My Life, Volume I

by Richard Wagner

  In addition to this work I practised the violin for some time, as my harmony master very rightly considered that some knowledge of the practical working of this instrument was indispensable for any one who had the intention of composing for the orchestra. My mother, indeed, paid the violinist Sipp (who was still playing in the Leipzig orchestra in 1865) eight thalers for a violin (I do not know what became of it), with which for quite three months I must have inflicted unutterable torture upon my mother and sister by practising in my tiny little room. I got so far as to play certain Variations in F sharp by Mayseder, but only reached the second or third. After that I have no further recollections of this practising, in which my family fortunately had very good reasons of their own for not encouraging me.

  But the time now arrived when my interest in the theatre again took a passionate hold upon me. A new company had been formed in my birthplace under very good auspices. The Board of Management of the Court Theatre at Dresden had taken over the management of the Leipzig theatre for three years. My sister Rosalie was a member of the company, and through her I could always gain admittance to the performances; and that which in my childhood had been merely the interest aroused by a strange spirit of curiosity now became a more deep-seated and conscious passion.

  Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, the plays of Schiller, and to crown all, Goethe's Faust, excited and stirred me deeply. The Opera was giving the first performances of Marschner's Vampir and Templer und Judin. The Italian company arrived from Dresden, and fascinated the Leipzig audience by their consummate mastery of their art. Even I was almost carried away by the enthusiasm with which the town was over-whelmed, into forgetting the boyish impressions which Signor Sassaroli had stamped upon my mind, when another miracle-which also came to us from Dresden-suddenly gave a new direction to my artistic feelings and exercised a decisive influence over my whole life. This consisted of a special performance given by Wilhelmine Schroder-Devrient, who at that time was at the zenith of her artistic career, young, beautiful, and ardent, and whose like I have never again seen on the stage. She made her appearance in Fidelio.

  If I look back on my life as a whole, I can find no event that produced so profound an impression upon me. Any one who can remember that wonderful woman at this period of her life must to some extent have experienced the almost Satanic ardour which the intensely human art of this incomparable actress poured into his veins. After the performance I rushed to a friend's house and wrote a short note to the singer, in which I briefly told her that from that moment my life had acquired its true significance, and that if in days to come she should ever hear my name praised in the world of Art, she must remember that she had that evening made me what I then swore it was my destiny to become. This note I left at her hotel, and ran out into the night as if I were mad. In the year 1842, when I went to Dresden to make my debut with Rienzi, I paid several visits to the kind-hearted singer, who startled me on one occasion by repeating this letter word for word. It seemed to have made an impression on her too, as she had actually kept it.

  At this point I feel myself obliged to acknowledge that the great confusion which now began to prevail in my life, and particularly in my studies, was due to the inordinate effect this artistic interpretation had upon me. I did not know where to turn, or how to set about producing something myself which might place me in direct contact with the impression I had received, while everything that could not be brought into touch with it seemed to me so shallow and meaningless that I could not possibly trouble myself with it. I should have liked to compose a work worthy of a Schroder-Devrient; but as this was quite beyond my power, in my head-long despair I let all artistic endeavour slide, and as my work was also utterly insufficient to absorb me, I flung myself recklessly into the life of the moment in the company of strangely chosen associates, and indulged in all kinds of youthful excesses.

  I now entered into all the dissipations of raw manhood, the outward ugliness and inward emptiness of which make me marvel to this day. My intercourse with those of my own age had always been the result of pure chance. I cannot remember that any special inclination or attraction determined me in the choice of my young friends. While I can honestly say that I was never in a position to stand aloof out of envy from any one who was specially gifted, I can only explain my indifference in the choice of my associates by the fact that through inexperience regarding the sort of companionship that would be of advantage to me, I cared only to have some one who would accompany me in my excursions, and to whom I could pour out my feelings to my heart's content without caring what effect it might have upon him. The result of this was that after a stream of confidences to which my own excitement was the only response, I at length reached the point when I turned and looked at my friend; to my astonishment I generally found that there was no question of response at all, and as soon as I set my heart on drawing something from him in return, and urged him to confide in me, when he really had nothing to tell, the connection usually came to an end and left no trace on my life. In a certain sense my strange relationship with Flachs was typical of the great majority of my ties in after-life. Consequently, as no lasting personal bond of friendship ever found its way into my life, it is easy to understand how delight in the dissipations of student life could become a passion of some duration, because in it individual intercourse is entirely replaced by a common circle of acquaintances. In the midst of rowdyism and ragging of the most foolish description, I remained quite alone, and it is quite possible that these frivolities formed a protecting hedge round my inmost soul, which needed time to grow to its natural strength and not be weakened by reaching maturity too soon.

