VOL. I.-23. WAGNER: A MEMORIAL ODE. I. DEAD, say they? Deathless one, Life-giver, world-waker, Hearts faint with worldly blight, Waking to second birth. Beings long laid in earth First, in all human ken, Master of souls of men, So long as lives the sun, Livest thou, deathless one! II. Ah, but thou speak'st no more, thy last word's said! Wordless, whose words leapt as with lightning shod. To see thee mute-ah, Fate, what is the gain That lips like his should motionless remain? Is it for love you let Death smite him so, Love that would fain his peerless voice forego, Or is it envy of that generous heart And once more hallowed the cheap name of king Him, of all sons his native country bore, Greatest of men since Goethe spoke no more? Or was it fear, O Fate, that let Death smite, Fear lest your sway should suffer in earth's sight, Sweet as the peace of two hearts love makes one, Joyous as sunshine, glad as Easter sun, Strong as sea-surges, weak as clinging vines, Harsh as the tramp of wind through mountain pines, Tender as blossoms, soft as maiden lip, Fierce as foam leaping on a foundering ship, Radiant as smiles upon an infant's face, Keen as the bent bow springing back to place, Pale as dawn starlight, red as flaming love! Ah, me! that voice is mute, those cold lips sealed: III. Ah, but Death has not won, Scatheless of Death's design, Alfred A. Wheeler. WAGNER AS A DRAMATIST. No estimate of Wagner will be able to an ticipate in any measure the verdict of posterity which does not proceed from the fullest understanding that he is first of all a dramatist. It was his misfortune through life to be judged by mere musicians, whom no previous training had qualified to pass judgment on dramatic art. But his true significance for Germany, for modern Europe, and for the world's history will be found in the fact that tendencies long gathering for some supreme achievement in drama had their first fruitage in him. For Germany his works are the harvest of a field prepared beforehand by the long and studious inquiry into the nature and limits of dramatic art which began with Lessing, and was continued by Schiller and Goethe. For modern Europe he fulfills for the first time, after more than three hundred years, the desire which arose in Italy with the Renaissance to create, by the help of music, a modern form of drama akin to the Greek. And his wholly original method of creating this new form will entitle him, in the world's history, to a place beside the two mighty spirits who are identified in all minds with the only two forms of drama hitherto known to usEschylus and Shakspere. It shall be the object of this paper to call attention to these aspects of Wagner's genius; and I do so the more readily from the conviction that hundreds of people are now reading the accounts called forth by his death in very much the same mental attitude towards Wagner in which I attended the Bayreuth Festival of 1876. I had heard "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" in Germany, and selections from all the later works admirably rendered in this country by Mr. Theodore Thomas. I was familiar with Wagner's criticism of the modern opera, as set forth in the pamphlet addressed to. a Parisian friend in 1860. But precisely what art form he had set up in place of the established operatic forms he rejected, I was unable to answer. With the deep conviction that this was the vital question for solution, I went to Bayreuth. Arriving there two weeks before the beginning of the Festival, I attended the last two rehearsals and then the three actual performances. I was thus, as one of Wagner's secretaries informed me, one of less than fifty people who heard the entire trilogy five times in succession. From darkness I arrived at clearest understanding; and with the help of notes taken at the time, I will now set forth a portion of the result. The great lesson of the trilogy is that Wagner is first of all a dramatist. All his revolutions in the forms of music have proceeded first and solely from the needs of drama. Drama is the end, music the means. To express the inmost spirit of the dramatic action at the very moment it is passing before the eyes of the spectator, Wagner summons to his aid the power of music. The music is thus the revelation of the drama, just as the drama is also the definition of the music. The first step, therefore, towards entering into the spirit of one of Wagner's works is to become familiar with its dramatic action. It would be proper, therefore, in a complete account of "The Nibelung's Ring," to set forth the story before proceeding to show in what manner the music is united to it. As the trilogy, however, is already accessible in an English translation, I am at liberty to pass to the consideration of those features which it possesses in common with the other dramas of its author. "The Nibelung's Ring," in common with all but one of Wagner's dramas, is the outgrowth of a myth. The distinctive feature of all myths of a genuinely popular origin is the purely human quality of their interest. This very element is the vital principle in drama, and no mere portrayal of historical incidents, however vivid and true to fact, can supply its place. If a historical drama win success, it is by virtue of its truth to na- his instructive exhibition of Turner's work a few years since, enabled the truth of this remark to be verified by placing side by side with one of Turner's visions of Switzerland a literal transcript of the same scene from nature. Nothing could have shown more clearly the contrast between art and observation; between the mere ability to make a faithful copy of natural facts and the power of arranging materials into such forms of beauty or such expressions of power as nature had hinted at but not attained. It is this free use of materials, this imaginative dealing with them, guided by the highest sense of dramatic design, which puts the stamp of ownership on everything Wagner touches; confounding with shame and wonder the lame inquirers who think, by tracing a drama to its legendary source, that they may learn the secret of the poet's alchemy. ture rather than its truth to history. This opinion is confirmed by Schiller. After having won a clearer right than any modern author to claim success for dramas based on history, he wrote to Goethe, in their memorable correspondence: "Inclination and necessity impel me towards a freely imagined, not a historical, subject; one purely passionate and human; for of soldiers, heroes, and rulers, I have had already more than enough." Every one of Wagner's works, from "The Flying Dutchman" to "Parsifal," bears witness to his belief in the deep significance of Schiller's words. His subjects are chosen from the original legendary sources of the German people, from the