Richard Moukarzel, Wagnerian Irony, a German Romantic Affair? Universalpoesie and the Literary Legacy of Schlegel, Tieck and Hoffmann

The following passage seems aptly to define the Wagnerian ideal of music drama at its loftiest as:

the self-conscious work of art which accommodates in free combination and association all manifestations of human expression, breaking down the artificial divisions of genres and art forms and embracing the fullest range of articulation.

No doubt the seasoned Wagnerian reader is accustomed to such abstruse theoretical ramblings. Indeed, when reading Wagner’s critical prose, it is often tempting to dismiss a passage like this one as incongruous, even pompous (not least due to William Ashton Ellis’s awkwardly literal translations that still remain in standard use, for want of better ones). However, I should hasten to add that the excerpt above is not a quotation from Richard Wagner, but a loose paraphrase of Friedrich Schlegel’s Athenaeum Fragment n. 252.