Europe,
remained strangers and hostile to each other. I could not bear the
thought that a genius, hopelessly misunderstood by the crowd, should be
bent on making his solitude more bitter and narrow by refusing, with a
sort of jealous waywardness, to be reconciled to his equals, or to offer
them the hand of friendship. But now I think that perhaps it was better
so. The first virtue of genius is sincerity. If Nietzsche had to go out
of his way _not_ to understand Wagner, it is natural, on the other hand,
that Wagner should be a closed book to Tolstoy; it would be almost
surprising if it were otherwise. Each one has his own part to play, and
has no need to change it. Wagner's wonderful dreams and magic intuition
of the inner life are not less valuable to us than Tolstoy's pitiless
truth, in which he exposes modern society and tears away the veil of
hypocrisy with which she covers herself. So I admire _Siegfried_, and
at the same time enjoy Tolstoy's satire; for I like the latter's sturdy
humour, which is one of the most striking features of his realism, and
which, as he himself noticed, makes him closely resemble Rousseau. Both
men show us an ultra-refined civilisation, and both are uncompromising
apostles of a return to nature.

Tolstoy's rough banter recalls Rousseau's sarcasm about an opera of
Rameau's. In the _Nouvelle Heloise_, he rails in a similar fashion
against the sadly fantastic performances at the theatre. It was, even
then, a question of monsters, "of dragons animated by a blockhead of a
Savoyard, who had not enough spirit for the beast."

"They assured me that they had a tremendous lot of machinery to
make all this movement, and they offered several times to show it
to me; but I felt no curiosity about little effects achieved by
great efforts.... The sky is represented by some blue rags
suspended from sticks and cords, like a laundry display.... The
chariots of the gods and goddesses are made of four joists in a
frame, suspended by a thick rope, as a swing might be. Then a plank
is stuck across the joists, and on this is seated a god. In front
of him hangs a piece of daubed cloth, which serves as a cloud upon
which his splendid chariot may rest.... The theatre is furnished
with little square trap-doors which, opening as occasion requires,
show that the demons can be let loose from the cellars. When the
demons have to fly in the air, dummies of