The men to whom it was disclosed, and who first
sought to refuse, and then accepted it, passionately, without
reservations, found in it their truth. It came to their ears as the
sound of their own voices. It was the common, the universal tongue. Not
alone on Germany, not alone on Europe, but on every quarter of the globe
that had developed coal-power civilization, the music of Wagner
descended with the formative might of the perfect image. Men of every
race and continent knew it to be of themselves as much as was their
hereditary and racial music, and went out to it as to their own
adventure. And wherever music reappeared, whether under the hand of the
Japanese or the semi-African or the Yankee, it seemed to be growing from
Wagner as the bright shoots of the fir sprout from the dark ones grown
the previous year. A whole world, for a period, came to use his idiom.
His dream was recognized during his very lifetime as an integral portion
of the consciousness of the entire race.
For Wagner's music is the century's paean of material triumph. It is its
cry of pride in its possessions, its aspiration toward greater and ever
greater objective power. Wagner's style is stiff and diapered and
emblazoned with the sense of material increase. It is brave, superb,
haughty with consciousness of the gigantic new body acquired by man.
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