sempstress herself can plait into a tissue: and there she chit-ps and twitters, as in the French confectionary-operas, until at last her peevish breath gives out, and sister Prose steps in to fill the stage. Dance, on the other hand, has only to espy some breach in the breath-taking of the tyrannising songstress, some chilling of the lava-stream of musical emotion,-and in an instant she flings her legs astride the boards; trounces sister Music off the scene, down to the solitary coiiflnement of the orchestra; and spins, and whirls, and runs around, until the public can no longer see the wood for wealth of leaves, i.e. the opera for the crowd of legs.
Thus Opera becomes the mutual compact of the egoism of the three related arts. To rescue her supremacy, Tone contracts with Dance for so many quarters-of-an-hour which shall belong to the latter alone: during this period the chalk upon the shoe-soles shall trace the regulations of the stage, and music shall be made according to the system of the leg-, and not the tone-, vibrations; item, that the singers shall be expressly forbidden to indulge in any sort of graceful bodily motion,-this is to be the exclusive property of the dancer, whereas the singer is to be pledged to complete abstention from any fancy for mimetic gestures, a restriction which will have the additional advantage of conserving his voice. With Poetry Tone settles, to the former's highest satisfaction, that she will not employ her in the slightest on the stage; nay, will as far as possible not even articulate her words and verses, and will relegate her instead to the printed text-book, necessarily to be read after the performance, in Literature's decorous garb of black and white. Thus, then, is the noble bond concluded, each art again itself; and between the dancing legs and written book, Music once more floats gaily on through all the length and breadth of her desire.- This is modern Freedom in the faithful counterfeit of Art!
Yet after such a shameful compact the art of Tone, however brilliantly she seem to reign in Opera, must needs be deeply conscious of her humiliating dependence. Her life-breath is the heart's affection; and if this also be centred on itself and its own contentment, then not only is it as much in need of the wherewithal of this contentment as are the yearnings of the senses and the understanding, but it feels its need of that object far more piercingly and vividly than they. The keenness of this need gives to the heart its courage of self-sacrifice; and just as Beethoven has spoken out this courage in a valiant deed, so have tone-poets like Gluck and Mozart expressed by glorious deeds of love the joy with which the lover sinks himself within his object; ceasing to be himself, but becoming in reward an infinitely greater thing. Wherever the edifice of Opera-though originally erected for the egoistic manifestoes of segregated arts-betrayed within itself the trace of a condition for the full absorption of Music into Poetry, these masters have accomplished the redemption of their art into the conjoint artwork. But the baleful influence of the ruling evil plight explains to us the utter isolation of such radiant deeds, together with the isolation of the very tone-poets who fulfilled them. That which was possible to the unit under certain fortunate, but almost purely accidental circumstances, is very far indeed from forming a law for the great mass of phenomena; and in the latter we can only recognise the distracted, egoistic oscillations of Caprice; whose methods indeed are those of all mere copying, since it cannot originate anything of itself. Gluck and Mozart, together with the scanty handful of kindred tone-poets, (25 ) serve us only as load-stars on the midnight sea of operatic music, to point the way to the pure artistic possibility of the ascension of the richest music into a still richer dramatic poetry, namely into that Poetic art which by this free surrender of Music to her shall first become an all-effectual Dramatic art. How impossible is the perfect artwork amid the ruling state of things, is proved by the very fact that, after Giuck and Mozart had disclosed the highest capabilities of Music, these deeds have yet remained without the smallest influence on our actual modern art's demeanour,-that the sparks which flew from their genius have only hovered before our art-world like sputtering fireworks, but have been absolutely unable to incend the fire which must have caught its flame from them, had the fuel for it been to hand.
But even the deeds of Gluck and Mozart were but one-sided deeds, i.e. they revealed the capability and the instinctive will of Music without their being understood by her sister arts, without the latter contributing towards those deeds from a like-felt genuine impulse to be absorbed in one another, and in fact without any response from their side. Only, however, from a like and common impulse of all three sister arts, can their redemption into the true Art-work, and thus this artwork itself; become a possibility. When at last the pride of all three arts in their own self-sufficiency shall break to pieces, and pass over into love for one another; when at last each art can only love itself when mirrored in the others; when at last they cease to be dissevered arts,-then will they all have power to create the perfect artwork; aye, and their own desistence, in this sense, is already of itself this Art-work, their death immediately its life.
