Sunday, April 26:
Foreword to Second Edition of Opera and Drama
For Constantin Frantz.
About the same time last year when a letter from you informed me in such gratifying fashion of your impression of this my book, I learnt that the First Edition had for some time been out of print. As I had been advised not long previously of there being a fairly large number in stock, I inquired in amazement as to the reason for the obvious interest in recent years for a literary work which, by its nature, was not really intended for a wide public. Experience to date had shown me that Part I, containing a critique of the opera as an art-genre had been flicked through by newspaper critics, and that certain jocular remarks occurring there had claimed some attention; the contents of this part had been read more seriously by a few real musicians, as also the constructive Part III. Of real attention being paid to Part II, devoted to the drama and dramatic material, I received no note: obviously my book had come into the hands only of music specialists. To our literary writers it remained entirely unknown. From the title of Part III, ‘Poetry and Music in the Drama of the Future’, a ‘music of the future’ was extracted to designate an ultra new ‘direction’ in music, as founder of which I have, in inadvertent fashion, been brought to something approaching world fame. It is to the previously wholly unnoticed Part II that I probably now owe the otherwise inexplicable increased demand for my book that has occasioned a Second Edition of the same. That is to say that with people to whom I was of no consequence at all as poet and musician, an interest arose to seek out in my writings, of which strange things had been heard, the insidious bits dealing with politics and religion; to what extent these people succeeded to their own satisfaction in judging my tendencies to be highly dangerous I have no means of knowing; still, it did however become possible for them to induce me to attempt elucidations of what I understood by the ‘downfall of the state’ that I called for. I confess that this really put me in some embarrassment and that in order to extricate myself tolerably, I gladly condescended to confess to not having intended anything so bad, and to having, on consideration, really no objection to its continued existence.
From all my experiences with this strange book, what emerged to me was that its publication had been totally unnecessary, incurring me only vexation, and providing no one with agreeable instruction. I was inclined to consign it to oblivion, and shrank from concerning myself with a new edition for the reason that for this I should have to read it anew, something that, since its first appearance, I had felt a great reluctance against. Your so expressive letter soon changed my mind. Your being attracted to my musical dramas, whilst I was imbuing myself with your political writings, was no coincidence. Who will realize the significance of my joyous amazement when from the much-misunderstood heart of my difficult book you cried to me with understanding: “Your downfall of the state is the founding of my German Reich.’ Seldom probably has there been such complete mutual integration as had its preparation here on the broadest and most comprehensive basis between politician and artist; and this German spirit which, proceeding from the extreme antithesis of the accustomed view, has so surprisingly brought us together in deeply felt recognition of our People’s great mission, is something which we may now believe in with increased courage.
There was however need for this faith to be strengthened by our meeting. The eccentric aspect of my opinions as still published in this present book was certainly occasioned by contrary despair. The reasons for opposing doubt might still be of small force if we were merely supposed to draw them from the declarations of our public; any contact with it can only bring those imbued with our faith into immediately regrettable associations, against which complete isolation, with all its sacrifices, alone offers salvation. The sacrifice which you made in this sense consisted in renouncing more general consideration and recognition for your noble political writings in which, with convincing clarity, you direct the Germans to that sole salvation which lies so close to them: slighter seemed to be the sacrifice that the artist, the dramatic poet and musician had to make, whose works speaking loudly to you out of the public of all theatres so animated your hope that you already saw all-powerful nourishment being fed to faith. You found it difficult not to misunderstand me and recognize even infirm hypertension in my resistance to your confident assumptions when I attempted to instruct you concerning the small compensation of my successes before the German theatre audience. You yourself, however, finally supplied yourself with this radical instruction by taking precise cognizance of this volume, now dedicated to you, concerning opera and drama. Certainly it disclosed to you the wounds, concealed from all the world, from which, prior to my unerringly certain inner feeling, my successes as German ‘opera composer’ suffered. — In truth, even today nothing can mollify me for the fact that these successes rest, in one most all-important part, upon a misunderstanding, which actually directly obstructs the real, uniquely achieved success.
The explanations of this apparent paradox I set down, now almost 18 years ago, in the form of an exhaustive treatment of the problem of the opera and the drama. What, above all, I must admire about those who apply careful attention to this work is their courage in not allowing themselves to become wearied by the difficulties of presentation which were forced upon me by precisely that exhaustive treatment. My desire to get completely to the bottom of the matter and to shrink from no detail which, in my view, should render the difficult subject of my aesthetic investigation intelligible to simple intuitive understanding, misled me into adopting in my style that pertinacity which, to the reader out for entertainment and not immediately interested in the subject, will in all likelihood seem perplexing diffuseness. In my present revision of the text I did however decide to make no essential alterations, as in the said difficulty of my book I did, on the other hand, recognize the special quality that would commend it to the serious scholar. For that, even an apology must be considered superfluous and misleading. The problems which I have felt urged to deal with, have never been examined in the context which I recognize, and apart from that, never by artists whose feelings they most immediately represent, but only by theatricalizing aesthetes who, even with the best will, cannot avoid the abuse of applying a dialectic form of representation to subjects like music, which in their essential form have hitherto lain so remote from philosophy. Shallowness and ignorance find it easy to expatiate on matters not understood, drawing on traditional dialectics in such a way as to seem, again to the uninitiated, to be of consequence: he however who is not willing to toy with such concepts before an audience which itself possesses no philosophical concepts, but who, as regards difficult problems of erroneous concepts, sets store by addressing himself to the correct feeling of the matter, him let kindly learn from me, and perhaps from the present volume, what exertions one has to make in order to cope with one’s task to one’s inner satisfaction.
It is then in this sense that I commend my book anew to serious attention: where it encounters it, it will, as was, my honoured friend, the case with you, serve to fill the alarming gap between the misunderstanding-filled spirit of the success of my dramatic-musical works and what, to me, seems the solely correct effect of the same.
Lucerne. Richard Wagner.