File:Wagner and his Isolde (1905) (14780523331).jpg

Identifier: wagnerhisisolde00wagn (find matches)
Title: Wagner and his Isolde
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883 Kobbé, Gustav, 1857-1918
Subjects: Wagner, Richard, 1813-1883 Wesendonck, Mathilde, 1828-1902 Composers
Publisher: New York : Dodd, Mead & company
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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unicated? Oh!one can tell where you are! For once I really ought not to talk aboutmyself at all, but what do I know about you!Nothing, except that I know nothing. Trulyphilosophical knowledge this! And aboutmyself? Dearest child, no one will ever beable to make anything in reason out of me.Above all, no one with any intelligence. Forinstance: Just now I am being congratu-lated by all intelligent people, and everyonethinks I must be soaring among heights ofbliss and delight because I have obtained theincredible promise that one of my operas isto be performed in Paris. Can he ask any-thing more? they say. And now picturethis to yourself—never have I found thewhole thing more tiresome than just now,and to everyone who congratulates me Igrimly show my teeth. I happen to be builtthat way! FRENCH MUSICAL TASTE Whoever stands by quietly and watches thelife of a nation as gifted, and also as incredi-bly light-hearted as France, and is able tointerest himself in everything that may serve 210
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Mathilde Wesexdonk 1860 From a photograph taken in Rome VICISSITUDES IN PARIS • ______•_—__—_«___«—«_______■^mm—_——^_——_____________________ for its development and progress, cannot beblamed if he sees in the manner in which aFrench Tannhauser may be received, acritical test of the capacity of this peoplefor artistic advancement. Consider the wretched state of French artat this moment; that poetry is somethingwholly foreign to this nation, and that in itsplace it substitutes rhetoric and sonorousphrases. With the French language com-pletely centred upon itself, and its resultingincapacity to take over the poetic elementwhich it lacks from another language, theonly method which remains is to have poetryinfluence the French through music. Thetruth is, however, that the French lack origi-nality in music, and that all their music hascome from elsewhere. From the outset Frenchmusical taste has been formed by the con-tact of Italian and German music, and reallyis no

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