Читать книгу Studies in the Wagnerian Drama онлайн

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It is only to recognize a truth, which Wagner himself freely confessed, to say that arts and manners based on such ideals do not always appear pleasing—that, in fact, they sometimes, at first blush, at least, appear uncouth and unamiable. But that fact need not long give us pause. We have simply to recognize that beauty, like everything else so far as we are concerned, is subject to change, and that a new order of beauty, which may be called characteristic beauty, has come to the fore with a claim for recognition as a fit element in dramatic representation. Are we bound to accept as infallible the popular maxim that no matter what the state of affairs on the stage, the accompanying music must delight the ear? Suppose that a composer, utilizing the ear simply as one of the gate-ways to the higher faculties, and aiming to quicken the imagination and stir the emotions, should find a means for doing this without pleasing the ear—would his art be bad for that reason? Was the agony on the faces of the Laocoön put there by the sculptor for the purpose of pleasing the eye? Does it please the eye, or does it fascinate with a horrible fascination, and achieve the artist's real purpose by appealing through the eye to the imagination and emotions?