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Introduction To Art And Revolution

pOMAS CARLYLE, in his History of Frederick the Great,* characterises the outbreak of the French Revolution as the First Act of the "Spontaneous Combustion" of a nation " sunk into torpor, abeyance, and dry-rot," and admonishes his readers in the following words : —

" There is the next mile-stone for you, in the History " of Mankind ! That universal Burning-up, as in hell- " fire, of Human Shams. The oath of Twenty-five " Million men, which has since become that of all men " whatsoever, ' Rather than live longer under lies, we " will die ! ' — that is the New Act in World-History. "New Act, — or, we may call it New Part; Drama of " World-History, Part Third. If Part Second was " 1800 years ago, this I reckon will be Part Third. " This is the truly celestial-infernal Event : the strang- " est we have seen for a thousand years. Celestial in " the one part ; in the other, infernal. For it is withal " the breaking-out of universal mankind into Anarchy, " into the faith and practice of iVo-Government,— ? " that is to say (if you will be candid), into unappeas- " able revolt against Sham-Governors and Sham- " Teachers, — which I do charitably define to be a " Search, most unconscious, yet in deadly earnest, for

"true Governors and Teachers When the

" Spontaneous Combustion breaks out ; and, many. " coloured, with loud noises, envelopes the whole " world in anarchic flame for long hundreds of years : " then has the Event come ; there is the thing for all • Book XXI. chap i.— Tr.

"men to mark, and to study and scrutinise as the " strangest thing they ever saw. Centuries of it yet " lying ahead of us ; several sad Centuries, sordidly " tumultuous, and good for little ! Say Two Centuries " yet, — say even Ten of such a process : before the Old " is completely burnt out, and the New in any state of " sightliness ? Millennium of Anarchies ;— abridge it, " spend your hearts-blood upon abridging it, ye Heroic " Wise that are to come 1 "

When, in the feverish excitement of the year 1849, I gave vent to an appeal such as that contained in the immediately succeeding essay: "Art and Revolution," I believe that I was in complete accord with the last words of this summons of the grey-headed historian. I believed in the Revolution, and in its unrestrainable necessity, with certainly no greater immoderation than Carlyle : only, I also felt that I was called to point out to it the way of rescue. Far though it was from my intent to define the New, which should grow from the ruins of a sham-filled world, as a fresh political ordering : * I felt the rather animated to draw the outlines of the Art-work which should rise from the ruins of a sham-bred Art. To hold this Art-work up to Life itself, as the prophetic mirror of its Future, appeared to me a weightiest contribution toward the work of damming the flood of Revolution within the channel of the peaceful-flowing stream of Manhood. I was bold enough to prefix the following motto to the little pamphlet : " When Art erst held her peace. State-wisdom and Philosophy began : when now both Statesman and Philosopher have breathed their last, let the Artist's voice again be heard."

It is needless to recall the scorn which my presumption brought upon me ; since in the course of my succeeding! literary labours, whose connected products I here append,'

* Even Carlyle can only betoken this as the " Death of the Anarchies ; ot a world once more built wholly on Fact better or worse ; and the lying jargoning professor of Sham-Fact . . . become a species extinct, arid well known to be gone down to Tophet ! " — R. Wagner.

Introduction To Art And Revolution. 2$

I had occasion enough to defend myself against the grossest of these attacks. I have also exhaustively treated this whole matter, both with regard to the inception of these works and the characteristic incitement thereto, not only in the " Communication to my Friends," * which brings this whole period to a close, but also in a later treatise, entitled : " The Music of the Future" {" Zuhm/tsmusik"). I will only say here that the principal cause which brought down the ridicule of our art-critics upon my seemingly paradoxical ideas, is to be found in the fervid enthusiasm which pervaded my style and gave to my remarks more of a poetic than a scientific character. Moreover, the effect of an indiscriminate intercalation of philosophical maxims was prejudicial to my clearness of expression, especially in the eyes of those who could not or would not follow my line of thought and general principles. Actively aroused by the perusal of some of Ludwig FeuerbacKs essays, I had borrowed various terms of abstract nomenclature and applied them to artistic ideas with which they could not always closely harmonise. In thus doing, I gave myself up without critical deliberation to the guidance of a brilliant writer, who approached most nearly to my reigning frame of mind, in that he bade farewell to Philosophy (in which he fancied he detected naught but masked Theology) and took refuge in a conception of man's nature in which I thought I clearly recognised my own ideal of artistic manhood. From this arose a kind of impassioned tangle of ideas, which manifested itself as precipitance and indistinctness in my attempts at philosophical system. ■

While on this subject, I deem it needful to make special mention of two chief 'terms,' my misunderstanding of which has since been strikingly borne in upon me.

