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My Life, Volume I

R >> Richard Wagner >> My Life, Volume I




What struck me more particularly about her was the strange
enthusiasm and almost pathetic manner with which she spoke of the
great and of the beautiful in Art. Under this heading, however,
she would never have let me suppose that she included dramatic
art, but only Poetry, Music, and Painting. Consequently, she
often even threatened me with her curse should I ever express a
desire to go on the stage. Moreover, she was very religiously
inclined. With intense fervour she would often give us long
sermons about God and the divine quality in man, during which,
now and again, suddenly lowering her voice in a rather funny way,
she would interrupt herself in order to rebuke one of us. After
the death of our stepfather she used to assemble us all round her
bed every morning, when one of us would read out a hymn or a part
of the Church service from the prayer-book before she took her
coffee. Sometimes the choice of the part to be read was hardly
appropriate, as, for instance, when my sister Clara on one
occasion thoughtlessly read the 'Prayer to be said in time of
War,' and delivered it with so much expression that my mother
interrupted her, saying: 'Oh, stop! Good gracious me! Things are
not quite so bad as that. There's no war on at present!'

In spite of our limited means we had lively and--as they appeared
to my boyish imagination--even brilliant evening parties
sometimes. After the death of my stepfather, who, thanks to his
success as a portrait painter, in the later years of his life had
raised his income to what for those days was a really decent
total, many agreeable acquaintances of very good social position
whom he had made during this flourishing period still remained on
friendly terms with us, and would occasionally join us at our
evening gatherings. Amongst those who came were the members of
the Court Theatre, who at that time gave very charming and highly
entertaining parties of their own, which, on my return to Dresden
later on, I found had been altogether given up.

Very delightful, too, were the picnics arranged between us and
our friends at some of the beautiful spots around Dresden, for
these excursions were always brightened by a certain artistic
spirit and general good cheer. I remember one such outing we
arranged to Loschwitz, where we made a kind of gypsy camp, in
which Carl Maria von Weber played his part in the character of
cook. At home we also had some music. My sister Rosalie played
the piano, and Clara was beginning to sing. Of the various
theatrical performances we organised in those early days, often
after elaborate preparation, with the view of amusing ourselves
on the birthdays of our elders, I can hardly remember one, save a
parody on the romantic play of Sappho, by Grillparzer, in which I
took part as one of the singers in the crowd that preceded
Phaon's triumphal car. I endeavoured to revive these memories by
means of a fine puppet show, which I found among the effects of
my late stepfather, and for which he himself had painted some
beautiful scenery. It was my intention to surprise my people by
means of a brilliant performance on this little stage. After I
had very clumsily made several puppets, and had provided them
with a scanty wardrobe made from cuttings of material purloined
from my sisters, I started to compose a chivalric drama, in which
I proposed to rehearse my puppets. When I had drafted the first
scene, my sisters happened to discover the MS. and literally
laughed it to scorn, and, to my great annoyance, for a long time
afterwards they chaffed me by repeating one particular sentence
which I had put into the mouth of the heroine, and which was--Ich
hore schon den Ritter trapsen ('I hear his knightly footsteps
falling'). I now returned with renewed ardour to the theatre,
with which, even at this time, my family was in close touch. Den
Freischutz in particular appealed very strongly to my
imagination, mainly on account of its ghostly theme. The emotions
of terror and the dread of ghosts formed quite an important
factor in the development of my mind. From my earliest childhood
certain mysterious and uncanny things exercised an enormous
influence over me. If I were left alone in a room for long, I
remember that, when gazing at lifeless objects such as pieces of
furniture, and concentrating my attention upon them, I would
suddenly shriek out with fright, because they seemed to me alive.
Even during the latest years of my boyhood, not a night passed
without my waking out of some ghostly dream and uttering the most
frightful shrieks, which subsided only at the sound of some human
voice. The most severe rebuke or even chastisement seemed to me
at those times no more than a blessed release. None of my
brothers or sisters would sleep anywhere near me. They put me to
sleep as far as possible away from the others, without thinking
that my cries for help would only be louder and longer; but in
the end they got used even to this nightly disturbance.