  My life seemed to break up in all directions; I had to leave St. Nicholas's School at Easter 1830, as I was too deeply in disgrace with the staff of masters ever to hope for any promotion in the University from that quarter. It was now determined that I should study privately for six months and then go to St. Thomas's School, where I should be in fresh surroundings and be able to work up and qualify in a short time for the University. My uncle Adolph, with whom I was constantly renewing my friendship, and who also encouraged me about my music and exercised a good influence over me in that respect, in spite of the utter degradation of my life at that time, kept arousing in me an ever fresh desire for scientific studies. I took private lessons in Greek from a scholar, and read Sophocles with him. For a time I hoped this noble poet would again inspire me to get a real hold on the language, but the hope was vain. I had not chosen the right teacher, and, moreover, his sitting-room in which we pursued our studies looked out on a tanyard, the repulsive odour of which affected my nerves so strongly that I became thoroughly disgusted both with Sophocles and Greek. My brother-in-law, Brockhaus, who wanted to put me in the way of earning some pocket-money, gave me the correcting of the proof-sheets of a new edition he was bringing out of Becker's Universal History, revised by Lobell. This gave me a reason for improving by private study the superficial general instruction on every subject which is given at school, and I thus acquired the valuable knowledge which I was destined to have in later life of most of the branches of learning so uninterestingly taught in class. I must not forget to mention that, to a certain extent, the attraction exercised over me by this first closer study of history was due to the fact that it brought me in eightpence a sheet, and I thus found myself in one of the rarest positions in my life, actually earning money; yet I should be doing myself an injustice if I did not bear in mind the vivid impressions I now for the first time received upon turning my serious attention to those periods of history with which I had hitherto had a very superficial acquaintance. All I recollect about my school days in this connection is that I was attracted by the classical period of Greek history; Marathon, Salamis, and Thermopylae composed the canon of all that interested me in the subject. Now for the first time I made an intimate acquaintance with the Middle Ages and the French Revolution, as my work in correcting dealt precisely with the two volumes which contained these two periods. I rem
ember in particular that the description of the Revolution filled me with sincere hatred for its heroes; unfamiliar as I was with the previous history of France, my human sympathy was horrified by the cruelty of the men of that day, and this purely human impulse remained so strong in me that I remember how even quite recently it cost me a real struggle to give any weight to the true political significance of those acts of violence.

  How great, then, was my astonishment when one day the current political events of the time enabled me, as it were, to gain a personal experience of the sort of national upheavals with which I had come into distant contact in the course of my proof- correcting. The special editions of the Leipzig Gazette brought us the news of the July Revolution in Paris. The King of France had been driven from his throne; Lafayette, who a moment before had seemed a myth to me, was again riding through a cheering crowd in the streets of Paris; the Swiss Guards had once more been butchered in the Tuileries, and a new King knew no better way of commending himself to the populace than by declaring himself the embodiment of the Republic. Suddenly to become conscious of living at a time in which such things took place could not fail to have a startling effect on a boy of seventeen. The world as a historic phenomenon began from that day in my eyes, and naturally my sympathies were wholly on the side of the Revolution, which I regarded in the light of a heroic popular struggle crowned with victory, and free from the blemish of the terrible excesses that stained the first French Revolution. As the whole of Europe, including some of the German states, was soon plunged more or less violently into rebellion, I remained for some time in a feverish state of suspense, and now first turned my attention to the causes of these upheavals, which I regarded as struggles of the young and hopeful against the old and effete portion of mankind. Saxony also did not remain unscathed; in Dresden it came to actual fighting in the streets, which immediately produced a political change in the shape of the proclamation of the regency of the future King Frederick, and the granting of a constitution. This event filled me with such enthusiasm that I composed a political overture, the prelude of which depicted dark oppression in the midst of which a strain was at last heard under which, to make my meaning clearer, I wrote the words Friedrich und Freiheil; this strain was intended to develop gradually and majestically into the fullest triumph, which I hoped shortly to see successfully performed at one of the Leipzig Garden Concerts.

  However, before I was able to develop my politico-musical conceptions further, disorders broke out in Leipzig itself which summoned me from the precincts of Art to take a direct share in national life. National life in Leipzig at this time meant nothing more than antagonism between the students and the police, the latter being the arch-enemy upon whom the youthful love of liberty vented itself. Some students had been arrested in a street broil who were now to be rescued. The under-graduates, who had been restless for some days, assembled one evening in the Market Place and the Clubs, mustered together, and made a ring round their leaders. The whole proceeding was marked by a certain measured solemnity, which impressed me deeply. They sang Gaudeamus igitur, formed up into column, and picking up from the crowd any young men who sympathised with them, marched gravely and resolutely from the Market Place to the University buildings, to open the cells and set free the students who had been arrested. My heart beat fast as I marched with them to this 'Taking of the Bastille,' but things did not turn out as we expected, for in the courtyard of the Paulinum the solemn procession was stopped by Rector Krug, who had come down to meet it with his grey head bared; his assurance that the captives had already been released at his request was greeted with a thundering cheer, and the matter seemed at an end.

