HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}) Once more let it be said that Wagner is really only
worthy of admiration and love by virtue of his inventiveness in small
things, in his elaboration of details,--here one is quite justified in
proclaiming him a master of the first rank, as our greatest musical
_miniaturist_ who compresses an infinity of meaning and sweetness into the
smallest space. His wealth of colour, of chiaroscuro, of the mystery of a
dying light, so pampers our senses that afterwards almost every other
musician strikes us as being too robust. If people would believe me, they
would not form the highest idea of Wagner from that which pleases them in
him to-day. All that was only devised for convincing the masses, and
people like ourselves recoil from it just as one would recoil from too
garish a fresco. What concern have we with the irritating brutality of the
overture to the "Tannhauser"? Or with the Walkyrie Circus? Whatever has
become popular in Wagner's art, including that which has become so outside
the theatre, is in bad taste and spoils taste. The "Tannhauser" March
seems to me to savour of the Philistine; the overture to the "Flying
Dutchman" is much ado about nothing; the prelude to "Lohengrin" was the
first, only too insidious, only too successful example of how one can
hypnotise with music (--I dislike all music which aspires to nothing higher
than to convince the nerves). But apart from the Wagner who paints
frescoes and practises magnetism, there is yet another Wagner who hoards
small treasures: our greatest melancholic in music, full of side glances,
loving speeches, and words of comfort, in which no one ever forestalled
him,--the tone-master of melancholy and drowsy happiness.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} A lexicon of
Wagner's most intimate phrases--a host of short fragments of from five to
fifteen bars each, of music which _nobody knows_.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} Wagner had the virtue
of _decadents_,--pity.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

8.

--"Very good! But how can this _decadent_ spoil one's taste if perchance
one is not a musician, if perchance one is not oneself a
_decadent_?"--Conversely! How can one _help_ it! _Just_ you try it!--You
know not what Wagner is: quite a great actor! Does a more profound, a more
_ponderous_ influence exist on the stage? Just look at these
youthlets,--all benumbed, pale, breathless! They are Wagnerites: they know
nothing about music,--and yet Wagner gets the mastery of them. Wagner's