| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: striking moments of the drama are conceived as tableaux vivants
with posed models, instead of as passages of action, motion and
life.
I need hardly add that the supernatural powers of control
attributed by credulous pilgrims to Madame Wagner do not exist.
Prima donnas and tenors are as unmanageable at Bayreuth as
anywhere else. Casts are capriciously changed; stage business is
insufficiently rehearsed; the public are compelled to listen to a
Brynhild or Siegfried of fifty when they have carefully arranged
to see one of twenty-five, much as in any ordinary opera house.
Even the conductors upset the arrangements occasionally. On the
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: his Prometheus Unbound is a sentiment of affectionate benevolence
which has nothing to do with sexual passion. It might, and in
fact does exist in the absence of any sexual interest whatever.
The words mercy and kindness connote it less ambiguously than the
word love. But Wagner sought always for some point of contact
between his ideas and the physical senses, so that people might
not only think or imagine them in the eighteenth century fashion,
but see them on the stage, hear them from the orchestra, and feel
them through the infection of passionate emotion. Dr. Johnson
kicking the stone to confute Berkeley is not more bent on
common-sense concreteness than Wagner: on all occasions he
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: Bids were to be opened that night and read by me before the
mayor and council. I was familiar with every detail of the law
governing municipal bonds and contract letting. We had advertised
that bids must be filed before seven-thirty that evening. Big
Jeff took down his bid at seven-fifteen and filed his new bid at
seven forty-five; fifteen minutes after the legal time limit.
The council was in session and hundreds of citizens were there
to protest against any more deals in letting contracts at
exorbitant prices. I opened and read aloud the various bids,
including that of the big boss, Jeff Rowley, adding that Jeff's
bid had been filed too late to be legal.
|
