c adapts itself to the needs of _l'ame moderne_,
the more Wagnerian it will become,--it is far enough advanced in this
direction already.--In this respect one should not allow one's self to be
misled by Wagner himself--it was simply disgraceful on Wagner's part to
scoff at Paris, as he did, in its agony in 1871.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} In spite of it all, in
Germany Wagner is only a misapprehension.--who could be more incapable of
understanding anything about Wagner than the Kaiser, for instance?--To
everybody familiar with the movement of European culture, this fact,
however, is certain, that French romanticism and Richard Wagner are most
intimately related. All dominated by literature, up to their very eyes and
ears--the first European artists with a _universal literary_ culture,--most
of them writers, poets, mediators and minglers of the senses and the arts,
all fanatics in _expression_, great discoverers in the realm of the
sublime as also of the ugly and the gruesome, and still greater
discoverers in passion, in working for effect, in the art of dressing
their windows,--all possessing talent far above their genius,--virtuosos to
their backbone, knowing of secret passages to all that seduces, lures,
constrains or overthrows; born enemies of logic and of straight lines,
thirsting after the exotic, the strange and the monstrous, and all opiates
for the senses and the understanding. On the whole, a daring dare-devil,
magnificently violent, soaring and high-springing crew of artists, who
first had to teach their own century--it is the century of the mob--what the
concept "artist" meant. But they were _ill_.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}

Wagner As The Apostle Of Chastity.

1.

Is this the German way?
Comes this low bleating forth from German hearts?
Should Teutons, sin repenting, lash themselves,
Or spread their palms with priestly unctuousness,
Exalt their feelings with the censer's fumes,
And cower and quake and bend the trembling knee,
And with a sickly sweetness plead a prayer?
Then ogle nuns, and ring the Ave-bell,
And thus with morbid fervour out-do heaven?
Is this the German way?
Beware, yet are you free, yet your own Lords.
What yonder lures is Rome, Rome's faith sung without words.

2.

There is no necessary contrast between sensuality and chastity, every good
marriage, every genuine love affair is above this contrast; but in those
cases where the contrast exists, it is very far from being necessari