art.

The preparations for it were conducted with untiring energy and
great wisdom. The works of art which he had already forged were the
sword. The true and noble art, which had begun with Goethe, was
now introduced in the various European centres of culture "with
considerate speed," and finally inspired in Germany, the very centre
of this culture and art, an understanding of their real elements. In
the modest Zurich where the banishment began, in London--Paris had
rejected it--in Petersburg, in Vienna, in Munich, and at last also
in Berlin, which at that time did not appear to have "one drop of
artist's blood in all its veins" the world's attention was aroused
anew by actual representations, though often only in parts, to the
fact, that the latter-day art of the last generation had removed us a
great distance from our ideals. And finally he succeeded, at first in
Munich, subsequently in Baireuth, in securing for the art of the stage
a proper representation, and with it an awakening of the age to a
correct perception of art as expressive of the ideal which stimulates
the whole world. The thrust which pierced the heart of the dragon of
the modern theatres was his "Parsifal," and the Siegfried, who dealt
the blow, gained with his art the slumbering bride, the re-awakening
heart of the nation and mankind.

Who is there to-day who will doubt that Faust denial of the curse and
the prophetic presentment of a new world? Is it not true that the
governing powers of the present time have seized upon the ideas in
politics and society, which were the kernel of the movement of 1848
and 1849? Whenever they shall understand the mental strivings of the
nation, as well as the political and military, then art and religion
will gain the dignity and the right to which they are entitled. The
revolt of Wagner was the revolt of the better soul of the nation which
had been estranged from itself. Thirty years of deeds have shown that
his word was the truth. We now come to their recital.

CHAPTER IV.

1850-1861.

EXILE.

Visit to Liszt--Flight to Foreign Lands--Three
Pamphlets--"Lohengrin" Performed--Wagner's Musical Ideas Expressed
in Words--Resumption of the Nibelungen Poem--The Idea of the
Poem--Its Religious Element--The First Music-Drama--In Zurich--New
Art Ideas--Increasing Fame--"Tristan and Isolde"--Analysis of this
Work--In Paris Again--The Amnesty--Tannhaeuser at the "Grand
Opera"--"Lohengrin" in Vienna--Resurrec