RICHARD WAGNER AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY. (continued 2)

Wagner’s hatred for the Jews, which is set forth by Puschmann as a “delusion of persecution,” rests simply upon the fact that Wagner saw in the Jews, especially those whose endeavours are limited to material gain, men who had renounced ideal love—in short, his Alberich. This feeling had no affinity with modern anti-Semitism; for, as can be seen in his letters to Liszt, along with “the Jews” he always named “the Philistines,” as he called the Germans who slept away their lives in slothful dreams, and were glad if people did not disturb them—in short, the Faffners. To these two he often added the Jesuits. “Let us flee from this world, where there are nothing but Jews, Philistines, and Jesuits.”

What Wagner longed for was the free, natural man, whose acts were not determined by petty personal interests and lower impulses, and whose life was not passed in thoughtless slumber—that is, Siegfried. There is no delusion of persecution here; it is only the artist’s ideal. What characterizes the delusion of persecution is the circumstance that the patient everywhere scents persecutors, and in the most unreasonable and typical way regards the benefits that people do him as hostile persecutions. How grateful and happy, on the other hand, was Wagner if he only saw that he was understood, or that anybody sympathized with him! Thus he wrote to Liszt: “When I consider the numerous, extended, and often very able papers which now proceed from Weimar, and contrast them with the envious hostility which assaulted me, for example, in the reviews of Dresden, and remember with what dire consistency they almost effected a systematic embroiling of the public against me, Weimar seems to me now as a blissful asylum in whose fresh air I can at last inhale deeply and give my contracted heart room.” Nobody suffering from the delusion of persecution writes in that strain. Such a person would have found in the articles about Lohengrin some deep-laid plot.

Wagner’s “hatred for the Jews” is marked only in a generalized and, I might say, a symbolized sentiment. It never extended to individuals. In his personal commerce with men he knew how strictly to individualize, and was very far from converting his feeling into a principle. The proof of this is, that he was on terms of friendship with many Jews. He intrusted the leadership of his play at the opening of the theatre in Bayreuth to a Jew, which he certainly would never have done if he had been suffering under the delusion that he was persecuted by the Jews.

Herr Puschmann further thinks that erotomania must be diagnosed from Wagner’s poems: “His first great opus, Das Liebesverbot, glorifies the triumph of free and open sensuality. Still, he there keeps within the limits of decent respectability. But in his latest works the erotic element is put into more undisguised prominence. In Tristan und Isolde he glorifies ‘adultery,’ in the Walküre ‘incest.’” Whoever has followed my account of Wagner’s poetry can judge for himself whether Wagner intends therein to glorify adultery and incest. He will perceive that in Wagner’s poems the woman never signifies the physical woman, and that by love he never means sexual intercourse; that there is merely an artistic embodiment of ideal sentiments, and that only total misconstruction can lead to such conclusions as those of Herr Puschmann. Whoever, in spite of all such commentaries, entertains the slightest doubts upon this point may set them at rest by a passage in a letter from Wagner to Liszt. Wagner sent his friend the score of Siegfried after having concluded not to bring it out for a while, and wrote: “I now impart to you readily and with good courage this poem, for now you too no longer need to lift your eyes from it to consider with careful glance your public. You have, for example, no longer any need of anxiety as to what those people shall say of the ‘woman’ who, when ‘woman’ is said, always think of their wives, or, if their power of abstraction mounts so high, of some young lady or other.”

Enough of Herr Puschmann! But let it be added that this pamphlet of the “specialist in psychiatry,” though it made a sensation in its day before the public, was never taken seriously in psychiatric circles, but was always considered as a thoroughly amateurish production. Twenty years have since elapsed. Wagnerian art has now spread over the whole globe, and numbers its adherents by the hundreds of thousands. Recently another specialist in nervous diseases, Herr Nordau, has made the weighty discovery that Wagner was indeed deranged and a degenerate. The whole of Puschmann’s nonsense, at which every rational psychiatrist laughed twenty years ago, has been furbished up anew by Herr Nordau, and put forth as the greatest wisdom, the newest acquisition of his scientific investigations.

