Art and Revolution, by Richard Wagner

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Art and Revolution

By Richard Wagner (1849)

Translated by William Ashton Ellis

Introduction

THOMAS CARLYLE, in his History of Frederick the Great, (01)
characterises the outbreak of the French Revolution as the First Act
of the "Spontaneous Combustion" of a nation "sunk into torpor,
abeyance, and dry-rot," and admonishes his readers in the following
words: --

"There is the next mile-stone for you, in the History of Mankind! That
universal Burning-up, as in hell-fire, of Human Shams. The oath of
Twenty-five Million men, which has since become that of all men
whatsoever, 'Rather than live longer under lies, we will die!' - that
is the New Act in World-History. New Act, - or, we may call it New
Part; Drama of World-History, Part Third. If Part Second was 1800
years ago, this I reckon will be Part Third. This is the truly
celestial-infernal Event: the strangest we have seen for a thousand
years. Celestial in the one part; in the other, infernal. For it is
withal the breaking-out of universal mankind into Anarchy, into the
faith and practice of No-Government, - that is to say (if you will be
candid), into unappeasable revolt against Sham-Governors and
Sham-Teachers, - which I do charitably define to be a Search, most
unconscious, yet in deadly earnest, for true Governors and
Teachers..... When the Spontaneous Combustion breaks out; and,
many-coloured, with loud noises, envelopes the whole world in anarchic
flame for long hundreds of years: then has the Event come; there is
the thing for all men to mark, and to study and scrutinise as the
strangest thing they ever saw. Centuries of it yet lying ahead of us;
several sad Centuries, sordidly tumultuous, and good for little! Say
Two Centuries yet, - say even Ten of such a process: before the Old is
completely burnt out, and the New in any state of sightliness?
Millennium of Anarchies; - abridge it, spend your heart's-blood upon
abridging it, ye Heroic Wise that are to come!"

When, in the feverish excitement of the year 1849, I gave vent to an
appeal such as that contained in the immediately succeeding essay:
"Art and Revolution," I believe that I was in complete accord with the
last words of this summons of the grey-headed historian. I believed in
the Revolution, and in its unrestrainable necessity, with certainly no
greater immoderation than Carlyle: only, I also felt that I was called
to point out to it the way of rescue. Far though it was from my intent
to define the New, which should grow from the ruins of a sham-filled
world, as a fresh political ordering: (02) I felt the rather animated
to draw the outlines of the Art-work which should rise from the ruins
of a sham-bred Art. To hold this Art-work up to Life itself; as the
prophetic mirror of its Future, appeared to me a weightiest
contribution toward the work of damming the flood of Revolution within
the channel of the peaceful-flowing stream of Manhood. I was bold
enough to prefix the following motto to the little pamphlet: "When Art
erst held her peace, State-wisdom and Philosophy began: when now both
Statesman and Philosopher have breathed their last, let the Artist's
voice again be heard."

It is needless to recall the scorn which my presumption brought upon
me; since in the course of my succeeding literary labours, whose
connected products I here append, I had occasion enough to defend
myself against the grossest of these attacks. I have also exhaustively
treated this whole matter, both with regard to the inception of these
works and the characteristic incitement thereto, not only in the
"Communication to my Friends," (03) which brings this whole period to
a close, but also in a later treatise, entitled: "The Music of the
Future" ("Zukunftsmusik"). I will only say here that the principal
cause which brought down the ridicule of our art-critics upon my
seemingly paradoxical ideas, is to be found in the fervid enthusiasm
which pervaded my style and gave to my remarks more of a poetic than a
scientific character. Moreover, the effect of an indiscriminate
intercalation of philosophical maxims was prejudicial to my clearness
of expression, especially in the eyes of those who could not or would
not follow my line of thought and general principles. Actively aroused
by the perusal of some of Ludwig Feuerbach's essays, I had borrowed
various terms of abstract nomenclature and applied them to artistic
ideas with which they could not always closely harmonise. In thus
doing, I gave myself up without critical deliberation to the guidance
of a brilliant writer, who approached most nearly to my reigning frame
of mind, in that he bade farewell to Philosophy (in which he fancied
he detected naught but masked Theology) and took refuge in a
conception of man's nature in which I thought I clearly recognised my
own ideal of artistic manhood. From this arose a kind of impassioned
tangle of ideas, which manifested itself as precipitance and
indistinctness in my attempts at philosophical system.

While on this subject, I deem it needful to make special mention of
two chief 'terms,' my misunderstanding of which has since been
strikingly borne in upon me.

I refer in the first place to the concept Willkür and Unwillkür, (04)
in the use of which a great confusion had long preceded my own
offending; for an adjectival term, unwillkürlich, had been promoted to
the rank of a substantive. Only those who have learnt from
Schopenhauer the true meaning and significance of the Will, can
thoroughly appreciate the abuse that had resulted from this mixing up
of words; he who has enjoyed this unspeakable benefit, however, knows
well that that misused "Unwillkür" should really be named "Der Wille"
(the Will); whilst the term Willkür (Choice or Caprice) is here
employed to signify the so-called Intellectual or Brain Will,
influenced by the guidance of reflection. Since the latter is more
concerned with the properties of Knowledge, - which may easily be led
astray by the purely individual aim, - it is attainted with the evil
qualities with which it is charged in the following pages, under the
name of Willkür whereas the pure Will, as the "Thing-in-itself" that
comes to consciousness in man, is credited with those true productive
qualities which are here - apparently the result of a confusion sprung
from the popular misuse of the term - assigned to the negative
expression, "Unwillkür." Therefore, since a thorough revision in this
sense would lead too far and prove a most fatiguing task, the reader
is begged, when doubtful of the meaning of any of such passages, to
bear graciously in mind the present explanation.

Further, I have to fear that my continual employment of the term
"Sinnlichkeit," (05) in a sense prompted by the same authority, may
give origin, if not to positively harmful misunderstanding, at least
to much perplexity. Since the idea conveyed by this term can only have
the meaning, in my argument, of the direct antithesis to "Gedanken"
(Thought), or - which will make my purport clearer - to
"Gedanklichkeit" (Ideation): its absolute misunderstanding would
certainly be difficult, seeing that the two opposite factors, Art and
Learning, must readily be recognised herein. But since, in ordinary
parlance, this word is employed in the evil sense of "Sensualism," or
even of abandonment to Sensual Lust, it would be better to replace it
by a term of less ambiguous meaning, in theoretical expositions of so
warm a declamatory tone as these of mine, however wide a currency it
has obtained in philosophical speech. Obviously, the question here is
of the contrast between intuitive and abstract knowledge, both in
themselves and their results; but above all, of the subjective
predisposition to these diverse modes. The term "Anschauungsvermögen"
(Perceptive Faculty) would sufficiently denote the former; were it not
that for the specific artistic perception, a distinctive emphasis
seems necessary, for which it might well appear indispensable to
retain the expression "Sinnliches Anschauungsvermögen" (Physical
perceptive faculty), and briefly "Sinnlichkeit" (Physicality), alike
for the faculty, for the object of its exercise, and for the force
which sets the two in rapport with each other.

But the greatest peril of all, is that which the author would incur by
his frequent use of the word Communism, should he venture into the
Paris of to-day with these art-essays in his hand; for he openly
proclaims his adherence to this severely scouted category, in
contradistinction to Egoism. (06) I certainly believe that the
friendly German reader, to whom the meaning of this antithesis will be
obvious, will have no special trouble in overcoming the doubt as to
whether he must rank me among the partisans of the newest Parisian
"Commune." Still, I cannot deny that I should not have embarked with
the same energy upon the use of this word "Communism" (employing it in
a sense borrowed from the said writings of Feuerbach) as the opposite
of Egoism: had I not also seen in this idea a soclo-pohitical ideal
which I conceived as embodied in a "Volk" (People) that should
represent the incomparable productivity of antique brotherhood, while
I looked forward to the perfect evolution of this principle as the
very essence of the associate Manhood of the Future. - It is
significant of my experiences on the practical side, that in the first
of these writings, Art and Revolution, which I had originally intended
for a certain political journal (07) then appearing in Paris (where I
stayed for a few weeks in the summer of 1849), I avoided this word
"Communism," - as it now seems to me, from fear of gross
misunderstanding on the part of our French brethren, materialistic
("sinnlich") as they are in their interpretation of so many an
abstract idea, - whereas I forthwith used it without scruple in my
next art-writings, designed expressly for Germany; a fact I now regard
as a token of my implicit trust in the attributes of the German mind.
In pursuance of this observation, I attach considerable importance
also to the experience, that my essay met with absolutely no whit of
understanding in Paris, and that no one at the time could understand
why I should single out a political journal for my mouthpiece; in
consequence whereof; my article did not after all attain to
publication there.

