work, and on the quality of the influence that it has exercised and is still capable of exercising in our country. By giving ourselves up to this examination with the impartiality and calm that it demands we shall, on one important question, be making beforehand our dispositions for "after the war"!
I
The question is a very wide one. I do not intend to study it here in its totality; of the two great aspects under which it presents itself, I shall only consider one. Wagner produced work both as a poet and as a musician. I will speak of the poet. I will try to characterise and judge Wagner's dramatic poems.
Beyond doubt the subject when thus limited is open to one objection. It may be said that dramas destined to be translated into music and only written with that object, form with their music a living and indissoluble whole. By separating the elements of this whole in order to make them the subject of two distinct analyses, shall we not inflict on both a sort of mutilation, shall we not deprive them of a part of their meaning?
There lies a difficulty against which we must indeed be on our guard. But that does not mean that we must withdraw the Wagnerian dramas from the test of a separate investigation. As Descartes said in effect, there is only one way of settling questions, and that is to begin by dividing them. This is especially true of such complex and many-sided questions as this. When it is intended to judge seriously a work of musical drama the first thing necessary is to study the drama by itself. Drama in music is still drama. As such
