Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/267

Rh our thinkers had cars to dive into the soul of our musicians by means of their music! How long have we to wait ere we may again meet with such an opportunity to take the inward man in the very act of his evil-doing and in the innocence of this act! For our musicians have not the faintest idea that it is their own history, the history of the disfigurement of the soul, which they transpose into music. Formerly a good musician was almost sure to become a good man for the sake of his art. And now? —He who believes that Shakespeare's stage has a moral effect and that the sight of Macbeth irresistibly detracts from evil ambition is mistaken. And he is again mistaken if he believes that Shakespeare himself was of this opinion. Any man who is really possessed by mad ambition will watch this, his emblem, with delight; and the very fact that the hero perishes in his passion is the strongest charm in the hot cup of this delight. Were the poet's feelings different to these? How royally and not in the least knavishly his ambitious hero runs his course from the hour of his great crime! Only then he grows "demonaically” attractive and encourages similar natures to imitation— demoniacal means here: in defiance of advantage and life, in favour of an idea and craving. Do you imagine that Tristan and Isolde give a warning example of