geyer
LUDWIG GEYER.
Where and when, we may ask, was this "discovery" made? We know that there has long been tittle-tattle current to the effect that Wagner's real father was not the police official whose name he bears, but the brilliant actor, musician, painter and dramatist, who came to the rescue of Wagner's mother in the early days of her widowhood, and married her some nine months afterwards. For the last generation or two a certain number of people have been going about the world shaking their heads mysteriously and darkly hinting at what they could tell if their lips were not sealed. The root of the legend is a notorious remark of Nietzsche's. That philosopher had seen one of the privately10 printed copies of the Autobiography about 1870, and his query11 in the postscript12 to Der Fall Wagner, "was Wagner a German at all?" and his point-blank statement that "his father was an actor of the name of Geyer," were supposed to have their justification13 in the Autobiography. It was confidently asserted that when that appeared the truth would be made known to all the world in Wagner's own confession14. Well, the Autobiography has appeared, and what Wagner says there is that Friedrich Wagner was his father. There is not the shadow of a hint in the book that Geyer was anything more than a friend of the family. (Mr. James Huneker, who discusses the subject in an essay in his book The Pathos15 of Distance (1913) thinks he sees such a hint, and a pretty broad one, in one passage that he quotes; but the wish, I imagine, is father to the thought: few people would care to put the construction upon it that he does.) Mr. Huneker as good as asserts that the commencement of the Autobiography has been tampered16 with. The reputation of Villa17 Wahnfried in editorial matters is certainly not of the best; but after the express assurance that has been given the world that the Autobiography has been printed just as Wagner left it, something more than mere18 suspicion is required to bolster19 up a charge of such atrocious bad faith. Mr. Huneker tells us that "the late Felix Mottl [the conductor], in the presence of several well-known musical critics of New York City, declared in 1904 that he had read the above statement" (i.e. "I am the son of Ludwig Geyer"). That is a little staggering: but again one prefers to think that Mottl or someone else was mistaken, rather than that Cosima and Siegfried Wagner have been guilty of an incredible piece of literary dishonesty. As for Mr. Huneker's further "fact"—that there are portraits of Wagner's mother and of Geyer at Wahnfried, and none of Friedrich Wagner—that is easily accounted for; no portrait of the latter has ever been traced, with the exception of a small pastel, while Geyer was an artist and fond of painting himself.
Sir Charles Stanford attempts to support his very dubious20 thesis by some show of musical argument. He alleges21 that the most marked characteristic in such little Jewish music as still exists is the continual repetition of short phrases—a method, he says, which Mendelssohn "uses to the verge22 of monotony" in his later works, and which is visible again in Wagner's employment of leading motives23. Note, to begin with, the restriction24 of the use of this method to Mendelssohn's later works. Being a Jew, Mendelssohn surely would have betrayed this characteristic in the work of his whole life, if it really be a characteristic rooted in the Hebrew nature. It looks as though the ingenuous25 argument were that there is no Jew like an old Jew. But it is of even less applicability to Wagner than to Mendelssohn. It is true that in the Ring Wagner worked to a great extent upon short leading motives; but the employment of these was due to the special problems of structure which he was then engaged in working out. Sir Charles Stanford, with his extensive knowledge of Wagner's music, must know that the short phrase is not a characteristic of Wagner's style as a whole. The phrases in Rienzi, the Flying Dutchman, Tannh?user, Lohengrin, the youthful Symphony, the Faust Overture26, and half-a-dozen other works, are as long-breathed as any of Brahms's. Moreover Sir Charles Stanford admits that in at least half of his work Wagner was a typical Teuton. He speaks of Brahms's melodies as being "long, developed, diatonic, and replete27 with a quality which may, for lack of a better term, be called 'swing.'" We get precisely28 the same qualities in the Meistersinger. Sir Charles Stanford can hardly be serious when he lays it down that Wagner was a typical Teuton when he wrote the Meistersinger, and a typical Jew when he wrote the Ring. But further, is the short thematic phrase a characteristic of the Hebrew composer? Will Sir Charles be good enough to illustrate29 this point for us from the work of Jewish composers like Mabler and Max Bruch? If, indeed, we are to attribute Hebraic ancestry30 to a composer on the strength merely or mainly of a certain shortness of melodic31 breath, there are dozens of composers who would have difficulty in repelling32 the imputation33. Was there ever a composer who habitually34 worked upon such short phrases as Grieg, for example? Is there anything to equal for brevity some of the themes with which Beethoven worked such wonders? And what precisely is a short phrase? Will some one provide us with a sort of inch-rule and table of measurements, by the application of which we shall be able to say precisely where musical Judaism ends and Gentilism begins?
