It will not be difficult to call to the mind the names of celebrated Hebrews, great as histrionic artists, who at once appear to confute this statement; and for my part, one name is sufficient, viz. Pauline Viardot Garcia, though it will be admitted, on closely examining Wagner’s feeling, there is a vein of truth in it, which grows upon one on reflection.
And then Wagner turns towards the plastic art, and examines the position of the Jew under that art aspect. He states as his opinion that the Hebrew people lack the sense of balance and proportion, and in this he sees the explanation of the non-existence of Jewish sculptors and architects. Now it is regrettable that Wagner should have committed himself to so faulty a statement. The sculptor’s art was not practised by the Jews, because it was prohibited by the Mosaic law, and to this day strict Hebrews would not fashion “any graven image, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.” But Wagner was of opinion that the Jew was too practical to employ himself with beauty, and yet he was unable to explain the Jew’s acknowledged supremacy as a connoisseur in works of art.
In such a general indictment, it is hardly to be expected that Wagner would have omitted the vulgar charge of usury, nay, he even went so far as to assert that it was their chief craft. This, I told Wagner, was hardly generous or fair on his part. By persecution and restriction of the Jew to certain trades we had driven him to the tables of the money-changers, and then charged, as crime, the very vice persecution had engendered.
Nor was he less severe towards the cultivated Jew, charging him with a desire to disown his descent, and wipe out his nationality, by embracing Christianity, but whatever his efforts, he remained isolated in a society he did not understand, with whose strivings and likings he had no sympathy, and whose history and development had remained indifferent to him.