Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/176

 mitted to us by the various national literatures to which they belonged.

One might discuss the limits of the influence, in any case very wide, exercised in Germany by these conceptions. But the discussion would be without interest for us, since, so far as Richard Wagner is concerned, this influence was unlimited. It would be impossible to be more subject to it than he was. He was absolutely possessed by it. He may have subsequently discovered other ideas; he may have changed, I will not say his principles (how attribute principles to a mind of this quality, all passion and mobility?) but at least his sentiments, impressions and impulses. His faith in the primitive and its ideal value adapted itself to these successive orientations; by doing so it took on some new tints but was not weakened. If anyone has found in his theoretical writings as many as thirty lines in which the following expressions do not recur ad nauseam, I should like to see them: rein menschlich (purely human), urmenschlich (primitively human), willkürlich and unwillkürlich (deliberate and spontaneous), unbewusst (unconscious). With these words, which do not mean much, Wagner imagines he has said all there is to be said.

It is true that I have traced to the national passions of the German people, if not the very origin of this ideology, at least the unprecedented favour that it enjoyed. And on the other hand the Wagner of 1848 appears to us to be far removed from nationalist preoccupations. He is as he says "utterly revolutionary." There is no contradiction in this. The ideology of German nationalism, and the revolutionary ideology (which must on no account be confused with the positive and definite ideas of reform contained in