Author's Preface

Preface to the First German Edition

In reading through this German version of my book in the
Manuscript of my friend Siegfried Trebitsch, I was struck by the
inadequacy of the merely negative explanation given by me of the
irrelevance of Night Falls On The Gods to the general philosophic
scheme of The Ring. That explanation is correct as far as it
goes; but, put as I put it, it now seems to me to suggest that
the operatic character of Night Falls On The Gods was the result
of indifference or forgetfulness produced by the lapse of
twenty-five years between the first projection of the work and
its completion. Now it is clear that in whatever other ways
Wagner may have changed, he never became careless and he never
became indifferent. I have therefore inserted a new section in
which I show how the revolutionary history of Western Europe from
the Liberal explosion of 1848 to the confused attempt at a
socialist, military, and municipal administration in Paris in
1871 (that is to say, from the beginning of The Niblung's Ring by
Wagner to the long-delayed completion of Night Falls On The
Gods), demonstrated practically that the passing away of the
present order was going to be a much more complicated business
than it appears in Wagner's Siegfried. I have therefore
interpolated a new chapter which will perhaps induce some readers
of the original English text to read the book again in German.

For some time to come, indeed, I shall have to refer English
readers to this German edition as the most complete in
existence.

My obligation to Herr Trebitsch for making me a living German
author instead of merely a translated English one is so great
that I am bound to point out that he is not responsible for my
views or Wagner's, and that it is as an artist and a man of
letters, and not as a propagandist, that he is conveying to the
German speaking peoples political criticisms which occasionally
reflect on contemporary authorities with a European reputation
for sensitiveness. And as the very sympathy which makes his
translations so excellent may be regarded with suspicion, let me
hasten to declare I am bound to Germany by the ties that hold my
nature most strongly. Not that I like the average German: nobody
does, even in his own country. But then the average man is not
popular anywhere; and as no German considers himself an average
one, each reader will, as an exceptional man, sympathize with my
dislike of the common herd. And if I cannot love the typical
modern German, I can at least pity and understand him. His worst
fault is that he cannot see that it is possible to have too much
of a good thing. Being convinced that duty, industry, education,
loyalty, patriotism and respectability are