But it was not only from the effects of these and similar experiences,
that the quick of my ideas drew gradually back from contact with the
political excitement of the day, and soon developed more and more
exclusively as an artistic ideal. Hereof the sequence of the writings
collected in these two volumes (08) gives sufficient indication; and
this the reader will best recognise from the insertion, in their
midst, of a dramatic sketch: Wieland der Schmied, executed by me in
the same chronological order as that in which it now stands. If that
artistic ideal, which I have ever since held fast to as my inmost
acquisition, under whatsoever form of its manifestment, - if that
ideal remained the only actual outcome of a labour which taxed the
whole energy of my nature; and finally, if only as a creative artist
could I live up to this ideal without disquietude: then my belief in
the German spirit, and the trust in its predestined place amid the
Council of the Nations that took an ever mightier hold upon me as time
rolled on, could alone inspire me with the hopeful equanimity so
indispensable to the artist - even from the outer aspect of the human
lot, however much the care for the latter had forced its passionate
disturbance upon my views of life. Already I have been enabled to
preface the second edition of Opera and Drama by a dedication to a
friend (09) I had won in the interval, - and to whose instructive
suggestions I have had to thank the most comforting solutions of the
last named problem, - in order to reach to him the hand of the artist
as well as of the man, in token of the hopes that cheer us both.

I have now only to conclude these comments by pointing back once more
to their opening sentences, wherein I cited the dictum of Carlyle upon
the import of the great world epoch that dawned upon us with the
French Revolution. According to the high opinion which this great
thinker has proclaimed, of the destiny of the German nation and its
spirit of veracity, it must be deemed no vain presumption that we
recognise in this German people - whose own completed Reformation
would seem to have spared it from the need of any share in Revolution
- the pre-ordained "Heroic Wise" on whom he calls to abridge the
period of horrible World-Anarchy. For myself; I feel assured that just
the same relation which my ideal of Art bears to the reality of our
general conditions of existence, that relation is allotted to the
German race in its destiny amid a whole political world in the throes
of "Spontaneous Combustion."

Art and Revolution.

ALMOST universal is the outcry raised by artists nowadays against the
damage that the Revolution has occasioned them. It is not the battles
of the "barricades," not the sudden mighty shattering of the pillars
of the State, not the hasty change of Governments, - that is bewailed;
for the impression left behind by such capital events as these, is for
the most part disproportionately fleeting, and short-lived in its
violence. But it is the protracted character of the latest
convulsions, that is so mortally affecting the artistic efforts of the
day. The hitherto-recognised foundations of industry, of commerce, and
of wealth, are now threatened; and though tranquillity has been
outwardly restored, and the general physiognomy of social life
completely re-established, yet there gnaws at the entrails of this
life a carking care, an agonising distress. Reluctance to embark in
fresh undertakings, is maiming credit; he who wishes to preserve what
he has, declines the prospect of uncertain gain; industry is at a
standstill, and - Art has no longer the wherewithal to live.

It were cruel to refuse human sympathy to the thousands who are
smarting from this blow. Where, a little while ago, a popular artist
was accustomed to receive, at the hands of the care-free portion of
our well-to-do society, the reward of his appreciated services in
sterling payment, and a like prospect of comfort and contentment in
his life, - it is hard for him now to see himself rejected by
tight-closed hands, and abandoned to lack of occupation. In this he
shares the fate of the mechanic, who must lay the cunning fingers with
which he was wont to create a thousand dainty trifles for the rich, in
idleness upon his breast above a hungering stomach. He has the right
then to bewail his lot; for to him who feels the smart of pain, has
Nature given the gift of tears. But whether he has a right to confound
his own personality with that of Art, to decry his ills as the ills of
Art, to scold the Revolution as the arch-enemy of Art, because it
interferes with the easy ministry to his own wants: this were grave
matter for question. Before a decision could be arrived at on this
point, at least those artists might be interrogated who have shown by
word and deed that they loved and laboured for Art for its own pure
sake; and from these we should soon learn, that they suffered also in
the former times when others were rejoicing.

The question must be therefore put to Art itself and its true essence;
nor must we in this matter concern ourselves with mere abstract
definitions; for our object will naturally be, to discover the meaning
of Art as a factor in the life of the State, and to make ourselves
acquainted with it as a social product. A hasty review of the salient
points of the history of European art will be of welcome service to us
in this, and assist us to a solution of the above-named problem -
problem which is surely not of slight importance.

_________________________________________________________

IN any serious investigation of the essence of our art of today, we
cannot make one step forward without being brought face to face with
its intimate connection with the Art of ancient Greece. For, in point
of fact, our modern art is but one link in the artistic development of
the whole of Europe; and this development found its starting-point
with the Greeks.

After it had overcome the raw religion of its Asiatic birth-place,
built upon the nature-forces of the earth, and had set thefair, strong
manhood of freedom upon the pinnacle of its religious convictions, -
the Grecian spirit, at the flowering-time of its art and polity, found
its fullest expression in the god Apollo, the head and national deity
of the Hellenic race.

It was Apollo, - he who had slain the Python, the dragon of Chaos; who
had smitten down the vain sons of boastful Niobe by his death-dealing
darts; who, through his priestess at Delphi, had proclaimed to
questioning man the fundamental laws of the Grecian race and nation,
thus holding up to those involved in passionate action, the peaceful,
undisturbed mirror of their inmost, unchangeable Grecian nature, - it
was this Apollo who was the fulfiller of the will of Zeus upon the
Grecian earth; who was, in fact, the Grecian people.

Not as the soft companion of the Muses, - as the later and more
luxurious art of sculpture has alone preserved his likeness, - must we
conceive the Apollo of the spring-time of the Greeks; but it was with
all the traits of energetic earnestness, beautiful but strong, that
the great tragedian Æschylus knew him. Thus, too, the Spartan youths
learnt the nature of the god, when by dance and joust they had
developed their supple bodies to grace and strength; when the boy was
taken from those he loved, and sent on horse to farthest lands in
search of perilous adventure; when the young man was led into the
circle of fellowship, his only password that of his beauty and his
native worth, in which alone lay all his might and all his riches.
With such eyes also the Athenian saw the god, when all the impulses of
his fair body, and of his restless soul, 'urged him to the new birth
of his own being through the ideal expression of art; when the voices,
ringing full, sounded forth the choral song, singing the deeds of the
god, the while they gave to the dancers the mastering measure that
meted out the rhythm of the dance, - which dance itself; in graceful
movements, told the story of those deeds; and when above the harmony
of well-ordered columns he wove the noble roof; heaped one upon the
other the broad crescents of the amphitheatre, and planned the scenic
trappings of the stage. Thus, too, inspired by Dionysus, the tragic
poet saw this glorious god: when, to all the rich elements of
spontaneous art, the harvest of the fairest and most human life, he
joined the bond of speech, and concentrating them all into one focus,
brought forth the highest conceivable form of art - the DRAMA.

The deeds of gods and men, their sufferings, their delights, as they,
- in all solemnity and glee, as eternal rhythm, as everlasting harmony
of every motion and of all creation, - lay disclosed in the nature of
Apollo himself; here they became actual and true. For all that in them
moved and lived, as it moved and lived in the beholders, here found
its peffected expression; where ear and eye, as soul and heart,
lifelike and actual, seized and perceived all, and saw all in spirit
and in body revealed; so that the imagination need no longer vex
itself with the attempt to conjure up .the image. Such a tragedy-day
was a Feast of the God; for here the god spoke clearly and
intelligibly forth, and the poet, as his high-priest, stood real and
embodied in his- art-work, led the measures of the dance, raised the
voices to a choir, and in ringing words proclaimed the utterances of
godlike wisdom.

Such was the Grecian work of art; such their god Apollo, incarnated in
actual, living art; such was the Grecian people in its highest truth
and beauty.

This race, in every branch, in every unit, was rich in individuality,
restless in its energy, in the goal of one undertaking seeing but the
starting-point of a fresh one; in constant mutual intercourse, in
daily-changing alliances, in daily-varying strifes; to-day in luck,
to-morrow in mischance; to-day in peril of the utmost danger,
to-morrow absolutely exterminating its foes; in all its relations,
both internal and external, breathing the life of the freest and most
unceasing development. This people, streaming in its thousands from
the State-assembly, from the Agora, from land, from sea, from camps,
from distant parts, - filled with its thirty thousand heads the
amphitheatre. To see the most pregnant of all tragedies, the
"Prometheus," came they; in this Titanic masterpiece to see the image
of themselves, to read the riddle of their own actions, to fuse their
own being and their own communion with that of their god; and thus in
noblest, stillest peace to live again the life which a brief space of
time before, they had lived in restless activity and accentuated
individuality.

