Artwork of the Future – Wagner

Seeing that the literary remains of noted musicians have
repeatedly been collected and published after their death, I
suppose that the first thing I ought to do, in the collected edition
of the products of my authorship, is to justify myself in face of the
reproach, that I still live. What in their case has been welcomed
as an act of piety, might easily, in mine, be reckoned to my
vanity. Whereas those happy dead cared nothing, what might be
thought of their literary jottings : it seems that I am busied for
the earnest consideration of my own. It would be hard for me,
to contradict this. Whosoever thinks necessary to read into this
confession the avowal of a weakness of my artistic works, is welcome
to follow such need to his heart’s content ; for, in the long
run, if my works do not speak out clearly for themselves those
of my art, by correct performances, and those of my literary labour,
by being properly understood it does not really make much
difference whether folk think necessary to lay my weakness in the
one direction or in the other.
Whether the most unusual efforts will succeed in helping my
artistic works to a true life in the nation’s midst, by the constant
guarantee of correct representations, I leave to the decrees of Fate ;
yet I believe that I shall supplement these efforts, if, on the other
side, I take care that at least the labours of my pen shall share in
an advantage common to all literary products, that of lying clearly
and comprehensively before the public. This care has naturally
come to me since I have observed around me a growing earnestness
of interest in my art-writings, while at like time I could not
but see the disadvantages inseparable from the fact, that in these
writings I have not stepped before the public in well-calculated
continuity, but at very diverse times and under the most various
of promptings to their composition. Since, however, even the
most heterogeneous promptings have always woken in me the one
motif, which lies at the bottom of my whole, howsoever scattered
literary exertions, I here felt the need of a carefully-ordered and
complete reproduction of my addresses (Mittheilungen), whereof
many have stayed altogether unknown, and the most have been
only regarded in that fugitive light which attaches to every
” Brochure.”
The wish to arrive at such completeness provided me, again,
with a sort of psychological method of arrangement, by help of
which the sympathetic reader might come to see how it was that
I lit, at all, upon the path of penmanship. Although, eventually, a
correct account of my life itself would be the only thing that could
give full information hereon, yet for the present I have seized on
the advantage of a chronological arrangement, in accordance
wherewith my essays will be laid before the reader in the order of
their origin. By this plan I have also won two other privileges,
in virtue of which I hope to gain a gentle handling at the judgment-
seat both of our art-philosophers and of our poets by profession.
To wit, I have escaped the temptation to cobble together
my piecemeal art-writings in such a fashion that they should
assume the appearance of an actual scientific system a course
that might easily have been treated by our professional aesthetes
as unblushing impudence ; while on the other hand, seeing
that I was making up a kind of day-book of all my labours, I
could thus strew-in my poems in their proper biographic place,
instead, maybe, of binding them up in a separate volume a proceeding
that would certainly have roused the contemptuous wrath
of our professional poets, and drawn down on me the charge of
placing my “opera-texts” on a level with poesies in which the
music (as in that provincial performance of the Dame Blanche) is
replaced by a “lively dialogue and a choice diction.”
What circle of readers it is, that I now shall have to stand
amidst with this collection, cannot but be of the greatest moment
to me, not only for the verdict on my own exertions, but also for
that on the elements which are coming to the front in the present
stage of our German cultural evolution. People have begun to
take me seriously, in a sphere where nothing is really taken
seriously : namely in that of our scientific-posing Belles lettres, in
which philosophy, natural science, philology, and especially poetry
are handled with a flippant wit, excepting when an incomprehensible
reason exists for some measure of unconditional recognition.
I have noticed that this system of valiant calumny bases itself on
the assumption that the writings and books reviewed are not read
by the critic’s readers. On the other hand, those persons on
whom stage performances of my dramatic compositions had
worked with a stimulating effect, felt prompted to an earnest
reading of my writings. Many of these hearers, however, have
not been able to conceive why I should write essays on an art
which I did best to practise as an artist. Only in quite recent
times have I met several persons, and especially among the younger
generation, who have understood this thing too : why I wrote
about my art; for they consider that they have found in my
writings a better explanation of the problems started by my artistic
creations, than in the emissions of such who themselves can make
nothing in the way of Art. Here one or two have come to the
belief, that he who understands a thing, can also speak best about
it ; as, for instance, that he who himself knows how to conduct, is
also the best man to show others how to conduct.
Now it would be interesting, if the verdict upon Art should fall
back into the hands of those who understand Art : whereas the
peculiarity of our present course of education has brought round
the view, that the judgment on a thing must come from a quite
different domain to that of the thing itself; forsooth, from the
“absolute Vernunft” or mayhap from the “self-thinking Thought.”
The analogy has been derived from our modern State, whose
political evolution has brought this curiosity with it, that a statesman
has to justify his success in the eyes of those who before had
never dreamt of its possibility, and to submit his measures to the
judgment of those to whom it must be made clear for the first
time, on such occasions, what the whole matter is about. As in
our case, it is a matter of Music, about which every one has his
own impression, often the most trivial the writer Gutzkow,
indeed (since the time when the art-historian Liibke appears to
have thoroughly ruined his phantasy) for the most part a quite
unseemly one must perceive at once that there can be really no
question viz. judgment on the part of those who do not understand
Art ; and one must either strike Music completely off the
list of arts, or admit that it first becomes an art by the very fact
of its being dealt with in artistic fashion by those alone who
understand music.
Often was it painful to myself, and often bitterness, to have to
write about my art, when I would so gladly have listened to others
on it. When finally I accustomed myself to this necessity, because
I learnt to comprehend why others could not say the thing that
was given to just me to say, neither could it but in time grow
ever clearer to me, that in the insights which had been opened up
to me by my own art-doings there dwelt a wider meaning than is
to be ascribed to a merely problematic-seeming artistic individuality.

Upon this path I have come to the view that the real
question concerns an entire re-birth of Art, which we now know
only as a shadow of its genuine self; since it has quite deserted
actual Life, and is only to be discovered in a scanty stock of
popular remains.
Whoever will permit himself to be led by the hand of one who
has become clear upon this point not on the path of abstract
speculation, but guided by the impulse of direct artistic Need,
to be led to a hopeful outlook upon the possibilities reserved for
the German spirit, I trust will not be vexed to wander with
me over the path on which I reached that outlook. For his
assistance, I have placed my writings of every kind so together
that he can follow me on every side of my development. He will
thus perceive that he has not to do with the collected-works of a
Scribe, but with a record of the life-activity of an Artist who,
disregarding schema, sought in his art itself for Life.
But this Life is naught else than the essence of true Music, in
which I recognise the only real art of the Present, as of the Future;
for it alone will give us back again the laws for a genuine wider
Art. So is it ; and every one must recognise this fact with me,
so soon as ever he compares the effect upon the souls of all, of
the only living power among us, Music, with that of our literaturepoesy
of nowadays, or of any of the plastic arts, which now can
only borrow foreign schemata, for parleying with our so deeply
sunken modern life. But in Drama glorified by Music, the Folk
will one day find itself and every art ennobled and embellished.
This as greeting to the friendly reader!

RICHARD WAGNER. TRIBSCHEN, near Lucerne, July 1871.

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