I refer in the first place to the concept Willkiir and UnwillkUrf^ in the use of which a great confusion had

• " Eine Mitthcilung an meine Freunde ; " — see end of the present volume. — Tr.

+ We have no English equivalents of these words, except in the adjectival form : vohtntary and involuntary, in which there lies the same confusion of long preceded imy own offending; for an adjectivalterm, unwillkurlich, had been promoted to the rank of a substantive. Only those who have learnt from Schopenhauer the true meaning arid significance of the Will, can thoroughly appreciate the abuse that had resulted from this mixing up of words; he who has enjoyed this unspeakable benefit, however, knows well that that misused " Unwillkiir" should really be named " Der Wille " (the Will) ; whilst the term Willkiir (Choice or Caprice) is here employed to signify the so-called Intellectual or Brain Will, influenced by the guidance of reflection. Since the latter is more concerned with the properties of Knowledge, — which may easily be led astray by the purely individual aim, — it is attainted with the evil qualities with which it is charged in the following pages, under the name of Willkiir : whereas the pure Will, as the " Thing-in-itself" that comes to consciousness in man, is credited with those true productive qualities which are here — apparently the result of a confusion sprung from the popular misuse of the term — assigned to the negative expression, " UnwillkUr" Therefore, since a thorough revision in this sense would lead too far and prove a most fatiguing task, the reader is begged, when doubtful of the meaning of any of such passages, to bear graciously in mind the present explanation.

Further, I have to fear that my continual employment of the term " Sinnlichkeit," * in a sense prompted by the same authority, may give origin, if not to positively harmful misunderstanding, at least to much perplexity. Since the idea conveyed by this term can only have the meaning,

ideas as that for which Wagner here upbraids himself ; and even now, when Schopenhauer's definition of the "Will" is pretty generally accepted, it would seem better, for clearness' sake, to delimit the term by some such prefix as the " Inner," or "Instinctive" Will, in order to distinguish it from the "Outer" or " Intellectual" Choice. In this series of translations I shall endeavour to lender such expressions in the sense the author here indicates. — W. A. E.

* .S¥»»/?<:A^«jV= Qualities appealing to the senses; or again, the bent to an objective method of viewing things. Hence it may at times be best rendered by Physicalism or Materialism ; at others, by Physical perception. Physical contemplation, or even — borrowing from C3.r\y\s—Five-sense-tkilosephy. ^Tr

Introduction To Art And Revolution. 2^

in my argument, of the direct antithesis to " Gedanken " ^Thought), or — which will make my purport clearer — to " Gedanklickkeit" (Ideation): its absolute misunderstanding would certainly be difficult, seeing that the two opposite factors. Art and Learning, must readily be recognised herein. But since, in ordinary parlance, this word is employed in the evil sense of "Sensualism," or even of abandonment to Sensual Lust, it would be better to replace it by a term of less ambiguous meaning, in theoretical expositions of so warm a declamatory tone as these of mine, however wide a currency it has obtained in philosophical speech. Obviously, the question here is of the contrast between intuitive and abstract knowledge, both in themselves and their results; but above all, of the subjective predisposition to these diverse modes. The term " Anschauungsvermdgen" (Perceptive Faculty) would sufficiently denote the former ; were it not that for the specific artistic perception, a distinctive emphasis seems necessary, for which it might well appear indispensable to retain the expression " Sinnlickes Anschauungsvermbgen" (Physical perceptive faculty), and briefly " Sinnlichkeit " (Physicality), alike for the faculty, for the object of its exercise, and for the force which sets the two in rapport with each other.