Ever jealous of his personal independence, and hunting down the
"Tyrannos" who, howsoever wise and lofty, might imperil from any
quarter the freedom of his own strong will: the Greek despised the
soft complacence which, under the convenient shelter of another's
care, can lay itself down to passive egoistic rest. Constantly on his.
guard, untiring in warding off all outside influence: he gave not even
to the hoariest tradition the right over his own free mundane life,
his actions, or his thoughts. Yet, at the summons of the choir his
voice was hushed, he yielded himself a willing slave to the deep
significance of the scenic show, and hearkened to the great story of
Necessity told by the tragic poet through the mouths of his gods. and
heroes on the stage. For in the tragedy he found himself again, - nay,
found the noblest part of his own nature united with the noblest
characteristics of the whole nation; and from his inmost soul, as it
there unfolded itself to him, proclaimed the Pythian oracle. At once
both God and Priest, glorious godlike man, one with the Universal, the
Universal summed up in him: like one of those thousand fibres which
form the plant's united life, his slender form sprang from the soil
into the upper air; there to bring forth the one lovely flower which
shed its fragrant breath upon eternity. This flower was the highest
work of Art, its scent the spirit of Greece; and still it intoxi cates
our senses and forces from us the avowal, that it were better to be
for half a day a Greek in presence of this tragic Art-work, than to
all eternity an - un-Greek God!

_____________________________________________________

Hand-in-hand with the dissolution of the Athenian State, marched the
downfall of Tragedy. As the spirit of Community split itself along a
thousand lines of egoistic cleavage, so was the great united work of
Tragedy disintegrated into its individual factors. Above the ruins of
tragic art was heard the cry of the mad laughter of Aristophanes, the
maker of comedies; and, at the bitter end, every impulse of Art stood
still before Philosophy, who read with gloomy mien her homilies upon
the fleeting stay of human strength and beauty.

To Philosophy and not to Art, belong the two thousand years which,
since the decadence of Grecian Tragedy, have passed till our own day.
In vain did Art send hither and thither her dazzling beams into the
night of discontented thought, of mankind grovelling in its madness;
they were but the cries, of pain or joy, of the units who had escaped
from the desert of the multitude, and, like fortunate wanderers from
distant lands, had reached the hidden, bubbling spring of pure
Castalian waters, at which they slaked their thirsty lips but dared
not reach the quickening draught unto the world. Or else it was, that
Art entered on the service of one or other of those abstract ideas or
even conventions which, now lighter and now more heavily, weighed down
a suffering humanity and cast in fetters the freedom both of
individuals and communities. But never more was she the free
expression of a free community. Yet true Art is highest freedom, and
only the highest freedom can bring her forth from out itself; no
commandment, no ordinance, in short, no aim apart from Art, can call
her to arise.

The Romans, - whose national art had early vanished before the
influence of an indoctrinated Grecian art, - procured the services of
Greek architects, sculptors and painters; and their own savants
trained themselves to Grecian rhetoric and versification. Their giant
theatres, however, they opened not to the gods and heroes of the
ancient myths, nor to the free dancers and singers of the sacred
choirs! No! Wild beasts, lions, panthers and elephants, must tear
themselves to pieces in their amphitheatres, to glut the Roman eye;
and gladiators, slaves trained up to the due pitch of strength and
agility, must satiate the Roman ear with the hoarse gulp of death.

These brutal conquerors of the world were pleased to wallow in the
most absolute realism; their imagination could find its only solace in
the most material of presentments. Their philosophers they gladly left
to flee shuddering from public life to abstract speculations; but, for
themselves, they loved to revel in concrete and open bloodthirstiness,
beholding human suffering set before them in absolute physical
reality.

These gladiators and fighters with wild beasts, were sprung from every
European nation; and the kings, nobles, and serfs of these nations
were all slaves alike of the Roman Emperor, who showed them, in this
most practical of ways, that all men were equals; just as, on the
other hand, he himself was often shown most palpably by his own
Pretorian Guard, that he also was no more than a mere slave.

This mutual and general slavery - so clear, that no one could gainsay
it - yearned, as every universal feeling of the world must yearn, for
an adequate expression of itself. But the manifest degradation and
dishonour of all men; the consciousness of the complete corruption of
all manly worth; the inevitably ensuing loathing of the material
pleasures that now alone were left; the deep contempt for their own
acts and deeds, from which all spirit of Genius and impulse of Art had
long since joined with Freedom in her flight; this sorrowful
existence, without actual aimful life, - could find but one
expression; which, though certainly universal as the condition that
called it forth, must yet be the direct antithesis of Art. For Art is
pleasure in itself; in existence, in community; but the condition of
that period, at the close of the Roman mastery of the world, was
self-contempt, disgust with existence, horror of community. Thus Art
could never be the true expression of this condition: its only
possible expression was Christianity.

Christianity adjusts the ills of an honourless, useless, and sorrowful
existence of mankind on earth, by the miraculous love of God; who had
not - as the noble Greek supposed - created man for a happy and
self-conscious life upon this earth, but had here imprisoned him in a
loathsome dungeon: so as, in reward for the self-contempt that
poisoned him therein, to prepare him for a posthumous state of endless
comfort and inactive ecstasy. Man was therefore bound to remain in
this deepest and unmanliest degradation, and no activity of this
present life should he exercise; for this accursed life was, in truth,
the world of the devil, i.e., of the senses; and by every action in
it, he played into the devil's hands. Therefore the poor wretch who,
in the enjoyment of his natural powers, made this life his own
possession, must suffer after death the eternal torments of hell!
Naught was required of mankind but Faith - that is to say, the
confession of its miserable plight, and the giving up of all
spontaneous attempt to escape from out this misery; for the undeserved
Grace of God was alone to set it free.

The historian knows not surely that this was the view of the humble
son of the Galilean carpenter; who, looking on the misery of his
fellow-men, proclaimed that he had not come to bring peace, but a
sword into the world ; whom we must love for the anger with which he
thundered forth against the hypocritical Pharisees who fawned upon the
power of Rome, so as the better to bind and heartlessly enslave the
people; and finally, who preached the reign of universal human love -
a love he could never have enjoined on men whose duty it should be to
despise their fellows and themselves. The inquirer more clearly
discerns the hand of the miraculously converted Pharisee, Paul, and
the zeal with which, in his conversion of the heathen, he followed so
successfully the monition: "Be ye wise as serpents...;" he may also
estimate the deep and universal degradation of civilised mankind, and
see in this the historical soil from which the full-grown tree of
finally developed Christian dogma drew forth the sap that fed its
fruit. But thus much the candid artist perceives at the first glance:
that neither was Christianity Art, nor could it ever bring forth from
itself the true and living Art.

The free Greek, who set himself upon the pinnacle of Nature, could
procreate Art from very joy in manhood: the Christian, who impartially
cast aside both Nature and himself; could only sacrifice to his God on
the altar of renunciation; he durst not bring his actions or his work
as offering, but believed that he must seek His favour by abstinence
from all self-prompted venture. Art is the highest expression of
activity of a race that has developed its physical beauty in unison
with itself and Nature; and man must reap the highest joy from the
world of sense, before he can mould therefrom the implements of his
art; for from the world of sense alone, can he derive so much as the
impulse to artistic creation. The Christian, on the contrary, if he
fain would create an art-work that should correspond to his belief;
must derive his impulse from the essence of abstract spirit (Geist),
from the grace of God, and therein find his tools. - What, then, could
he take for aim? Surely not physical beauty, - mirrored in his eyes as
an incarnation of the devil? And how could pure spirit, at any time,
give birth to a something that could be cognised by the senses?

All pondering of this problem is fruitless; the course of history
shows too unmistakeably the results of these two opposite methods.
Where the Greeks, for their edification, gathered in the amphitheatre
for the space of a few short hours full of the deepest meaning: the
Christian shut himself away in the life-long imprisonment of a
cloister. In the one case, the Popular Assembly was the judge: in the
other, the Inquisition; here the State developed to an honourable
Democracy: there, to a hypocritical Despotism.

Hypocrisy is the salient feature, the peculiar characteristic, of
every century of our Christian era, right down to our own day; and
indeed this vice has always stalked abroad with more crying
shamelessness, in direct proportion as mankind, in spite of
Christendom, has refreshed its vigour from its own unquenchable and
inner well-spring, and ripened toward the fulfilment of its true
purpose. Nature is so strong, so inexhaustible in its regenerative
resources, that no conceivable violence could weaken its creative
force. Into the ebbing veins of the Roman world, there poured the
healthy blood of the fresh Germanic nations. Despite the adoption of
Christianity, a ceaseless thirst of doing, delight in bold adventure,
and unbounded self-reliance, remained the native element of the new
masters of the world. But, as in the whole history of the Middle Ages
we always light upon one prominent factor, the warfare between worldly
might and the despotism of the Roman Church: so, when this new world
sought for a form of utterance, it could only find it in opposition
to, and strife against, the spirit of Christendom. The Art of
Christian Europe could never proclaim itself; like that of ancient
Greece, as the expression of a world attuned to harmony; for reason
that its inmost being was incurably and irreconcilably split up
between the force of conscience and the instinct of life, between the
ideal and the reality. Like the order of Chivalry itself; the
chivalric poetry of the Middle Ages, in attempting to heal this
severance, could, even amid its loftiest imagery, but bring to light
the falsehood of the reconciliation; the higher and the more proudly
it soared on high, so the more visibly gaped the abyss between the
actual life and the idealised existence, between the raw, passionate
bearing of these knights in physical life and their too delicate,
etherealised behaviour in romance. For the same reason did actual
life, leaving the pristine, noble, and certainly not ungraceful
customs of the People, become corrupt and vicious; for it durst not
draw the nourishment for its art-impulse from out of its own being,
its joy in itself; and its own physical demeanour; but was sent for
all its spiritual sustenance to Christianity, which warned it off from
the first taste of life's delight, as from a thing accursed. - The
poetry of Chivalry was thus the honourable hypocrisy of fanaticism,
the parody of heroism: in place of Nature, it offered a convention.

