"I WELL remember," writes Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonk in
1862, "how, when I was about thirty, I used to ask myself whether
after all I had the stuff in me to do really individual work. I could
still see influence and imitation in everything of mine, and could only
venture an anxious hope that I might some day develop as a truly
original artist." Doubts and questions of this sort are symptoms
that attend every artist's development. They usually become con-
scious at the moment when the man of real originality pauses to look
back upon the road he has traversed before striking out on his own
way into the unknown. Wagner's confession, made long after the
time to which it relates, though it refers, on the face of it, to a stage
very commonly preceding the full flowering of genius, is, none the
less, a very acute piece of self-criticism. There is more in the reference
to "influence and imitation" in his work than mere over-scrupulosity.
There is a true statement of fact. The fact has, however, no bearing
on the question of the greatness of his talent, but on its peculiar nature.
Wagner's genius was imitative in kind. But he never realised this so
acutely as up to, and during, his thirtieth year, when his absolute
dependence on models became very clear to him. Afterwards his
dependence in externals became less obvious. The imitative tendency
withdrew from the surface and entrenched itself deep in the imagination
itself. Imitation took place henceforth increasingly in the imaginative
province, assuming the guise of creative incentive, and clothing
itself more and more effectually in original ideas. Wagner's artistic
genius expanded in this work of transformation. But its true founda-
tion is still the imitative impulse which underlies all expressionist art.

In another passage Wagner emphasises the value of imitation to
his art, thus supplementing and completing his confession to Mathilde.
In Mitteilung an meine Freunde he declares that he can conceive of the
artistic faculty only as the "power of receptivity." The artistic

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