These are surely very flimsy foundations on which to erect35 a theory that Wagner was a Jew. It is, of course, not impossible: nothing is impossible in this world. One of the rumours36 afloat is that Wagner himself, in private, spoke37 of Geyer as being his father. Again proof or disproof is impossible; though Mrs. Burrell gives a facsimile of a letter from Wagner of the 23rd October 1872 (sending Feustel a certificate of baptism), in which he goes out of his way to call himself "Polizei-Amts-Actuarius-Sohn" (Police-actuary's son).
Another branch of the argument is that Wagner was typically Jewish in appearance. I question whether that theory would ever have gained currency except for the back-stairs gossip with regard to his supposed paternity. It has long been a puzzle to the present writer to discover what there is particularly Jewish in Wagner's face. It is true that his nose was large and to some extent aquiline38; but it is certainly not the nose that we are accustomed to regard as typically Jewish. The portraits of Geyer that we possess do not show a physiognomy that anybody would call peculiarly Hebraic. On the other hand, Wagner's mother had a nose not only very prominent and curved like Wagner's, but suggesting a Jewish origin far more than either his or Geyer's. For the rest there is nothing whatever in Wagner's face that could lead anyone to think he was a Jew. Let us take Sir Charles Stanford's own test. He remarks that "no one who had known Brahms, especially in his later years, when the Jewish type, if it exists in the blood, is most accentuated40, could fail to see that in face, in complexion41, in hair and in gait he was a pure Teuton, without a trace of Eastern relationship or characteristics." Let us admit, for the sake of argument, that it is in a man's later years that Jewish characteristics in the blood show themselves most markedly in the face. Now Wagner, so far from looking more Jewish in his maturity42 and old age, looked decidedly less Jewish. In some of the later full-faced portraits, indeed, the face bears an extraordinary resemblance to that of Mr. Asquith. Some people would call it a very English face. And what of the other members of the Wagner family? We have portraits of his uncle Adolf (1774-1835) and his brother Albert (the latter was born fourteen years before Wagner, and long before Geyer comes into the story). But these faces are unmistakably of the same general cast as Wagner's: that of Albert, indeed, is almost exactly the face of Wagner, but without the genius. The bust43 of Adolf Wagner shows a nose, forehead, and other features very like those of Richard. The chin is not so pronounced, but the two faces are incontestably of the same type. According to Frau Rose, the daughter of Carl Friedrich Wagner's friend, Gustav Zocher, Wagner's father "was small and slightly crooked44, but had a fine face." "I have often thought," says Mrs. Burrell, to whom Frau Rose made this communication, "in looking at Wagner, that he had a narrow escape of deformity; he was not in the least deformed45, yet the immense head was poised46 on the shoulders at the angle peculiar39 to hunchbacks." The mother also was tiny and eccentric, with "an electric disposition47." No judge and jury would say on this evidence that there was any reason whatever to doubt the German paternity of Wagner and assume the Jewish.
There are one or two facts, however, that must be taken into consideration on the other side. Why should Geyer, a struggling artist, be so willing to assume the burden of the widow Wagner and her seven young children? A man of the highest character and the warmest heart he certainly was: are these sufficient explanation of his chivalrous48 conduct? We have letters of his to Frau Wagner during the weeks that immediately followed the husband's death. The tone of them is warm, but friendly and sympathetic rather than loving. He generally addresses her simply as "Friend," or "Dear Friend." His goodness of heart is shown by such remarks as that à propos of the recovery of the little Albert from illness: "I have indeed felt sincerely with you in your terrible experience, for if Albert were my own son he could not be nearer to my heart." There is not a line in the letters that shows any more affection for Richard than for Albert; the latter, indeed, is mentioned the more frequently. Yet some suspicion clusters round a fact that cannot be discovered from the ordinary biographies of Wagner. The date of the marriage of Johanna Wagner and Geyer is not generally known; it cannot be found, for example, in Glasenapp's big official life of Wagner; while in other biographies the date is variously given as from one month to two or three years after Carl Friedrich's death. The marriage is now known to have taken place in August 1814—on the 14th according to Otto Bournot, on the 28th according to Mrs. Burrell;[411] and a daughter, C?cilie, was born to them on the 26th February 1815,—i.e. six months later. This fact must necessarily count somewhat in our estimate of the nature of the earlier relations between Geyer and Frau Wagner.