In connection with this childish terror, what attracted me so
strongly to the theatre--by which I mean also the stage, the
rooms behind the scenes, and the dressing-rooms--was not so much
the desire for entertainment and amusement such as that which
impels the present-day theatre-goers, but the fascinating
pleasure of finding myself in an entirely different atmosphere,
in a world that was purely fantastic and often gruesomely
attractive. Thus to me a scene, even a wing, representing a bush,
or some costume or characteristic part of it, seemed to come from
another world, to be in some way as attractive as an apparition,
and I felt that contact with it might serve as a lever to lift me
from the dull reality of daily routine to that delightful region
of spirits. Everything connected with a theatrical performance
had for me the charm of mystery, it both bewitched and fascinated
me, and while I was trying, with the help of a few playmates, to
imitate the performance of Der Freischutz, and to devote myself
energetically to reproducing the needful costumes and masks in my
grotesque style of painting, the more elegant contents of my
sisters' wardrobes, in the beautifying of which I had often seen
the family occupied, exercised a subtle charm over my
imagination; nay, my heart would beat madly at the very touch of
one of their dresses.

In spite of the fact that, as I already mentioned, our family was
not given to outward manifestations of affection, yet the fact
that I was brought up entirely among feminine surroundings must
necessarily have influenced the development of the sensitive side
of my nature. Perhaps it was precisely because my immediate
circle was generally rough and impetuous, that the opposite
characteristics of womanhood, especially such as were connected
with the imaginary world of the theatre, created a feeling of
such tender longing in me.

Luckily these fantastic humours, merging from the gruesome into
the mawkish, were counteracted and balanced by more serious
influences undergone at school at the hands of my teachers and
schoolfellows. Even there, it was chiefly the weird that aroused
my keenest interest. I can hardly judge whether I had what would
be called a good head for study. I think that, in general, what I
really liked I was soon able to grasp without much effort,
whereas I hardly exerted myself at all in the study of subjects
that were uncongenial. This characteristic was most marked in
regard to arithmetic and, later on, mathematics. In neither of
these subjects did I ever succeed in bringing my mind seriously
to bear upon the tasks that were set me. In the matter of the
Classics, too, I paid only just as much attention as was
absolutely necessary to enable me to get a grasp of them; for I
was stimulated by the desire to reproduce them to myself
dramatically. In this way Greek particularly attracted me,
because the stories from Greek mythology so seized upon my fancy
that I tried to imagine their heroes as speaking to me in their
native tongue, so as to satisfy my longing for complete
familiarity with them. In these circumstances it will be readily
understood that the grammar of the language seemed to me merely a
tiresome obstacle, and by no means in itself an interesting
branch of knowledge.

The fact that my study of languages was never very thorough,
perhaps best explains the fact that I was afterwards so ready to
cease troubling about them altogether. Not until much later did
this study really begin to interest me again, and that was only
when I learnt to understand its physiological and philosophical
side, as it was revealed to our modern Germanists by the pioneer
work of Jakob Grimm. Then, when it was too late to apply myself
thoroughly to a study which at last I had learned to appreciate,
I regretted that this newer conception of the study of languages
had not yet found acceptance in our colleges when I was younger.

Nevertheless, by my successes in philological work I managed to
attract the attention of a young teacher at the Kreuz Grammar
School, a Master of Arts named Sillig, who proved very helpful to
me. He often permitted me to visit him and show him my work,
consisting of metric translations and a few original poems, and
he always seemed very pleased with my efforts in recitation. What
he thought of me may best be judged perhaps from the fact that he
made me, as a boy of about twelve, recite not only 'Hector's
Farewell' from the Iliad, but even Hamlet's celebrated monologue.
On one occasion, when I was in the fourth form of the school, one
of my schoolfellows, a boy named Starke, suddenly fell dead, and
the tragic event aroused so much sympathy, that not only did the
whole school attend the funeral, but the headmaster also ordered
that a poem should be written in commemoration of the ceremony,
and that this poem should be published. Of the various poems
submitted, among which there was one by myself, prepared very
hurriedly, none seemed to the master worthy of the honour which
he had promised, and he therefore announced his intention of
substituting one of his own speeches in the place of our rejected
attempts. Much distressed by this decision, I quickly sought out
Professor Sillig, with the view of urging him to intervene on
behalf of my poem. We thereupon went through it together. Its
well-constructed and well-rhymed verses, written in stanzas of
eight lines, determined him to revise the whole of it carefully.
Much of its imagery was bombastic, and far beyond the conception
of a boy of my age. I recollect that in one part I had drawn
extensively from the monologue in Addison's Cato, spoken by Cato
just before his suicide. I had met with this passage in an
English grammar, and it had made a deep impression upon me. The
words: 'The stars shall fade away, the sun himself grow dim with
age, and nature sink in years,' which, at all events, were a
direct plagiarism, made Sillig laugh--a thing at which I was a
little offended. However, I felt very grateful to him, for,
thanks to the care and rapidity with which he cleared my poem of
these extravagances, it was eventually accepted by the
headmaster, printed, and widely circulated.

