My picture of Wagner, completely surpa.s.sed him; I had depicted an _ideal monster_-one, however, which is perhaps quite capable of kindling the enthusiasm of artists. The real Wagner, Bayreuth as it actually is, was only like a bad, final proof, pulled on inferior paper from the engraving which was my creation. My longing to see real men and their motives, received an extraordinary impetus from this humiliating experience.
5.
This, to my sorrow, is what I realised; a good deal even struck me with sudden fear. At last I felt, however, that if only I could be strong enough to take sides against myself and what I most loved I would find the road to truth and get solace and encouragement from it-and in this way I became filled with a sensation of joy far greater than that upon which I was now voluntarily turning my back.
6.
I was in love with art, pa.s.sionately in love, and in the whole of existence saw nothing else than art-and this at an age when, reasonably enough, quite different pa.s.sions usually possess the soul.
7.
_Goethe_ said: "The yearning spirit within me, which in earlier years I may perhaps have fostered too earnestly, and which as I grew older I tried my utmost to combat, did not seem becoming in the man, and I therefore had to strive to attain to more complete freedom." Conclusion?-I have had to do the same.
8.
He who wakes us always wounds us.
9.
I do not possess the talent of being loyal, and what is still worse, I have not even the vanity to try to appear as if I did.
10.
He who accomplishes anything that lies beyond the vision and the experience of his acquaintances,-provokes envy and hatred masked as pity,-prejudice regards the work as decadence, disease, seduction. Long faces.
11.
I frankly confess that I had hoped that by means of art the Germans would become thoroughly disgusted with _decaying Christianity_-I regarded German mythology as a solvent, as a means of accustoming people to polytheism.
What a fright I had over the Catholic revival!!
12.
It is possible neither to suffer sufficiently acutely from life, nor to be so lifeless and emotionally weak, as to have _need_ of Wagner"s art, as to require it as a medium. This is the princ.i.p.al reason of one"s _opposition_ to it, and not baser motives; something to which we are not driven by any personal need, and which we do not _require_, we cannot esteem so highly.
13.
It is a question either of no longer _requiring_ Wagner"s art, or of still requiring it.
Gigantic forces lie concealed in it: _it drives one beyond its own domain_.
14.
_Goethe_ said: "Are not Byron"s audacity, sprightliness and grandeur all creative? We must beware of always looking for this quality in that which is perfectly pure and moral. All _greatness_ is creative the moment we realise it." This should be applied to Wagner"s art.
15.
We shall always have to credit Wagner with the fact that in the second half of the nineteenth century he impressed art upon our memory as an important and magnificent thing. True, he did this in his own fashion, and this was not the fashion of upright and far-seeing men.
16.
Wagner _versus_ the cautious, the cold and the contented of the world-in this lies his greatness-he is a stranger to his age-he combats the frivolous and the super-smart-But he also fights the just, the moderate, those who delight in the world (like Goethe), and the mild, the people of charm, the scientific among men-this is the reverse of the medal.
17.
Our youth was up in arms against the _soberness_ of the age. It plunged into the cult of excess, of pa.s.sion, of ecstasy, and of the blackest and most austere conception of the world.