Norse sagas, and the later records of chivalry left by Gottfried of Strasburg and Wolfram of Eschenbach; a rich mine of legend akin to that splendid legacy of Sir Thomas Malory from which Tennyson has drawn so abundantly in his Arthurian idyls. But the interest which these legends have for him is purely human, never antiquarian. Like one who, on exhuming an Egyptian mummy, should take no care for anything but the little kernels of wheat that had preserved their vitality three thousand years, Wagner, with the instinct of a poet, rescues from old myths the kernels of human feeling, vital for all time, which take root in his imagination and then bloom for all the world. I have said it is because its vital kernel of human interest is so large, and its dry husk of antiquarianism so thin, that the legend, rather than history, is preferred by Wagner as the source of his dramas. It is noteworthy, however, that he does not discard those elements in a legend which give it a local habitation. Human feeling without them would be vague and meaningless. For the sake of local color, of picturesque effect, of the proper setting of dramatic action, many elements are necessary which depend for their success upon the antiquaIt will not be supposed that, in thus as- rian, prior to the poetic, spirit. The life cribing the germs of his dramas to sources and manners at the court of the Landgrave outside of himself, one iota of diminution in "Tannhäuser," or of King Mark in from the original potency of Wagner is or "Tristan," are instances of this. But never could be intended. It is the poet's privilege is anything of this sort depicted for its own to take and make his own whatever serves sake, or allowed any position but one wholly his purposes, and it is no more possible to subservient to the purely human interest of discover Wagner's dramas in the legends the action. There is abundant matter in from which he derived them than it is to ac- "The Nibelung's Ring" which seems to count for "Hamlet," "Othello," or "Lear," contradict this. The whole tragedy, for by reference to the early plays or stories example, turns on the possession of a ring, which gave the first hint of them to Shaks- which not only has the extraordinary power pere. It has been well said of Turner's of giving its owner the mastery of the world, pictures, that the materials drawn from na- but is also endowed with a curse that brings ture are all modified and rearranged into destruction upon everybody but its original new forms of beauty or more emphatic ex- possessor. Here, certainly, are elements of pressions of powers; and Mr. Ruskin, in the supernatural, which, far from exhibiting those purely human qualities belonging to this would be one of them." But, in reality, mankind in all countries and at all times, are products of an age of superstition and witchcraft. True, antiquarian these features assuredly are, and in the highest degree; but not on this account do they detract one particle from the human interest of the drama. Every art has its conventions, and a rudimentary convention of the dramatic art demands that human passion, before it can have a meaning, shall be framed in the dress, manners, and beliefs of some fixed time and place. The construction of this frame-work may involve the acceptance of beliefs long since obsolete; but even though they be in flagrant violation of well-known natural laws, the human interest of the action will not on this account necessarily suffer. no such question of the ghost's existence is ever permitted to arise; for with infinite. tact the poet instantly draws his conclusion as though his premise were unquestionable. In other words, he makes everybody on the stage show such complete and natural awe at the ghostly presence that the spectators cease forthwith to question the reality of the cause, and find nothing extraordinary in the fact that Hamlet should accept beforehand the ghost's existence, when it is supported by the cumulative testimony of three witnesses, We may see convincing proof of this in "Hamlet." The whole current of that tragedy turns on a belief in ghosts. Everything follows from the Prince's implicit confidence in the revelations of his father's spirit. Take away the plausibility of that revelation; in other words, make plain the absurdity of believing in ghosts; and Hamlet's whole course becomes the career of a credulous weakling, spurred to suspicion and revenge by an hallucination. How is it, then, that nowadays, when nobody believes in ghosts, when anybody who should do so (unless he were the dupe of spiritualists) would be set down as a victim of disease or nightmarehow is it that Hamlet's acceptance of a ghostly revelation, as the mainspring of his subsequent action, does not take away from him one particle of a modern audience's sympathy and respect? The answer is, that the human imagination accepts and forgets a false premise, even when contrary to physical law, provided the premise itself be plausibly set forth, and the conclusion drawn be nobly true to nature. False and improbable as Shakspere's premise is, who can deny the wonderful plausibility of its presentation? The spirit of Hamlet's father appears with such due ghostliness of bearing that not even the most skeptical spectator could help thinking, "If there were ghosts, "Distilled Almost to jelly with the act of fear." Ghosts or no ghosts, every spectator for the time being believes in them, and the poet is able to complete his tragic chain of events in absolute certainty that the deeply human interest of each successive link will not be diminished by any recollection that the first link of all, on which the rest depend, was woven of thin air. Yes, it is because Shakspere's conclusion is so convincingly true to nature that we accept without question his false premise; and this subjection to the poet's will, which everybody has felt in "Hamlet," makes it easy to conceive beforehand how the author of "The Nibelung's Ring" attains a like result. If, at the bidding of poetic power, an incredulous skeptic of the nineteenth century can be made temporarily a believer in ghosts, it will not be difficult, by the same means, to transport him to a still more distant period of credulity and make him a believer in the Norse sagas. This is precisely what Wagner does. A ring with mystical power and endowed with a curse; a magic cap that enables its wearer to change shape; gods, dwarfs, and giants; nymphs that live under water; maidens that ride on horseback through the air; potions that banish from man all memory of women;-these are some of the inventions of a by-gone age that find place in the trilogy. But like the ghost in "Hamlet," they are the false premise, accepted and forgotten. It is the purely human interest of scenes like the |