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(Download PDF) Being Wagner A Short Biography of A Larger Than Life Man Simon Callow Online Ebook All Chapter PDF
(Download PDF) Being Wagner A Short Biography of A Larger Than Life Man Simon Callow Online Ebook All Chapter PDF
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Simon Callow
BEING WAGNER
Simon Callow is an actor, director, and writer. He made his stage
debut in 1973 and came to prominence in a critically acclaimed
performance as Mozart in the original stage production of Peter
Shaffer’s Amadeus at the Royal National Theatre in 1979. He is well
known for a series of one-man shows that have toured
internationally and featured subjects including Dickens, Oscar
Wilde, Shakespeare, Jesus, and Richard Wagner. Among his many
film roles is the character Gareth in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Callow simultaneously pursued careers as a director in theater and
opera and an author of several books, including the biographical
trilogy Orson Welles, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the
World, My Life in Pieces (winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize),
Shooting the Actor, Being an Actor, and the biography Charles
Laughton.
www.simoncallow.com
ALSO BY SIMON CALLOW
Being an Actor
Acting in Restoration Comedy
Orson Welles, Volume 1: The Road to Xanadu
Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor
The Night of the Hunter (BFI Film Classics)
Dickens’ Christmas: A Victorian Celebration
Shooting the Actor
Orson Welles, Volume 2: Hello Americans
Love Is Where It Falls
Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World
Orson Welles, Volume 3: One Man Band
A VINTAGE BOOKS ORIGINAL, FEBRUARY 2018
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of
Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in hardcover in
Great Britain by William Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, London,
in 2017.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
www.vintagebooks.com
v5.2
a
To David Hare,
friend, adviser, beacon.
‘Only those friends, however, who feel an interest in the Man within
the Artist, are capable of understanding him.’
Richard Wagner,
A Communication to My Friends, 1851
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Author
Also by Simon Callow
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Foreword
Vorspiel
1 Young Richard
2 Out in the World
3 Doldrums
4 Triumph
5 The World in Flames
6 Pause for Thought
7 It Begins
8 Suspension
9 Limbo
10 Enter a Swan
11 Towards the Green Hill
12 The Long Day’s Task is Done
Coda
Chronology
Wagner’s Works
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
FOREWORD
Credit 2
Wagner has been written about at greater length than any other
composer. Superb books, some short and some hernia-inducingly
long, have covered him from every possible angle; primarily
interested as I am in how he lived his life day-to-day, my main source
has been his own words, in his copious published writings and
especially, perhaps, in the letters, great tracts of which have been
translated into English. Above all, I found that my most sustained
sense of the man came from a book I had somewhat dreaded reading
– his two-volume autobiography, My Life, published privately from
1870 to 1880. In the event, it turned out to be as vivacious and
candid as the greatest artists’ autobiographies, every bit as
compelling and stimulating as Benvenuto Cellini’s or Berlioz’s – and
about as reliable. The circumstances of the book’s writing (dictated
to his then mistress, Cosima von Bülow, at the behest of his besotted
patron Ludwig II, edited and brought to press by an equally – at that
stage – doting Nietzsche) mean that its truth is rarely pure and never
simple, but it leaps off the page. At the very least, it tells us how he
wanted to be seen by the world, which was by no means as a plaster
saint. It is the work of a master dramatist, which is how he saw
himself.
VORSPIEL
Credit 3
Unable to utter a word, Kreisler seated himself at the grand piano and
struck the first chords of the duet as if dazed and confused by some
strange intoxication…in the greatest agitation of mind, with an
ardour which, in performance, was certain to enrapture anyone to
whom Heaven had granted an even passable ear…soon both voices
rose on the waves of the song like shimmering swans, now aspiring to
rise aloft, to the radiant, golden clouds with the beat of rushing wings,
now to sink dying in a sweet amorous embrace in the roaring currents
of chords, until deep sighs heralded the proximity of death, and with
a wild cry of pain the last Addio welled like a fount of blood from the
wounded breast.