On the whole the weight of external evidence is against the theory that Geyer was Wagner's father: the facial resemblances between Richard, his brother Albert, his sister Ottilie (born 14th March 1811), and his uncle Adolf, and Frau Rose's testimony49 as to the size and appearance of the police actuary, Carl Friedrich, make it more than probable that the last was the composer's father. But the explicit50 statements of Nietzsche and Mottl cannot be disregarded. The question of their veracity51, however, could very easily be settled. There must be more than a dozen of the early copies of Mein Leben in existence. Mrs. Burrell, who seems to have spent a life-time and a fortune in accumulating Wagner letters and documents,[412] actually managed to buy a copy of this privately printed edition. One gathers that she knew Wagner and Cosima, and had evidently small liking52 for the latter. She appears to have been horrified53 by the picture Wagner gives of himself and his friends, and at the many evasions54, suppressions and distortions of the truth in the work. "This unmentionable book," she calls it in one place. She doubts whether Wagner wrote it, and hints that it has really been pieced together—presumably by Cosima: "To the well-informed and candid55 mind the book cannot fail to give the impression of being written up after conversations; the exact words are not remembered, and the writer unconsciously imparts another stamp to the language; it is not the German of a German," which is an obvious side-blow at the Franco-Hungarian-Jewish Cosima. "The easily proved inaccuracies are legion...." "The unmistakable purpose of the book is to ruin the reputation of everyone connected with Wagner.... I maintain that Wagner consented under pressure to the book being put together, that he yielded to the temptation of allowing everyone else's character to be blackened in order to make his own great fault [apparently his conduct towards von Bülow] pale before the iniquities56, real or invented, of others.... The poet who wrote the pure and impassioned poems of which Senta and Elsa are the heroines could never have conceived so flat and prosaic57 a plan of revenge upon everyone that had ever annoyed or thwarted58 him, yes, and worse still, upon many who had benefited and befriended him." She concludes that "Richard Wagner is not responsible for the book."
These remarks are interesting as showing the disgust felt by one who knew something of Wagner at the many basenesses perpetrated in Mein Leben—a disgust that thousands of readers have felt since the publication of the book. There may be something in Mrs. Burrell's theory as to how the work was put together; but Wagner undoubtedly59 assumed full responsibility for it, as is shown by the letter of his to the printer, Bonfantini, Basel (1st July 1870), of which Mrs. Burrell gives a facsimile: he is having fifteen copies printed "dans le seul but d'éviter la perte possible du seul manuscrit, et de les remettre entre les mains d'amis fidèles et [conscientieux?] qui les doivent garder pour un avenir lointain" ("with the object simply of guarding against the possible loss of the sole manuscript, and of placing the copies in the hands of faithful and [conscientious?] friends, who should keep them for a distant future"). But Mrs. Burrell is generally right in her facts, and there may be something more than mere conjecture60 in her hint that the book, so far as its actual composition is concerned, is Cosima's work at least as much as Wagner's. This would account, among other things, for the tone of enmity or contempt towards almost everyone who had come into his life before herself. But the point with which we are most closely concerned here is not how Mein Leben came to be written, but what it contains on the first page. The copies that Nietzsche and Mottl saw belonged to the same imprint61 as Mrs. Burrell's copy. This last must still be in existence somewhere. If the possessor would allow an inspection62 of it, it could be settled once for all whether the first page opens with the words "I am the son of Ludwig Geyer," or "My father, Friedrich Wagner...." If Mottl was speaking the truth, there is an end of the matter—except that our last remaining shred63 of respect for the editorial probity64 of Wahnfried will be gone. If Mottl was deceiving himself and others, we can only fall back on a balance of the evidence I have tried to marshal in the preceding pages.
