Revival: Life of Richard Wagner Vol. III (1903)

The Theatre

Carl Francis Glasenapp, W. M. Aston Ellis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351342001
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performance Art

Third volume of Carl Francis Glasenapp's Life of Richard Wagner.

THE OUTLAW. (1849-1853.)

Misswende folgt mir

wohin ich fliehe ;

Misswende naht mir

wo ich mich neige

. . . . . . . . .

Friedmund darf ich nicht heissen ;

Frohwalt möchr’ ich wohl sein :

doch Wehwalt muss ich mich nennen.

(DIE WALKÜRE, act i.)

I.

Art-Work of The Future.

To Paris once more; Liszts avant-courière ; Meyerbeer alert—“Let me be at home again somewhere!”—Zurich and vallant friends there.—“Art and Revolution?—Minna rejoins her husband.—“The Art-work of the Future?—Relation to Feuerbach.—“Wielandder Schmiedt” draftedfor Paris.—Frau Julie Ritter.—Anotherfruitless stay in Paris; French oferaticpian abandoned—Bordeaux and Villeneuve.—Back to Zurich.

My latest experiences have forced me on a path where 1 feel that I must bring the whole strength of my nature inio play. Even four weeks since I had no presentiment of what I now recognise to be my highest task.

RICHARD WAGNER (letter to Wolff, May 29, 1849).

“YOU probably need no assuring, that no amnesty nor restitution in the world could induce me anywhere to become again what to my deepest suffering I was in Dresden.” Thus Wagner writes to Uhlig precisely three months after shaking from his feet the dust of the Saxon capital, where he had felt the personal “catastrophe brewing in every limb “for nearer two years than one. It had been a moral degradation, that squandering of all his powers on an absolutely hopeless endeavour to breathe life into a mummy like the House of Wettin’s Royal Court-theatre. A quarter of a century hence, perhaps, the dead bones might begin to quiver ; but what would have become of Richard Wagner’s art mean-while ?

In this sense the politicai trouble in Saxony had been a perfect godsend. Painlessly, and without any of that humiliation which had attended all his later deallngs with the Dresden management, it had removed him from an impossible situation, a post to which he had clung far more for Minna’s sake than for his own. Outlawed, outcast, as penniless and almost as forlorn as in those earlier Paris years,—yet he was free and given back to his own self, at the prime of manhood and the noon of his creative powers. A new epodi in his life had dawned ; what-ever might become of him, to one thing it should never come again : no more Court-theatre despotism should claim him as thrall.

Nevertheless there was one constraint to which, for very gratitude, he must gracefully submit : Liszt, his only lodestar in this troubled sea, had pointed to a shore long since renounced as altogether barren. Six years ago had Wagner written to humbler comrades in the French metropolis, “A truce to Paris!” Two years later, confronted with the hopelessness of all attempts to spread his works beyond the walls of Dresden, he had written to Gaillard, “Can it be that only through this Paris, after all, it is possible to react on Germany? When I allow my thoughts to dwell on Paris, I fall into a melancholy as though I had to sell my dear good mother.” And yet it was Liszt, his “saviour,” who insisted on his making Paris the pivot of a world-career ; though he himself would infinitely rather “settle in a cottage by a wood at home, and let the Devil take his great World,” for “I haven’t the smallest wish to conquer it, since its possession would disgust me even more than its look” (first letter from Paris, June 5, 49).

In this instance the practical judgment of Wagner was wiser and surer than that of his world-travelled friend. He knew himself, and that sufficed to prove to him the bootlessness of this renewed attempt : Liszt knew but two operas of his, and judged his character as yet by a standard far too normal. But how could Wagner shew his friend that he was prepared for any sacrifice, to help support himself, if he refused compliance with the first piece of distasteful advice, so strenuously proffered? The impregnable must be attacked, and that in earnest. Though the intense heat on his four-days journey from Jena had inflamed his blood to such a point, that to take up his staff again at once would have meant a fit of apoplexy ; though it also was necessary to wait for the return of an old acquaintance, Alexander Mùller, through whom to procure a passport for France*—he cannot have rested more than three days at Zurich, where we left him at the end of last volume. There he had his first opportunity of perusing Liszt’s article on Tannhàuser, contributed to the Journal des Débats of May 18.