But the greatest peril of all, is that which the author would incur by his frequent use of the word Communism, should he venture into the Paris of to-day with these artessays in his hand ; for he openly proclaims his adherence to this severely scouted category, in contradistinction to Egoism.* I certainly believe that the friendly German reader, to whom the meaning of this antithesis will be obvious, will have no special trouble in overcoming the doubt as to whether he must rank me among the partisans of the newest Parisian "Commune." Still, I cannot deny that I should not have embarked with the same energy upon the use of this word " Communism " (employing it in

* To use the now more customary antithesis : Socialism v. IndiviJualism.<s — Tr.

a sense borrowed from the said writings of Feuerbach) as the opposite of Egoism : had I not also seen in this idea a socio-political ideal which I conceived as embodied in a " Volk" (People) that should represent the incomparable productivity of antique brotherhood, while I looked forward to the perfect evolution of this principle as the very essence of the associate Manhood of the Future. — It is significant of my experiences on the practical side, that in the first of these writings, Ari and Revolution, which I had originally intended for a certain political journal* then appearing in Paris (where I stayed for a few weeks in the summer of 1 849), I avoided this word " Communism," — as it now seems to me, from fear of gross misunderstanding on the part of our French brethren, materialistic (" sinnlich ") as they are in their interpretation of so many an abstract idea, — whereas I forthwith used it without scruple in my next art-writings, designed expressly for Germany; a fact I now regard as a token of my implicit trust in the attributes of the German mind. In pursuance of this observation, I attach considerable importance also to the experience, that my essay met with absolutely no whit of understanding in Paris, and that no one at the time could understand why I should single out a political journal for my mouthpiece ; in consequence whereof, my article did not after all attain to publication there.

But it was not only from the effects of these and similar experiences, that the quick of my ideas drew gradually back from contact with the political excitement of the day, and soon developed moi-e and more exclusively as an artistic ideal. Hereof the sequence of the writings collected in these two volumes t gives sufficient indication;' and this the reader will best recognise from the insertion, in their midst, of a dramatic sketch : Wieland der Schmied, executed by me in the same chronological order as that in

* " In the National JOM will shortly see an important article of mine : Art and Revolution, which I believe will also appear in German at Wigand's in Leipzig." — From Wagner's letter to Uhlig, of 9th August 1849. — Tk.

t Volumes III. and IV. of the Gesammelte Schriften, or "Collected Writings."— Tr.

Introduction To Art And Revolution. 29

which it now stands. If that artistic ideal, which I have ever since held fast to as my inmost acquisition, under whatsoever form of its manifestment, — if that ideal remained the only actual outcome of a labour which taxed the whole energy of my nature ; and finally, if only as a creative artist could I live up to this ideal without disquietude: then my belief in the German spirit, and the trust in its predestined place amid the Council of the Nations that took an ever mightier hold upon me as time rolled on, could alone inspire me with the hopeful equanimity so indispensable to the artist — even from the outer aspect of the human lot, however much the care for the latter had forced its passionate disturbance upon my views of life. Already I have been enabled to preface the second edition of Operd and Drama by a dedication to a friend * I had won in the interval, — and to whose instructive suggestions I have had to thank the most comforting solutions of the last named problem, — in order to reach to him the hand of the artist as well as of the man, in token of the hopes that cheer us both.

I have now only to conclude these comments by pointing back once more to their opening sentences, wherein I cited the dictum of Carlyle upon the import of the great world epoch that dawned upon us with the French Revolution. According to the high opinion which this great thinker has proclaimed, of the destiny of the German nation and its spirit of veracity, it must be deemed no vain presumption that we recognise in this German people — whose own completed Reformation would seem to have spared it from the need of any share in Revolution — the pre-ordained " Heroic Wise " on whom he calls to abridge the period of horrible World-Anarchy. For myself, I feel assured that just the same relation which my ideal of Art bears to the reality of our general conditions of existence, that relation is allotted to the German race in its destiny amid a whole political world in the throes of " Spontaneous Combustion." • 1868; Constantin Frantz.— Tr.