For the unscientific pamphlet of Puschmann there is an excuse. At that time, twenty years ago, although Wagner already had a great number of warm adherents, Puschmann might still come to the conclusion that upon matter-of-fact people Wagner’s music made an impression of absurdity; that it was not capable of exciting an elevated feeling in anybody, etc. In a word, he voiced the sentiments of the majority when he assumed that Wagner’s productions were “verrücktes Zeug”—crazy stuff. But things are different to-day. Understanding of Wagner’s art is no longer so uncommon, and on every German opera stage Wagner’s works take the lead. Not only in Germany has this success been attained, but far beyond her borders, his renown has pressed. Even in the New World, in far America, there are thousands of enthusiastic Wagner lovers. How does Nordau get away from this fact? Very simply: he says all the world is “crazy,” or, at any rate, “hysterical.” “Wagner’s mighty influence on his contemporaries is to be explained neither by his capacities as author and musician nor by any of his personal qualities, ... but by the peculiarities in the life of the present nervous temperament.... He had the good fortune to endure until the general degeneration and hysteria were sufficiently advanced to supply a rich and nutritious soil for his theories and his art.”⁠[208]⁠

From this, one might think that it were time for publishing new text-books of psychiatry and instructing students that there is only one “normal man” in the world—to wit, Max Nordau. Everybody who writes, composes, or paints anything that Max Nordau does not take a fancy to, is degenerate; and everybody who likes anything that Herr Nordau does not, is hysterical. So long as this platform is not universally accepted in psychiatry, Herr Nordau can not expect to find scientific support. But whoever stands upon the universal ground of science must admit that Herr Nordau is a perfect amateur in the department of psychiatry. I can hardly think that anybody, even a layman in psychiatry, although he be an opponent of Wagner’s art, can possibly assent to Herr Nordau’s opinions; yet for the sake of justice, we had better enter upon a brief consideration of the main points of his deductions.

Nordau’s diagnosis is as follows: “Richard Wagner is himself alone charged with a greater abundance of degeneration than all the degenerates put together with whom we have hitherto become acquainted. The stigmata of this morbid condition are united in him in the most complete and most luxuriant development. He displays in the general constitution of his mind the persecution mania, megalomania, and mysticism; in his instincts vague philanthropy, anarchism, a craving for revolt and contradiction; in his writings all the signs of graphomania—namely, incoherence, fugitive ideation, and a tendency to idiotic punning; and, as the groundwork of his being, the characteristic emotionalism of a colour at once erotic and religiously enthusiastic.”⁠[209]⁠

Very indicative of Nordau’s dilettanteism is his incidental way of throwing in the most important symptoms of developed insanity, “delusion of persecution” and “delusion of grandeur.” As proof of the first, he adduces quite briefly the trite stories about the Jews, which I have already sufficiently considered. Of the latter he simply says: “His megalomania is so well known through his writings, his verbal utterances, and the whole course of his life, that a bare reference to it is sufficient.”⁠[210] Nordau evidently does not know what is meant by a delusive idea; otherwise, he could not talk so innocently. According to him, everybody who thinks he is persecuted has a “delusion of persecution,” and everybody who thinks he can accomplish what nobody else can has a “delusion of grandeur.” Supposing that Wagner had really had the degree of self-conceit which is often attributed to him—which, as I have already shown, is far from having been the case—supposing it to be true that he believed himself to be the greatest musician of all the ages, to conclude from this alone a delusion of grandeur would be unwarranted in the extreme. Overestimation of self and the delusion of grandeur are widely different things. One may, for instance, make pretensions to being a thoroughly expert judge of all departments of art and science—music, painting, philosophy, and what not—so much so as to declare that every man who dissents from one’s pronouncements ought to be cared for as insane; yet this does not amount to a delusion of grandeur—in the psychiatric sense of the term. No such sign of overrating himself was displayed by Wagner. He respected and honoured the masters of his art as much as any of his contemporaries ever did. Which one of the great masters of music was the greatest of all the ages the psychiatrist, as such, is not competent to say. Whoever it may have been was probably fully aware of it, and if he ever betrayed that consciousness, it was not a mark of insanity. But how very far Wagner was from overestimating himself is shown in his correspondence, which demonstrates how little he was occupied with what he had attained, and how entirely with what he had still to strive for.

