Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/178

 from saying that its reputation is not well-earned. This drama in four dramas would deserve that opinion even if the author had not put into it other conceptions that are anything but clear besides those which I have just sketched. But if these conceptions provide the Ring with its principle and dominant themes, they do not constitute it entirely. There are several others added, which seem to me to have a relation with those first ones analogous to that of musical variations with their theme. Taken all together they form a sort of universal system embracing the totality of things human and divine. And it is indeed true that some parts of this system are calculated to reduce the most resolute exponent of it to despair.

The Ring, then, is obscure. But is it unique in its obscurity? I think not, and I am astonished that among the aspects it presents this is the only one usually emphasised. Side by side with its symbolic meanings, which themselves are only partially, not wholly, wrapped in darkness, it offers us a story that is very clear and easily understood as soon as one stops looking too eagerly for symbolism. Its clearness is of two sorts according to which of two themes one chooses to study. One is the sort of clearness which is proper to fanciful stories and fairy tales, and one could not ask for anything more vivid, seeing that it satisfies the mind of a little child. The other is somewhat out of range of the young, but is no more difficult to understand than a novel or drama in the fashion of 1830, a novel or drama by Georges Sand or Dumas, such as Lelia, Indiana, Jacques or Antony, inspired by the defence of free love and the rights of nature against the slavery and prejudice of marriage and laws. It does not really