ART AND REVOLUTION.

3LMOST universal is the outcry raised byartists nowadays against the damage that the Revolution has occasioned them. It is not the battles of the " barricades," not the sudden mighty shattering of the pillars of the State; not the hasty change of Governments, — that is bewailed ; for the impression left behind by such capital events as these, is for the most part disproportionately fleeting, and short-lived in its violence. But it is the protracted character of the latest convulsions, that is so mortally affecting the artistic efforts of the day. The hithertorecognised foundations of industry, of commerce, and of wealth, are now threatened; and though tranquillity has been outwardly restored, and the general physiognomy of social life completely re-established, yet there gnaws at the entrails of this life a carking care, an agonising distress. Reluctance to embark in fresh undertakings, is maiming credit; he who wishes to presei-ve what he has, declines the prospect of uncertain gain ; industry is at a standstill, and — Art has no longer the wherewithal to live.

It were cruel to refuse human sympathy to the thousands who are smarting from this blow. Where, a little while ago, a popular artist was accustomed to receive, at the hands of the care-free portion of our well-to-do society, the reward of his appreciated services in sterling payment, and a like prospect of comfort and contentment in his life,— it is hard for him now to see himself rejected by , tight-closed hands, and abandoned to lack of occupation. In this he shares the fate of the mechanic, who must lay the cunning fingers with which he was wont to create a thousand dainty trifles for the rich, in idleness upon his breast above a hungering stomach. He has the right then to bewail his lot ; for to him who feels the smart of pain, has Nature given the gift of tears. But whether he has a right to confound his own personality with that of Art, to decry his ills as the ills of Art, to scold the Revolution as the arch-enemy of Art, because it interferes with the easy ministry to his own wants : this were grave matter for question. Before a decision could be arrived at on this point, at least those artists might be interrogated who have shown by word and deed that they loved and laboured for Art for its own pure sake ; and from these we should soon learn, that they suffered also in the former times when others were rejoicing.

The question must be therefore put to Art itself and its true essence; nor must we in this matter concern ourselves with mere abstract definitions ; fnr 01^- phjprt will naturally be^ to discover the mea ning of Art as a factor in^ the life of the State, and to makeour selves_a^uainted wi'tlT it as a social product. A hasty review of the salient points of the history of European art will be of welcome service to us in this, and assist us to a solution of the above-named problem — a problem which is surely not of slight importance.

pN any serious investigation of the essence of our art of to-day, we cannot make one step forward without being brought face to face with its intimate connection with the Art of ancient Greece. For, in point of fact, our modern art is but one link in the artistic development of the whole of Europe ; and this development found its starting-point with the Greeks.

After it had overcome the raw religion of its Asiatic birth-place, built upon the nature-forces of the earth, and had set ih&fair, strong manhood of freedom upon the pinnacle of its religious convictions, — the Grecian spirit, at the flowering-time of its art and polity, found its fullest expression in the god Apollo, the head and national deity of the Hellenic race.

It was Apollo, — he who had slain the Python^ the dragon of Chaos ; who had smitten down the vain sons of boastful Niobe by his death-dealing darts; who, through his priestess at Delphi, had proclaimed to questioning man the fundamental laws of the Grecian race and nation, thus holding up to those involved in passionate action, the peaceful, undisturbed mirror of their inmost, unchangeable Grecian nature, — it was this Apollo who was the fulfiller of the will of Zeus upon the Grecian earth ; who was, in fact, the Grecian people.