Painful points (Valleix's points) are not present, but there is usually
tenderness over the supraorbital notch during an attack of migraine,
and after the paroxysm there is a general soreness of the scalp and
forehead. Sometimes there remains a tenderness of the parts
surrounding the affected nerve. This is not in the nerve itself, but in
the adjacent tissues. Anstie9 says that in his own case, after
repeated attacks of migraine, the bone had become sensibly
thickened in the neighborhood of the supraorbital notch. There is
sometimes hyperæsthesia of the skin in the affected regions of the
forehead and scalp during an attack. As well as hyperæsthesia,
there may be an abnormal acuteness of the sense of touch. Deep
pressure over the superior and middle ganglia of the sympathetic
causes pain, according to Eulenburg. This observer also states that
the spinal processes of the lower cervical and upper dorsal vertebræ
are painful on pressure.
9 Op. cit., p. 182.
During the attack there are disorders of the circulation. The pulse
may be intermittent or irregular, and the extremities are usually cold.
Disorders of cutaneous sensibility are also often present. A condition
of numbness confined to one lateral half of the body is sometimes
experienced during the early part of the paroxysm. This numbness is
noticed even in one half of the tongue.
The German writers have divided migraine into two types, and the
arrangement may be followed in some instances. The first is called
hemicrania spastica or sympathico-tonica. In this form there is
supposed to be vascular spasm and a diminished supply of blood in
the brain. The symptoms are as follows: When the attack has
reached its height the face is pale and sunken; the eye is hollow and
the pupil dilated; the arteries are tense and feel like a cord. The
external ear and the tip of the nose are cold. Eulenburg10 states that
by actual measurement he has found the temperature in the external
auditory meatus fall 0.4° to 0.6° C. The pain is increased by
stooping, straining, or anything which adds to the blood-supply in the
head. At the end of the attack the face becomes flushed and there is
a sense of heat. The conjunctiva becomes reddened, the eye is
suffused, and the pupil, which had been dilated, contracts. The
sense of warmth becomes general, the pulse is quickened, and the
heart palpitates. The crisis is reached with vomiting and a copious
flow of urine or perhaps a diarrhœic stool. There is sometimes an
abundant flow of saliva. One observer has reported that he has
estimated a flow of two pounds of saliva during an attack.
10 Op. cit.
In all forms, if the patient can be quiet, he usually falls asleep after
the crisis has been reached, and awakes free from pain, but feeling
haggard and prostrated.
The paroxysm lasts for several hours, generally the greater part of
the day. It may last for several days, with variations of severity. The
attacks are at longer or shorter intervals of time, and in women they
often appear at the menstrual period. The attack may be brought on
by over-mental or bodily exertion, imprudence in eating or drinking,
and exposure to cold draughts of air. It will often begin as a
supraorbital neuralgia from exposure to cold, and go on through all
the phenomena of a regular migraine.
We now come to the question of the origin and seat of the pain in
migraine. This question has involved a great deal of thought, and
has been answered in various ways by different writers. E. du Bois-
Raymond thought that the pain was due to tonic spasm of the
muscular coats of the vessels, and that thereby the nerves in the
sheaths of the vessels were pinched, as it were, and so caused pain.
Moellendorff was of the opinion that the pain was due to dilatation of
the vessels, and not to contraction; and this theory might explain the
pain in the angio-paralytic form. There are many cases in which
neither of these views is sufficient, for we have no reason to believe
that a condition of either anæmia or hyperæmia is present.
Romberg believed that the pain was situated in the brain itself, and
Eulenburg holds that the pain must be caused by alterations in the
blood-supply, without regard to their origin, in the vessels of one side
of the head. He thinks that the vessels may contract and dilate with
suddenness, just as is often seen in some neuralgias, and thus
intensely excite the nerves of sensation which accompany the
vessels. The increase of pain upon stooping, straining, or coughing,
and the influence upon it by compression of the carotids, seem to
give force to this view. But are we not here confusing cause with
effect? Are not these variations in the calibre of the vessels due to
the irritation of the sensory and vaso-motor nerves, which are in a
state of pain? No doubt increase in the blood-supply augments the
pain, just as it does in an inflamed part when more blood goes to the
part. Let a finger with felon hang down, or let a gouty foot rest upon
the floor, what an intensity of pain follows!
