Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/190

 declared enemy of Law? The guardian of the laws who applies them while groaning over them.

To grasp, as far as possible, Wagner's intention we must understand Law in the most general sense—political laws, social laws, laws of morality, intelligence and thought, rules, institutions, discipline of every kind; these are what Wotan personifies, these are what must perish with the power and reign of Wotan. All this general body of principles of order Wagner sums up somewhere in one word. He calls it "the Monumental." He desires and foretells the crumbling away of the Monumental, and contrasts its detestable fixity with what, in a jargon which has unfortunately passed from Germany to France, he calls "Life." Like all romantic and revolutionary natures, he is incapable of understanding that the "Order" which offers itself and acts as a destroyer of living forces is not Order, but Routine; that real Order is the support and mainstay of spontaneous energies, and that the latter if not guided and kept in their channel by fixed elements are doomed to sterility and wretched waste. This error shows the violence of impulses where reason is weak. But what am I saying? There is one sphere in which Wagner is as far as possible from committing this error. That sphere is music. There he is not at all inclined to despise the Monumental; on the contrary, he glorifies it, he declares himself a thorough conservative, and never has a professor of harmony, counterpoint or composition preached the respect and sanctity of rules with such decisive energy. The fact is that music corresponded to the strong side of his brain.

If we wished to probe further into the dark places of the Tetralogy, we should have to scrutinise the allusions