in this sense, is already of
itself this art-work: their death giving it life.
Thus will the Drama of the Future rise up of itself; when nor comedy,
nor opera, nor pantomime, can any longer live; when the conditions
which allowed their origin and sustained their unnatural life, shall
have been entirely removed. These conditions can only be removed by the
advent of those fresh conditions which breed from out themselves the
Art-Work of the Future. The latter, however, cannot arise alone, but
only in the fullest harmony with the conditions of our whole life. Only
when the ruling religion of egoism, which has split the entire domain
of art into crippled, self-seeking art-tendencies and art- varieties,
shall have been mercilessly dislodged and torn up root and branch from
every moment of the life of man, can the new religion step forth of
itself to life; the religion which includes within itself the
conditions of the Art-Work of the Future.
Before we turn with straining eyes to the prefigurement of this art-
work -- the one that we have to win for ourselves, by completely
disowning our present artistic environment -- it is necessary to cast a
glance upon the nature of the so-called plastic arts.
(Tr. W.A. Ellis, with some corrections and changes for readability)
--
Derrick Everett
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