Book Description

Excerpt from The Quarterly Review, Vol. 187: Published in January and April, 1898 It does not follow that he is rightly read by the multitudes who worship his name. On the contrary, it would be amazing if he were. We may lift him to the pedestal which his bio graphers, Herr Glasenapp and Mr. Chamberlain, have erected for him, or agree with the disparaging judgments of the second Nietzsche' contra Wagner, ' but, in any case, it is not to own that we are in presence of a complex and personality, whose views were as deep as h1s accomplishments were vast, - a man who stretched out his hands 1n all directions, who took hold of existence with a mighty whose emo tions were violent enough to shake the pm of the house where he had been brought out to make sport for the Philistines, and who passed with equal vehemence from one extreme of feeling to its opposite. If we are to know Wagner, we must not be ignorant of the principles on which he shaped his course, or allowed it to move. And they are German principles, not English or French, they keep their own colour; they rise out of an instinct which has been striving for centuries to make itself heard 1n the world of letters, which has done incomparably well 111 music, and which is now vindicating to itself the stage. As a name is of the utmost service when we would preach to the crowd, all these things have been brought to a focus by calling them 'the Bayreuth idea.' And it must be evident to those who have studied Wagner that the Bayreuth idea is not so simple, or so superficial, as to be easily assimilated by the pilgrims of every degree of culture who will henceforth flock to the Bavarian temple where this new worship 1s practised. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.