Only when the enthusiasm of belief had smouldered down, when the
Church openly proclaimed herself as naught but a worldly despotism
appreciable by the senses, in alliance with the no less material
worldly absolutism of the temporal rule which she had sanctified: only
then, commenced the so-called Renaissance of Art. That wherewith man
had racked his brains so long, he would fain now see before him clad
in body, like the Church itself in all its worldly pomp. But this was
only possible on condition that he- opened his eyes once more, and
restored his senses to their rights. Yet when man took the objects of
belief and the revelations of phantasy and set them before his eyes in
physical beauty, and with the artist's delight in that physical
beauty, - this was a complete denial of the very essence of the
Christian religion; and it was the deepest humiliation to Christendom
that the guidance to these art-creations must be sought from the pagan
art of Greece. Nevertheless, the Church appropriated to herself this
newly-roused art-impulse, and did not blush to deck herself with the
borrowed plumes of paganism; thus trumpeting her own hypocrisy.

Worldly dominion, however, had its share also in the revival of art.
After centuries of combat, their power armed against all danger from
below, the security of riches awoke in the ruling classes the desire
for more refined enjoyment of this wealth: they took into their pay
the arts whose lessons Greece had taught. "Free" Art now served as
handmaid to these exalted masters, and, looking into the matter more
closely, it is difficult to decide who was the greater hypocrite: -
Louis XIV., when he sat and heard the Grecian hate of Tyrants,
declaimed in polished verses from the boards of his Court-theatre; or
Corneille and Racine, when, to win the favour of their lord, they set
in the mouths of their stage-heroes the warm words of freedom and
political virtue, of ancient Greece and Rome.

Could Art be present there in very deed, where it blossomed not forth
as the living utterance of a free, self-conscious community, but was
taken into the service of the very powers which hindered the
self-development of that community, and was thus capriciously
transplanted from foreign climes? No, surely! Yet we shall see that
Art, instead of enfranchising herself from eminently respectable
masters, such as were the Holy Church and witty Princes, preferred to
sell her soul and body to a far worse mistress - Commerce.

___________________________________________________________

The Grecian Zeus, the father of all life, sent a messenger from
Olympus to the gods upon their wanderings through the world - the fair
young Hermes. The busy thought of Zeus was he; winged he clove from
the heights above to the depths below, to proclaim the omnipresence of
the sovereign god. He presided, too, at the death of men, and led
their shades into the still realm of Night; for wherever the stern
necessity of Nature's ordering showed clearly forth, the god Hermes
was visible in action, as the embodied thought of Zeus.

The Romans had a god, Mercury, whom they likened to the Grecian
Hermes. But with them his winged mission gained a more practical
intent. For them it was the restless diligence of their chaffering and
usurious merchants, who streamed from all the ends of the earth into
the heart of the Roman world; to bring its luxurious masters, in
barter for solid gain, all those delights of sense which their own
immediately surrounding Nature could not afford them. To the Roman,
surveying its essence and its methods, Commerce seemed no more nor
less than trickery; and though, by reason of his ever-growing luxury,
this world of trade appeared a necessary evil, he cherished a deep
contempt for all its doings. Thus Mercury, the god of merchants,
became for him the god withal of cheats and sharpers.

This slighted god, however, revenged himself upon the arrogant Romans,
and usurped their mastery of the world. For, crown his head with the
halo of Christian hypocrisy, decorate his breast with the soulless
tokens of dead feudal orders: and ye have in him the god of the modern
world, the holy-noble god of 'five per cent,' the ruler and the master
of the ceremonies of our modern - 'art.' Ye may see him embodied in a
strait-laced English banker, whose daughter perchance has been given
in marriage to a ruined peer. Ye may see- him in this gentleman, when
he engages the chief singers of the Italian Opera to sing before him
in his own drawing-room rather than in the theatre, because he will
have the glory of paying higher for them here than there; but on no
account, even here, on the sacred Sunday. Behold Mercury and his
docile handmaid, Modern Art!

This is Art, as it now fills the entire civilised world! Its true
essence is Industry; its ethical aim, the gaining of gold; its
aesthetic purpose, the entertainment of those whose time hangs heavily
on their hands. From the heart of our modern society, from the golden
calf of wholesale Speculation, stalled at the meeting of its
cross-roads, our art sucks forth its life-juice, borrows a hollow
grace from the lifeless relics of the chivalric conventions of
mediaeval times, and - blushing not to fleece the poor, for all its
professions of Christianity - descends to the depths of the
proletariate, enervating, demoralising, and dehumanising everything on
which it sheds its venom.

Its pleasaunce it has set up in the Theatre, as did the art of Greece
in its maturity; and, indeed, it has a claim upon the theatre: for is
it not the expression of our current views of present life? Our modern
stage materialises the ruling spirit of our social life, and publishes
its daily record in a way that no other branch of art can hope to
rival; for it prepares its feasts, night in night out, in almost every
town of Europe. Thus, as the broad-strewn art of drama, it denotes, to
all appearance, the flower of our culture; just as the Grecian tragedy
denoted the culminating point of the Grecian spirit; but ours is the
effiorescence of corruption, of a hollow, soulless and unnatural
condition of human affairs and human relations.

This condition of things we need not further characterise here; we
need but honestly search the contents and the workings of our public
art, especially that of the stage, in order to see the spirit of the
times reflected therein as in a faithful mirror; for such a mirror
public Art has ever been. (10)

Thus we can by no means recognise in our theatrical art the genuine
Drama; that one, indivisible, supreme creation of the mind of man. Our
theatre merely offers the convenient locale for the tempting
exhibition of the heterogeneous wares of art-manufacture. H ow
incapable is our stage to gather up each branch of Art in its highest
and most perfect expression - the Drama - it shows at once in its
division into the two opposing classes, Play and Opera; whereby the
idealising influence of music is forbidden to the Play, and the Opera
is forestalled of the living heart and lofty purpose of actual drama.
Thus on the one hand, the spoken Play can never, with but few
exceptions, lift itself up to the ideal flight of poetry; but, for
very reason of the poverty of its means of utterance, - to say nothing
of the demoralising influence of our public life, - must fall from
height to depth, from the warm atmosphere of passion into the cold
element of intrigue. On the other hand, the Opera becomes a chaos of
sensuous impressions jostling one another without rhyme or reason,
from which each one may choose at will what pleases best his fancy;
here the alluring movements of a dancer, there the bravura passage of
a singer; here the dazzling effect of a triumph of the scene-painter,
there the astounding efforts of a Vulcan of the orchestra. Do we not
read from day to day, that this or that new opera is a masterpiece
because it contains a goodly number of fine arias and duets, the
instrumentation is extremely brilliant, &c., &c.? The aim which alone
can justify the employment of such complex means, - the great dramatic
aim, - folk never give so much as a thought.

Such verdicts as these are shallow, but honest; they show exactly what
is the position of the- audience. There are even many of our most
popular artists who do not in the least conceal the fact, that they
have no other ambition than to satisfy this shallow audience. They are
wise in their generation; for when the prince leaves a heavy dinner,
the banker a fatiguing financial operation, the working man a weary
day of toil, and go to the theatre: they ask for rest, distraction,
and amusement, and are in no mood for renewed effort and fresh
expenditure of force. This argument is so convincing, that we can only
reply by saying: it would be more decorous to employ for this purpose
any other thing in the wide world, but not the body and soul of Art.
We shall then be told, however, that if we do not employ Art in this
manner, it must perish from out our public life: i.e., - that the
artist will lose the means of living.

On this side everything is lamentable, indeed, but candid, genuine,
and honest; civilised corruption, and modern Christian dulness!

But, affairs having undeniably come to such a pass, what shall we say
to the hypocritical pretence of many an art-hero of our times, whose
fame is now the order of the day? - when he dons the melancholy
counterfeit of true artistic inspiration; when he racks his brains for
thoughts of deep intent, and ever seeks fresh food for awe, setting
heaven and hell in motion: in short, when he behaves just like those
honest journeymen of art who avowed that one must not be too
particular if one wish to get rid of one's goods. What shall we say,
when these heroes not only seek to entertain, but expose themselves to
all the peril of fatiguing, in order to be thought profound; when,
too, they renounce all hope of substantial profit, and even - though
only a rich man, born and bred, can afford that! - spend their own
money upon their productions, thus offering up the highest modern
sacrifice? To what purpose, this enormous waste? Alas! there yet
remains one other thing than gold, a thing that nowadays a man may buy
for gold like any other pleasure: that thing is Fame! - Yet what sort
of fame is there to reach in our public art? Only the fame of the same
publicity for which this art is planned, and which the fame-lusting
man can never obtain but by submission to its most trivial claims.
Thus he deludes both himself and the public, in giving it his piebald
art-work; while the public deludes both itself and him, in bestowing
on him its applause. But this mutual lie is worthy of the lying nature
of modern Fame itself; for we are adepts in the art of decking out our
own self-seeking passions with the monstrous lies of such
sweet-sounding names as "Patriotism," "Honour," "Law and Order," &c.,
&c.

