This wild mood soon ceased under the pressure of petty cares; in 1836 he married the woman whose devotion helped him through so many years of bitter struggle. The following year he began his first large work, _Rienzi_, and became musical director at the Riga theatre. The poem was finished in 1838, and in 1839 when the music was nearly completed, Wagner embarked with his wife and his beloved big dog on board a sailing ship bound for London _en route_ for Paris. His object was to get _Rienzi_ performed there, but despite the influence of Meyerbeer he was doomed to disappointment and found himself stranded there in the utmost poverty. This, as we shall see from an essay later in the volume, was the turning-point in his life; but we have now to consider the next essay, the famous
The main theme of this fine article is the relation of Art to the Universal Brotherhood of Man. It is prefaced by an introduction written in 1872 which begins with Carlyle’s trenchant words on “that universal Burning-up, as in hell-fire, of Human Shams.” Wagner goes on to explain how the essay was written “in the feverish excitement of the year 1849.” This was the revolution which cost him so many years of painful exile at Paris and Zürich. He says he was guided by an ideal which he thought of as “embodied in a Folk that should represent the incomparable might of ancient brotherhood, while I looked forward to the perfect evolution of this principle as the very essence of the associate Manhood of the Future.”
After some explanations of certain technical words which might be misunderstood, Wagner introduces us to the essay itself. He begins by saying that the essence of Modern Art is only a link in a chain of causes started by the Ancient Greeks. The Grecian spirit found its fullest expression in the god Apollo: “It was Apollo,—he who had slain the Python, the dragon of Chaos ... who was the fulfiller of the will of Zeus upon the Grecian earth; who was, in fact, the Grecian people.” Proceeding then to connect Dance and Song, as inseparable elements in early Greek Art, he says: “Thus, too, inspired by Dionysus,[1] the tragic poet saw this glorious god; when to all the rich elements of spontaneous art ... he joined the bond of speech, and concentrating them all into one focus, brought forth the highest conceivable form of art—the DRAMA.”
