And in his audible representation of natural sounds and natural
sights he does, consummately, what others have only tried, more or less
well, to do. When, in the past at least, the critics objected to the
realism of his imitative effects, they forgot that all other composers,
at one time or another, had tried to be just as imitative, but had not
succeeded so well in their imitations. Wagner, in his painting, is the
Turner of music. He brings us nature, heroically exalted, full of fiery
splendour, but nature as if caught in a mirror, not arranged, subdued,
composed, for the frame of a picture. He is afraid of no realism,
however mean, because he has confidence in nature as it is, apprehended
with all the clairvoyance of emotion.
Between the abyss of the music, out of which the world rises up with all
its voices, and the rocks and clouds, in which the scenery carries us
onward to the last horizon of the world, gods and men act out the brief
human tragedy, as if on a narrow island in the midst of a great sea. A
few steps this way or that will plunge them into darkness; the darkness
awaits them, however they succeed or fail, whether they live nobly or
ignobly, in the interval; but the interval absorbs them, as if it were
to be eternity, and we see them rejoicing and suffering with an
abandonment to the moment which intensifies the pathos of what we know
is futile.
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