It was a curious coincidence : that article (subsequently incorporated in his Lohengrin et Tannhàuser) had been written by Liszt within five weeks of the opera’s production in Weimar, at a time when Wagner stili was Kapellmeister to the Saxon court—as proved by its printed date, “le 20 Mars”; yet Wagner, a fugitive with a warrant hanging over him, had been listening to Liszt’s rehearsal of the opera on the very day the article appeared in the city whither he now was bound. Moreover, Berlioz, who some ten years hence was to adopt so disdainful an attitude towards him in that city, had prefaced the article with a few kindly introductory lines,* referring to the “brilliant position occupied by this young poet-composer at the side of Reissiger to-day”; a remark unconsciously ironical in a twofold sense. In those days printed matter took somewhat longer to travel than letters, so that Liszt, evidently apprised by Belloni of the article’s ultimate appearance, had not received it when he set out for Jena to give Wagner his send-off ; for he writes to his Princess Carolyne (letter 37, undated), “If by chance the Tannhàuser article is sent you to-day or tomorrow, please have it conveyed at once to his Highness [Her^y Gd Duke] without awaiting my return.” The two persons principally interested had therefore no opportunity of discussing the article, either in manuscript or print, before their separation. It was a joyful surprise to Wagner, and his joy finds expression in the words : “You wished to describe my opera to the world, and instead of that, yourself have produced a veritable artwork !”The ruling of Chance seemed propitious ; the iron must be struck while hot.

Poor Wagner, accordingly, had to pocket his antipathy and travel post-haste to the scene of earlier disappointments. There he must have arrived on June the 2nd or 3rd, for his letter to Liszt dated June 5 sums up experiences that can scarcely have been reaped in less than three days, and he talks of Belloni’s having called on him “each day” to conduct him “on the pathways of Parisian fame.” Another month of contrasts : from May 2, when “a revolution is imminent” in Dresden; through a week of the din of arms ; a fortnight of broken rest, with a Tannhàuser rehearsal as interlude ; ten days of more or less uninterrupted skeltering over Western Europe ; to June 2 (?) with its “gruesome Paris lying on me like a ton-weight.” How his thoughts must have reverted to his Flying Dutchman, finished here”seven years” ago—eternai Wanderer !

Of course the article in the Débats was viewed by the Meyerbeer clique as part of a deliberate conspiracy, and “our friend regards the coincidence as of the very blackest dye.” That the two protagonists actually met in Paris on this occasion, is not quite evident. Were it so, it can only have been by the purest accident, and upon the most distant of terms. But it was impossible to walk an inch without stumbling across some of great Giacomo’s acquaintances, or jackals. If proof were needed of the instinctiveness of the Saxon’s aversion to the Hebrew composer and all his ways, it would be fully supplied by his taking this scarcely politic opportunity of reading Liszt an admonition : “My dear good Liszt, you really must make up your mind about this man ! Can you be unaware that natures like his are diametrically opposed to yours and mine ; that between you and him there can exist but one tie, knit on your side by magnanimity, on his by shrewdness ? M. is little, through and through, and unfortunately there’s not a single person I meet now who would go out of his way to dispute it.” Yet, “little” in one dimension, in another Meyerbeer was big : he had intrigue and a liberal purse. As for intrigue, Wagner declares, “Were that the only road for me, I’d pack my traps tomorrow and make straight for some German hamlet.” As for money, that is out of his reach ; Belloni himself, Liszt’s confidential agent, informs him that “he must have as much, in fact more than Meyerbeer—or else, he must make himself feared.” A little “artistic terrorism,” then, appears to be the only resource ; for that he has both will and matter, and is prepared to set to work next day and write a redhot article for a Parisian politicai newspaper on the “Theatre of the Future,” with some scathing observations on the corruption of art in the Present—a project he carries out at Zurich, some six weeks later, with his Art and Revolution.