Yet, why do we deem it necessary so publicly to cheat each one the
other? - Because, mid all the ruling evils, these notions and these
virtues are present still within our conscience; though truly in our
guilty conscience. For it is sure, that where honour and truth are
really present, there also is true Art at hand. The greatest and most
noble minds - whom Æschylus and Sophocles would have greeted with the
kiss of brotherhood - for centuries have raised their voices in the
wilderness. We have heard their cry, and it lingers still within our
ears; but from our base and frivolous hearts we have washed away its
living echo. We tremble at their fame, but mock their art. We admit
their rank as artists of lofty aim, but rob them of the realisation of
their art-work; for the one great, genuine work of Art they cannot
bring to life unaided: we, too, must help them in its birth. The
tragedies of Æschylus and Sophocles were the work of Athens!

What boots, then, the fame of these Masters? What serves it us, that
Shakespeare, like a second Creator, has opened for us the endless
realm of human nature? What serves it, that Beethoven has lent to
Music the manly, independent strength of Poetry? Ask the threadbare
caricatures of your theatres, ask the street-minstrel commonplaces of
your operas: and ye have your answer! But do ye need to ask? Alas, no!
Ye know it right well; indeed, ye would not have it otherwise; ye only
give yourselves the air as though ye knew it not!

What then is your Art, and what your Drama?

The Revolution of February deprived the Paris theatres of public
support; many of them were on the brink of bankruptcy. After the
events of June, Cavaignac, busied with the maintenance of the existing
order of society, came to their aid and demanded a subvention for
their continu ance. Why? - Because the Breadless Classes, the
Prolétariat, would be augmented by the closing of the theatres. - So;
this interest alone has the State in the Stage! It sees in it an
industrial workshop, and, to boot, an influence that may calm the
passions, absorb the excitement, and divert the threatening agitation
of the heated public mind; which broods in deepest discontent, seeking
for the way by which dishonoured human nature may return to its true
self; even though it be at cost of the continuance of our - so
appropriate theatrical institutions!

Well! the avowal is candid; and on all fours with the frankness of
this admission, stands the complaint of our modern artists and their
hatred for the Revolution. Yet what has Art in common with these cares
and these complaints?

____________________________________________________

Let us now compare the chief features of the public art of modern
Europe with those of the public art of Greece, in order to set clearly
before our eyes their characteristic points of difference.

The public art of the Greeks, which reached its zenith in their
Tragedy, was the expression of the deepest and the noblest principles
of the people's consciousness: with us the deepest and noblest of
man's consciousness is the direct opposite of this, namely the
denunciation of our public art. To the Greeks the production of a
tragedy was a religious festival, where the gods bestirred themselves
upon the stage and bestowed on men their wisdom: our evil conscience
has so lowered the theatre in public estimation, that it is the duty
of the police to prevent the stage from meddling in the slightest with
religion; (11) a circumstance as characteristic of our religion as of
our art. Within the ample boundaries of the Grecian amphitheatre, the
whole populace was wont to witness the performances: in our superior
theatres, loll only the affluent classes. The Greeks sought the
instruments of their art in the products of the highest associate
culture: we seek ours in the deepest social barbarism. The education
of the Greek, from his earliest youth, made himself the subject of his
own artistic treatment and artistic enjoyment, in body as in spirit:
our foolish education, fashioned for the most part to fit us merely
for future industrial gain, gives us a ridiculous, and withal arrogant
satisfaction with our own unfitness for art, and forces us to seek the
subjects of any kind of artistic amusement outside ourselves, - like
the rake who goes for the fleeting joys of love to the arms of a
prostitute. Thus the Greek was his own actor, singer, and dancer; his
share in the performance of a tragedy was to him the highest pleasure
in the work of Art itself, and he rightly held it an honour to be
entitled by his beauty and his culture to be called to this beloved
task: we, on the other hand, permit a certain portion of our
proletariate, which is to be found in every social stratum, to be
instructed for our entertainment; thus prurient vanity, claptrap, and
at times unseemly haste for fortune-making, fill up the ranks of our
dramatic companies. Where the Grecian artist found his only reward in
his own delight in the masterpiece, in its success, and the public
approbation: we have the modern artist boarded, lodged, and - paid.
And thus we reach the essential distinction between the two: with the
Greeks their public art was very Art, with us it is artistic -
Handicraft.

The true artist finds delight not only in the aim of his creation, but
also in the very process of creation, in the handling and moulding of
his material. The very act of production is to him a gladsome,
satisfying activity: no toil. The journeyman reckons only the goal of
his labour, the profit which his toil shall bring him; the energy
which he expends, gives him no pleasure; it is but a fatigue, an
inevitable task, a burden which he would gladly give over to a
machine; his toil is but a fettering chain. For this reason he is
never present with his work in spirit, but always looking beyond it to
its goal, which he fain would reach as quickly as he may. Yet, if the
immediate aim of the journeyman is the satisfaction of an impulse of
his own, such as the preparing of his own dwelling, his chattels, his
raiment, &c.: then, together with his prospective pleasure in the
hasting value of these objects, there also enters by degrees a bent to
such a fashioning of the material as shall agree with his individual
tastes. After he has fulfilled the demands of bare necessity, the
creation of that which answers to less pressing needs will elevate
itself to the rank of artistic production. But if he bargains away the
product of his toil, all that remains to him is its mere money-worth;
and thus his energy can never rise above the character of The busy
strokes of a machine; in his eyes it is but weariness, and bitter,
sorrowful toil. The latter is the lot of the Slave of Industry; and
our modern factories afford us the sad picture of the deepest
degradation of man, - constant labour, killing both body and soul,
without joy or love, often almost without aim.

It is impossible to mistake the lamentable effects of Christian dogma,
in this also. As this dogma set man's goal entirely outside his
earthly being, and that goal was centred in an absolute and superhuman
God: so only from the aspect of its most inevitable needs, could life
remain an object of man's care; for, having once received the gift of
life, it was his bounden duty to maintain it until that day when God
alone should please relieve him of its burden. But in no wise should
his needs awake a lust to treat with loving hand the matter given him
for their satisfaction; only the abstract aim of life's bare
maintenance could justify the operation of his senses. And thus we see
with horror the spirit of modern Christianity embodied in a
cotton-mill: to speed the rich, God has become our Industry, which
only holds the wretched Christian labourer to life until the heavenly
courses of the stars of commerce bring round the gracious dispensation
that sends him to a better world.

The Greek knew no handicraft, rightly so described. The so-called
necessaries of life, - which, strictly speaking, make up the whole
concernment of our private and our public life, - he deemed unworthy
to rank as objects of special and engrossing attention. His soul lived
only in publicity, in the great fellowship of his nation; the needs of
this public life made up the total of his care; whereas these needs
were satisfied by the patriot, the statesman, and the artist, but not
the handicraftsman. The Greek went forth to the delights of this
publicity from a simple, unassuming home. It would have seemed to him
disgraceful and degrading to revel, within the costly walls of a
private palace, in the refinements of luxury and extravagance which
to-day fill out the life of a hero of the Bourse; for this was the
distinction that he drew between himself and the egoistic "Barbarians"
of the East. He sought the culture of his body in the general public
baths and gymnasia; his simple, noble clothing was for the most part
the artistic care of the women; and whenever he fell upon the
necessity of manual toil, it was of his very nature that he should
find out its artistic side, and straightway raise it to an art. But
the drudgery of household labour he thrust away - to Slaves.

This Slave thus became the fateful hinge of the whole destiny of the
world. The Slave, by sheer reason of the assumed necessity of his
slavery, has exposed the null and fleeting nature of all the strength
and beauty of exclusive Grecian manhood, and has shown to all time
that Beauty and Strength, as attributes of public life, can then alone
prove lasting blessings, when they are the common gifts of all
mankind.

Unhappily, things have not as yet advanced beyond the mere
demonstration. In fact, the Revolution of the human race, that has
lasted now two thousand years, has been almost exclusively in the
spirit of Reaction. It has dragged down the fair, free man to itself,
to slavery; the slave has not become a freeman, but the freeman a
slave.

To the Greek the fair, strong man alone was free, and this man was
none other than himself; whatever lay outside the circle of Grecian
manhood and Apollonian priesthood, was to him barbarian, and if he
employed it, - slave. True that the man who was not Greek, was
actually barbarian and slave; but he was still a man, and his
barbarianism and his slavery were not his nature but his fate: the sin
of history against his nature, just as to-day it is the sin of our
social system, that the healthiest nations in the healthiest climates
have brought forth cripples and outcasts. This historical sin,
however, was destined soon to be avenged upon the free Greek himself.
Where there lived among the nations no feeling of absolute human-love,
the Barbarian needed only to subjugate the Greek: and all was over
with Grecian freedom, strength, and beauty. Thus, in deep humiliation,
two hundred million men, huddled in helpless confusion in the Roman
empire, too soon found out that - when all men cannot be free alike
and happy - all men must suffer alike as slaves.

