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With the exception of the well-known Fliegende Blätter, Kladderadatsch, and one or two less representative, there is nothing to compare with the artistic excellence and restrained good taste of Life or Punch, for example. There is one illustrated paper published in Munich, Simplicissimus, which deserves more than negligent and passing comment.
This he sold to a now forgotten composer named Dietsch, who wrote an opera upon the subject, which failed completely. The disappearance of this work left Wagner's hands free once more, and some years later he returned con amore to his original idea. 'Der Fliegende Holländer' was produced at Dresden in 1843. The legend of the Flying Dutchman is, of course, an old one.
It is the more incomprehensible from the fact that Spohr in after years was the very first musician of eminence to interest himself in Wagner's talent, for he brought out at Cassel "Der Fliegende Holländer," and continued with "Tannhäuser," notwithstanding the opposition of the court. He considered Wagner to be by far the greatest of all dramatic composers living at that time.
The strange mixture of styles which prevails in 'Der Fliegende Holländer' makes it in some ways even less satisfactory as a work of art than 'Rienzi, which at any rate has the merit of homogeneity. Wagner is most happily inspired by the sea.
They were so far appeased that they offered me my selection from the private stock. Happily the duke never read anything but the Fliegende Blätter and Jugend, and thus war was averted. Later an automobile agent visited the town at the secret bidding of her Highness but he was so unceremoniously hustled over the frontier that his teeth must have rattled like a dancer's castanets.
Germany is the classic land of queer people. It is the land of Quintus Fixlein, Onkel Bräsig, Leberecht Hühnchen, and the host of Fliegende Blatter worthies; it is the land of the beer-garden and the Kaffeekranzchen, of the Christmas-tree and the Whitsuntide merry-making; it is the land of country inns and of student pranks.
It is my belief that in the American clubs where I find copies of Fliegende Blätter and the Journal Amusant, these papers are much more read than Punch, and in not a few cases, I fear, by men who have but slight understanding of the languages in which they are printed.
At our present rate of progress, the drawings in all our amusing weeklies will soon be as good as those in the 'Fliegende Blatter. The change is marvelous; and the popular taste has so improved that it would not be profitable to go back to the ill-drawn illustrations of twenty years ago.
Poor Richard's Almanack gives it twice, as "the foot of a master is the best manure" and "the eye of a master will do more work than both his hands." It is perennial in its appeal. The present editor saw it recently in the German comic paper Fliegende Blätter. But the jest is much older than Cato. This was an ancient Egyptian precaution which the Greeks had learned. Cf.
A great deal of 'Der Fliegende Holländer' might have been written by any operatic composer of the time, but this scene bears upon it the hall-mark of genius. If 'Der Fliegende Holländer' proved that the descriptive side of Wagner's genius had developed more rapidly than the psychological, the balance was promptly re-established in 'Tannhäuser, his next work.
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