Richard Wagner in Exile

BOOKS OF THE DAY

By DESMOND SHAWE-TAYLOR

WITEN Professor Einstein writes a new book about relativity, to whom, I wonder, is it sent for review ? The second volume of Mr. Newman's monumental Life of Richard Wagner, covering his activities in the Dresden revolution of 1849 and the ere-Ven years of exile to which they led, now follows the first after an interval of four years ; already, it may be remembered, the author has to his credit four books on the same subject : an early Study (1899), a popular handbook (1904), the still valuable Wagner as Man diatiArtist (1914), and Fact and Fiction abOut Wagner -(1931), a sort of Preliminary clearing of the ground for the present work. Only those unacquainted with the inexhaustible subject will call this life- , long interest an obsession ; think what we will of the ultimate .value of his music, Wagner remains one of the seminal forces in European culture, while his meteoric life is more fully documented than that of any Other artist (about 6,000 of his letters, for example, hive. now been published). Further- more, there is no other adequate biography : Glasenapp's official Life and its English expansion by Ashton Ellis, besides being blindly partisan and rather dull, are rendered out of date by the enormous amount of fresh material now avail-

able ; the 'rest are mostly second-hand Glasenapp. . .

The Life of Richicl Wagner. ljy trnUsi keWnaii: Volume II (1848-1860). (Cassell. 3084 , . • -• It would be an affectation for the Present reviewer to pretend that he is in a position to check the use made by Mr. Newman of the vast mass of new sources he has investigated. No one in England, and very few anywhere, can compete with his grasp of the Wagner literature in toto. In a work of this scale it is hardly possible to avoid errors, and we may presume that the first volume was closely scrutinised by all the experts in their various fields. As a result of their scrutiny Mr. Newman now. finds it necessary to apologise—for an error of one year in the date of Morlacchi's death In the thousand and more pages of Vols. I and II, I have detected scarcely half a dozen slips and misprints, all trivial. Such scholarship is beyond the assessment of the ordinary reviewer ; as one who has from time to time, from this or that clearing, peered into the Wagner jungle, he can only admire, and call others to admire, the broad undeviating path which the author has driven through its very heart.

• This is not only the most important biography of recent years, but one of the most absorbing. From the mass of detail, presented with the precision of a K.C., the impartiality of a judge, and 'the psychological insight of a great novelist, there emerges a portrait of Wagner, far more alive and credible than any other. Though no unpleasant fact is shirked, the stature of the man appears, paradoxically, greater than ever. Mr. Newman's outlook on the man has widened and deepened- since-Iris Wagner as Man and Artist ; how much may be seen by a comparison of his treatment in the two volumes of Minna Wagner and of Mathilde Wesendonk. In general he lays less emphasis now on the erotic element in Wagner, more on his finar.- cial troubles. He keeps a firm grasp on the " cardinal fact in his psychology that it was not his life that determined his art so much as his art that coloured his life." To put it crudely : he did not write Tristan because he was in love with Mathilde Wesendonk ; he was in love with Mathilde because he was writing Tristan. Nothing and nobody in the last resort mattered to him but the bringing to birth of what he felt

stirring within him. • •

In these five yearit [1847.52] the relatively naive Wagner of the earlier years . . . gradually hardens into a domineering spirit that has taken full stock of itself, realises its fundamental difference

from the rest of mankind,, becomes iaerfectlir" clear to its iire. . . appointed goal, and makes for that goal witl oit a moment's self- doubt, a moment's compromise, a moment's consideration fez:a/WIN.

We can see clearly now that, without this hardening of librc in his relationship with others, he could never have won the gigantic struggle -necessary for the imposition of his ideas upon the existing operatic world. We arc accustomed to shake our heads and smile at the ceaseless tale of Weir:flees borrowings and debts. We should remember that during the period covered by this volume his four early operas were making "their-way through most of the smaller German theatres ; if anything like the present system of royalties

had been in force, his affairs would have prospered. In most cases, however, a single fee, varying from £7 10s. to £17, was held to discharge a theatre's total indebtedness towards a composer for any number of performances of one of his works ; while in little Weimar the tenor, Tichatschek, would receive about £40 for a single guest appearance ! In a world organised on such crazy lines as these, can we wonder that4Vagner did not look upon the business of loans in quite the saute light as his creditors ?

All he wanted was enough money to give him the comfort and seclusion necessary to the completion of his works.

Luxurious surroundings, it is true, were almost essential to

him in the throes of composition ; but only the foolish will scoff at the rich, heavy curtains and portieres which he loved, and which, Mr. Newman conjectures with his customary insight, " gave him an agreeable sense of temporary seclusion from the world that treated him so roughly." While his brain was seething with the marvellous musiel-dramatic structure of Tristan and the Ring, he had to spend long hours in negotiating for loans, writing endless business letters to publishers and theatre managers, framing roundabout appeals

to Gentian princelings of the type of the Grand Duke of Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, the compwer of an opera called 7'ony. When the somewhat sycophantic Liszt proposed that he should score a second Ducal opera, then on the stocks, he was furious : nothing, he declared, would induce hint to " scorn his rubbish " or to " sit in a Coburg casth co-operating with Frau Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer " (the Duke's librettist). Five years later the Duke was again big with opera, and the tactless Liszt urged him to accept the dedication of the new work. He was in the middle of Tristan and in desperate financial straits, and his temper boiled over again :

" In the name of God what can I do with Diana de Solange . . . Dingelstedt ! Grand Duke ! Rienzi All stuff and non- sense ! What I want is money. . . . Tell them that Wagner- does not care a curse for you all, your theatres, even his own operas ; he needs money ; that is all ! "

The second volume was to have brought the story down to 1864 ; but various expansions of the author's plan have resulted in his covering only twelve years in this volume, which leaves twenty-three years for the third, and supposedly last. Al Appendix on Wagner's origins (his . paternity remains as doubtful as ever) discusses the interesting proba- bility that his mother's father was not tie! Weissenfels baker, Pacts, but Prince Constantin of Weimar, brother of Goethe's Karl August ; if this is true, he was barely fifteen at the time of the misdemeanour which ultimately gave us Die Meister- singer. Seldom can wild oats have been more advantageously scattered.

I have no room even to suggest the humour that constantly wells up in the footnotes to this great biography, but cannot resist drawing attention to the dedication (a handful of notes from Die Meistersinger): in its scholarly and allusive way as pretty a compliment as Wagner's serenading of Cosima with the Siegfried Idyll..