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taadid Citudiec Byte wa teat aad CChaitad pode as ak Lia Saale time was almost consistently despicable as a man. He thus poses most acutely the aesthetic-moral ques- tion of how the creator of music as radiant es the ( —~--- 1 quintet in Die Meistersinger or as heart-wrenching as ‘the reconciliation of Briinnhilde and Wotan in Die | = Malkiire could have been quite so consummate a pig in his daily life. A monater of egotism, a fanatical bigot, a philanderer, _Charlatan and double-dealer, Wagner the man com- ’ bined the charms and talents of Tartuffe, Rasputin and - Dr. Goebbels in his diminutive, satin-clad frame. But at the same time he produced some of the most glorious _ music the world has ever heard; music by turn heroic, , hypnotic, compassionate and neurotic. In Gutman’s apt "Phrase, he was “the Orpheus of all secret misery.” __ This fine biography, an outgrowth of the author's lectures to the Bayreuth master classes, wastes no time attempting to reconcile the artist with the man. Gutman :-eanely admires that which is admirable and detests that '‘ which is detestable in Wagner. He thus provides a long- , needed modern, one-volume life for those readers who ‘ere already fairly familiar with Wagner’s works but ! are unaware of all the seamy details of his life and j who wish to see him placed accurately and objectively : within the cultural context of his time. “ So objective is Gutman, in fact, that one wonders | how he could have borne living with his subject for as » long as he must have done to produce this book. “I am the German spirit,” Wagner once modestly proclaimed, ' “consider the incomparable magic of my works.” Gut. : man does go, in absorbing details, but finds Siegfried a Richard Freedman teaches English a1 Simmons College. ' BOOK WORLD May 12, 1968 DR ee soe - et : i oa F fa Be} oF _ Sees a ¥ ~ . fT ” 1 . + tes As Ree . . "e . a LF TA i z * be . ve 1 it ‘ . a 9 ae SOY taeh ee Moa yh. i . veer: Lie ’ 2 , 5 1 mo 7 ‘o ‘ 2 ee a ee 2 gua oh a ee oe | enough for this “voluptuousness of Heil!” Gutman’s attitude is similarly ambivalent. He ts en- Soak Aedes aeons thratled by the epic decadence of Wagner’s srt, as any- one must be who gives himself fully to-it (most anti- Woagnerians simply haven't listened to him carefully enough). But he is merciless ieahamyth that Wagner was also a respectable, let alone a profound, poet and thinker. He has read all Wagner's dreadful polemical essays, and exposes their shoddy “ideas” for the evil _ twaddle they are. On the other hand, Wagner was a genuinely tor- mented genius whose paranoia should elicit as much sympathy as if he had been committed for it. And if, while lashing out at “Franco-Jewish” financial canni- ness, he robbed everybody from Ladwig Ii to the pettiest tradesmen, it was on the perfectly valid theory that the world owed him a living — and a good one at that. “T cannot sleep on straw and drink bad whisky,” be once exclaimed. “i must have money . .. but what is the good of hundreds where thousands are needed?” Con- . sidering the sort of people who generally do have thousands, was the creator of Tristan und Isolde en- tirely unjustified in his demands? Ian’t Wagner’s insuf- ferable arrogance somewhat mitigated by the fact that he really was every inch the genius he proclaimed him- self to be? It is usually those who are well-off who expect self-abnegating spirituality from their artists. In all fairness, then, Wagner was nof entirely evil. If an inflamed finger prevented him from attending the funeral of his first, long-suffering wife, Minna, he was genuinely distrsught at the coincident death of his dog, Pohl. He was « great lover of dumb animals. It was co only people he hated. a Co Paget