Not as the soft companion of the Muses, — as the later and more luxurious art of sculpture has alone preserved his likeness, — must we conceive the Apollo of the springtime of the Greeks ; but it was with all the traits of energetic earnestness, beautiful but strong, that the great tragedian ^schylus knew him. Thus, too, the Spartan youths learnt the nature of the god, when by dance and joust they had developed their supple bodies to grace and strength ; when the boy Was taken from those he loved, and sent on horse to farthest lands in search of perilous adventure f when the young man was led into the circle of fellowship, his only password that of his beauty and his native ivorth, in which alone lay all his might and all his riches. With such eyes also the Athenian saw the god, when all the impulses of his fair body, and of his restless soul, urged him to the new birth of his own being through the ideal expression of art ; when the voices, ringing full, sounded forth the choral song, singing the deeds of the god, the while they gave to the dancers the mastering •measure that meted out the rhythm of the dance,— which dance itself, in graceful movements, told the story of those deeds ; and when above the harmony of well-ordered ■columns he wove the noble roof, heaped one upon the other the broad crescents of the amphitheatre, and planned the scenic trappings of the stage. Thus, too, inspired by Dionysus, the tragic poet saw this glorious god : when, to all the rich elements of spontaneous art, the harvest of the fairest and most human life, he joined the bond of speech, and concentrating them all into one focus, brought forth the highest conceiyableJbiiiLO-Lar.|-— thp DramAi.-

The deeds of gods and men, their sufferings, their delights, as they, — in all solemnity and glee, as eternal rhythm, as •everlasting harmony of every motion and of all creation, — lay disclosed in the nature of Apollo himself ; here they ;became actual and true. For all that in them moved and iived, as it moved and lived in the beholders, here found its perfected expression ; where ear and eye, as soul and heart, lifelike and actual, seized and perceived all, and saw all in spirit and in body revealed ; so that the imagination need no longer vex itself with the attempt to conjure up the image. Such a tragedy-day was a Feast of the God ; for here the god ^poke clearly and intelligibly forth, and the poet, as his high-priest, stood real and embodied in his art-work, led the measures of the dance, raised the voices to a choir, and in ■ringing words proclaimed the utterances of godlike wisdom.

Such was the Grecian work of art ; such their god Apollo, incarnated in actual, living art ; such was the Grecian people in its highest truth and beauty.

This race, in every branch, in every unit, was rich in indi-

C viduality, restless in its energy, in the goal of one undertaking seeing but the starting-point of a fresh one; in constant mutual intercourse, in daily-changing alliances, in daily-varying strifes ; to-day in luck, to-morrow in mischance ; to-day in peril of the utmost danger, to-morrowabsolutely exterminating its foes ; in all its relations, both internal and external, breathing the life of the freest and most unceasing development. This people, streaming in its thousands from the State-assembly, from the Agora, from land, from sea, from camps, from distant parts, — filled with its thirty thousand heads the amphitheatre. To see the most pregnant of all tragedies, the " Prometheus," came they; in this Titanic masterpiece to see the image of themselves, to read the riddle of their own actions, to fuse their own being and their own communion with that of their god ; and thus in noblest, stillest peace to live again the life which a brief space of time before, they had lived, in restless activity and accentuated individuality.

Ever jealous of his personal independence, and huntingdown the " Tyrannos " who, howsoever wise and lofty,, might imperil from any quarter the freedom of his own strong will: the Greek despised the soft complacencewhich, under the convenient shelter of another's care, canlay itself down to passive egoistic rest. Constantly on hisguard, untiring in warding off all outside influence : he gave not even to the hoariest tradition the right over his own Jreeonundan^ Jifg,. his actions, or his thoughts. Yet, at the summons of the choir his voice was hushed, he yielded himself a willing slave to the deep significance of the scenic show, and hearkened to the great story of Necessitytold by the tragic poet through the mouths of his godsand heroes on the stage. For in the tragedy he found himself again, — nay, found the noblest part of his own nature united with the noblest characteristics of the wholenation ; and from his inmost soul, as it there unfolded itself to him, proclaimed the Pythian oracle. At once both God and Priest, glorious godlike man, one with the Universal, the Universal summed up in him: like one of thoseu thousand fibres which form the plant's united life, his slender form sprang from the soil into the upper air ; there to bring forth the one lovely flower which shed its fragrant breath upon eternity. This flower was the highest work of Art, its scent the spirit of Greece ; and still it intoxicates our senses and forces from us the avowal, that it were better to be for half a day a Greek in presence of this tragic Art-work, than to all eternity an— un-Greek God I

Hand-in-hand with the dissolution of the Athenian State, marched the downfall of Tragedy. As the spirit of i Community split itself along a thousand lines of egoistic cleavage, so was the great united work of Tragedy disintegrated into its individual factors. Above the ruins of tragic art was heard the cry of the mad laughter of Aristo- ' phanes, the maker of comedies ; and, at the bitter end, every impulse of Art stood still before Philosophy, who read with gloomy mien her homilies upon the fleeting stay of human strength and beauty.