Thus we are slaves until this very day, with but the sorry consolation
of knowing that we are all slaves together. Slaves, to whom once the
Christian Apostles and the Emperor Constantine gave counsel, to
patiently submit to a suffering life below, for sake of a better world
above; slaves, whom bankers and manufacturers teach nowadays to seek
the goal of Being in manual toil for daily bread. Free from this
slavery, in his time, felt the Emperor Constantine alone; when he
enthroned himself a pleasure-seeking heathen despot, above this life
which he had taught his believing subj ects to deem so useless. And
free alone, to-day, - at least in the sense of freedom from open
slavery, - feels he who has money; for he is thus able to employ his
life to some other end than that of winning the bare means of
subsistence. Thus, as the struggle for freedom from the general
slavery proclaimed itself in Roman and Medieval times as the reaching
after absolute dominion: so it comes to light to-day as the greed for
gold. And we must not be astonished, if even Art grasps after gold;
for everything strives to its freedom, towards its goda - and our god
is Gold, our religion the Pursuit of Wealth.

Yet Art remains in its essence what it ever was; we have only to say,
that it is not present in our modern public system. It lives, however,
and has ever lived in the individual conscience, as the one fair,
indivisible Art. Thus the only difference is this: with the Greeks it
lived in the public conscience, whereas to.day it lives alone in the
conscience of private persons, the public un-conscience recking
nothing of it. Therefore in its flowering time the Grecian Art was
conservative, because it was a worthy and adequate expression of the
public conscience: with us, true Art is revolutionary, because its
very existence is opposed to the ruling spirit of the community.

With the Greeks the perfect work of art, the Drama, was the abstract
and epitome of all that was expressible in the Grecian nature. It was
the nation itself - in intimate connection with its own history - that
stood mirrored in its art-work, that communed with itself and, within
the span of a few hours, feasted its eyes with its own noblest
essence. All division of this enjoyment, all scattering of the forces
concentred on one point, all diversion of the elements into separate
channels, must needs have been as hurtful to this unique and noble
Art-work as to the like-formed State itself; and thus it could only
mature, but never change its nature. Thus Art was conservative, just
as the noblest sons of this epoch of the Grecian State were themselves
conservative. Æschylus is the very type of this conservatism, and his
loftiest work of conservative art is the "Oresteia," with which he
stands alike opposed as poet to the youthful Sophocles, as statesman
to the revolutionary Pericles. The victory of Sophocles, like that of
Pericles, was fully in the spirit of the advancing development of
mankind; but the deposition of Æschylus was the first downward step
from the height of Grecian Tragedy, the first beginning of the
dissolution of Athenian Polity.

With the subsequent downfall of Tragedy, Art became less and less the
expression of the public conscience. The Drama separated into its
component parts; rhetoric, sculpture, painting, music, &c., forsook
the ranks in which they had moved in unison before; each one to take
its own way, and in lonely self-sufficiency to pursue its own
development. And thus it was that at the Renaissance of Art we lit
first upon these isolated Grecian arts, which had sprung from the
wreck of Tragedy. The great unitarian Art-work of Greece could not at
once reveal itself to our bewildered, wandering, piecemeal minds in
all its fulness; for how could we have understood it? But we knew how
to appropriate those dissevered handiworks of Art; for as goodly
handiwork, to which category they had already sunk in the Romo-Greek
world, they lay not so far from our own nature and our minds. The
guild and handicraft spirit of the new citizenship rose quick and
lively in the towns ; princes and notabilities were well pleased that
their castles should be more becomingly built and decorated, their
walls bedecked with more attractive paintings, than had been possible
to the raw art of the Middle Ages; the priests laid hands on rhetoric
for their pulpits and music for their choirs; and the new world of
handicraft worked valiantly among the separate arts of Greece, so far
at least as it understood them or thought them fitted to its purpose.

Each one of these dissevered arts, nursed and luxuriously tended for
the entertainment of the rich, has filled the world to overflowing
with its products; in each, great minds have brought forth marvels;
but the one true Art has not been born again, either in or since the
Renaissance. The perfect Art-work, the great united utterance of a
free and lovely public life, the Drama, Tragedy, - howsoever great the
poets who have here and there indited tragedies, - is not yet born
again: for reason that it cannot be re-born, but must be born anew.

Only the great Revolution of Mankind, whose beginnings erstwhile
shattered Grecian Tragedy, can win for us this Art-work. For only this
Revolution can bring forth from its hidden depths, in the new beauty
of a nobler Universalism, that which it once tore from the
conservative spirit of a time of beautiful but narrow-meted culture -
and tearing it, engulphed.

__________________________________________________________

But only Revolution, not slavish Restoration, can give us back that
highest Art-work. The task we have before us is immeasurably greater
than that already accomplished in 'days of old. If the Grecian
Art-work embraced the spirit of a fair and noble nation, the Art-work
of the Future must embrace the spirit of a free mankind, delivered
from every shackle of hampering nationality; its racial imprint must
be no more than an embellishment, the individual charm of manifold
diversity, and not a cramping barrier. We have thus quite other work
to do, than to tinker at the resuscitation of old Greece. Indeed, the
foolish restoration of a sham Greek mode of art has been attempted
already, - for what will our artists not attempt, to order? But
nothing better than an inane patchwork could ever come of it - the
offspring of the same juggling endeavour which we find evinced by the
whole history of our official civihisation, seized as it is with a
constant wish to avoid the only lawful endeavour, the striving after
Nature.

No, we do not wish to revert to Greekdom; for what the Greeks knew
not, and, knowing not, came by their downfall: that know we. It is
their very fall, whose cause we now perceive after years of misery and
deepest universal suffering, that shows us clearly what we should
become; it shows us that we must love all men before we can rightly
love ourselves, before we can regain true joy in our own personality.
From the dishonouring slave-yoke of universal journeymanhood, with its
sickly Money-soul, we wish to soar to the free manhood of Art, with
the star-rays of its World-soul; from the weary, overburdened
day-labourers of Commerce, we desire to grow to fair strong men, to
whom the world belongs as an eternal, inexhaustible source of the
highest delights of Art.

To this end we need the mightiest force of Revolution; for only that
revolutionary force can boot us, which presses forward to the goal -
to that goal whose attainment alone can justify its earliest exercise
upon the disintegration of Greek Tragedy and the dissolution of the
Athenian State.

But whence shall we derive this force, in our present state of utmost
weakness? Whence the manly strength against the crushing pressure of a
civilisation which disowns all manhood, against the arrogance of a
culture which employs the human mind as naught but steam-power for its
machinery? Whence the light with which to illumine the gruesome ruling
heresy, that this civilisation and this culture are of more value in
themselves than the true living Man? - that Man has worth and value
only as a tool of these despotic abstract powers, and not by virtue of
his manhood?

When the learned physician is at the end of his resources, in despair
we turn at last to - Nature. Nature, then, and only Nature, can
unravel the skein of this great world-fate. If Culture, starting from
the Christian dogma of the worthlessness of human nature, disown
humanity: she has created for herself a foe who one day must
inevitably destroy her, in so far as she no longer has place for
manhood; for this foe is the eternal, and only living Nature. Nature,
Human Nature, will proclaim this law to the twin sisters Culture and
Civilisation: "So far as I am contained in you, shall ye live and
flourish; so far as I am not in you, shall ye rot and die!"

In the man-destroying march of Culture, however, there looms before us
this happy result: the heavy load with which she presses Nature down,
will one day grow so ponderous that it lends at last to down-trod,
never-dying Nature the necessary impetus to hurl the whole cramping
burden from her, with one sole thrust; and this heaping up of Culture
will thus have taught to Nature her own gigantic force. The releasing
of this force is - Revolution.

In what way, then, does this revolutionary force exhibit itself in the
present social crisis? Is it not in the mechanic's pride in the moral
consciousness of his labour, as opposed to the criminal passivity or
immoral activity of the rich? Does he not wish, as in revenge, to
elevate the principle of labour to the rank of the one and orthodox
religion of society? To force the rich like him to work, - like him,
by the sweat of their brow to gain their daily bread? Must we not fear
that the exercise of this compulsion, the recognition of this
principle, would raise at last the man-degrading journeymanhood to an
absolute and universal might, and - to keep to our chief theme - would
straightway make of Art an impossibility for all time?

