Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/207

 these abstractions are not hollow. They embrace realities. They are the names of the most general moral forces, whose conflicts have since the beginning of time engendered human events,—Fate and Freedom, Greed and Love, Ambition and Disinterestedness, Knowledge and Instinct. These are the powers that guide the drama. Not that the poet has personified them in figures of flesh and blood. But his heroes constantly mention them, refer to them as the principles and motives of their actions. By this substitution of the abstract for the personal, Wagner's works wear the aspect of mediæval Mysteries. On the other hand the concept of these forces and their part in humanity and history is mixed with ideologies that are purely modern, revolutionary, romantic and Germanic. It is this that gives to the Tetralogy something that it shares with Hugo's Legend of the Ages, and the symbolical novels of Zola.

IV. The setting and scenery must not be counted among the accessories of Wagner's dramatic poems, but among their constituent elements. One might even say that they are both important elements. They are assuredly the richest and most ornate. This scenery is always a blend of the fantastic with landscape, of fairyland with nature.

V. Lastly, there is a fifth and less conspicuous element; among all these large and opulent features it is the only delicate thing. I am thinking of those passages of lyric reverie for which Nietzsche in the midst of his anti-Wagnerian diatribes expresses a liking. In these it is Wagner himself who speaks through the mouth of his characters, attributing to them thoughts and sensations whose subtlety does not always accord with their usual simplicity; but