To P hilosop hy and not to Art, belong the two thousand years which, since the decadence of Grecian Tragedy, have passed till our own day. In vain did Art send hither and thither her dazzling beams into the night of discontented thought, of mankind grovelling in its madness ; they were but tiie cries, of pain or joy, of the units who had escaped from the desert of the multitude, and, like fortunate wanderers from distant lands, had reached the hidden, bubbling spring of pure Castalian waters, at which they slaked their thirsty lips but dared not reach the quickening draught unto the world. Or else it was, that Art entered on the service of one or other of those abstract ideas or even conventions which, now lighter and now more heavily, weighed down a suffering humanity and cast in fetters the freedom both of individuals and communities. But never more was she. the free expression of a free comjnunity. Yet true Art is highest freedom, and only the highest freedom can bring her forth from out itself; no commandment, no ordinance, in short, no aim apart from Art, can call her to arise.

The Romans, — whose national art had early vanished before the influence of an indoctrinated Grecian art, — procured the services of Greek architects, sculptors and painters ; and their own savants trained themselves to Grecian rhetoric and versification. Their giant theatres, however, they opened not to the gods and heroes of the ancient myths, nor to the free dancers and singers of the sacred choirs ! No ! Wild beasts, lions, panthers and elephants, must tear themselves to pieces in their amphitheatres, to glut the Roman eye; and gladiators, slaves trained up to the due pitch of strength and agility, must satiate the Roman ear with the hoarse gulp of death.

These brutal conquerors of the world were pleased to wallow in the most absolute realism ; their imagination could find its only solace in the most material of presentments. Their philosophers they gladly left to flee shuddering from public life to abstract speculations ; but, for themselves, they loved to revel in concrete and open bloodthirstiness, beholding human suffering set before them in absolute physical reality.

These gladiators and fighters with wild beasts, were sprung from every European nation ; and the kings, nobles, and serfs of these nations were all slaves alike of the Roman Emperor, who showed them, in this most practical of ways, that all men were equals ; just as, on the other hand, he himself was often shown most palpably by his own Pretorian Guard, that he also was no more than a mere slave.

This mutual and general slavery — so clear, that no one could gainsay it — yearned, as every universal feeling of the world must yearn, for an adequate expression of itself. But the manifest degradation and dishonour of all men ; the consciousness of the complete corruption of all manly worth; the inevitably ensuing loathing of the material pleasures that now alone were left ; the deep contempt for their own acts and deeds, from which all spirit of Genius and impulse of Art had long since joined with Freedom in her flight; this sorrowful existence, without actual aimful life, — could find but one expression; which, though certainly universal as the condition that called it forth, must yet be the direct antithesis of Art. For Art is pleasure in itself, in existence, in community ; but the condition of that period, at the close of the Roman mastery of the world, was self-contempt, disgust with existence, horror of community. Thus Art could never be the true expression of this condition : its only possible expression was Christianity.

Christianity adjusts the ills of an honourless, useless, and sorrowful existence of mankind on earth, by the miraculous love of God ; who had not — as the noble Greek supposed — created man for a happy and self-conscious life upon this earth, but had here imprisoned him in a loathsome dungeon : so as, in reward for the self-contempt that poisoned him therein, to prepare him for a posthumous state of endless comfort and inactive ecstasy. Man was therefore bound to remain in this deepest and unmanliest degradation, and no activity of this present life should he exercise ; for this accursed life was, in truth, the world of the devil, i.e,, of the senses ; and by every action* in it, he played into the devil's hands. Therefore the poor wretch who, in the enjoyment of his natural powers, made this life his own possession, must suffer after death the eternal torments of hell ! Naught was required of mankind but Faith — that is to say, the confession of its miserable plight, and the giving up of all spontaneous attempt to escape from out this misery ; for the undeserved Grace of God was alone to set it free.