PREFACE

The following pages contain little if anything that is new, or that
would be likely to interest those who are already at home in Wagner's
work. They are intended for those who are beginning the study of
Wagner. In spite of many books, I know of no Wagner literature in
English to which a beginner can turn who wishes to know what Wagner
was aiming at, in what respect his works differ from those of the
operatic composers who preceded him. Some sort of Introduction appears
to me a necessary preliminary to the study of Wagner, not because his
works are artificial or unnatural, but because our minds have become
perverted by the highly artificial products of the Italian and French
opera, so that a work of Wagner at first appears to us very much as
_Paradise Lost_ or a tragedy of Sophokles would appear to a person who
had never read anything but light French novels. He must entirely change
the attitude of his mind, and the change, although it be a return to
nature and truth, is not easy to make.

Those who wish fully to understand Wagner's aims must read his own
published works. I have not attempted to give his views in a condensed
form, being convinced that any such attempt could only end in failure.
Whenever it has been made, the result has been a caricature; you
cannot separate a man's work from his personality. All that I could do
was to endeavour to lay some of the problems involved, as I conceive
them, before the reader in my own words.

SAMER, PAS DE CALAIS, _May_, 1912.