Anstie brings forward as arguments to support his view the facts that
the attacks of migraine often interchange with neuralgic seizures,
and that a person who has been migraineuse in early life may in later
years lose his hemicranial attacks, and have violent neuralgia in the
ophthalmic division of the fifth nerve.
The true seat of the lesion, if we may so call it, upon which the
exaggeration of pain-sense depends, is probably in the nerve-centre;
that is, in that part of the trigeminal nucleus back to which the fibres
go which are distributed to the painful areas. The pain is no doubt
chiefly intracranial, and in those portions of the cerebral mass and
meninges to which branches of the trigeminal are distributed. All of
the divisions of the trigeminus send branches to the dura mater.
Many nerves are found in the pia mater as plexuses around the
vessels, some of which penetrate into the centre of the brain. Most of
these nerves come from branches of the trigeminus.
Anstie has found the careful use of galvanism to the head and
sympathetic of positive advantage in keeping off attacks, and
Eulenburg has had the same experience.
In the treatment of the attack the patient should be freed from all
sources of external irritation. He should lie down in a darkened room,
and all noises should be excluded. If the attack is of the hyperæmic
variety, the patient's head should not be low, as this must favor
increase of blood to the head. In this form the patient is often more
comfortable sitting up or walking about. Occasionally an impending
attack can be warded off by the administration of caffeine, guarana,
or cannabis indica. Purgatives are of but little value in this form of
headache. The local application of menthol or of the oleate of
aconitia to the brow of the affected side will sometimes prevent an
attack. If a person can lie down quietly when he feels an attack
coming on, one or two doses of fifteen grains each of the bromide of
lithium will enable him to sleep, and wake free from pain. I have
found the lithium bromide far more valuable in migraine than any
other of the bromides. An effervescing preparation known as bromo-
caffeine is often efficacious in aborting a paroxysm or in palliating it
when it has got under way.
Once the attack has begun fully, we can only attempt to mitigate the
pain. Firm pressure on the head generally gives relief, and encircling
the head firmly with a rubber bandage is often of great comfort.
Compression of the carotids gives temporary but decided ease to the
pain. Strong counter-irritation in the shape of a mustard plaster to the
nape of the neck or a stimulating application, like Granville's lotion,
to the vertex, will afford relief. I have found in some cases that
placing a hot-water bag, as hot as could be borne, against the back
of the head alleviates the pain. In other instances cold affords more
relief, and an ice-bag resting upon the forehead is the most
efficacious way of applying cold. Hot bottles to the feet are an
accessory not to be overlooked.
It is for this reason that I prefer to use the bromides, and if a patient
is seen at the beginning of a paroxysm, given a fifteen-grain dose of
bromide of lithium, his feet put in hot mustard-water, and he then
goes to bed, he will almost always cut his attack short, and on
waking from sleep will feel refreshed and able to take food.
VERTIGO.
A few persons insist that something like a distinct aura precedes the
attacks. In other cases the brain symptoms develop gradually, from a
faint sense of dizziness up to a tumultuous feeling of confusion with
sensory illusions. In a few rare cases there is, as in that above
mentioned, an abrupt onset. Something seems to snap in the head,
and the vertigo follows; or, most rare of all, we have a sensory
discharge felt as light or sound, and followed by the ordinary
symptoms.2
2 See the author in lectures on Nerv. Diseases, Disorders of Sleep, p. 63, 2d ed.
In pigeons, injury on one side may get well, but when the canals are
cut on both sides there is permanent loss of balance. In some way,
then, these little organs appear to be needful to the preservation of
equilibrium; and of late some interesting attempts have been made
to explain the mechanism of this function. It probably depends on the
varying pressure relations of the endo-lymph to the nerve-ends
which lie in the membranous canals.
Lastly, excess in venery, or, in rare cases, every sexual act, profound
moral and emotional perturbations, and in some states of the system
mental exertion, may occasion it, while in hysteria we may have
almost any variety of vertigo well represented. Outside of the brain
grave organic diseases of the heart are apt to produce vertigo,
especially where the walls of the heart are fatty or feeble from any
cause. Suppression of habitual discharges, as of hemorrhoids or
menstrual flow, is certainly competent, but I have more doubt as to
the accepted capacity of rapidly cured cutaneous disease.