  But the tense expectation of a revolution had grown too great not to demand some sacrifice. A summons was suddenly spread calling us to a notorious alley in order to exercise popular justice upon a hated magistrate who, it was rumoured, had unlawfully taken under his protection a certain house of ill-fame in that quarter. When I reached the spot with the tail-end of the crowd, I found the house had been broken into and all sorts of violence had been committed. I recall with horror the intoxicating effect this unreasoning fury had upon me, and cannot deny that without the slightest personal provocation I shared, like one possessed, in the frantic onslaught of the undergraduates, who madly shattered furniture and crockery to bits. I do not believe that the ostensible motive for this outrage, which, it is true, was to be found in a fact that was a grave menace to public morality, had any weight with me whatever; on the contrary, it was the purely devilish fury of these popular outbursts that drew me, too, like a madman into their vortex.

  The fact that such fits of fury are not quick to abate, but, in accordance with certain natural laws, reach their proper conclusion only after they have degenerated into frenzy, I was to learn in my own person. Scarcely did the summons ring out for us to march to another resort of the same kind than I too found myself in the tide which set towards the opposite end of the town. There the same exploits were repeated, and the most ludicrous outrages perpetrated. I cannot remember that the enjoyment of alcoholic drinks contributed to the intoxication of myself and my immediate fellows. I only know that I finally got into the state that usually succeeds a debauch, and upon waking next morning, as if from a hideous nightmare, had to convince myself that I had really taken part in the events of the previous night by a trophy I possessed in the shape of a tattered red curtain, which I had brought home as a token of my prowess. The thought that people generally, and my own family in particular, were wont to put a lenient construction upon youthful escapades was a great comfort to me; outbursts of this kind on the part of the young were regarded as righteous indignation against really serious scandals, and there was no need for me to be afraid of owning up to having taken part in such excesses.

  The dangerous example, however, which had been set by the undergraduates incited the lower classes and the mob to similar excesses on the following nights, against employers and any who were obnoxious to them. The matter at once assumed a more serious complexion; property was threatened, and a conflict between rich and poor stood grinning at our doors. As there were no soldiers in the town, and the police were thoroughly disorganised, the students were called in as a protection against the lower orders. An undergraduate's hour of glory now began, such as I could only have thirsted for in my schoolboy dreams. The student became the tutelar deity of Leipzig, called on by the authorities to arm and band together in defence of property, and the same young men who two days before had yielded to a rage for destruction, now mustered in the University courtyard. The proscribed names of the students' clubs and unions were shouted by the mouths of town councillors and chief constables in order to summon curiously equipped undergraduates, who thereupon, in simple mediaeval array of war, scattered throughout the town, occupied the guard-rooms at the gates, provided sentinels for the grounds of various wealthy merchants, and, as occasion demanded, took places which seemed threatened, more especially inns, under their permanent protection.

  Though, unluckily, I was not yet a member of their body, I anticipated the delights of academic citizenship by half- impudent, half-obsequious solicitation of the leaders of the students whom I honoured most. I had the good fortune to recommend myself particularly to these 'cocks of the walk,' as they were styled, on account of my relationship to Brockhaus, in whose grounds the main body of these champions were encamped for some time. My brother-in-law was among those who had been seriously threatened, and it was only owing to really great presence of mind and assurance that he succeeded in saving his printing works, and especially his steam presses, which were the chief object of attack, from destruction. To protect his property against further assault, detachments of students were told off to his grounds as well; the excellent entertainment which the generous master of the house offered his jovial guardians in his pleasant summer-house enticed the pick of the students to him. My brother-in-law was for several weeks guarded day and night against possible attacks by the populace, and on this o
ccasion, as the mediator of a flowing hospitality, I celebrated among the most famous 'bloods' of the University the true saturnalia of my scholarly ambition.

  For a still longer period the guarding of the gates was entrusted to the students; the unheard-of splendour which accordingly became associated with this post drew fresh aspirants to the spot from far and near. Every day huge chartered vehicles discharged at the Halle Gate whole bands of the boldest sons of learning from Halle, Jena, Gottingen, and the remotest regions. They got down close to the guards at the gate, and for several weeks never set foot in an inn or any other dwelling; they lived at the expense of the Council, drew vouchers on the police for food and drink, and knew but one care, that the possibility of a general quieting of men's minds would make their opportune guardianship superfluous. I never missed a day on guard or a night either, alas! trying to impress on my family the urgent need for my personal endurance. Of course, the quieter and really studious spirits among us soon resigned these duties, and only the flower of the flock of undergraduates remained so staunch that it became difficult for the authorities to relieve them of their task. I held out to the very last, and succeeded in making most astonishing friends for my age. Many of the most audacious remained in Leipzig even when there was no guard duty to fulfil, and peopled the place for some time with champions of an extraordinarily desperate and dissipated type, who had been repeatedly sent down from various universities for rowdyism or debt, and who now, thanks to the exceptional circumstances of the day, found a refuge in Leipzig, where at first they had been received with open arms by the general enthusiasm of their comrades.