In truth, this is the fear of many an honest friend of Art and many an
upright friend of men, whose only wish is to preserve the nobler core
of our present civilisation. But they mistake the true nature of the
great social agitation. They are led astray by the windy theories of
our socialistic doctrinaires, who would fain patch up an impossible
compact with the present conditions of society. They are deceived by
the immediate utterance of the indignation of the most suffering
portion of our social system, behind which lies a deeper, nobler,
natural instinct : the instinct which demands a worthy taste of the
joys of life, whose material sustenance shall no longer absorb man's
whole life-forces in weary service, but in which he shall rejoice as
Man. Viewed closer, it is thus the straining from journeymanhood to
artistic manhood, to the free dignity of Man.

It is for Art therefore, and Art above all else, to teach this social
impulse its noblest meaning, and guide it toward its true direction.
Only on the shoulders of this great social movement can true Art lift
itself from its present state of civilised barbarianism, and take its
post of honour. Each has a common goal, and the twain can only reach
it when they recognise it jointly. This goal is the strong fair Man,
to whom Revolution shall give his Strength, and Art his Beauty!

Neither is it our present purpose to indicate more closely the march
of this social development and the records it will stamp on history,
nor could dogmatic calculation foretell the historical demeanour of
man's social nature, so little dependent upon preconceived ideas. In
the history of man nothing is made, but everything evolves by its own
inner necessity. Yet it is impossible that the final state which this
movement shall attain one day, should be other than the direct
opposite of the present; else were the whole history of the world a
restless zig-zag of cross purposes, and not the ordered movement of a
mighty stream; which with all its bends, its deviations, and its
floods, yet flows for ever in one steadfast course.

Let us glance, then, for a moment at this future state of Man, when he
shall have freed himself from his last heresy, the denial of Nature, -
that heresy which has taught him hitherto to look upon himself as a
mere instrument to an end which lay outside himself. When Mankind
knows, at last, that itself is the one and only object of its
existence, and that only in the community of all men can this purpose
be fulfilled: then will its mutual creed be couched in an actual
fulfilment of Christ's injunction, "Take no care for your life, what
ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye
shall put on, for your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of
all these things." This Heavenly Father will then be no other than the
social wisdom of mankind, taking Nature and her fulness for the common
weal of all. The crime and the curse of our social intercourse have
lain in this: that the mere physical maintenance of life has been till
now the one object of our care, - a real care that has devoured our
souls and bodies and well nigh lamed each spiritual impulse. This Care
has made man weak and slavish, dull and wretched; a creature that can
neither love nor hate; a thrall of commerce, ever ready to give up the
last vestige of the freedom of his Will, so only that this Care might
be a little lightened.

When the Brotherhood of Man has cast this care for ever from it, and,
as the Greeks upon their slaves, has lain it on machines, - the
artificial slaves of free creative man, whom he has served till now as
the Fetish-votary serves the idol his own hands have made, - then will
man's whole enfranchised energy proclaim itself as naught but pure
artistic impulse. Thus shall we regain, in vastly higher measure, the
Grecian element of life; what with the Greek was the result of natural
development, will be with us the product of ages of endeavour; what
was to him a half-unconscious gift a will remain with us a conquered
knowledge; for what mankind in its wide communion doth truly know, can
never more be lost to it.

Only the Strong know Love; only Love can fathom Beauty; only Beauty
can fashion Art. The love of weaklings for each other can only
manifest as the goad of lust; the love of the weak for the strong is
abasement and fear; the love of the strong for the weak is pity and
forbearance; but the love of the strong for the strong is Love, for it
is the free surrender to one who cannot compel us. Under every fold of
heaven's canopy, in every race, shall men by real freedom grow up to
equal strength; by strength to truest love; and by true love to
beauty. But Art is Beauty energised.

Whatsoever we deem the goal of life, to that we train our selves and
children. The Goth was bred to battle and to chase, the genuine
Christian to abstinence and humility: while the liegeman of the modern
State is bred to seek industrial gain, be it even in the exercise of
art and science. But when life's maintenance is no longer the
exclusive aim of life, and the Freemen of the Future - inspired by a
new and deed-begetting faith, or better, Knowledge - find the means of
life assured by payment of a natural and reasonable energy; in short,
when Industry no longer is our mistress but our handmaid: then shall
we set the goal of life in joy of life, and strive to rear our
children to be fit and worthy partners in this joy. This training,
starting from the exercise of strength and nurture of corporeal
beauty, will soon take on a pure artistic shape, by reason of our
undisturbed affection for our children and our gladness at the
ripening of their beauty; and each man will, in one domain or other,
become in truth an artist. The diversity of natural inclination will
build up arts in manifold variety and countless forms of each variety,
in fulness hitherto undreamed. And as the Knowledge of all men will
find at last its religious utterance in the one effective Knowledge of
free united manhood: so will all these rich developments of Art find
their profoundest focus in the Drama, in the glorious Tragedy of Man.
The Tragedy will be the feast of all mankind; in it, - set free from
each conventional etiquette, - free, strong, and beauteous man will
celebrate the dolour and delight of all his love, and consecrate in
lofty worth the great Love-offering of his Death.

This Art will be conservative afresh. Yet truly of its own immortal
force, will it maintain itself and blossom forth: not merely cry for
maintenance, on pretext of some outward-lying aim. For mark ye well,
this Art seeks not for Gain!

_______________________________________________________________

"Utopia! Utopia!" I hear the mealy-mouthed wise-acres of our modern
State-and-Art-barbarianism cry; the so-called practical men, who in
the manipulation of their daily practice can help themselves alone
with lies and violence, or - if they be sincere and honest - with
ignorance at best.

"Beautiful ideal! but, alas! like all ideals, one that can only float
before us, beyond the reach of man condemned to imperfection." Thus
sighs the smug adorer of the heavenly kingdom in which - at least as
far as himself is concerned - God will make good the inexplicable
shortcomings of this earth and its human brood.

They live and lie, they sin and suffer, in the loathliest of actual
conditions, in the filthy dregs of an artificial, and therefore never
realised Utopia; they toil and over-bid each other in every
hypocritical art, to maintain the cheat of this Utopia; from which
they daily tumble headlong down to the dull, prosaic level of nakedest
reality, - the mutilated cripples of the meanest and most frivolous of
passions. Yet they cry down the only natural release from their
bewitchment, as "Chimeras" or "Utopias;" just as the poor sufferers in
a madhouse take their insane imaginings for truth, and truth itself
for madness.

If history knows an actual Utopia, a truly unattainable ideal, it is
that of Christendom; for it has clearly and plainly shown, and shows
it still from day to day, that its dogmas are not realisable. How
could those dogmas become really living, and pass over into actual
life: when they were directed against life itself, and denied and
cursed the principle of living? Christianity is of purely spiritual,
and super-spiritual contents; it preaches humility, renunciation,
contempt of every earthly thing; and amid this contempt - Brotherly
Love! How does the fulfilment work out in the modern world, which
calls itself, forsooth, a Christian world, and clutches to the
Christian religion as its inexpugnable basis? As the arrogance of
hypocrisy, as usury, as robbery of Nature's goods, and egoistic scorn
of suffering fellow-men. Whence comes this shocking contradiction
between the ideal and the fulfilment? Even hence: that the ideal was
morbid, engendered of the momentary relaxing and enfeeblement of human
nature, and sinned against its inbred robust qualities. Yet how strong
this nature is, how unquenchable its ever fresh, productive fulness -
it has shown all the more plainly under the universal incubus of that
ideal; which, if its logical consequences had been fulfilled, would
have completely swept the human race from off the earth; since even
abstinence from sexual love was included in it as the height of
virtue. But still ye see that, in spite of that all-powerful Church,
the human race is so abundant that your Christian-economic
State-wisdom knows not what to do with this abundance, and ye are
looking round for means of social murder, for its uprootal; yea, and
would be right glad, were mankind slain by Christianity, so only that
the solitary abstract god of your own beloved Me might gain sufficient
elbow-room upon this earth!

These are the men who cry "Utopia," when the healthy human
understanding (Menschenverstanda) appeals from their insane
experiments to the actuality of visible and tangible Nature; when it
demands no more from man's godlike reason (Vernunft) than that it
should make good to us the instinct of dumb animals, and give us the
means of finding for ourselves the sustenance of our life, set free
from care though not from labour! And, truly, we ask from it no higher
result for the community of mankind, in order that we may build upon
this one foundation the noblest, fairest temple of the true Art of the
Future!

The true artist who has already grasped the proper standpoint, may
labour even now - for this standpoint is ever present with us - upon
the Art-work of the Future! Each of the sister Arts, in truth, has
ever, and therefore also now, proclaimed in manifold creations the
conscience of her own high purpose. Whereby, then, have the inspired
creators of these noble works from all time suffered, and above all in
our present pass? Was it not by their contact with the outer world,
with the very world for whom their works were destined? What has
revolted the architect, when he must shatter his creative force on
bespoken plans for barracks and lodging-houses? What has aggrieved the
painter, when he must immortalise the repugnant visage of a
millionaire? What the musician, when he must compose his music for the
banquet-table? And what the poet, when he must write romances for the
lending-library? What then has been the sting of suffering to each?
That he must squander his creative powers for gain, and make his art a
handicraft! - And finally, what suffering has the dramatist to bear,
who would fain assemble every art within Art's master-work, the Drama?
The sufferings of all other artists combined in one!

