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My Life, Volume I

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




At the time of my confirmation, at Easter, 1827, I had
considerable doubt about this ceremony, and I already felt a
serious falling off of my reverence for religious observances.
The boy who, not many years before, had gazed with agonised
sympathy on the altarpiece in the Kreuz Kirche (Church of the
Holy Cross), and had yearned with ecstatic fervour to hang upon
the Cross in place of the Saviour, had now so far lost his
veneration for the clergyman, whose preparatory confirmation
classes he attended, as to be quite ready to make fun of him, and
even to join with his comrades in withholding part of his class
fees, and spending the money in sweets. How matters stood with me
spiritually was revealed to me, almost to my horror, at the
Communion service, when I walked in procession with my fellow-
communicants to the altar to the sound of organ and choir. The
shudder with which I received the Bread and Wine was so
ineffaceably stamped on my memory, that I never again partook of
the Communion, lest I should do so with levity. To avoid this was
all the easier for me, seeing that among Protestants such
participation is not compulsory.

I soon, however, seized, or rather created, an opportunity of
forcing a breach with the Kreuz Grammar School, and thus
compelled my family to let me go to Leipzig. In self-defence
against what I considered an unjust punishment with which I was
threatened by the assistant headmaster, Baumgarten-Crusius, for
whom I otherwise had great respect, I asked to be discharged
immediately from the school on the ground of sudden summons to
join my family in Leipzig. I had already left the Bohme household
three months before, and now lived alone in a small garret, where
I was waited on by the widow of a court plate-washer, who at
every meal served up the familiar thin Saxon coffee as almost my
sole nourishment. In this attic I did little else but write
verses. Here, too, I formed the first outlines of that stupendous
tragedy which afterwards filled my family with such
consternation. The irregular habits I acquired through this
premature domestic independence induced my anxious mother to
consent very readily to my removal to Leipzig, the more so as a
part of our scattered family had already migrated there.

My longing for Leipzig, originally aroused by the fantastic
impressions I had gained there, and later by my enthusiasm for a
student's life, had recently been still further stimulated. I had
seen scarcely anything of my sister Louisa, at that time a girl
of about twenty-two, as she had gone to the theatre of Breslau
shortly after our stepfather's death. Quite recently she had been
in Dresden for a few days on her way to Leipzig, having accepted
an engagement at the theatre there. This meeting with my almost
unknown sister, her hearty manifestations of joy at seeing me
again, as well as her sprightly, merry disposition, quite won my
heart. To live with her seemed an alluring prospect, especially
as my mother and Ottilie had joined her for a while. For the
first time a sister had treated me with some tenderness. When at
last I reached Leipzig at Christmas in the same year (1827), and
there found my mother with Ottilie and Cecilia (my half-sister),
I fancied myself in heaven. Great changes, however, had already
taken place. Louisa was betrothed to a respected and well-to-do
bookseller, Friedrich Brockhaus. This gathering together of the
relatives of the penniless bride-elect did not seem to trouble
her remarkably kind-hearted fiance. But my sister may have become
uneasy on the subject, for she soon gave me to understand that
she was not taking it quite in good part. Her desire to secure an
entree into the higher social circles of bourgeois life naturally
produced a marked change in her manner, at one time so full of
fun, and of this I gradually became so keenly sensible that
finally we were estranged for a time. Moreover, I unfortunately
gave her good cause to reprove my conduct. After I got to Leipzig
I quite gave up my studies and all regular school work, probably
owing to the arbitrary and pedantic system in vogue at the school
there.

In Leipzig there were two higher-class schools, one called St.
Thomas's School, and the other, and the more modern, St.
Nicholas's School. The latter at that time enjoyed a better
reputation than the former; so there I had to go. But the council
of teachers before whom I appeared for my entrance examination at
the New Year (1828) thought fit to maintain the dignity of their
school by placing me for a time in the upper third form, whereas
at the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden I had been in the second
form. My disgust at having to lay aside my Homer--from which I
had already made written translations of twelve songs--and take
up the lighter Greek prose writers was indescribable. It hurt my
feelings so deeply, and so influenced my behaviour, that I never
made a friend of any teacher in the school. The unsympathetic
treatment I met with made me all the more obstinate, and various
other circumstances in my position only added to this feeling.
While student life, as I saw it day by day, inspired me ever more
and more with its rebellious spirit, I unexpectedly met with
another cause for despising the dry monotony of school regime. I
refer to the influence of my uncle, Adolph Wagner, which, though
he was long unconscious of it, went a long way towards moulding
the growing stripling that I then was.

