Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/199

 think I have shown that there is little humanity in Wagner's dramatic inventions. Take away from them all the rubbish of symbolic significations, foggy abstractions obscuring ideas that are more childishly simple than is usually supposed, and what remains of these strange compositions ought to be called by its true name, poetic fantasies. They remind one of frescoes or rather of moving tapestries that unroll before our view natural and fantastic scenes of a heavy and expensive colouring, figures of strong and outstanding picturesqueness, but almost without life. This essentially German art form has its charm; it is free from vulgarity. There is no error of taste in taking pleasure in it, so long as it is only a petty pleasure, such as we might feel in some wonderful Nuremberg doll, which no Frenchman could possibly confuse with a statue by Houdon. I am considering these picturesque and poetic elements apart from the music which lends them lustre and wraps them in its brilliant charm. We shall now have to bring them again in contact with the music, as one brings together the terms of a problem after analysing them separately. It is for musical criticism to say to what extent and in what sense Wagner's music transfigures the themes of his poems. But if his music is of the same nature as his poetry, it may be presumed that in the marvels it has succeeded in rendering real, the enthusiasm of a very powerful German imagination for rich theatrical effects has generally speaking had more share than the pure inspirations of the heart and the subtleties of the mind.