that his whims were not hatched in
hours of happiness), he denied Wagner his most obvious qualities--his
vigour, his determination, his unity, his logic, and his power of
progress. He amused himself by comparing Wagner's style with that of
Goncourt, by making him--with amusing irony--a great miniaturist
painter, a poet of half-tones, a musician of affectations and
melancholy, so delicate and effeminate in style that "after him all
other musicians seemed too robust."[108] He has painted Wagner and his
time delightfully. We all enjoy these little pictures of the Tetralogy,
delicately drawn and worked up by the aid of a
magnifying-glass--pictures of Wagner, languishing and beautiful, in a
mournful salon, and pictures of the athletic meetings of the other
musicians, who were "too robust"! The amusing part is that this piece of
wit has been taken seriously by certain arbiters of elegance, who are
only too happy to be able to run counter to any current opinion,
whatever it may be.

[Footnote 108: F. Nietzsche, _Der Fall Wagner_.]

I do not say that there may not be a decadent side in Wagner, revealing
super-sensitiveness or even hysteria and other modern nervous
affections. And if this side was lacking he would not be representative
of his time, and that is what every great artist ought to be. But there
is certainly something more in him than decadence; and if women and
young men cannot see anything beyond it, it only proves their inability
to get outside themselves. A long time ago Wagner himself complained to
Liszt that neither the public nor artists knew how to listen to or
understand any side of his music but the effeminate side: "They do not
grasp its strength," he said. "My supposed successes," he also tells us,
"are founded on misunderstanding. My public reputation isn't worth a
walnut-shell." And it is true he has been applauded, patronised, and
monopolised for a quarter of a century by all the decadents of art and
literature. Scarcely anyone has seen in him a vigorous musician and a
classic writer, or has recognised him as Beethoven's direct successor,
the inheritor of his heroic and pastoral genius, of his epic
inspirations and battlefield rhythms, of his Napoleonic phrases and
atmosphere of stirring trumpet-calls.

Nowhere is Wagner nearer to Beethoven than in _Siegfried_. In _Die
Walkuere_ certain characters, certain phrases of Wotan, of Bruennhilde,
and, especially, of Siegmund, bear a close relationship to Be