The effect of this success was extraordinary, both on my
schoolfellows and on my own family. My mother devoutly folded her
hands in thankfulness, and in my own mind my vocation seemed
quite a settled thing. It was clear, beyond the possibility of a
doubt, that I was destined to be a poet. Professor Sillig wished
me to compose a grand epic, and suggested as a subject 'The
Battle of Parnassus,' as described by Pausanias. His reasons for
this choice were based upon the legend related by Pausanias,
viz., that in the second century B.C. the Muses from Parnassus
aided the combined Greek armies against the destructive invasion
of the Gauls by provoking a panic among the latter. I actually
began my heroic poem in hexameter verse, but could not get
through the first canto.

Not being far enough advanced in the language to understand the
Greek tragedies thoroughly in the original, my own attempts to
construct a tragedy in the Greek form were greatly influenced by
the fact that quite by accident I came across August Apel's
clever imitation of this style in his striking poems 'Polyidos'
and 'Aitolier.' For my theme I selected the death of Ulysses,
from a fable of Hyginus, according to which the aged hero is
killed by his son, the offspring of his union with Calypso. But I
did not get very far with this work either, before I gave it up.

My mind became so bent upon this sort of thing, that duller
studies naturally ceased to interest me. The mythology, legends,
and, at last, the history of Greece alone attracted me.

I was fond of life, merry with my companions, and always ready
for a joke or an adventure. Moreover, I was constantly forming
friendships, almost passionate in their ardour, with one or the
other of my comrades, and in choosing my associates I was mainly
influenced by the extent to which my new acquaintance appealed to
my eccentric imagination. At one time it would be poetising and
versifying that decided my choice of a friend; at another,
theatrical enterprises, while now and then it would be a longing
for rambling and mischief.

Furthermore, when I reached my thirteenth year, a great change
came over our family affairs. My sister Rosalie, who had become
the chief support of our household, obtained an advantageous
engagement at the theatre in Prague, whither mother and children
removed in 1820, thus giving up the Dresden home altogether. I
was left behind in Dresden, so that I might continue to attend
the Kreuz Grammar School until I was ready to go up to the
university. I was therefore sent to board and lodge with a family
named Bohme, whose sons I had known at school, and in whose house
I already felt quite at home. With my residence in this somewhat
rough, poor, and not particularly well-conducted family, my years
of dissipation began. I no longer enjoyed the quiet retirement
necessary for work, nor the gentle, spiritual influence of my
sisters' companionship. On the contrary, I was plunged into a
busy, restless life, full of rough horseplay and of quarrels.
Nevertheless, it was there that I began to experience the
influence of the gentler sex in a manner hitherto unknown to me,
as the grown-up daughters of the family and their friends often
filled the scanty and narrow rooms of the house. Indeed, my first
recollections of boyish love date from this period. I remember a
very beautiful young girl, whose name, if I am not mistaken, was
Amalie Hoffmann, coming to call at the house one Sunday. She was
charmingly dressed, and her appearance as she came into the room
literally struck me dumb with amazement. On other occasions I
recollect pretending to be too helplessly sleepy to move, so that
I might be carried up to bed by the girls, that being, as they
thought, the only remedy for my condition. And I repeated this,
because I found, to my surprise, that their attention under these
circumstances brought me into closer and more gratifying
proximity with them.

The most important event during this year of separation from my
family was, however, a short visit I paid to them in Prague. In
the middle of the winter my mother came to Dresden, and took me
hack with her to Prague for a week. Her way of travelling was
quite unique. To the end of her days she preferred the more
dangerous mode of travelling in a hackney carriage to the quicker
journey by mail-coach, so that we spent three whole days in the
bitter cold on the road from Dresden to Prague. The journey over
the Bohemian mountains often seemed to be beset with the greatest
dangers, but happily we survived our thrilling adventures and at
last arrived in Prague, where I was suddenly plunged into
entirely new surroundings.