Were it not for Belloni, “a capital, most energetic fellow,” and one or two of his former comrades, this Paris stay would have been as maddening as that of ten years back, when he saw with dread “the dawn of every broiling day that rose to shine upon an empty stomach.” Ernst Kietz was there (elder brother of Gustav), a link with the dreary past ; and Gottfried Semper had lately arrived, pursued like himself by a warrant. In the pauses of his antechambering he could while away an hour at meal-times with these two, in a dingy cook-shop frequented by flymen and carters ; for, despite Liszt’s generosity, in Paris it was difficult to make ends meet.

Through Semper he heard alarming news of Heubner : that he had been condemned to death already, with a prospect of immediate execution of the sentence. As he phrases it in a letter to Uhlig next February, “it made his heart jump into his mouth.” Though his acquaintanceship with that member of the defunct Provisionai Government had been of the briefest duration, he could not stand idly by, without a hand stirred to avert such a judicial murder. To whom should he address himself, to intercede with the Saxon King on behalf of this high-minded captive ? At last it occurred to him that one personage of influence in Dresden had always been kindly-disposed to him, the cultured wife of his quondam chief, Frau Ida von Lùttichau. From the country (whither we shall follow him in a moment) he wrote imploring her to go at once to his Majesty, in case the sentence had really been passed, and represent to him the value of the life at stake. The rumour turned out to be premature, but the letter itself gave origin a few months later to another report, namely that Wagner had petitioned the King in his own behalf—emphatically repudiated by the artist’s remark to Uhlig that he “naturally did not say a single word about himself.” If anybody stili aftects to regard the writer as a monument of selfishness, let him place this Heubner petition by side of that earlier one for Weber’s heirs, each launched from the outskirts of Paris at a time when every thought was needed for his own relief.

After something like the first ten days of June had been consumed in paying calls in town on various people recommended by Liszt or Belloni—including Liszt’s mother, with whom he is immensely pleased—Wagner consults his depleted exchequer, and takes a thrifty lodging at Reuil, near Belloni’s summer quarters. From here he sends his “liege-lord “Liszt a letter (June 18) full of the most piteous concern about his “poor wife.” The silent month of separation from Minna has made him long for her with all his heart ; let him but be granted a tiny home in Zurich, where he may have her by his side again ! “In Paris, and without a home—in other words, content of heart—I cannot work. I must gain some new point where I may be at home, and feel at home…. The best I can do, I then will do—everything, everything ! Only not to beat about in this big world—let me be at home again some-where!” Perhaps the most strongly-marked feature in the personallty of this world-commanding artist is his eternai yearning for a quiet and domestic nook, far from the madding crowd, the Flying Dutchman turned into Hans Sachs. “Quiet, rest ! or I never can work for the world,” is his Constant refrain, to the end of his life. If he really must compose for Paris, why torture him with the constraint to live there ? “There’s no earthly use in my being in Paris at present : all I can do with it, is to write it an opera, and that can’t be done in a jiffy. With luck I may have the poem in half a year, and in a year and a half the performance.” But do let him get away to Zurich : “There I have a friend, Alexander Mùller, who will help me arrange for a cheap abode etc. : if only I can, I shall go direct from here to there. When I have my wife with me, my work shall begin with a will. The sketch for my Paris subject I shall send from there to Belloni, who will get it put into French by Gustave Vaez. In October the latter should have fìnished his task ; then I will leave my wife behind me for a little, go to Paris, do everything possible to procure a commission to compose the said subject, perhaps also conduct something, and return to Zurich to make the music. The interval I shall devote to the setting, at last, of my latest German poem, Siegfried’s Tod; in half a year I shall send you that opera completed.”

Man proposes, etc. For all this breathless energy, the “Paris subject”—Wieland, as it eventually turned out—was never set to music; nor was the earlier Siegfried’s Tod itself. Other developments were to intervene.

