Their place in a national legend permits them, without
disturbing our critical sense of the probability of things, a superhuman
passion; for they are ideals, this of chivalry, that of love, this of
the bravery, that of the purity, of youth. Yet Wagner employs infinite
devices to give them more and more of verisimilitude; modulating song,
for instance, into a kind of chant which we can almost take for actual
speech. It is thus the more interesting to note the point to which
realism conducts him, the limit at which it stops, his conception of a
spiritual reality which begins where realism leaves off.
And, in his treatment of scenery also, we have to observe the admirable
dexterity of his compromises. The supernatural is accepted frankly with
almost the childish popular belief in a dragon rolling a loathly bulk
painfully, and breathing smoke. But note that the dragon, when it is
thrown back into the pit, falls without sound; note that the combats are
without the ghastly and foolish modern tricks of blood and disfigurement;
note how the crowds pose as in a good picture, with slow gestures, and
without intrusive individual pantomime.
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