Just as any artist who leaves the well-trodden roads and breaks new paths is exposed to every imaginable enmity and misunderstanding, Wagner had to combat persecutions and hostilities, which, far from being imaginary or delusive, were so real that it would have been folly to blind himself to them; and nothing but a rare and precious firmness of character, and an accurate appreciation of his own inward worth, could have carried him through all his tribulations to his eventual triumph.

Only psychiatric amateurs—and not the most observant or wisest of them either—can possibly mistake the self-consciousness that marks the developed character for a “delusion of grandeur.” Stories about boundless “vanity,” a passion for “divine veneration,” “incense,” and so forth—easily picked up among the valets and secretaries of any great man—have no foundation but arbitrary distortions or ignorance of the facts. As I have already proved, Wagner asked as little from the great public as did Goethe. In his creating alone, in his art itself, he found satisfaction and contentment. “Believe me implicitly,” he wrote to Liszt, “when I tell you that the only reason of my continuing to live as long as I have done is the irresistible impulse to complete a series of works of art which yet have the strength to live within me. I accurately know that nothing but this creation and completion gratifies me; and as for the performance of those works and the seeing them from without, that I can dispense with well enough.”

The remaining lucubrations of Nordau are limited almost exclusively to a critique, such as it is, of Wagner’s works, and are shaped by the principle that whatever Max Nordau does not like is the work of an insane mind. Wagner’s theoretical writings, one and all, fail to obtain Nordau’s favour; therefore Wagner is insane. That Wagner himself recognised that what he had to say could not be expressed by words alone, that he saw the inflation of his own style, that his different writings were composed for special objects, and finally that Wagner, with the greatest “reluctance” and only when “driven by need,” betook himself to writing—all this has little power to bend the inflexible critic. The long and short of it is that Wagner’s writings do not please Nordau. Hence it appears that Wagner was a “graphomaniac.” The trifling contradiction between a man’s being a “graphomaniac” and his writing with “reluctance” and only when “driven by need,” is apparent. Graphomania is pretty nearly the contrary of that. But what difference does that make? One contradiction more or less is a trifle when one is as well supplied with them as Herr Nordau. Here is a sample of Herr Nordau’s manner of employing criticism: Concerning Wagner’s idea of fusing the different arts into one great whole, the musical drama, he says: “His art-work of the future is the art-work of times long past. What he takes for evolution is a retrogression, and a return to a primeval human—nay, to a pre-human [!] stage.” One wonders what put this notion into Herr Nordau’s head. Does he really believe that “pre-human” beings composed musical dramas?

Wagner, in one of his articles, speaks repeatedly of the action of the “head” in contradistinction to that of the “heart.” He calls speech the language of the “head” and music that of the “heart.” “The organ of the heart is music (Ton), and its artistically conscious language is the art of music.” Every schoolboy can see what is meant. A form of speech common to all ages and all nations denotes the conative faculties by the term heart, as opposed to cold, calculating, speculative understanding—the action of the brain. But Herr Nordau feels himself called upon to challenge this figure of speech in the following terms: “But as his mystically disposed brain was not capable of clearly grasping the various parts of this intricate idea, and of arranging them in parallel lines, he entangled himself in the absurdity of an ‘activity of the brain without activity of the heart’; ... and finally attains to the pure twaddle of calling ‘sound’ the ‘organ of the heart.’”⁠[211]⁠

