Richard Wagner | Page 9

leading a life of his
own at school and very wilfully taking a line or lines of his own there.
We can now begin to trace the growth of the mental, and especially the

artistic, nature of one of the most stupendous geniuses the earth has
produced. It is altogether unnecessary to try to piece together anything
approaching an elaborate sketch of the activities and escapades of these
days: this would involve laying violent and liberal hands on the fruits
of the labours of Glasenapp and a dozen other pickers-up of
unconsidered trifles, would yield us nothing essential and might drive
the reader to an untimely end. Out of the strangely tangled skein of
truth and obvious fiction which is called his "life" for this period I shall
endeavour only to pick out such threads of fact as seem to me helpful.
Richard remained five years at the Kreuzschule and took to the classics
with avidity. The best part of his education was classical. True, he
learned enough arithmetic to know how many marks made twenty and
how many francs a louis; but the classics provided him with the
pabulum his growing mind hungered for. His Greek professor took a
special interest in him, which is not surprising when we remember that
at the age of thirteen he translated twelve books of the Odyssey as a
holiday task. Besides this he worked at philology and the ordinary
school curriculum. It is just possible--just, I say--that had the family
remained longer in Dresden he might never have turned to the
Scandinavian sagas at all, but have become an eminent scholar and the
composer of mediocre symphonic music. That, luckily, is one of the
might-have-beens, and we need not mourn over it. Music he was very
far from dropping. He had played a Weber scene while his stepfather
was dying; and he continued to bang away at overtures with such a
fingering, as Mr. Bernard Shaw has said, as of necessity would be
employed by the average worker at a circular-saw. But the great
awakening was not yet. He had first to give the world the mightiest
drama ever conceived by the mind of an energetic, bright,
self-confident boy.
I do not think there is on record a single instance of a great engineer
having manifested artistic preferences in his youth, or of a great painter
having misspent his boyhood in making toy machines. Always, from
the very beginning, the boy unconsciously, without reflection,
instinctively, helplessly, starts away in the direction he is destined to
follow as a man; and though some potential great poets may be

thwarted and ultimately discouraged and lost to the world, by far the
more common phenomenon is that of young geniuses overcoming or
brushing aside or dodging all obstacles at all costs (to themselves and
every one else) and finding their true road, the path nature shaped them
to tread. At the first glance Wagner might seem a startling exception to
the nearly universal rule; but he is no exception. The theatre was his
first love, and to the theatre he ever remained faithful: only through the
theatre did his genius manifest itself; apart from the theatre it may be
doubted whether he could have developed into the consummate
technical musician of Tristan and the Mastersingers. Music was his
second love, music associated with drama; and throughout his long
career we find him engaged, first, in getting his drama true, poignant
and effective, and then in allying it with music. Third in his affections
came philosophy; and at this time of day it need scarcely be remarked
that he always considered himself a bit of a philosopher, and toyed to
the last with philosophy and pseudo-philosophy. Reams of good paper
and gallons of good ink have been used in writing about the musician,
the composer of the most magnificent operas in the world; weeks,
months, years have gone to the writing. But all the paper, all the ink, all
the labour, all the mental effort and sympathy and love seem a bagatelle
when we look through the bibliographies and realize how much paper,
ink, effort--not always to be called mental--sympathy and love have
been used up in expounding Wagner's philosophy. The cases of
Whitman and Browning make a poor show compared with this case. I
believe there are still some human beings who turn for guidance to
Wagner the philosopher. Later I shall be compelled to say something
about the subject. What Wagner's docile apostles say does not greatly
matter--in fact, does not matter at all; what Wagner said does demand a
little consideration; and we must bear in mind that philosophy and
pseudo-philosophy supplied him with the stuff out of which he wove
the word-tissue of his dramas.
II
There is not much, then, to detain us