A touch of unconscious humour has been given to the situation by a recent book of Otto Bournot, Ludwig Heinrich Christian [strange name this for a Jew!] Geyer, der Stiefvater Richard Wagners. Bournot has delved65 with Teutonic thoroughness into the records of the Geyer family, has traced it back to 1700, in which year one Benjamin Geyer was a "town musician" in Eisleben, and has established the piquant66 facts that all the Geyers were of the evangelical faith, that most of them were Protestant church organists, and that all of them married maidens67 of unimpeachable68 German extraction. It makes one smile to find how many of these alleged69 Jews had "Christian" as one of their forenames, as Wagner's putative70 father had. Even, therefore, if it should be proved at some time or other that Geyer was Richard Wagner's real father, this can only bring with it the admission that the amount of Jewish blood in the composer's veins71 must have been negligibly small. At the worst he was much more of a German than, say, a semi-Dutchman like Beethoven; much more German than the present English royal family is English; and Bournot is therefore justified72 in holding that in the last resort the question of Wagner's paternity cannot affect the "national" quality of the work of Bayreuth.
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1
autobiography
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| n.自传 | |
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2
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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3
piquancy
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| n.辛辣，辣味，痛快 | |
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4
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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5
malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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partisans
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| 游击队员( partisan的名词复数 )； 党人； 党羽； 帮伙 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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privately
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| adv.以私人的身份，悄悄地，私下地 | |
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query
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| n.疑问，问号，质问；vt.询问，表示怀疑 | |
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postscript
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| n.附言，又及；(正文后的)补充说明 | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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tampered
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| v.窜改( tamper的过去式 )；篡改；（用不正当手段）影响；瞎摆弄 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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bolster
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| n.枕垫；v.支持，鼓励 | |
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dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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alleges
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| 断言，宣称，辩解( allege的第三人称单数 ) | |
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verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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restriction
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| n.限制，约束 | |
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ingenuous
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| adj.纯朴的，单纯的；天真的；坦率的 | |
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overture
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| n.前奏曲、序曲，提议，提案，初步交涉 | |
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replete
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| adj.饱满的，塞满的；n.贮蜜蚁 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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ancestry
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| n.祖先，家世 | |
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melodic
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| adj.有旋律的，调子美妙的 | |
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repelling
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| v.击退( repel的现在分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开 | |
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imputation
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| n.归罪，责难 | |
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habitually
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| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
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erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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aquiline
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| adj.钩状的，鹰的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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accentuated
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| v.重读( accentuate的过去式和过去分词 )；使突出；使恶化；加重音符号于 | |
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41
complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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bust
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| vt.打破；vi.爆裂；n.半身像；胸部 | |
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crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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deformed
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| adj.畸形的；变形的；丑的，破相了的 | |
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poised
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| a.摆好姿势不动的 | |
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disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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48
chivalrous
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| adj.武士精神的；对女人彬彬有礼的 | |
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49
testimony
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| n.证词；见证，证明 | |
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50
explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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51
veracity
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| n.诚实 | |
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52
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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horrified
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| a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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54
evasions
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| 逃避( evasion的名词复数 )； 回避； 遁辞； 借口 | |
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candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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iniquities
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| n.邪恶( iniquity的名词复数 )；极不公正 | |
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prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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thwarted
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| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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61
imprint
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| n.印痕，痕迹；深刻的印象；vt.压印，牢记 | |
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inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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shred
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| v.撕成碎片，变成碎片；n.碎布条，细片，些少 | |
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probity
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| n.刚直；廉洁，正直 | |
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delved
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| v.深入探究，钻研( delve的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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piquant
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| adj.辛辣的，开胃的，令人兴奋的 | |
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67
maidens
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| 处女( maiden的名词复数 )； 少女； 未婚女子； （板球运动）未得分的一轮投球 | |
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unimpeachable
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| adj.无可指责的；adv.无可怀疑地 | |
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alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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putative
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| adj.假定的 | |
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veins
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| n.纹理；矿脉( vein的名词复数 )；静脉；叶脉；纹理 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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