We have already remarked that Nordau, in the department of psychiatry, is a mere amateur; so that we must not expect any accurate application of the concepts of the science in his writings. Yet, since he writes upon the subject, it might have been hoped that he would tolerably post himself in relation to it, and not publish things in the most injudicious manner. Now, Herr Nordau assures us that in all Wagner’s writings there is hardly a single page “which will not puzzle the unbiassed reader, either through some nonsensical thought or some impossible mode of expression”; whence one has a right to gather that Nordau has read those writings. But if that be the fact, how was it possible that he could totally mistake the purpose of Wagner’s art as it is expressly and distinctly set forth in numerous places in his writings? Wagner declares in so many words—not once, but often, very, very often—that by the “woman” he never meant the physical, sexual woman; that it gave him pain when anybody attributed a religious moral to Tannhäuser, etc. But, notwithstanding these explicit declarations, Herr Nordau sings again the long-worn-out song about the “shameless sensuality,” and with a bombastic aping of that scientific jargon which is defensible only so far as it insures precision of ideas, talks of Wagner’s “erotomania.” Thus he says in one place: “It certainly redounds to the high honour of German public morality that Wagner’s operas could have been publicly performed without arousing the greatest scandal. How unperverted must wives and maidens be when they are in a state of mind to witness these pieces without blushing crimson and sinking into the earth for shame! How innocent must even husbands and fathers be who allow their womankind to go to these representations of ‘lupanar’ incidents! Evidently the German audiences entertain no misgivings concerning the actions and attitudes of Wagnerian personages; they seem to have no suspicion of the emotions by which they are excited, and what intentions their words, gestures, and acts denote; and this explains the peaceful artlessness with which these audiences follow theatrical scenes during which, among a less childlike public, no one would dare lift his eyes to his neighbour or endure his glance. With Wagner amorous excitement assumes the form of mad delirium. The lovers in his pieces behave like tomcats gone mad, rolling in contortions and convulsions over a root of valerian. They reflect a state of mind in the poet which is well known to the professional expert. It is a form of Sadism. It is the love of those degenerates who, in sexual transport, become like wild beasts. Wagner suffered from ‘erotic madness’ which leads coarse natures to murder for lust, and inspires ‘higher degenerates’ with works like Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Tristan und Isolde.”⁠[212]⁠

While Nordau passes by the most important symptoms of insanity, “the delusion of persecution” and “the delusion of grandeur,” with startling levity, satisfying himself with mentioning that they are “known to everybody,” he tarries to discuss with astonishing thoroughness the erotic element. Let us here adduce only one or two passages: “Mysticism is, as we know, always accompanied by eroticism, especially in the degenerate, whose emotionalism has its chief source in morbidly excited states of the sexual centres. Wagner’s imagination is perpetually occupied with woman. But he never sees her relation to man in the form of healthy and natural love, which is a benefit and satisfaction for both lovers. As with all morbid erotics (we have already remarked this in Verlaine and Tolstoi), woman presents herself to him as a terrible force of Nature, of which man is the trembling, helpless victim. The woman that he knows is the gruesome Astarte of the Semites, the frightful man-eating Kali Bhagawati of the Hindoos, an apocalyptic vision of smiling bloodthirstiness, of eternal perdition and infernal torment, in demoniacally beautiful embodiment.... Wagner’s Elisabeth, Elsa, Senta, and Gertrude are extremely instructive manifestations of erotic mysticism, in which the half-unconscious idea is struggling for form—viz., that the safety of the sexually crazy degenerate lies in purity, continence, or in the possession of a wife having no sort of individuality, no desire and no rights, and hence incapable of ever proving dangerous to the man. In one of his first compositions, as in his last, in Tannhäuser as in Parsifal, he treats of the combat between the man and his corruptress, the fly versus the spider, and in this way testifies that for thirty-three years—from youth to old age—the subject has never been absent from his mind.... Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, Tristan und Isolde, are exact repetitions of the essential content of the Walküre. It is always the dramatic embodiment of the same obsession of the terrors of love.”⁠[213]⁠

