Waart, Edo de. 56 Wachmann, Eduard 56

(iii) Autobiographies.

Wagner’s next autobiographical essay, Eine Mitteilung an meine Freunde, was written to introduce the librettos of his three Romantic operas – Der fliegende Höllander, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin – on their publication in December 1851. Concerned that he had been ‘misunderstood’ in his artistic intentions, he wished, he told his friends, to clarify them. Eine Mitteilung thus describes and offers interpretative insights into those operas, as well as mentioning, in lesser detail, the earlier operas (Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi), the prose sketches for Die Meistersinger (1845), Friedrich I (1846–9), Jesus von Nazareth (1849) and Wieland der Schmied (1850), and the Nibelung project, which was even then undergoing transformation from a single drama to a tetralogy.

However, the opening paragraph of Eine Mitteilung betrays a hidden agenda. The need had arisen, Wagner suggests there, to account for the contradiction between the ‘character and form’ of the Romantic operas and the theoretical principles laid down in the recently published essay Oper und Drama. Wagner’s approach to operatic composition was undergoing a critical change at this time, and Eine Mitteilung can be seen, on one level, as an attempt to make the three earlier operas conform to the aesthetic criteria propounded in Oper und Drama. Thus all three are characterized as incipient through-composed music dramas, with the entire score of the Holländer germinating from the ‘thematic seed’ planted in Senta’s Ballad.

More problematic is the philosophical underpinning of these works, in particular of Lohengrin. Wagner’s exegesis of what we would now call the gender relations of Lohengrin – his empathy with Elsa as the unconscious, implicitly loving female principle capable of redeeming conscious, egoistic man – owes a good deal to both Feuerbach and the revolutionary, völkisch ideals which were ostensibly not embraced by the composer until the late 1840s. It should be pointed out, however, that although the text of Lohengrin was completed in November 1845, the work as a whole took a further two or three years to finish; that Feuerbachian/revolutionary ideals were in the air earlier in the decade too; and that Wagner’s retrospective interpretation of his work is not necessarily invalidated by the chronology, since every great work of art contains more than its creator could consciously intend.

One of the purposes behind Wagner’s chief autobiographical project, Mein Leben, was similarly to ‘refute all the distortions & calumnies’ supposedly circulating about him. However, in attempting to provide a corrective to the many scurrilous reports that had indeed been launched even before his controversial relationship with King Ludwig II, Wagner succumbed all too readily to the temptation prevalent among autobiographers to paint an idealized picture of their lives. Thus Wagner’s predisposition to place himself in a line of succession that ran through Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Goethe and Beethoven caused him to misrepresent, either consciously or unconsciously, certain key experiences. The implausibility of it being Schröder-Devrient’s Leonore that made such an indelible impression on the 16-year-old composer (as opposed to her Romeo in Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi) has been well documented, as has the real inspiration for Wagner’s Faust Ouvertüre. Other examples of mythologization – concerning the geneses of Der fliegende Holländer, Das Rheingold and Parsifal – have been noted above.

In spite of – or perhaps in the light of – such distortions, Mein Leben remains an invaluable testimony to the aspirations and achievements of a composer determined to place himself at the centre of the world stage. The period covered by the autobiography is 1813 (Wagner’s birth) to 1864 (his ‘rescue’ by Ludwig II). In response to a request from the king, Wagner began, on 17 July 1865, to dictate it to Cosima, using notes from his ‘Red Pocketbook’ (see above). The dictation occupied some 15 years (albeit with interruptions), being completed on 25 July 1880. The work was divided into four volumes, of which the first three were published by G.A. Bonfantini of Basle between 1870 and 1875. Volume 4 was published by Theodor Burger of Bayreuth in 1880. Only 15 copies of the first volume were ordered, and 18 of each of the remaining volumes. They were sent to close friends and associates but recalled by Cosima after Wagner’s death. An extra copy of the first three volumes had, however, been made by Bonfantini for himself, and these were subsequently acquired (in 1892) by the collector Mary Burrell. Mein Leben finally entered the public domain with the edition of 1911, which was severely compromised by numerous printing errors (for which Cosima’s handwriting was partly responsible) and by the suppression or falsifying of some 17 passages, largely concerning people still alive at the time. Martin Gregor-Dellin’s ‘first authentic edition’ of 1963 (A, English translation by Andrew Gray, 1983) was a marked improvement, though a fully annotated, critical edition is still awaited.