Wagner As Man & Artist

H AS MAN 8 ARTIST By ERNEST NEWMAN TUDOR PUBLISHING CO NEW YORK AS RICHARD AND COS1MA WAGNER PREFACE TO THE SECOND ENGLISH EDITION IN the ten years that have elapsed since the publication of the first edition of this work a number of new letters and other documents relating to Wagner have become available. The text of the book has therefore been not only expanded but drastically revised at various points the issue of Wagners letters to Frau Julie Ritter, for example, has both cleared up one or two points in the Laussot episode that were formerly obscure, and added considerably to our understanding of the affair. This section of the book, accordingly, has been virtually re-written. It will be seen also that a much fuller treatment is given of the old question of Wagners parentage. The vocal score of Das Liebesverbot has now been published, and the opera was performed publicly in Germany in the spring of There may be people who will think it unnecessary to inquire as minutely as I have done into some of the details of Wagners private life. Their point of view, no doubt, is that expressed by Frau Mathilde Wesendonck then an old lady of sixty-four in a letter to Mr. W. Ashton Ellis given in facsimile in the latters edition of the Wagner-Wesendonck correspondence. I quote it with its own quaint spelling It is a base and hateful beginning, that of Mr. Ferdinand Pragers, in writing and publishing a book, merely to darken the Meisters Memory to Mankind, by making Gossip on the In timacy of his private Life, a Life, full of Conflikt, affliction and Suffering 1 What hath the Publik to do with it Deed he not bequeath to him, his unequaled, unrivaled everlasting Works And is this holy Testament notabove all Doubt and Calumny Is it not sufficient to secure him vor ever, the grateful and tender Respect, the awe and the Consideration, due to his Greatness and his Genius The Episode of Bordeaux has been related by the vii viii PREFACE himself, and is to be found in the Edition of Hinterlassene Schriften. May we not be content with what He tells us about it Need we know more u The truth is that R. Wagners affection and gratefulness to the WesendonckY remained the same throughout his life, and that the WesendonckY on theire Side, never ceased to belong to his most true and sincerest friends until to Death What shall I say More Is it worth while, to speak in so seri ous a matter, from my owne personal Self u The tie that bound him to Mathilde Wesendonck, whome he than called his Muse, was of so high, pure, nobel and ideal Nature that, alas, it will only be valued of those, that in their own Noble chest find the same elevation and selfishlessness of Mind There would indeed be some reason for respecting the privacy of a great mans life if he and his family set us the example. But both Wagner and the Wagner family have gone to unheard-of lengths to make us sharers of that privacy His letters have been published by the thousand he himself left us a huge autobiography. It is a very natural desire in us, under these circumstances, to try to see him as he really was and that means the careful comparison of one document with another in order to get at the truth. The letters have sometimes been garbled the autobiography is often incomplete or disingenuous. Moreover, other reputations besides Wagners are concerned. A man cannot expect to have his say about everyone with whom he came into contactwithout our trying to find out precisely how much he was justified in saying some of the things he did about them. Wagner was anxious to paint his own portrait for posterity it is for us to try to find out to what extent the portrait is true or false. E. N. September 1923. PREFACE TO THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION SOME apology Is perhaps needed from an author for writing three books on the same subject...