For a long time the thought of leaving Saxony on another visit to
Bohemia, and especially Prague, had had quite a romantic
attraction for me. The foreign nationality, the broken German of
the people, the peculiar headgear of the women, the native wines,
the harp-girls and musicians, and finally, the ever present signs
of Catholicism, its numerous chapels and shrines, all produced on
me a strangely exhilarating impression. This was probably due to
my craze for everything theatrical and spectacular, as
distinguished from simple bourgeois customs. Above all, the
antique splendour and beauty of the incomparable city of Prague
became indelibly stamped on my fancy. Even in my own family
surroundings I found attractions to which I had hitherto been a
stranger. For instance, my sister Ottilie, only two years older
than myself, had won the devoted friendship of a noble family,
that of Count Pachta, two of whose daughters, Jenny and Auguste,
who had long been famed as the leading beauties of Prague, had
become fondly attached to her. To me, such people and such a
connection were something quite novel and enchanting. Besides
these, certain beaux esprits of Prague, among them W. Marsano, a
strikingly handsome and charming man, were frequent visitors at
our house. They often earnestly discussed the tales of Hoffmann,
which at that date were comparatively new, and had created some
sensation. It was now that I made my first though rather
superficial acquaintance with this romantic visionary, and so
received a stimulus which influenced me for many years even to
the point of infatuation, and gave me very peculiar ideas of the
world.

In the following spring, 1827, I repeated this journey from
Dresden to Prague, but this time on foot, and accompanied by my
friend Rudolf Bohme. Our tour was full of adventure. We got to
within an hour of Teplitz the first night, and next day we had to
get a lift in a wagon, as we had walked our feet sore; yet this
only took us as far as Lowositz, as our funds had quite run out.
Under a scorching sun, hungry and half-fainting, we wandered
along bypaths through absolutely unknown country, until at
sundown we happened to reach the main road just as an elegant
travelling coach came in sight. I humbled my pride so far as to
pretend I was a travelling journeyman, and begged the
distinguished travellers for alms, while my friend timidly hid
himself in the ditch by the roadside. Luckily we decided to seek
shelter for the night in an inn, where we took counsel whether we
should spend the alms just received on a supper or a bed. We
decided for the supper, proposing to spend the night under the
open sky. While we were refreshing ourselves, a strange-looking
wayfarer entered. He wore a black velvet skull-cap, to which a
metal lyre was attached like a cockade, and on his back he bore a
harp. Very cheerfully he set down his instrument, made himself
comfortable, and called for a good meal. He intended to stay the
night, and to continue his way next day to Prague, where he
lived, and whither he was returning from Hanover.

My good spirits and courage were stimulated by the jovial manners
of this merry fellow, who constantly repeated his favourite
motto, 'non plus ultra.' We soon struck up an acquaintance, and
in return for my confidence, the strolling player's attitude to
me was one of almost touching sympathy. It was agreed that we
should continue our journey together next day on foot. He lent me
two twenty-kreutzer pieces (about ninepence), and allowed me to
write my Prague address in his pocket-book. I was highly
delighted at this personal success. My harpist grew extravagantly
merry; a good deal of Czernosek wine was drunk; he sang and
played on his harp like a madman, continually reiterating his
'non plus ultra' till at last, overcome with wine, he fell down
on the straw, which had been spread out on the floor for our
common bed. When the sun once more peeped in, we could not rouse
him, and we had to make up our minds to set off in the freshness
of the early morning without him, feeling convinced that the
sturdy fellow would overtake us during the day. But it was in
vain that we looked out for him on the road and during our
subsequent stay in Prague. Indeed, it was not until several weeks
later that the extraordinary fellow turned up at my mother's, not
so much to collect payment of his loan, as to inquire about the
welfare of the young friend to whom that loan had been made.