With all these castles floating in the air, it is quite affecting to see how Wagner cleaves to that wife of his, who cannot under-stand him and throws cold water on his ardent schemes ; a woman “seriously timorous and without exaltation,” as he defines her in a letter to Liszt toward the end of July, though in the same breath he exclaims “Give her back to me ! and you give me all you possibly could wish me. And lo !—for that I should be thankful to you, eh ! thankful ! “Yet all this time was Minna cherishing the most stubborn reluctance to leave “the dregs of Dresden,” whence she evidently sends her husband such a scolding that he follows up his letter of June r8 to Liszt by another on the 19th, withdrawing his prayer “for the present.” Indeed poor penny-wise Minna would have tried the temper of a saint, and nothing could more clearly manifest the nobleness of her husband’s character, than the infinite delicacy of all his allusions to her ; only after a dose comparison of facts and dates, are we supplied with a precipitant for the sensitive ink between the lines.

That second letter from Reuil, written under the shock of his four-weeks-silent wife’s disheartening message, asks Liszt for “a little money to get away with—anywhither ; perhaps after all to Zurich, to my friend Mùller. I want to have peace, to write the sketch for Paris ; I don’t feel up to mudi just now. What good should I be in London yet? Fui good for nothing—at most for writing operas,—and that I can’t in London.” We fear, Liszt’s knowledge of the British capital must have been somewhat vague, if heflattered himself that London was the least bit ripe for the composer of Tannhàuser. A quarter of a century hence, perhaps—that eternai quarter of a century, which we may easily doublé before we arrive at an approximate estimate of the length Richard Wagner stood ahead of his age.

So the London idea is abandoned, and Paris said goodbye to for the present. Back to Switzerland, with the aid of 300 francs from Liszt, is Wagner to go. Toward the end of June he leaves Reuil, to pass through Paris on his road to “peace.” An hour before his departure for Zurich, the son of his old Dresden friend F. Heine comes to wish him God-speed, young Heine being also a fugitive.* “I was delighted beyond measure with the healthy, sensible young man,” Wagner writes to his father soon after: “When he told me quite dryly that there was nothing to be done with Europe at present, so he was going to America, and father, mother and the chicks would follow in a year or two, I found it all so sensible and naturai that I calmly took a pinch of snuff and said ‘That’s righiti’” Wagner was always a good judge of promise in youth, and Wilhelm Heine did not disappoint his expectations : a few years later we find him as master’s mate, under Commodore Perry, in the North American expedition to the eastern coasts of Asia ; in 1860 he induced Prussia to send an expedition into the same waters, and steered the first German vessel into the harbour of Yeddo ; in the American Civil War he rose to the rank of Brigadier-General, and thereafter became United States Consul in Paris, and later in Liverpool, returning to Dresden in 1871, in the neighbourhood of which he died in 1886, after publishing a number of books of travel. His name is frequently mentioned in Wagner’s letters to the young man’s father, but he himself will not reappear in our story.

It was a refreshing send-off, to be ushered out of “the pestilential atu osphere of modem Babel” by this breezy sample of young Germany. “Like a dark shadow from a long-departed hideous past, had that Paris slid before me ; a spectre of night, whose loathsome features scared me back to the fresh air of the Alps “(P. I. 382).

At the beginning of July he is in Zurich again, with no immediate prospect of conquering his wife’s marked predilection for the Dresden “slough of bourgeois respectability and magnanimità “So he accepts the humble hospitallty of Alexander Mùller, and puts up on the third floor of the “Tannenberg “in the Rennweg, where he stays for full two months. A patriarchal old house (since pulled down), with overhanging upper storeys and iron cages to the Windows of its lower, a stone bench under them beside the door. The room devoted to the master’s use overlooked the “Fròschengraben,” or Frog’s Ditch—so called from the slimy malodorous water which there found its exit from the lake—now transformed into the Bahnhofstrasse ; that room was the birthplace of Art and Revolution.

Müller, a native of Erfurt, had struck up friendsh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents of Volume III.
• The Outlaw (1849-1853).
• Appendix.
• Supplemental Notes.
• Index.