散文:The monster

This essay on a famous man, whose name is not revealed until almost the end of the piece, is a study of monstrous 1 conceit 2. Filled with biographical details that keep the reader guessing to the last moment, the essay concludes with a challenging view on the nature of genius: If a genius was so prolific 3, "is it any wonder that he had no time to be a man?"

THE MONSTER

Deems Taylor

He was an undersized little man, with a head too big for his body -- a sickly little man. His nerves were had. He had skin trouble. It was agony for him to wear anything next to his skin coarser than silk. And he had seclusions 4 of grandeur 5.

He was a monster of conceit. Never for one minute did he look at the world or at people, except in relation to himself. He was not only the most important person in the world, to himself; in his own eyes he was the only person who existed. He believed himself to be one of the greatest dramatists in the world, one of the greatest thinkers, and one of the greatest composers. To hear him talk, he was Shakespeare, and Beethoven, and Plato, rolled into one. And you would have had no difficulty in hearing him talk. He was one of the most exhausting conversationalists that ever lived. An evening with him was an evening spent in listening to a monologue 6. Sometimes he was brilliant; sometimes he was maddeningly tiresome 7. But whether he was being brilliant or dull, he had one sole topic of conversation: himself. What he thought and what he did.

He had a mania 8 for being in the right. The slightest hint of disagreement, from anyone, on the most trivial point, was enough to set him off on a harangue 9 that might last for house, in which he proved himself right in so many ways, and with such exhausting volubility, that in the end his hearer, stunned 10 and deafened 11, would agree with him, for the sake of peace.

It never occurred to him that he and his doing were not of the most intense and fascinating interest to anyone with whom he came in contact. He had theories about almost any subject under the sun, including vegetarianism 12, the drama, politics, and music; and in support of these theories he wrote pamphlets, letters, books … thousands upon thousands of words, hundreds and hundreds of pages. He not only wrote these things, and published them -- usually at somebody else's expense -- but he would sit and read them aloud, for hours, to his friends and his family.

He wrote operas, and no sooner did he have the synopsis 13 of a story, but he would invite -- or rather summon -- a crowed of his friends to his house, and read it aloud to them. Not for criticism. For applause. When the complete poem was written, the friends had to come again, and hear that read aloud. Then he would publish the poem, sometimes years before the music that went with it was written. He played the piano like a composer, in the worst sense of what that implies, and he would sit down at the piano before parties that included some of the finest pianists of his time, and play for them, by the hour, his own music, needless to say. He had a composer's voice. And he would invite eminent 14 vocalists to his house and sing them his operas, taking all the parts.

He had the emotional stability of a six-year-old child. When he felt out of sorts, he would rave 15 and stamp, or sink into suicidal gloom and talk darkly of going to the East to end his days as a Buddhist 16 wonk. Ten minutes later, when something pleased him, he would rush out of doors and run around the garden, or jump up and down on the sofa, or stand on his head. He could be grief-stricken over the death of a pet dog, and he could be callous 17 and heartless to a degree that would have made a Roman emperor shudder 18.

He was almost innocent of any sense of responsibility. Not only did he seem incapable 19 of supporting himself, but it never occurred to him that he was under ay obligation to do so. He was convinced that the world owed him a living. In support of this belief, he borrowed money from everybody who was good for a loan -- men, women, friends, or strangers. He wrote begging letters by the score, sometimes groveling without shame, at other loftily offering his intended benefactor 20 the privilege of contributing to his support, and being mortally offended if the recipient 21 declined the honor. I have found no record of his ever paying or repaying money to anyone who did not have a legal claim upon it.

What money he could lay his hands on he spent like an Indian rajah. The mere 22 prospect 23 of a performance of one of his operas was enough to set him to running up bills amounting to ten times the amount of his prospective 24 royalties 25. No one will ever know -- certainly he never knew -- how much money he owed. We do know that his greatest benefactor gave him $6,000 to pay the most pressing of his debts in one city, and a year later had to give him $16,000 to enable him to live in another city without being thrown into jail for debt.

He was equally unscrupulous in other ways. An endless procession of women marched through his life. His first wife spent twenty years enduring and forgiving his infidelities. His second wife had been the wife of his most devoted 26 friend and admirer, from whom he stole her. And even while he was trying to persuade her to leave her first husband he was writing to a friend to inquire whether he could suggest some wealthy woman -- any wealthy woman -- whom he could marry for her money.

He was completely selfish in his other personal relationships. His liking 27 for his friends was measured solely 28 by the completeness of their devotion to him, or by their usefulness to him, whether financial or artistic 29. The minute they failed him -- even by so much as refusing dinner invitation -- or began to lessen 30 in usefulness, he cast them off without a second thought. At the end of his life he had exactly one friend left whom he had known even in middle age.

The name of this monster was Richard Wagner. Everything that I have said about him you can find on record -- in newspapers, in police reports, in the testimony 31 of people who knew him, in his own letters, between the lines of his autobiography 32. And the curious thing about this record is that it doesn't matter in the least.

Because this undersized, sickly, disagreeable, fascinating little man was right all the time. The joke was on us. He was one of the world's greatest dramatists; he was a great thinker; he was one of the most stupendous musical geniuses that, up to now, the world has ever seen. The world did owe him a living.

When you consider what he wrote -- thirteen operas and music dramas, eleven of them still holding the stage, eight of them unquestionably worth ranking among the world's great musico-dramatic masterpieces -- when you listen to what he wrote, the debts and heartaches that people had to endure from him don't seem much of a price. Think of the luxury with which for a time, at least, fate rewarded Napoleon, the man who ruined France and looted Europe; and then perhaps you will agree that a few thousand dollars' worth of debts were not too heavy a price to pay for the Ring trilogy.

What if he was faithless to his friends and to his wives? He had one mistress to whom he was faithful to the day of his death: Music. Not for a single moment did he ever compromise with what he believed, with what be dreamed. There is not a line of his music that could have been conceived by a little mind. Even when he is dull, or downright bad, he is dull in the grand manner. There is greatness about his worst mistakes. Listening to his music, one does not forgive him for what he may or may not have been. It is not a matter of forgiveness. It is a matter of being dumb with wonder that his poor brain and body didn't burst under the torment 33 of the demon 34 of creative energy that lived inside him, struggling, clawing, scratching to be released; tearing, shrieking 35 at him to write the music that was in him. The miracle is that what he did in the little space of seventy years could have been done at all, even by a great genius. Is it any wonder that he had no time to be a man?