The fact that my romantic tastes were not based solely on a
tendency to superficial amusement was shown by my ardent
attachment to this learned relative. In his manner and
conversation he was certainly very attractive; the many-sidedness
of his knowledge, which embraced not only philology but also
philosophy and general poetic literature, rendered intercourse
with him a most entertaining pastime, as all those who knew him
used to admit. On the other hand, the fact that he was denied the
gift of writing with equal charm, or clearness, was a singular
defect which seriously lessened his influence upon the literary
world, and, in fact, often made him appear ridiculous, as in a
written argument he would perpetrate the most pompous and
involved sentences. This weakness could not have alarmed me,
because in the hazy period of my youth the more incomprehensible
any literary extravagance was, the more I admired it; besides
which, I had more experience of his conversation than of his
writings. He also seemed to find pleasure in associating with the
lad who could listen with so much heart and soul. Yet
unfortunately, possibly in the fervour of his discourses, of
which he was not a little proud, he forgot that their substance,
as well as their form, was far above my youthful powers of
comprehension. I called daily to accompany him on his
constitutional walk beyond the city gates, and I shrewdly suspect
that we often provoked the smiles of those passers-by who
overheard the profound and often earnest discussions between us.
The subjects generally ranged over everything serious or sublime
throughout the whole realm of knowledge. I took the most
enthusiastic interest in his copious library, and tasted eagerly
of almost all branches of literature, without really grounding
myself in any one of them.

My uncle was delighted to find in me a very willing listener to
his recital of classic tragedies. He had made a translation of
Oedipus, and, according to his intimate friend Tieck, justly
flattered himself on being an excellent reader.

I remember once, when he was sitting at his desk reading out a
Greek tragedy to me, it did not annoy him when I fell fast
asleep, and he afterwards pretended he had not noticed it. I was
also induced to spend my evenings with him, owing to the friendly
and genial hospitality his wife showed me. A very great change
had come over my uncle's life since my first acquaintance with
him at Jeannette Thome's. The home which he, together with his
sister Friederike, had found in his friend's house seemed, as
time went on, to have brought in its train duties that were
irksome. As his literary work assured him a modest income, he
eventually deemed it more in accordance with his dignity to make
a home of his own. A friend of his, of the same age as himself,
the sister of the aesthete Wendt of Leipzig, who afterwards
became famous, was chosen by him to keep house for him. Without
saying a word to Jeannette, instead of going for his usual
afternoon walk he went to the church with his chosen bride, and
got through the marriage ceremonies as quickly as possible; and
it was only on his return that he informed us he was leaving, and
would have his things removed that very day. He managed to meet
the consternation, perhaps also the reproaches, of his elderly
friend with quiet composure; and to the end of his life he
continued his regular daily visits to 'Mam'selle Thome,' who at
times would coyly pretend to sulk. It was only poor Friederike
who seemed obliged at times to atone for her brother's sudden
unfaithfulness.

What attracted me in my uncle most strongly was his blunt
contempt of the modern pedantry in State, Church, and School, to
which he gave vent with some humour. Despite the great moderation
of his usual views on life, he yet produced on me the effect of a
thorough free-thinker. I was highly delighted by his contempt for
the pedantry of the schools. Once, when I had come into serious
conflict with all the teachers of the Nicolai School, and the
rector of the school had approached my uncle, as the only male
representative of my family, with a serious complaint about my
behaviour, my uncle asked me during a stroll round the town, with
a calm smile as though he were speaking to one of his own age,
what I had been up to with the people at school. I explained the
whole affair to him, and described the punishment to which I had
been subjected, and which seemed to me unjust. He pacified me,
and exhorted me to be patient, telling me to comfort myself with
the Spanish proverb, un rey no puede morir, which he explained as
meaning that the ruler of a school must of necessity always be in
the right.

