SOURCE: Nattiez, Jean-Jacques. “The Theoretical Essays of 1849 to 1851.” In Wagner Androgyne: A Study in Interpretation, translated by Stewart Spencer, pp. 12-42. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993.

In the following essay, Nattiez defines Wagner's mythologized theory of the splintering and reunification of western art.

Hardly had Wagner completed the full score of Lohengrin on 28 April 1848 when a whole new series of ideas began to clamor for his attention—The Nibelung Legend, the prose draft of “Siegfrieds Tod,” an article on the Wibelungs, the prose draft of Wieland der Schmied, the essays. … [T]heoretical reflections and plans for dramatic works went hand in hand at this crucial moment in the life of a man whose mind was teeming with a thousand simultaneous projects, as he glimpsed the creative opportunities for the whole of the rest of his life even if, for the present, he lacked the maturity needed to...