COSIMA WAGNER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21921, 5 April 1933, Page 6

COSIMA WAGNER.

It is fifty years since Wagner died, as many an admiring tribute has recently recalled, after a career remarkable alike for its artistic brilliance —he created a body of music, the secret of which seems to have died with him—and its picturesqueness. That the Nazis, in the mood which has come upon them in their hour of triumph, should have chosen at this time to insult his memory does not reflect their discrimination. Nor can their desecration of the Wagner memorial in Munich be said to do credit to their intelligence. Their reason, it is stated, was that Wagner’s second wife was a Jewess. Setting aside for a moment the fact that the persecution to which they are subjecting the members of the Jewish race is senseless and indefensible, the nature of their excuse for assaulting the statue of Wagner remains almost unbelievably ludicrous. Wagner is celebrated not for his matrimonial and extra-matri-monial essays, but for the imperishable and unique contribution which he made to music. It would be as sensible for the Nazis to refuse to make use of high explosives —a luxury they are unlikely to deny themselves —because a Jew took a prominent part in their development, as to assert the ancestry of Cosima Wagner as a reason for burning the wreaths on a memorial to her husband. Cosima, they might have discovered, had they thought to make inquiries, was not even a member of the Jewish faith when she married Wagner. The story of the life of the daughter of Liszt as it was linked with that of the great composer is well known. He was a man who passionately needed a woman’s inspiration when his compositions were in the process of germination. Cosima was not the first of the feminine lodestars which directed his genius, but she was apparently the last and the most luminous. She was of the temperament of some other women in history whose particular purpose in life it is to feed the genius of a great man with her own ambition. Hans von Bnlow, whom she first selected as the instrument of her creative purpose, failed her. Ho himself admitted the inferiority of his gifts, compared with Wagner’s, asking “ What can one do with just feeble piety?” That Cosima should have discarded him for another musician might appear morally reprehensible, but the Nazis are, of course, not guilty of any such narrow outlook, but are merely out to feed fat their ancient grudge against any Semitic irritant. Even the most excitable of them should be able in moments of discretion to think, with the bulk of the German people, of Cosima Wagner with some gratitude for the part she may be allowed in feeding the flame of genius during the years when the Ring was mainly conceived and triumphantly presented.