WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS OF MARK TWAIN

then the dead rise with one impulse and shake the building with

their applause. Every seat is full in the first act; there is

not a vacant one in the last. If a man would be conspicuous, let

him come here and retire from the house in the midst of an act.

It would make him celebrated.

This audience reminds me of nothing I have ever seen and of

nothing I have read about except the city in the Arabian tale

where all the inhabitants have been turned to brass and the

traveler finds them after centuries mute, motionless, and still

retaining the attitudes which they last knew in life. Here the

Wagner audience dress as they please, and sit in the dark and

worship in silence. At the Metropolitan in New York they sit in

a glare, and wear their showiest harness; they hum airs, they

squeak fans, they titter, and they gabble all the time. In some

of the boxes the conversation and laughter are so loud as to

divide the attention of the house with the stage. In large

measure the Metropolitan is a show-case for rich fashionables who

are not trained in Wagnerian music and have no reverence for it,

but who like to promote art and show their clothes.

Can that be an agreeable atmosphere to persons in whom this

music produces a sort of divine ecstasy and to whom its creator

is a very deity, his stage a temple, the works of his brain and

hands consecrated things, and the partaking of them with eye and

ear a sacred solemnity? Manifestly, no. Then, perhaps the

temporary expatriation, the tedious traversing of seas and

continents, the pilgrimage to Bayreuth stands explained. These

devotees would worship in an atmosphere of devotion. It is only

here that they can find it without fleck or blemish or any

worldly pollution. In this remote village there are no sights to

see, there is no newspaper to intrude the worries of the distant

world, there is nothing going on, it is always Sunday. The

pilgrim wends to his temple out of town, sits out his moving

service, returns to his bed with his heart and soul and his body

exhausted by long hours of tremendous emotion, and he is in no

fit condition to do anything but to lie torpid and slowly gather

back life and strength for the next service. This opera of

“Tristan and Isolde” last night broke the hearts of all witnesses

who were of the faith, and I know of some who have heard of many

who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. I feel

strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the sane

person in a community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one

blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the

college of the learned, and always, during service, I feel like a

heretic in heaven.

But by no means do I ever overlook or minify the fact that

this is one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. I

have never seen anything like this before. I have never seen

anything so great and fine and real as this devotion.

FRIDAY.–Yesterday’s opera was “Parsifal” again. The others

went and they show marked advance in appreciation; but I went

hunting for relics and reminders of the Margravine Wilhelmina,

she of the imperishable “Memoirs.” I am properly grateful to her

for her (unconscious) satire upon monarchy and nobility, and

therefore nothing which her hand touched or her eye looked upon

is indifferent to me. I am her pilgrim; the rest of this

multitude here are Wagner’s.

TUESDAY.–I have seen my last two operas; my season is

ended, and we cross over into Bohemia this afternoon. I was

supposing that my musical regeneration was accomplished and

perfected, because I enjoyed both of these operas, singing and

all, and, moreover, one of them was “Parsifal,” but the experts

have disenchanted me. They say:

“Singing! That wasn’t singing; that was the wailing,

screeching of third-rate obscurities, palmed off on us in the

interest of economy.”

Well, I ought to have recognized the sign–the old, sure

sign that has never failed me in matters of art. Whenever I

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