Paris - The New Kulturkampf

( Originally Published 1915 )

September twenty-sixth.

THE Germans have been instilling, little by little, their poison into the hearts of all peoples. If it is true that the soul of a race is in its language, this is still more true of its music. Lis-ten to the songs of Naples, Spain, Russia, Sweden, and Arabia : are they not the very portraits of these peoples? Do they not tell more about their nature than all the commentaries? We have no more use for the German language, we do not wish to speak it, we do not wish to learn it, we do not wish to sing it. And yet some are saying that we do not need to give up Richard Wagner. How many times will it be necessary to repeat: that this music, without the language that accompanies it, is incomprehensible, and that those who think they understand the music without the language are greatly deluded? But this delusion pleases them : this chimera attracts them. It must have taken upon them a very strong hold if they dare to say at this moment that they are held by the spell of Parsifal."

My hand, stretched out for the honey while I read my morning paper, falls back on the table. My café au lait grows cold. Breakfast loses its interest. For this is Camille Saint-Saëns, writing in the Echo de Paris, daring to express over his signature that unbelievable phenomenon, the growth of which I have been noticing since the war began. Let us read on.

"I have said what I think of this impenetrable work, where the sublime rubs elbows with the ridiculous in the midst of an atmosphere of boredom, whose most beautiful pages accompany the sacrilegious parading of the ceremonies of Catholicism, where one sees the Holy Spirit Himself descended from heaven as a dove, suspended on a thread. Thirty years of waiting and advertisement have made it an enormous success. Will the French people finish by perceiving that this work, whatever may be its merits, is not made for them? These long-drawn-out scenes, this heaviness, these obscurities, this false mysticism, this unwearying prolixity, what have they to do with our French soul which loves only frankness and clearness?

"Before Richard Wagner, all the greatest composers wrote honest music. It was he who, unfortunately, gave fashion to charlatanism.

"After the massacre of women and children, after the bombardment of hospitals, after the destruction of cathedrals, after the desecration of burial places, after the cynical confession of hate for France, how can there be found a jingle Frenchman to demand the music of the `fakir,' whom Germany has considered for a long time its national genius'? The morality of individuals is not that of nations. We may forget the injuries of nations, perhaps that is a virtue, but Wagner was of those who insulted the French people. The forgetfulness of such an insult is a fault. Would you go to applaud a marvelous singer if he had insulted your' mother?"

This piece of stupidity is in keeping with the movement of which e hear from London to bar from concert program the works of Germans, and to replace them by th productions of loyal British, French, and Russians Ye Gods ! Is this war to deprive us of the great masters? Is it treason and denial of country to listen to Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Wagner, Schubert, Handel, Liszt, Meyerbeer, and Strauss? Saint Saens in the field of music is omnly one instance of how the French are writing against all forms of German Kultur. The starting point has been the response of the five famous academies to the manifesto of the ninety-three German intellectuels. They have dropped from active and corresponding membership all subjects of Wilhelm II and Franz Josef on the ground that these learned men have defended the barbarism and maintained the righteousness of their country in the present war. Then, how human nature does show itself to be primeval !It has only been a step from this action to the questioning of the reality and worth of the scholarship and genius of men who could belong to such a nation as that which burned Louvain. The German Kultur defended the burning of Louvain. These men are exponents of that Kultur. So, Wundt is not a good psychologist, Eucken is a poor philosopher, Ostwald a chemist of mediocre attainments, Roentgen rays are valueless, Deissmann's Greek might be better, Lasson is a humbug, and Harnack is insane.

If the Kultur of the present generation in Germany is a bubble, pricked in Belgium, {how about that of the fathers and grandfathers? Nothing good ever could have come out of such a race of barbarians ! I have been reading literary men on Goethe and Schiller, philosophers on Kant and Lotze, naturalists on Humboldt, historians on Mommsen and Ranke, and so on, until I find the idea insidiously put into my head that, after all, Frenchmen and Britishers have really been supreme in every field of intellectual endeavor. But when it comes to music well, I let my coffee get cold.

Heretofore, we have regarded the productions of the human soul and the human intellect to be far above the clash of human passions and human greed. *Genius has been international, and the one to whom has been granted the gift of song, of poetry, of color, or of insight into the secrets of human nature and the laws of God, has been proudly claimed as a citizen of the world belonging to, and a benefactor of, the whole human race. But now we must ask where a man was born, if he be dead, or to show his passport, if he be living, before we read what he has written, or listen to the message he has to give.

I shall wait for the protests against the new Kulturkampf. But I feel sure that they will not come now. Never struggle of race with race was bitterer than this one. Who would have thought that in the twentieth century the highest musical and intellectual leaders of France would be advising and advocating a national boycott of the great masters, and of the contributions to science that have made Berlin and Vienna, Jena and Heidelberg, Bonn and Leipzig, foyers from which every student and thinker the world over has taken inspiration for a great deal that is best and highest in his life ?