Thus will the Drama of the Future rise up of itself; when nor Comedy, nor Opera, nor Pantomime, can any longer live; when the conditions which allowed their origin and sustained their unnatural life, shall have been entirely upheaved. These conditions can only be upheaved by the advent of those fresh conditions which breed from out themselves the Art-work of the Future. The latter, however, cannot arise alone, but only in the fullest harmony with the conditions of our whole Life. Only when the ruling religion of Egoism, which has split the entire domain of Art into crippled, self-seeking art-tendencies and art-varieties, shall have been mercilessly dislodged and torn up root and branch from every moment of the life of man, can the new religion step forth of itself to life; the religion which includes within itself the conditions of the Artwork of the Future.
Before we turn with straining eyes to the prefigurement of this Artwork-such as we have to win for ourselves from the utter disowning of our present art-surroundings -it is necessary, however, to cast a glance upon the nature of the so-called plastic arts.
III. MAN SHAPING ART FROM NATURE'S STUFFS. (26)
1. ARCHITECTURAL ART.
AS Man becomes the subject and the matter of his own artistic treatment, in the first and highest reference, so does he extend his longing for artistic portrayal to the objects of surrounding, allied, ministering Nature. Exactly in proportion as Man knows how to grasp the reference of Nature to himself in his portrayal of her, and to set himself in the centre of his survey of the world as the conscience-woken and the conscience-wakener, (27) is he able to picture Nature to himself artistically; and thereafter to impart her to the only beings for whom this portrait can be destined-to wit, to Men. In this he proceeds from a like, though not an equally imperative, impulse to that which urged the art-work whose subject and whose stuff he was himself. But only the man who has already brought forth from and in himself the directly human artwork, and can thus both comprehend and impart himself artistically, is also able to represent Nature to himself artistically; not the unawakened thrall of Nature. The Asiatic peoples, and even the Egyptians-to whom Nature only showed herself as a self-willed, elementary, or brutish force, to which Man stood in the relation either of unconditioned suffering or of grovelling self-debasement-set Nature up above them as the object of their adoration, the graven symbol of their worship; without, for that very reason, being able to exalt themselves to free, artistic consciousness. Here, then, Man could never form the subject of his own artistic exposition; but seeing that, whether he willed or no, he could only conceive all personality-such as the personal nature-force-according to a human standard, he made over his owrr image, in sooth in horrible distortion, to those objects of Nature which he fain would portray.
It was reserved for the Hellenes to first evolve the humanistic (rein menschliche) art-work in their own person, and from that to expand it to the exposition of Nature. But they could not be ripe for this human art-work itself until they had conquered Nature, in the sense in which she presented herself to the Asiatic peoples, and had so far set Man on Nature's pinnacle that they conceived those personal nature-forces as clothed with the perfect shape of human beauty, as Gods that bore themselves as men. First when Zeus breathed life throughout the world from his Olympian height, when Aphrodite rose from out the sea-foam, and Apollo proclaimed the spirit and the form of his own being as the law of beauteous human life, did the uncouth nature-deities of Asia vanish with their idols, and fair artistic Man, awakening to self-consciousness, apply the laws of human beauty to his conception and his portraiture of Nature.
Before the God's-oak at Dodona the Pelasgian ('Ur-hellene') bowed himself in waiting for the oracle; beneath the shady thatch of leaves, and circled by the verdant pillars of the God's-grove, the Orpheist raised his voice; but under the fair-ceiled roof, and amid the symmetry of marble columns of the God's-temple, the art-glad Lyrist led the mazes of his dance, to strains of sounding hymns,-and in the Theatre, which reared itself around the God's-altar- as its central point-on the one hand to the message-giving stage, on the other to the ample rows where sat the message-craving audience, the Tragedian brought to birth the living work of consummated Art.
Thus did artistic Man, of his longing for artistic commune with himself rule Nature to his own artistic needs and bid her serve his highest purpose. Thus did the Lyrist and Tragedian command the Architect to build the artistic edifice which should answer to their art in worthy manner.
The foremost, natural need urged men to build them homes and strongholds: but in that land and mid that folk
