in that case my fate
is fixed--I shall be among the reactionaries, the admirers of the
thing that cannot be admired, the lovers of the unlovable. But indeed
it is incredible that "Lohengrin" should ever cease to seem
lovely--lovely in idea and in the expression of the idea. The story is
one of the finest Wagner ever set; it remains fresh, though it had
been told a hundred times before. The maiden in distress--we know her
perfectly well; the wicked sorceress who has got her into distress--we
know her quite as well; the celestial knight who rescues her--we know
him nearly as well. But the details in which "Lohengrin" differs from
all other tales of the same order are precisely those that make it the
most enchanting tale of them all. Lohengrin, knight of the Grail,
redeemer, yet with a touch of tragedy in his fate, drawn down the
river in his magic boat by the Swan from a far mysterious land, a land
of perpetual freshness and beauty, is an infinitely more poetic notion
than the commonplace angel flapping clumsily down from heaven; and
even if we feel it to be absurd that he should have to beg his wife to
take him on trust, yet, after all, he takes his wife on trust, and he
tells her at the outset that he cannot reveal the truth about himself.
Elsa is vastly preferable to the ordinary distressed mediaeval maiden,
if only because a woman who is too weak to be worth a snap of the
fingers does move us to pity, whereas the ordinary mediaeval is cut out
of pasteboard, and does not affect us at all. The King is perhaps
merely a stage figure; Ortrud is just one degree better than the
average witch of a fairy story; but Frederic, savage and powerful,
but so superstitious as to be at the mercy of his wife, is human
enough to interest us. And Wagner has managed his story perfectly
throughout, excepting at the end of the second act, where that dreary
business of Ortrud and Frederic stopping the bridal procession is a
mere reminiscence of the wretched stagecraft of Scribe, and quite
superfluous. But if there is a flaw in the drama, there cannot be said
to be one in the music. The mere fact that, save two numbers, it is
all written in common time counts for absolutely nothing against its
endless variety. Wagner never again hit upon quite so divine and pure
a theme as that of the Grail, from which the prelude is evolved; the
Swan theme at once carries one in imagination up the ever-rippling
river to that wonderful land of everlasting daw