Wagner's aim at expressing the soul of things is still further helped by
his system of continuous, unresolved melody. The melody which
circumscribes itself like Giotto's _O_ is almost as tangible a thing as
a statue; it has almost contour. But this melody afloat in the air,
flying like a bird, without alighting for more than a moment's swaying
poise, as the notes flit from strings to voice, and from voice to wood
and wind, is more than a mere heightening of speech: it partakes of the
nature of thought, but it is more than thought; it is the whole
expression of the subconscious life, saying more of himself than any
person of the drama has ever found in his own soul.
It is here that Wagner unites with the greatest dramatists, and
distinguishes himself from the contemporary heresy of Ibsen, whose only
too probable people speak a language exactly on the level of their desks
and their shop-counters. Except in the "Meistersinger," all Wagner's
personages are heroic, and for the most part those supreme sublimations
of humanity, the people of legend, Tannhauser, Tristan, Siegfried,
Parsifal, have at once all that is in humanity and more than is hi
humanity.
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