"Art and Revolution" is a long essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

 by the composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

, originally published in 1849. It sets out some of his basic ideas about the role of art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

 in society

Society

A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...

 and the nature of opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

.

Background

Wagner had been an enthusiast for the 1848 revolutions and had been an active participant in the Dresden Revolution of 1849

May Uprising in Dresden

The May Uprising took place in Dresden, Germany in 1849; it was one of the last of the series of events known as the Revolutions of 1848.-Events leading to the May Uprising:...

, as a consequence of which he was forced to live for many years in exile from Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. "Art and Revolution" was one of a group of polemical articles he published in his exile (another was the notorious "Jewishness in Music

Das Judenthum in der Musik

Das Judenthum in der Musik is an essay by Richard Wagner, attacking Jews in general and the composers Giacomo Meyerbeer and Felix Mendelssohn in particular, which was published under a pseudonym in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik of Leipzig in...

" of 1850). His enthusiasm for such writing at this stage of his career is in part explained by his inability, in exile, to have his operas produced. But it was also an opportunity for him to express and justify his deep-seated concerns about the true nature of opera as music drama at a time when he was beginning to write his libretti

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

  for his Ring cycle, and turning his thoughts to the type of music it would require. This was quite different from the music of popular grand opera

Grand Opera

Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events...

s of the period, which Wagner believed were a sell-out to commercialism in the arts. "Art and Revolution" therefore explained his ideals in the context of the failure of the 1848 revolutions to bring about a society like that which Wagner conceived to have existed in Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

—truly dedicated to, and which could be morally sustained by, the arts—which for Wagner meant, supremely, his conception of drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

.

Wagner wrote the essay over two weeks in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 and sent it to a French political journal, the National; they refused it, but it was published in Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

 and ran to a second edition.

Summary

The following summary is based on the standard translation of Wagner's prose works by William Ashton Ellis, first published in 1895. Quotations are taken from this translation.

Wagner notes that artists complain that economic uncertainty following the 1848 revolutions has damaged their prospects. But such materialistic complaints are selfish and unjustified. Those who practised art for art's sake 'suffered also in the former times when others were rejoicing'. He therefore undertakes an examination of the role of art in society, commencing with a historical review starting in Ancient Greece.

He extols the Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

nian spirit, embodied in the tragedies

Tragedy

Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

 of Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...

, as 'the highest conceivable form of Art - the DRAMA'. But the fall of the Athenian state meant that philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, rather than art, dominated European society. Wagner portrays the Romans

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 as brutal and sensuous, and the Church

Christian Church

The Christian Church is the assembly or association of followers of Jesus Christ. The Greek term ἐκκλησία that in its appearances in the New Testament is usually translated as "church" basically means "assembly"...

 as having hypocritically betrayed Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

's gospel of Universal Love. 'The Greek [...] could procreate Art for the very joy of manhood; the Christian, who impartially cast aside both Nature and himself; could only sacrifice to his God on the altar of renunciation; he durst not bring his actions or his work as offering, but believed that he must seek His favour by abstinence from all self-prompted venture.' The worldly power of Christendom indeed 'had its share in the revival of art' by patronage of artists celebrating its own supremacy. Moreover, 'the security of riches awoke in the ruling classes the desire for more refined enjoyment of their wealth'. Modern changes in society have resulted in the catastrophe that art has sold 'her soul and body to a far worse mistress - Commerce.'

The modern stage offers two irreconcilable genres, split from Wagner's Greek ideal - the play, which lacks 'the idealising influence of music', and opera which is 'forestalled of the living heart and lofty purpose of actual drama'. Moreover, opera is enjoyed specifically because of its superficial sensationalism. In a critique which lies at the heart of much of his writings at this period and thereafter, (and which is a clear dig at composers such as Giacomo Meyerbeer

Giacomo Meyerbeer

Giacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...

), Wagner complains:

There are even many of our most popular artists who do not in the least conceal the fact, that they have no other ambition than to satisfy this shallow audience. They are wise in their generation; for when the prince leaves a heavy dinner, the banker a fatiguing financial operation, the working man a weary day of toil, and go to the theatre: they ask for rest, distraction, and amusement, and are in no mood for renewed effort and fresh expenditure of force. This argument is so convincing, that we can only reply by saying: it would be more decorous to employ for this purpose any other thing in the wide world, but not the body and soul of Art. We shall then be told, however, that if we do not employ Art in this manner, it must perish from out our public life: i.e.,—that the artist will lose the means of living.

Wagner continues by comparing many features of contemporary art and art practice to those of Ancient Greece, alway of course to the detriment of the former; some of this decay was due to the introduction in the ancient world of slave-labour, to which Wagner links contemporary wage labour; concluding this section by asserting that the Greeks had formed the perfect Art-work (i.e. Wagner's own conception of Greek drama), whose nature we have lost.

Only the great Revolution of Mankind, whose beginnings erstwhile shattered Grecian Tragedy, can win for us this Art-work. For only this Revolution can bring forth from its hidden depths, in the new beauty of a nobler Universalism, that which it once tore from the conservative spirit of a time of beautiful but narrow-meted culture—and tearing it, engulphed.