These passages may suffice. At best, they bespeak at once Nordau’s total misunderstanding of Wagner’s artistic purpose, and his complete dilettanteism in psychiatric matters. Of the former truth, scarcely anybody who does not with might and main shut out the facts and is not ignorant of Wagner’s own declarations, can be in doubt. Whoever still insists, after the observations made above, that Wagner, in the creation of his works of art, was thinking of the sensual, sexual woman, simply will not understand; and there is no help for it. As to the latter point, that a man who his whole life long never showed the slightest indication of sexual anomalies, who lived in happy marriage and was a tender husband and father, should be called an “erotomaniac” solely because love is introduced into his dramas, and that “a morbid state of excitation of his sexual centres” should be diagnosed, is the grossest and sheerest nonsense that ever was. There is scarcely a poet in the whole history of art whom one might not by the same token stamp as an “erotomaniac.”

Herr Nordau might by the same right just as well have diagnosed a number of other symptoms from Wagner’s poems. Why, for example, does the great musician not suffer from pyromania on the ground of the magic fire in the Walküre? Why does Nordau not declare him a kleptomaniac, in view of the numerous thefts in Rheingold? There would have been quite as much sense in either diagnosis as in that of erotomania from Tannhäuser. Perhaps Herr Nordau has overlooked these symptoms, and perhaps he will do us the pleasure, in the next edition of his Degeneration, of dishing these up as the latest achievements of his scientific researches.

Nordau has made the important discovery that Wagner was born to be a painter, and only missed his vocation in consequence of his morbid impulses. “Wagner is no comedian,” he says, “but a born painter. If he had been a healthy genius, endowed with intellectual equilibrium, that is what he would undoubtedly have become. His inner vision would have forced the brush into his hand, and constrained him to realize it on canvas, by means of colour.... He did not understand his natural impulses. Perhaps, also, with the feeling of his own deep organic feebleness, he dreaded the heavy labour of drawing and painting, and, conformably with the law of least effort, his instinct sought vent in the theatre, where his inner visions were embodied by others—the decorative painters, machinists, and actors—without requiring him to exert himself.” Did anybody ever hear more luxuriant nonsense? A man who thinks the labour of painting too severe, takes up the musical drama, composing himself both the verse and the music, and thus escapes hard work! Is it possible to make a serious answer to such silly talk?

Equally astounding is the self-complacency with which Nordau passes judgment upon Wagner’s music. I, too, am of the opinion that the judgment of art, especially of those arts which appeal to the sensitive heart, is not only open to the theorizing professional, but that the direct sentiment of the unprejudiced layman ought to be its touchstone. Wagner himself gives expression to this thought in the Meistersinger, where Hans Sachs says:

But when a person who “knows nothing of the rules of the mastersingers” declares both the judgment of an innumerable multitude of experienced masters and the sentiment of hundreds of thousands to be “morbid,” solely because he himself thinks and feels otherwise than they, he only pronounces judgment upon himself.

It is well known that Wagner revolutionized the form of opera music. He banished the disconnected interpolated arias, put a stop to the inartistic license of singers in the recitativo, introduced a continuous music corresponding to the dramatical treatment and idea, and endeavoured through this music to express that for which the spoken word was inadequate. Of this innovation Nordau says: “It is a product of degenerate thought; it is musical mysticism. It is the form in which incapacity for attention shows itself in music.” After having, in the remainder of his criticism, illuminated in a similar way the theory of Wagner’s music, the Leitmotive, the “unending melody,” etc., he reaches the conclusion that Wagner, “in the inmost depths of his nature, and by virtue of his organic constitution, was not a musician, but a confused mixture of a poet feeble in style and a painter lazy of brush, with a Javanese ‘Gamelang’ accompaniment buzzing in between.”⁠[215]⁠

Concerning the theory of Wagner’s art, others may dispute with Nordau, if it seems worth their while. But as to the psychiatric lucubrations by which he reaches the conclusion that Wagner was insane and a “degenerate,” I believe that I have characterized them sufficiently, and that I may spare myself a more minute examination thereof.