He could not, of course, help noticing, to his alarm, the effect
upon me of this kind of conversation, which I was far too young
to appreciate. Although it annoyed me one day, when I wanted to
begin reading Goethe's Faust, to hear him say quietly that I was
too young to understand it, yet, according to my thinking, his
other conversations about our own great poets, and even about
Shakespeare and Dante, had made me so familiar with these sublime
figures that I had now for some time been secretly busy working
out the great tragedy I had already conceived in Dresden. Since
my trouble at school I had devoted all my energies, which ought
by rights to have been exclusively directed to my school duties,
to the accomplishment of this task. In this secret work I had
only one confidante, my sister Ottilie, who now lived with me at
my mother's. I can remember the misgivings and alarm which the
first confidential communication of my great poetic enterprise
aroused in my good sister; yet she affectionately suffered the
tortures I sometimes inflicted on her by reciting to her in
secret, but not without emotion, portions of my work as it
progressed. Once, when I was reciting to her one of the most
gruesome scenes, a heavy thunderstorm came on. When the lightning
flashed quite close to us, and the thunder rolled, my sister felt
bound to implore me to stop; but she soon found it was hopeless,
and continued to endure it with touching devotion.

But a more significant storm was brewing on the horizon of my
life. My neglect of school reached such a point that it could not
but lead to a rupture. Whilst my dear mother had no presentiment
of this, I awaited the catastrophe with longing rather than with
fear.

In order to meet this crisis with dignity I at length decided to
surprise my family by disclosing to them the secret of my
tragedy, which was now completed. They were to be informed of
this great event by my uncle. I thought I could rely upon his
hearty recognition of my vocation as a great poet on account of
the deep harmony between us on all other questions of life,
science, and art. I therefore sent him my voluminous manuscript,
with a long letter which I thought would please him immensely. In
this I communicated to him first my ideas with regard to the St.
Nicholas's School, and then my firm determination from that time
forward not to allow any mere school pedantry to check my free
development. But the event turned out very different from what I
had expected. It was a great shock to them. My uncle, quite
conscious that he had been indiscreet, paid a visit to my mother
and brother-in-law, in order to report the misfortune that had
befallen the family, reproaching himself for the fact that his
influence over me had not always, perhaps, been for my good. To
me he wrote a serious letter of discouragement; and to this day I
cannot understand why he showed so small a sense of humour in
understanding my bad behaviour. To my surprise he merely said
that he reproached himself for having corrupted me by
conversations unsuited to my years, but he made no attempt to
explain to me good-naturedly the error of my ways.

The crime this boy of fifteen had committed was, as I said
before, to have written a great tragedy, entitled Leubald und
Adelaide.