The remainder of our journey was very fatiguing, and the joy I
felt when I at last beheld Prague from the summit of a hill, at
about an hour's distance, simply beggars description. Approaching
the suburbs, we were for the second time met by a splendid
carriage, from which my sister Ottilie's two lovely friends
called out to me in astonishment. They had recognised me
immediately, in spite of my terribly sunburnt face, blue linen
blouse, and bright red cotton cap. Overwhelmed with shame, and
with my heart beating like mad, I could hardly utter a word, and
hurried away to my mother's to attend at once to the restoration
of my sunburnt complexion. To this task I devoted two whole days,
during which I swathed my face in parsley poultices; and not till
then did I seek the pleasures of society. When, on the return
journey, I looked back once more on Prague from the same hilltop,
I burst into tears, flung myself on the earth, and for a long
time could not be induced by my astonished companion to pursue
the journey. I was downcast for the rest of the way, and we
arrived home in Dresden without any further adventures.

During the same year I again gratified my fancy for long
excursions on foot by joining a numerous company of grammar
school boys, consisting of pupils of several classes and of
various ages, who had decided to spend their summer holidays in a
tour to Leipzig. This journey also stands out among the memories
of my youth, by reason of the strong impressions it left behind.
The characteristic feature of our party was that we all aped the
student, by behaving and dressing extravagantly in the most
approved student fashion. After going as far as Meissen on the
market-boat, our path lay off the main road, through villages
with which I was as yet unfamiliar. We spent the night in the
vast barn of a village inn, and our adventures were of the
wildest description. There we saw a large marionette show, with
almost life-sized figures. Our entire party settled themselves in
the auditorium, where their presence was a source of some anxiety
to the managers, who had only reckoned on an audience of
peasants. Genovefa was the play given. The ceaseless silly jests,
and constant interpolations and jeering interruptions, in which
our corps of embryo-students indulged, finally aroused the anger
even of the peasants, who had come prepared to weep. I believe I
was the only one of our party who was pained by these
impertinences, and in spite of involuntary laughter at some of my
comrades' jokes, I not only defended the play itself, but also
its original, simple-minded audience. A popular catch-phrase
which occurred in the piece has ever since remained stamped on my
memory. 'Golo' instructs the inevitable Kaspar that, when the
Count Palatine returns home, he must 'tickle him behind, so that
he should feel it in front' (hinten zu kitzeln, dass er es vorne
fuhle). Kaspar conveys Golo's order verbatim to the Count, and
the latter reproaches the unmasked rogue in the following terms,
uttered with the greatest pathos: 'O Golo, Golo! thou hast told
Kaspar to tickle me behind, so that I shall feel it in front!'

From Grimma our party rode into Leipzig in open carriages, but
not until we had first carefully removed all the outward emblems
of the undergraduate, lest the local students we were likely to
meet might make us rue our presumption.

Since my first visit, when I was eight years old, I had only once
returned to Leipzig, and then for a very brief stay, and under
circumstances very similar to those of the earlier visit. I now
renewed my fantastic impressions of the Thome house, but this
time, owing to my more advanced education, I looked forward to
more intelligent intercourse with my uncle Adolph. An opening for
this was soon provided by my joyous astonishment on learning that
a bookcase in the large anteroom, containing a goodly collection
of books, was my property, having been left me by my father. I
went through the books with my uncle, selected at once a number
of Latin authors in the handsome Zweibruck edition, along with
sundry attractive looking works of poetry and belles-lettres, and
arranged for them to be sent to Dresden. During this visit I was
very much interested in the life of the students. In addition to
my impressions of the theatre and of Prague, now came those of
the so-called swaggering undergraduate. A great change had taken
place in this class. When, as a lad of eight, I had my first
glimpse of students, their long hair, their old German costume
with the black velvet skull-cap and the shirt collar turned back
from the bare neck, had quite taken my fancy. But since that time
the old student 'associations' which affected this fashion had
disappeared in the face of police prosecutions. On the other
hand, the national student clubs, no less peculiar to Germans,
had become conspicuous. These clubs adopted, more or less, the
fashion of the day, but with some little exaggeration. Albeit,
their dress was clearly distinguishable from that of other
classes, owing to its picturesqueness, and especially its display
of the various club-colours. The 'Comment,' that compendium of
pedantic rules of conduct for the preservation of a defiant and
exclusive esprit de corps, as opposed to the bourgeois classes,
had its fantastic side, just as the most philistine peculiarities
of the Germans have, if you probe them deeply enough. To me it
represented the idea of emancipation from the yoke of school and
family. The longing to become a student coincided unfortunately
with my growing dislike for drier studies and with my ever-
increasing fondness for cultivating romantic poetry. The results
of this soon showed themselves in my resolute attempts to make a
change.

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