Wagner: Jewish Characteristics

 

Source: http://www.renegadetribune.com/wagner-jewish-characteristics/

 

It matters not to which particular European nationality he may belong, the jew's appearance strikes us as something so unpleasantly incongruous that, involuntarily, we wish to have nothing in common with him.

 

 

DAS JUDENTHUM IN DER MUSIK

 

“JEWRY IN MUSIC”

 

The Original Essay of 1850

 

Richard Wagner

 

II. CHARACTERISTICS

 

The jew who, as we all know, claims to have a God all to himself, arrests our attention in appearance. It matters not to which particular European nationality he may belong, the jew’s appearance strikes us as something so unpleasantly incongruous that, involuntarily, we wish to have nothing in common with him.

 

Formerly no doubt this redounded to his misfortune, but nowadays we cannot fail to recognise it as a misfortune which quite permits of his still feeling very well ; so much so, that, considering the measure of his success, his dissimilarity from us is even liable to be esteemed by himself as a distinction. We are not concerned with the moral side of this disagreeable play of Nature but merely with the consideration of its relation to Art; and, in this connection, must be mentioned the inconceivability of the jew’s exterior as a representative medium.

 

Thus, when plastic Art wishes to represent the jew, it generally draws its model from imagination; his either discreetly ennobling or leaving out exterior, altogether those traits which characterise his presence in ordinary life. Never in his wanderings does he stray upon the theatrical stage; exceptions to this being so rare, both in point of number and in respect of the circumstances attending them, that they may be said to confirm the rule.

 

No character, whether antique or modern, hero or lover, can be even thought of as represented by a jew without an instant consciousness on our part of the ludicrous inappropriateness of such a proceeding. This is extremely important; for, if we hold a man to be exteriorly disqualified by race for any artistic presentment whatsoever – that is to say, not merely for any one in particular but for all without exception – it follows that we should also regard him as unfit for any artistic pronouncement.

 

The speech of the jew is however of even greater importance; considered, that is, in relation to its effect upon us – an effect which constitutes the essential feature to dwell upon in referring to jewish influence upon Music. The jew converses in the tongue of the people amongst whom he dwells from age to age, but he does this invariably after the manner of a foreigner.!

 

As it is foreign to our purpose to account for this fact we may for that reason claim not only to omit all accusation against Christian civilisation for having forcibly kept the jew secluded, but also to acquit the latter of responsibility for consequences of the separation; at the same time that we permit ourselves to treat of such results.

 

On the other hand, the duty of elucidating the aesthetic character of these circumstances is one which devolves upon us in full force. Immediately, the general circumstance, that a jew speaks his modern European language only as if acquired and not as if he were native to it, shuts him out from all capability of full, independent and characteristic expression of his ideas.

 

A language is not the work of one man, but its mode of expression and its development are the joint emanation of an ancient community; and only he whose life has been fostered within that community can expect to take part in its creations. But alone with his Jehovah stood the jew outside all such, his race divided and bereft of native land, with all development denied to it; even its peculiar tongue – the Hebrew – being only sustained to it as a dead language.

 

Even the greatest genius has hitherto found it impossible to write genuine poetry in a foreign tongue. But in the position of a foreign tongue to the jew has our entire European civilisation remained. As in the formation of the one so in the development of the other he has borne no part, but, at the most, merely looked on, with feelings cold and even hostile, as is natural to a homeless unfortunate. In such language or in such art the jew can naturally but echo and imitate, and is perforce debarred from fluent expression and pure creative work. 

 

But the mere audible twang of the jew’s speech is also particularly offensive. Two thousand years of intercourse with European nations have, in his case not sufficed to eradicate peculiarities of the Semitic mode of expression, which peculiarities of the Semitic mode of expression, which has defeated all culture through the strange obstinacy of the jewish nature. 

 

The hissing, shrill sounding buzzing and grunting mannerisms of jewish speech fall at once upon our ear as something strange and disagreeable in kind. These mannerisms also take the form of an application of the words entirely inappropriate to our national speech; of an arbitrary prolongation of them; and of a phrase-construction producing the total effect of a confused babble; in listening to which our attention is monopolised by the manner of utterance and correspondingly diverted from the sense of what is being said.

 

The exceptional importance of this circumstance as explaining the impression produced upon us particularly by the music works of modern jews must first of all be recognised. Hear a jew speak; every shortcoming in point of human expression has its sting, and the cold indifference of his peculiar “Gelabber” never rises to any warmth – not even in presence of the stimulation to higher or heated passion. 

 

On the other hand, should it happen that we become impelled to such ardour when speaking to a jew, his incapability of effective response will invariably cause him to give way. Never does the jew become aroused in merely sentimental expression with us. If ever he becomes excited at all it is on behalf of some special and selfish interest. Either it is his material profit which is in question, or his personal vanity; and, as his excitement has usually a distorting effect upon his speech, it also assumes a ridiculous character not in the least calculated to arouse sympathy for the speaker.

 

No doubt it is conceivable that in connection with their mutual affairs, and particularly in family concerns where the purely human feeling finds its most natural scope for exercise, the jews may nevertheless be capable of an adequate expression of feeling, at all events in the sense of appearing sufficient to one another. That, however, scarcely falls within our purview, as we are expressly engaged in contemplation of the jew so far as, in life and art-intercourse, he affects ourselves.

 

But, if the defects of speech to which reference has been made practically withhold from the jew the capacity for all artistic delivery, feeling through the medium of spoken words, it follows that, through the medium of song, such expression must be far more distinctly impossible. Song, for example, is but speech intensified or raised to the level of passion. 

 

If the jew, in allowing himself a greater intensity of expression through the medium of speech, may make himself ridiculous, but cannot excite our sympathy in the least degree, he will, should he proceed to the height of song, become entirely unsupportable. In the latter, everything which had previously moved us unfavourably, whether relating to his speech or to his outward appearance, becomes intensified; and we are either driven from the scene or else chained to the spot by the utter absurdity of such a manifestation.

 

In Song the peculiarity of the jewish nature which affects us so disagreeably is very naturally at its height, considering that song is the most vivid and unquestionably the truest expression of personal feeling; so that, to whatever branch of Art we may feel inclined to admit the jews as capable, that of song, at all events, must to him, by a natural admission, be eternally denied.