Napoleon wept at a reading of
_Paul et Virginie_, and delighted in the pallid music of Paesiello. A
man wearied by an over-active life seeks repose in art; a man who lives
a narrow, commonplace life seeks energy in art. A great artist writes a
gay work when he is sad, and a sad work when he is gay, almost in spite
of himself. Beethoven's symphony _To Joy_ is the offspring of his
misery; and Wagner's _Meistersinger_ was composed immediately after the
failure of _Tannhaeuser_ in Paris. People try to find in _Tristan_ the
trace of some love-story of Wagner's, but Wagner himself says: "As in
all my life I have never truly tasted the happiness of love, I will
raise a monument to a beautiful dream of it: I have the idea of _Tristan
und Isolde_ in my head." And so it was with his creation of the happy
and heedless _Siegfried_.
* * * * *
The first ideas of _Siegfried_ were contemporary with the Revolution of
1848, which Wagner took part in with the same enthusiasm he put into
everything else. His recognised biographer, Herr Houston Stewart
Chamberlain--who, with M. Henri Lichtenberger, has succeeded best in
unravelling Wagner's complex soul, though he is not without certain
prejudices--has been at great pains to prove that Wagner was always a
patriot and a German monarchist.
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