What he creates, becomes an Art-work only when it enters into open
life; and a work of dramatic art can only enter life upon the stage.
But what are our theatrical institutions of to-day, with their
disposal of the ample aid of every branch of art? - Industrial
undertakings: yes, even when supported by a special subsidy from
Prince or State. Their direction is mostly handed over to the same men
who have yesterday conducted a speculation in grain, and to-morrow
devote their well-learned knowledge to a 'corner' in sugar; or mayhap,
have educated their taste for stage proprieties in the mysteries of
back-stairs intrigue, or such like functions. So long as - in
accordance with the prevailing character of public life, and the
necessity it lays upon the theatrical director to deal with the public
in the manner of a clever commercial speculator - so long as we look
upon a theatrical institution as a mere means for the circulation of
money and the production of interest upon capital, it is only logical
that we should hand over its direction, i.e., its exploitation, to
those who are well-skilled in such transactions; for a really artistic
management, and thus such an one as should fulfil the original purpose
of the Theatre, would certainly be but poorly fitted to carry out the
modern aim. For this reason it must be clear to all who have the
slightest insight, that if the Theatre is at all to answer to its
natural lofty mission, it must be completely freed from the necessity
of industrial speculation.

How were this possible? Shall this solitary institution be released
from a service to which all men, and every associate enterprise of
man, are yoked to-day? Yes: it is precisely the Theatre, that should
take precedence of every other institution in this emancipation; for
the Theatre is the widest-reaching of Art's institutes, and the
richest in its influence; and till man can exercise in freedom his
noblest, his artistic powers, how shall he hope to become free and
self-dependent in lower walks of life? Since already the service of
the State, the military service, is at least no longer an industrial
pursuit, let us begin with the enfranchisement of public art; for, as
I have pointed out above, it is to it that we must assign an
unspeakably lofty mission, an immeasurably weighty influence on our
present social upheaval. More and better than a decrepit religion to
which the spirit of public intercourse gives the lie direct more
effectually and impressively than an incapable statesmanship which has
long since host its compass: shall the ever-youthful Art, renewing its
freshness from its own well-springs and the noblest spirit of the
times, give to the passionate stream of social tumult - now dashing
against rugged precipices, now lost in shallow swamps - a fair and
lofty goal, the goal of noble Manhood.

If ye friends of Art are truly concerned to know it saved from the
threatening storms: then hear me, when I tell you that it is no mere
question of preserving Art, but of first allowing it to reach its own
true fill of life!

Is it your real object, ye honourable Statesmen, confronted with a
dreaded social overthrow, - against which, mayhap, ye strive because
your shattered faith in human nature's purity prevents your
understanding how this overthrow can help but make a bad condition
infinitely worse, - is it, I say, your object to graft upon this
mighty change a strong and living pledge of future nobler customs?
Then lend us all your strength, to give back Art unto itself and to
its lofty mission!

Ye suffering brethren, in every social grade, who brood in hot
displeasure how to flee this slavery to money and become free men:
fathom ye our purpose, and help us to lift up Art to its due dignity;
that so we may show you how ye raise mechanical toil therewith to Art;
and the serf of industry to the fair,'self-knowing man who cries, with
smiles begotten of intelligence, to sun and stars, to death and to
eternity: "Ye, too, are mine, and I your lord!"

Ye to whom I call, were ye at one with us in heart and mind, how easy
were it to your Will to set the simple rules to work, whose following
must infallibly ensure the flourishing of that mightiest of all
art-establishments, - the Theatre! In the first place it would be the
business of the State and the Community to adjust their means to this
end: that the Theatre be placed in a position to obey alone its higher
and true calling. This end will be attained when the Theatre is so far
supported that its management need only be a purely artistic one; and
no one will be better situated to carry this out than the general body
of the artists themselves, who unite their forces in the art-work and
assure the success of their mutual efforts by a fit conception of
their task. Only the fullest freedom can bind them to the endeavour to
fulfil the object for sake of which they are freed from the fetters of
commercial speculation; and this object is Art, which the free man
alone can grasp, and not the slave of wages.

The judge of their performance, will be the free public. Yet, to make
this public fully free and independent when face to face with Art, one
further step must be taken along this road: the public must have
unbought admission to the theatrical representations. So long as money
is indispensable for all the needs of life, so long as without pay
there remains naught to man but air, and scarcely water: the measures
to be taken can only provide that the actual stage-performances, to
witness which the populace assembles, shall not take on the semblance
of work paid by the piece, - a mode of regarding them which
confessedly leads to the most humiliating misconception of the
character of art-productions, - but it must be the duty of the State,
or rather of the particular Community, to form a common purse from
which to recompense the artists for their performance as a whole, and
not in parts.

Where means should not suffice for this, it were better, both now and
always, to allow a theatre which could only be maintained as a
commercial undertaking, to close its doors for ever; or at least, for
so long as the community's demand had not proved strong enough to
bring about the necessary sacrifice for its supply.

When human fellowship has once developed its manly beauty and
nobihity, - in such a way as we shall not attain, however, by the
influence of our Art alone, but as we must hope and strive for by
union with the great and inevitably approaching social revolution, -
then will theatrical performances be the first associate undertaking
from which the idea of wage or gain shall disappear entirely. For
when, under the above conditions, our education more and more becomes
an artistic one, then shall we be ourselves all thus far artists: that
we can join together in free and common service for the one great
cause of Art, in its special manifestment, abandoning each sidelong
glance at gain.

Art and its institutes, whose desired organisation could here be only
briefly touched on, would thus become the herald and the standard of
all future communal institutions. The spirit that urges a body of
artists to the attainment of its own true goal, would be found again
in every other social union which set before itself a definite and
honourable aim; for if we reach the right, then all our future social
bearing cannot but be of pure artistic nature, such as alone befits
the noble faculties of man.

Thus would Jesus have shown us that we all alike are men and brothers;
while Apollo would have stamped this mighty bond of brotherhood with
the seal of strength and beauty, and led mankind from doubt of its own
worth to consciousness of its highest godlike might. Let us therefore
erect the altar of the future, in Life as in the living Art, to the
two subhimest teachers of mankind: - Jesus, who suffered for all men;
and Apollo, who raised them to their joyous dignity!

Notes

01
Book XXI. chap i. -TR.

02
Even Carlyle can only betoken this as the "Death of the Anarchies: or
a world once more built wholly on Fact better or worse; and the lying
jargoning professor of Sham-Fact. . . become a species extinct, and
well known to be gone down to Tophet!" -R. WAGNER.

03
"Eine Mittheilung an meine Freunde;" - see end of the present volume.
-TR.

04
We have no English equivalents of these words, except in the
adjectival form: voluntary and involuntary, in which there lies the
same confusion of ideas as that for which Wagner here upbraids
himself; and even now, when Schopenhauer's definition of the "Will" is
pretty generally accepted, it would seem better, for clearness' sake,
to delimit the term hy some such prefix as the "Inner," or
"Instinctive" Will, in order to distinguish it from the "Outer" or
"Intellectual" Choice. In this series of translations I shall
endeavour to render such expressions in the sense the author here
indicates. -W. A. E.

05
Sinnlichkeit= Qualities appealing to the senses; or again, the bent to
an objective method of viewing things. Hence it may at times be best
rendered by Physicalism or Materialism; at others, by Physical
perception, Physical contemplation, or even - borrowing from Carlyle -
Five-sense-philosophy. -TR.

06
To use the now more customary antithesis: Socialism v. Individualism.
-TR.

07
"In the National you will shortly see an important article of mine:
Art and Revolution, which I believe will also appear in German at
Wigand's in Leipzig." - From Wagner's letter to Uhlig, of 9th August
1849. -TR.

08
Volumes III. and IV. of the Gesammelte Schriften, or "Collected
Writings." -TR.

09
1868; Constantin Frantz. -TR.

10
In the original text of both the present treatise and The Art-work of
the Future, the expression "öffentlich" is frequently made use of. In
English the only available equivalent is that which I have here
employed, viz.: "public"; but our word "public" must be stretched a
little in its significance, to answer to Richard Wagner's purpose.
When he speaks of "public art" or "public life," it must be borne in
mind that the idea of officialdom or State-endowment is not
necessarily included; but rather the word is employed in the sense in
which we use it when talking of a "public appearance"; thus "public
art" will mean such an art as is not merely designed for private or
home consumption. -TR.

11
R. Wagner to F. Heine, March 18, '41: - "This showed me still more
decidedly that the religious-catholic part of my Rienzi libretto was a
chief stumbling-block. . . . If in my Rienzi the word 'Church' is not
allowed to stand," &c. - To W. Fischer, Dec. 8, '41: - "Sixteen
singers must remain for the Priests, or on account of the censorship,
aged Citizens." -TR.

12
It is impossible to realise the full sting of this allusion, without
having read in "Wagner's Letters to Uhlig" (H. Grevel & Co.) the
account of the author's own experience at Dresden of the conduct of
these gentry. -TR.