The manuscript of this drama has unfortunately been lost, but I
can still see it clearly in my mind's eye. The handwriting was
most affected, and the backward-sloping tall letters with which I
had aimed at giving it an air of distinction had already been
compared by one of my teachers to Persian hieroglyphics. In this
composition I had constructed a drama in which I had drawn
largely upon Shakespeare's Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, and
Goethe's Gotz van Berlichingen. The plot was really based on a
modification of Hamlet, the difference consisting in the fact
that my hero is so completely carried away by the appearance of
the ghost of his father, who has been murdered under similar
circumstances, and demands vengeance, that he is driven to
fearful deeds of violence; and, with a series of murders on his
conscience, he eventually goes mad. Leubald, whose character is a
mixture of Hamlet and Harry Hotspur, had promised his father's
ghost to wipe from the face of the earth the whole race of
Roderick, as the ruthless murderer of the best of fathers was
named. After having slain Roderick himself in mortal combat, and
subsequently all his sons and other relations who supported him,
there was only one obstacle that prevented Leubald from
fulfilling the dearest wish of his heart, which was to be united
in death with the shade of his father: a child of Roderick's was
still alive. During the storming of his castle the murderer's
daughter had been carried away into safety by a faithful suitor,
whom she, however, detested. I had an irresistible impulse to
call this maiden 'Adelaide.' As even at that early age I was a
great enthusiast for everything really German, I can only account
for the obviously un-German name of my heroine by my infatuation
for Beethoven's Adelaide, whose tender refrain seemed to me the
symbol of all loving appeals. The course of my drama was now
characterised by the strange delays which took place in the
accomplishment of this last murder of vengeance, the chief
obstacle to which lay in the sudden passionate love which arose
between Leubald and Adelaide. I succeeded in representing the
birth and avowal of this love by means of extraordinary
adventures. Adelaide was once more stolen away by a robber-knight
from the lover who had been sheltering her. After Leubald had
thereupon sacrificed the lover and all his relations, he hastened
to the robber's castle, driven thither less by a thirst for blood
than by a longing for death. For this reason he regrets his
inability to storm the robber's castle forthwith, because it is
well defended, and, moreover, night is fast falling; he is
therefore obliged to pitch his tent. After raving for a while he
sinks down for the first time exhausted, but being urged, like
his prototype Hamlet, by the spirit of his father to complete his
vow of vengeance, he himself suddenly falls into the power of the
enemy during a night assault. In the subterranean dungeons of the
castle he meets Roderick's daughter for the first time. She is a
prisoner like himself, and is craftily devising flight. Under
circumstances in which she produces on him the impression of a
heavenly vision, she makes her appearance before him. They fall
in love, and fly together into the wilderness, where they realise
that they are deadly enemies. The incipient insanity which was
already noticeable in Leubald breaks out more violently after
this discovery, and everything that can be done to intensify it
is contributed by the ghost of his father, which continually
comes between the advances of the lovers. But this ghost is not
the only disturber of the conciliating love of Leubald and
Adelaide. The ghost of Roderick also appears, and according to
the method followed by Shakespeare in Richard III., he is joined
by the ghosts of all the other members of Adelaide's family whom
Leubald has slain. From the incessant importunities of these
ghosts Leubald seeks to free himself by means of sorcery, and
calls to his aid a rascal named Flamming. One of Macbeth's
witches is summoned to lay the ghosts; as she is unable to do
this efficiently, the furious Leubald sends her also to the
devil; but with her dying breath she despatches the whole crowd
of spirits who serve her to join the ghosts of those already
pursuing him. Leubald, tormented beyond endurance, and now at
last raving mad, turns against his beloved, who is the apparent
cause of all his misery. He stabs her in his fury; then finding
himself suddenly at peace, he sinks his head into her lap, and
accepts her last caresses as her life-blood streams over his own
dying body.

I had not omitted the smallest detail that could give this plot
its proper colouring, and had drawn on all my knowledge of the
tales of the old knights, and my acquaintance with Lear and
Macbeth, to furnish my drama with the most vivid situations. But
one of the chief characteristics of its poetical form I took from
the pathetic, humorous, and powerful language of Shakespeare. The
boldness of my grandiloquent and bombastic expressions roused my
uncle Adolph's alarm and astonishment. He was unable to
understand how I could have selected and used with inconceivable
exaggeration precisely the most extravagant forms of speech to be
found in Lear and Gotz von Berlichingen. Nevertheless, even after
everybody had deafened me with their laments over my lost time
and perverted talents, I was still conscious of a wonderful
secret solace in the face of the calamity that had befallen me. I
knew, a fact that no one else could know, namely, that my work
could only be rightly judged when set to the music which I had
resolved to write for it, and which I intended to start composing
immediately.

