A critical discussion of only the more important of the problems
raised by Wagner would require not one volume but several. For the
purpose of this book, which is only to help readers in understanding
his works, I must confine myself to the one which directly bears upon
his artistic production, namely, that of the organic union of all the
arts into one supreme art, which as their crown and completion may be
designated "art," as a universal, in distinction from the separate
individual "arts." Such art, [Greek: kat' e'xochaen], can only be the
drama, which already holds a position of its own above all the other
arts from the fact that these only _depict_ or _describe_
while the drama _represents_; its characters actually enact the
events to be expressed, whence the expression is marked by a
directness and vividness not possible to the other arts. The natural
tendency which different arts show to unite and support each other is
evident in many familiar phenomena, as, for example, illustrated
books. Lessing, in his luminous essay, has traced the limits of the
arts of depicting (painting and sculpture) and of describing (poetry).
Painting with him is the art of rest, poetry that of movement.
Wagner's theory asserts that each art, when it reaches its natural
limits, tends to call in the help of another art to express what lies
beyond its own domain. If the two are able to coalesce so as to become
organically one, it will be found that the expressive power of each
has been enormously enhanced by the union, just as the union of a man
with a woman in marriage enhances the value of each for the community.

With Lessing painting and sculpture are determined by the law of
beauty (_Schoenheit_); poetry is the wider art, including all the
elements of painting, but not bound by the same restrictions. Who can
forget his fine contrast of the howling Philoktetes in _Sophokles_ with
the gently sighing Laokoon, both in mortal agony, but the latter unable