The nearest modern analogy to what the ancient drama must have been is
to be found probably in the operas of Wagner, who indeed was strongly
influenced by the tragedy of the Greeks. It was his ideal like theirs,
to combine the various branches of art, employing not only music but
poetry, sculpture, painting and the dance, for the representation of his
dramatic theme; and his conception also to make art the interpreter of
life, reflecting in a national drama the national consciousness, the
highest action and the deepest passion and thought of the German race.
To consider how far in this attempt he falls short of or goes beyond the
achievement of the Greeks, and to examine the wide dissimilarities that
underlie the general identity of aim, would be to wander too far afield
from our present theme. But the comparison may be recommended to those
who are anxious to form a concrete idea of what the effect of a Greek
tragedy may have been, and to clothe in imagination the dead bones of
the literary text with the flesh and blood of a representation to the
sense.
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