The long sea voyage of twenty-five days, full of mishaps, had a very important bearing upon his art. The stormy sea along the Norwegian coast and the stories of the sailors who never doubled the existence of the “Flying Dutchman,” gave life and definite form to the legend. He remained but a short time in London, seeing the city and its two houses of Parliament, and then went to Boulogne-sur-Mer. He remained there four weeks, for Meyerbeer was there taking sea baths, and his Parisian introductions were of the highest importance. The composer of the “Huguenots” immediately recognized the talent of the younger artist, and particularly praised the text to “Rienzi,” which Scribe was soon to imitate for him in his weak production of “The Prophet.” At the same time he pointed out the obstacles to success in the great city which it would be extremely difficult for one to overcome without means or connections. Wagner however relied on his good star and departed for that city which he conceived to be the only one that could open the way to the stage of the world for a dramatic composer. The result of the visit to Paris was an abundance of disappointments, but it added largely to his experience, increased his strength, nay more, even gave rise to his first great work.
Meyerbeer recommended him to the director of the Renaissance Theatre and besides acquainted him with artists of note. An introduction to the Grand Opera however was out of the question for one who was an utter stranger. Through Heinrich Laube, then in Paris, he made the acquaintance of Heine, who was much surprised that a young musician with his wife and a large Newfoundland dog should come to Paris, where everything, however meritorious, must conquer its position. Wagner himself has described these experiences in Lewald’s “Europa,” under the title of “Parisian Fatalities of Germans.” His first object was to win some immediate success and he accordingly offered to the above named director the “Liebesverbot,” which apparently was well suited to French taste. Unfortunately this theatre went into bankruptcy, so all his efforts were fruitless. He now sought to make himself known through lyrics set to music and wrote several, such as Heine’s “Grenadiers,” but a favorite amateur balladist, Loisa Puget, reigned supreme in the Paris salons, and neither he nor Berlioz could obtain a hearing. His means were constantly diminishing and a terrible bitterness filled his soul against the splendid Paris salons and theatre world, whose interior appeared so hollow.
It happened one day that he heard the Ninth symphony at a performance of the Conservatory, whose concerts were always splendidly and carefully executed, and, as before, it stirred his inmost soul. Once more his genius came to his rescue. He felt intuitively—what we now know with historical certainty—that this work was born of the same spirit which bore Faust, and thus in him also this “ever restless spirit seeking for something new” was called into being and activity. The overture to Faust, in reality the prelude of a Faust symphony, tells us in tones of mighty resolve that his power to do and to will still lived, and would not yield till it had performed its part. This was toward the close of the year 1840.
“The God, who in my breast resides,
Can deeply stir the inner sources;
Though all my energies he guides,
He cannot change external forces.
Thus by the burden of my days oppressed,
Death is desired, and life a thing unblest.”
With such a confession he regained strength to battle against Parisian superficiality, which even in the sacred sphere of art seemed to seek only for outward success and to admire whatever fashion dictated. His criticisms on the condition of life and art in Paris are very severe. Even the noble Berlioz does not escape censure from the artist’s stand-point, while Liszt, who resided there at the time, he had not yet learned to appreciate. But again the saving genius of his art, German music, rose resplendent, and she it was who recalled him to his own self and to art.
He now entirely gave up the “Liebesverbot,” as he felt that he could not respect himself unless he did so. He thought of his native land. A heroic patriotism seized him, although tinged with a political bearing, for he did not forget the Bundestag and its resistance to every movement for liberty, and yet withal he beheld the coming grandeur of his fatherland. Now he himself first fully comprehended Rienzi’s words about his noble bride, whom he saw dishonored and defiled, and a deep anger awakened in him those mighty exhorting accents which his enthusiasm had already intoned in Rienzi’s first speech to the nobility and the people, and which had not been heard in Germany since Schiller’s days. As Rienzi resolved not to rest until his proud Roma was crowned as queen of the world, so now there flashed through him also the conviction, as he has so beautifully said in speaking of Beethoven’s music, that the genius of Germany was destined to rescue the mind of man from its deep degradation. In the merely superficial culture, which the Semitic-Gallic spirit had impressed upon the period, and with which it held all Europe as in a net of iron, he saw only utter frivolity. The great revolution had brought about many political and social reforms but the liberation of the soul, like that accomplished by the Reformation, it had not effected. There was a material condition and mental tendency which he afterward, not without reason, compared with the times of the Roman emperors. Heine and his associates formed the literary centre, but even more effective in its influence was Meyerbeer’s grand opera. The imperious sway of fashion had usurped the place of real culture and the problem was therefore again to elevate culture with his art to its proper sphere. He became more and more conscious of a mission which went far beyond the realm of mere art-work. Even in this foreign land, which had treated him so coldly and with such hostile egoism, he was to find the ways and means to carry out his mission and to create for us actual human beings instead of phantoms. In his “Parisian Fatalities,” Wagner said of the Germans in Paris that they learned anew to appreciate their mother tongue and to strengthen their patriotic feeling. “Rienzi” was an illustration of this patriotic sentiment. He now resolved to produce this composition for Dresden and the thought gave him fresh zeal for work. Elsewhere, he says of the Germans: “As much as they generally dread the return to their native land, they yet pine away from it with homesickness.” Longing for home! Had he not once before beheld a being wasting away in the constant longing for the eternal home and yet destined never to find rest? The “Flying Dutchman” recurred to his imagination and to the outward form of the ever-wandering seaman was added the human heart, constantly longing for love and faithfulness. After having come to an understanding with Heine, he rapidly arranged the material of this Wandering Jew of the sea. A fortunate circumstance, the return of Meyerbeer to Paris, even gave promise that the work might secure a hearing at the grand opera.
That he might be at rest while engaged on this work he earned his daily bread by arranging popular operas for cornet-a-piston. He submitted to this deep humiliation for he was conscious of the prize to be obtained by “serving.” A partial compensation in thus working for hire he found in the permission given him by the sympathetic music publisher, Schlesinger, to write for his Gazette Musicale to which he contributed many brilliant articles. In these he could at least do in words what he was not allowed to do otherwise. He could disclose the splendor of German music, and never before has anyone written of Mozart, Weber, and Beethoven with keener appreciation or profounder thought. Of the last named he proposed to write a comprehensive biography and entered into correspondence with a publisher in Germany.[A] He confronted the formal culture of the Latin races with the character of the German mind, as it were the head of the Medusa, and the consciousness of his mission kept up his spirits under the most trying circumstances. With Paris as an art centre he had done. Like Mozart’s “Idomeneo” to the Opera Seria, “Rienzi” was his last tribute to the Grand Opera. They have forever extinguished the genre in style by exhausting its capabilities.
In the meantime “Rienzi” had been accepted at Dresden, and he now hoped through Meyerbeer’s influence to see it also accepted by the Grand Opera. The director, however, had been so well pleased with the “Flying Dutchman” that he wished to appropriate the poem for himself, or rather for another composer. In order therefore not to lose everything, Wagner sold the copyright for Paris for 500 francs and it soon after appeared as “Vaisseau Phantome.” It naturally followed that for the present his most urgent task was to complete the work for