He
was reaching devotional fervour as he approached the inner tabernacle,
the holy of holies.
'Oh! Schumann, typical of despair, the voluptuousness of despair! Yes,
the end of everything, the last song of saddened purity hovering above
the ruins of the world! Oh! Wagner, the god in whom centuries of music
are incarnated! His work is the immense ark, all the arts blended in
one; the real humanity of the personages at last expressed, the
orchestra itself living apart the life of the drama. And what a
massacre of conventionality, of inept formulas! what a revolutionary
emancipation amid the infinite! The overture of "Tannhauser," ah!
that's the sublime hallelujah of the new era. First of all comes the
chant of the pilgrims, the religious strain, calm, deep and slowly
throbbing; then the voices of the sirens gradually drown it; the
voluptuous pleasures of Venus, full of enervating delight and languor,
grow more and more imperious and disorderly; and soon the sacred air
gradually returns, like the aspiring voice of space, and seizes hold
of all other strains and blends them in one supreme harmony, to waft
them away on the wings of a triumphal hymn!'
'I am going to shut up, sir,' repeated the waiter.
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