persuasive completeness. It was necessary to remain constantly aware
that the will to expression has a merely relative value as a formative
principle in art. From this standpoint the critic's task seemed to
consist not in detailed criticism but rather in a critical understanding
of that one underlying idea, for, its presuppositions and consequences
once clearly set forth, the tree of Wagnerian personality and work
must stand revealed from its roots to its topmost branches.

In this idea arose my book, and the plan of my book. I could not
consider the life, writings and works of art separately, since the human,
literary and artistic expressions of each phase of Wagner's development
are but manifestations on different levels of the same will to expression
and illuminate one another. For this reason the book bears the sub-
title His Life in His Work; and for this reason also I have dealt with
the writings as being, in my opinion, neither more nor less than
dramaturgical allegories, always and exclusively concerned with the
individual work which they immediately precede. On the same
grounds I have found it necessary to take the works in strict chrono-
logical order, not discussing the Venusberg together with the Tann-
häuser of the Dresden period, nor the third act of Siegfried and The
Dusk of the Gods with the antecedent portions of The Ring. If con-
siderations of chronology or stylistic criticism alone forbade such
grouping they might have been ignored, but in any attempt to inter-
pret Wagner's life and art as manifestations of Expressionism, con-
sideration of the inner nature of the works themselves must make it
as impossible to place the later parts of The Nibelungs side by side with
the earlier as it was to Wagner to compose them in this order.

Once I had recognised the elemental unity in all Wagner's life
and work I found it equally impracticable to write of him merely as
a musician. Wagner's music may be examined as such, and Ernst
Kurth has done so in exemplary fashion in his book on Romantic
harmony. Such a work, however, is a specialised study in which the
artist from whom examples are drawn remains but a subsidiary subject.
And the whole subject of Wagner could never be understood by
means of an empirical examination of his music. On the other hand
I believe that through the avenues opened to me by means of a critical
examination of the idea of Expressionism I have been able to interpret
Wagner's work in such a way that new light is shed even on his music.
Since I hold Wagnerian dramatic action to be a drama of musical
notes and their interrelations, projected in a symbolic allegorical scenic

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