I must now explain my position with respect to music hitherto.
For this purpose I must go back to my earliest attempts in the
art. In my family two of my sisters were musical; the elder one,
Rosalie, played the piano, without, however, displaying any
marked talent. Clara was more gifted; in addition to a great deal
of musical feeling, and a fine rich touch on the piano, she
possessed a particularly sympathetic voice, the development of
which was so premature and remarkable that, under the tuition of
Mieksch, her singing master, who was famous at that time, she was
apparently ready for the role of a prima donna as early as her
sixteenth year, and made her debut at Dresden in Italian opera as
'Cenerentola' in Rossini's opera of that name. Incidentally I
may remark that this premature development proved injurious to
Clara's voice, and was detrimental to her whole career. As I have
said, music was represented in our family by these two sisters.
It was chiefly owing to Clara's career that the musical conductor
C. M. von Weber often came to our house. His visits were varied
by those of the great male-soprano Sassaroli; and in addition to
these two representatives of German and Italian music, we also
had the company of Mieksch, her singing master. It was on these
occasions that I as a child first heard German and Italian music
discussed, and learnt that any one who wished to ingratiate
himself with the Court must show a preference for Italian music,
a fact which led to very practical results in our family council.
Clara's talent, while her voice was still sound, was the object
of competition between the representatives of Italian and German
opera. I can remember quite distinctly that from the very
beginning I declared myself in favour of German opera; my choice
was determined by the tremendous impression made on me by the two
figures of Sassaroli and Weber. The Italian male-soprano, a huge
pot-bellied giant, horrified me with his high effeminate voice,
his astonishing volubility, and his incessant screeching
laughter. In spite of his boundless good-nature and amiability,
particularly to my family, I took an uncanny dislike to him. On
account of this dreadful person, the sound of Italian, either
spoken or sung, seemed to my ears almost diabolical; and when, in
consequence of my poor sister's misfortune, I heard them often
talking about Italian intrigues and cabals, I conceived so strong
a dislike for everything connected with this nation that even in
much later years I used to feel myself carried away by an impulse
of utter detestation and abhorrence.

The less frequent visits of Weber, on the other hand, seemed to
have produced upon me those first sympathetic impressions which I
have never since lost. In contrast to Sassaroli's repulsive
figure, Weber's really refined, delicate, and intellectual
appearance excited my ecstatic admiration. His narrow face and
finely-cut features, his vivacious though often half-closed eyes,
captivated and thrilled me; whilst even the bad limp with which
he walked, and which I often noticed from our windows when the
master was making his way home past our house from the fatiguing
rehearsals, stamped the great musician in my imagination as an
exceptional and almost superhuman being. When, as a boy of nine,
my mother introduced me to him, and he asked me what I was going
to be, whether I wanted perhaps to be a musician, my mother told
him that, though I was indeed quite mad on Freischutz, yet she
had as yet seen nothing in me which indicated any musical talent.

This showed correct observation on my mother's part; nothing had
made so great an impression on me as the music of Freischutz, and
I tried in every possible way to procure a repetition of the
impressions I had received from it, but, strange to say, least of
all by the study of music itself. Instead of this, I contented
myself with hearing bits from Freischutz played by my sisters.
Yet my passion for it gradually grew so strong that I can
remember taking a particular fancy for a young man called Spiess,
chiefly because he could play the overture to Freischutz, which I
used to ask him to do whenever I met him. It was chiefly the
introduction to this overture which at last led me to attempt,
without ever having received any instruction on the piano, to
play this piece in my own peculiar way, for, oddly enough, I was
the only child in our family who had not been given music
lessons. This was probably due to my mother's anxiety to keep me
away from any artistic interests of this kind in case they might
arouse in me a longing for the theatre.

When I was about twelve years old, however, my mother engaged a
tutor for me named Humann, from whom I received regular music
lessons, though only of a very mediocre description. As soon as I
had acquired a very imperfect knowledge of fingering I begged to
be allowed to play overtures in the form of duets, always keeping
Weber as the goal of my ambition. When at length I had got so far
as to be able to play the overture to Freischutz myself, though
in a very faulty manner, I felt the object of my study had been
attained, and I had no inclination to devote any further
attention to perfecting my technique.

Yet I had attained this much: I was no longer dependent for music
on the playing of others; from this time forth I used to try and
play, albeit very imperfectly, everything I wanted to know. I
also tried Mozart's Don Juan, but was unable to get any pleasure
out of it, mainly because the Italian text in the arrangement for
the piano placed the music in a frivolous light in my eyes, and
much in it seemed to me trivial and unmanly. (I can remember that
when my sister used to sing Zerlinen's ariette, Batti, batti, ben
Masetto, the music repelled me, as it seemed so mawkish and
effeminate.)

On the other hand, my bent for music grew stronger and stronger,
and I now tried to possess myself of my favourite pieces by
making my own copies. I can remember the hesitation with which my
mother for the first time gave me the money to buy the scored
paper on which I copied out Weber's Lutzow's Jagd, which was the
first piece of music I transcribed.

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