This revolution consists for Wagner of a not very clearly defined return to Nature. Elements of this are a condemnation of the rich and 'the mechanic's pride in the moral consciousness of his labour', not however to be confused with 'the windy theories of our socialistic doctrinaires' who believe that society might be reconstructed without overthrow. Wagner's goal (to which some of the aesthetic ideals of much later Soviet communism and of Fascism

Fascism

Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 show some uncanny parallels) is 'the strong fair Man, to whom Revolution shall give his Strength, and Art his Beauty!'

Wagner then berates those who simply dismiss these ideas as utopian. Reconciling his two main inspirations, Wagner concludes 'Let us therefore erect the altar of the future, in Life as in the living Art, to the two sublimest teachers of mankind:—Jesus, who suffered for all men; and Apollo, who raised them to their joyous dignity!'

Reception and Influence

Wagner's idealism of ancient Greece was a commonplace amongst his romantic intellectual circle (for example, his Dresden friend the architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 Gottfried Semper

Gottfried Semper

Gottfried Semper was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture, who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in Dresden and was put on the government's wanted list. Semper fled first to Zürich and later...

 wrote to demonstrate the ideal qualities of classical Greek architecture

Architecture of Ancient Greece

The architecture of Ancient Greece is the architecture produced by the Greek-speaking people whose culture flourished on the Greek mainland and Peloponnesus, the Aegean Islands, and in colonies in Asia Minor and Italy for a period from about 900 BC until the 1st century AD, with the earliest...

). Although Wagner at the time imagined his intended operas to constitute the 'perfect Art-works' mentioned in this essay and described further in "The Artwork of the Future

The Artwork of the Future

"The Artwork of the Future" is a long essay written by Richard Wagner, first published in 1849 in Leipzig, in which he sets out some of his ideals on the topics of art in general and music drama in particular....

" and "Opera and Drama

Opera and Drama

"Opera and Drama" is a long essay written by Richard Wagner in 1851 setting out his ideas on the ideal characteristics of opera as an art form...

", with the aim of redeeming society through art, in the event practicality superseded the naive ideas (and shallow historical interpretation) expressed in these essays. However, the concept of music drama as Wagner eventually forged it is undoubtedly rooted in the ideas he expressed at this time. Indeed the essay is notable among other things for Wagner's first use of the term Gesamtkunstwerk

Gesamtkunstwerk

A Gesamtkunstwerk is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so...

(total art work)—in this case referring to his view of Greek drama as combining music, dance and poetry, rather than his later application of the term to his own works.

Curt von Westernhagen also detects in the essay the influence of Proudhon's What is Property?

What Is Property?

What Is Property?: or, An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government is an influential work of nonfiction on the concept of property and its relation to anarchist philosophy by the French anarchist and mutualist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, first published in 1840.In the book, Proudhon most...

which Wagner read in June 1849.

In his 1872 introduction to his collected writings, (by which time he was no longer an outcast, but had established himself as a leading artist) Wagner wrote of this essay: 'I believed in the Revolution, and in its unrestrainable necessity [...] only, I also felt that I was called to point out to it the way of rescue.[...] It is needless to recall the scorn which my presumption brought upon me [...]' The essay, the first of a series of polemical blasts from Wagner in the years 1849 to 1852, which included "The Artwork of the Future" and "Jewishness in Music", indeed provided fuel to those who wished to characterize Wagner as an impractical and/or eccentric radical

Radicalism (historical)

The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...

 idealist.

Wagner had however been writing in part to deliberately provoke, on the basis that any notoriety was better than no notoriety. In a letter of June 1849 to Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

, one of his few influential allies at the time, he wrote "I must make people afraid of me. Well, I have no money, but what I do have is an enormous desire to commit acts of artistic terrorism"; without denying the sincerity of Wagner's views at the time of writing, this article can be seen perhaps as one of those acts.

During and immediately after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the ideas of Wagner's "Art and Revolution" were influential in the proletarian art movement and on the ideas of those such as Platon Kerzhentsev

Platon Kerzhentsev

Platon Mikhailovich Kerzhentsev , real name Lebedev was a Russian state and party official, journalist, playwright and arts theorist who was involved with the Proletcult movement...

, the theorist of Proletcult Theatre

Proletcult Theatre

Proletcult Theatre was the theatrical branch of the Soviet cultural movement Proletcult. It was concerned with the powerful expression of ideological content as political propaganda in the years following the revolution of 1917...

.

Texts

Ellis's English translation online

Sources

• Peter Burbidge and Richard Sutton (eds), The Wagner Companion, London 1979 ISBN 0571114504
• Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, vol. II (1848–1860), Cambridge, 1976. ISBN 0521290953
• Von Geldern, James. Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. (http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft467nb2w4/)
• Richard Wagner, tr. W. Ashton Ellis, The Art-Work of the Future, and other works, University of Nebraska Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0803297524
• Richard Wagner, trans and ed. S. Spencer and B. Millington Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, London 1987.