The Perfect Wagnerite | Page 4

now
seems to me to suggest that the operatic character of Night Falls On
The Gods was the result of indifference or forgetfulness produced by
the lapse of twenty-five years between the first projection of the work
and its completion. Now it is clear that in whatever other ways Wagner
may have changed, he never became careless and he never became
indifferent. I have therefore inserted a new section in which I show how
the revolutionary history of Western Europe from the Liberal explosion
of 1848 to the confused attempt at a socialist, military, and municipal
administration in Paris in 1871 (that is to say, from the beginning of
The Niblung's Ring by Wagner to the long-delayed completion of
Night Falls On The Gods), demonstrated practically that the passing
away of the present order was going to be a much more complicated
business than it appears in Wagner's Siegfried. I have therefore
interpolated a new chapter which will perhaps induce some readers of
the original English text to read the book again in German.
For some time to come, indeed, I shall have to refer English readers to
this German edition as the most complete in existence.
My obligation to Herr Trebitsch for making me a living German author
instead of merely a translated English one is so great that I am bound to
point out that he is not responsible for my views or Wagner's, and that
it is as an artist and a man of letters, and not as a propagandist, that he
is conveying to the German speaking peoples political criticisms which
occasionally reflect on contemporary authorities with a European
reputation for sensitiveness. And as the very sympathy which makes
his translations so excellent may be regarded with suspicion, let me
hasten to declare I am bound to Germany by the ties that hold my
nature most strongly. Not that I like the average German: nobody does,
even in his own country. But then the average man is not popular
anywhere; and as no German considers himself an average one, each
reader will, as an exceptional man, sympathize with my dislike of the
common herd. And if I cannot love the typical modern German, I can at

least pity and understand him. His worst fault is that he cannot see that
it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Being convinced that
duty, industry, education, loyalty, patriotism and respectability are
good things (and I am magnanimous enough to admit that they are not
altogether bad things when taken in strict moderation at the right time
and in the right place), he indulges in them on all occasions
shamelessly and excessively. He commits hideous crimes when crime
is presented to him as part of his duty; his craze for work is more
ruinous than the craze for drink; when he can afford secondary
education for his sons you find three out of every five of them with
their minds lamed for life by examinations which only a thoroughly
wooden head could go through with impunity; and if a king is patriotic
and respectable (few kings are) he puts up statues to him and exalts him
above Charlemagne and Henry the Fowler. And when he meets a man
of genius, he instinctively insults him, starves him, and, if possible,
imprisons and kills him.
Now I do not pretend to be perfect myself. Heaven knows I have to
struggle hard enough every day with what the Germans call my higher
impulses. I know too well the temptation to be moral, to be
self-sacrificing, to be loyal and patriotic, to be respectable and
well-spoken of. But I wrestle with it and--as far as human fraility will
allow--conquer it, whereas the German abandons himself to it without
scruple or reflection, and is actually proud of his pious intemperance
and self-indulgence. Nothing will cure him of this mania. It may end in
starvation, crushing taxation, suppression of all freedom to try new
social experiments and reform obsolete institutions, in snobbery,
jobbery, idolatry, and an omnipresent tyranny in which his doctor and
his schoolmaster, his lawyer and his priest, coerce him worse than any
official or drill sergeant: no matter: it is respectable, says the German,
therefore it must be good, and cannot be carried too far; and everybody
who rebels against it must be a rascal. Even the Social-Democrats in
Germany differ from the rest only in carrying academic orthodoxy
beyond human endurance--beyond even German endurance. I am a
Socialist and a Democrat myself, the hero of a hundred platforms, one
of the leaders of the most notable Socialist organizations in England. I
am as conspicuous in English Socialism as Bebel is in German
Socialism; but do you suppose that the German Social-Democrats

tolerate me? Not a bit of it. I have