Wagner’s aim at expressing the soul of things is still further helped by his system of continuous, unresolved melody.  The melody which circumscribes itself like Giotto’s O is almost as tangible a thing as a statue; it has almost contour.  But this melody afloat in the air, flying like a bird, without alighting for more than a moment’s swaying poise, as the notes flit from strings to voice, and from voice to wood and wind, is more than a mere heightening of speech:  it partakes of the nature of thought, but it is more than thought; it is the whole expression of the subconscious life, saying more of himself than any person of the drama has ever found in his own soul.

It is here that Wagner unites with the greatest dramatists, and distinguishes himself from the contemporary heresy of Ibsen, whose only too probable people speak a language exactly on the level of their desks and their shop-counters.  Except in the “Meistersinger,” all Wagner’s personages are heroic, and for the most part those supreme sublimations of humanity, the people of legend, Tannhauser, Tristan, Siegfried, Parsifal, have at once all that is in humanity and more than is hi humanity.  Their place in a national legend permits them, without disturbing our critical sense of the probability of things, a superhuman passion; for they are ideals, this of chivalry, that of love, this of the bravery, that of the purity, of youth.  Yet Wagner employs infinite devices to give them more and more of verisimilitude; modulating song, for instance, into a kind of chant which we can almost take for actual speech.  It is thus the more interesting to note the point to which realism conducts him, the limit at which it stops, his conception of a spiritual reality which begins where realism leaves off.

And, in his treatment of scenery also, we have to observe the admirable dexterity of his compromises.  The supernatural is accepted frankly with almost the childish popular belief in a dragon rolling a loathly bulk painfully, and breathing smoke.  But note that the dragon, when it is thrown back into the pit, falls without sound; note that the combats are without the ghastly and foolish modern tricks of blood and disfigurement; note how the crowds pose as in a good picture, with slow gestures, and without intrusive individual pantomime.  As I have said in speaking of “Parsifal,” there is one rhythm throughout; music, action, speech, all obey it.  When Bruennhilde awakens after her long sleep, the music is an immense thanksgiving for light, and all her being finds expression in a great embracing movement towards the delight of day.  Siegfried stands silent for I know not what space of time; and it is in silence always, with a wave-like or flame-like music surging about them, crying out of the depths for them, that all the lovers in Wagner love at first sight.  Tristan, when he has drunk the potion; Siegmund, when Sieglinde gives him to drink; Siegfried, when Bruennhilde awakens to