The Revolution

After a failed attempt to establish himself in Paris between 1839 and 1842, Wagner returned to Germany at the age of 28 and found employment as conductor of the court opera at Dresden. He was there until 1849. The revolutions of 1848 in Paris stimulated reform movements elsewhere, including the German states, and Wagner, although later an arch-conservative, was at this time caught up in the wave of radicalism. His assistant, August Rockel, lost his post due to his political activities, and started a newspaper, the Volksblatter in August 1848. Wagner contributed several anonymous articles, including 'The Revolution' on 8 April 1849. The following month, May 1849, the Dresden Uprising broke out. After its suppression, Wagner fled into exile in Switzerland, where he was to remain for the next ten years. Wagner's invocation of Revolution contains images of cataclysm, of the existing world being shaken and destroyed, comparable to those in the contemporaneous writings of such diverse figures as Marx and Delacroix. And also like the early Marx, he identifies the freedom to be brought by Revolution with a freedom from alienated labour and enjoyment of creative power. The present extracts are from the translation of Wagner's text by P. R. J. Ford and Mary Whittal in Wagner.- A Documentary Study, compiled and edited by Herbert Barth, Dietrich Mack and Egon Voss, Vienna and London: Thames and Hudson, 1975, pp. 170-3.

An Excerpt From 'The Revolution'
"I will destroy the existing order of things which divides mankind into hostile nations, into strong and weak, into those with rights and those without, into rich and poor, for this order simply makes wretches of all. I will destroy the order of things which makes millions into slaves of the few, and these few into slaves of their own paper and their own wealth. I will destroy this order of things which divides work from enjoyment, which makes work a burden and enjoyment a vice, and renders one man miserable through want and the other miserable through excess. I will destroy this order of things which consumes men's strength in the service of the dominion of the dead, of lifeless matter which keeps half of mankind inactive or engaged in useless activity, which compels hundreds of thousands to devote the flower of their youth in busy indolence to the preservation of this damnable state of affairs as soldiers, officials, speculators and financiers, while the other half has to sustain the whole shameful edifice at the cost of the exhaustion of their powers and the sacrifice of any enjoyment of life. I will wipe from the face of the earth every trace of this crazy order of things, this compact of violence, lies, worry, hypocrisy, poverty, misery, suffering, tears, deceit and crime which fathers an occasional burst of impure lust, but almost never a ray of pure joy."

Quotation by Richard Wagner:
"I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven...I believe in the Holy Spirit and the truth of the one, individual Art...I believe that through this Art all men are saved, and therefore each may die of hunger for Her...I believe...that true disciples of high Art will be transfigured in a heavenly veil of sun-drenched fragrance and sweet sound, and united for eternity with the divine fount of all Harmony. May mine be the sentence of grace! Amen!"
--Wagner, An End in Paris, PW VII