Part 12 (1/2)
The ”tabulature” gives the straight and narros upon which a song nity of -chair!” Kothner orders Walther at the close of his reading ”Here, in this chair?”
It is the tall carved chair in which he had cast himself earlier
”As is the custoation to sing on a given spot is repugnant to the spirit of the highborn youth, who yet is undertaking to satisfy the e he could havethe seat: ”For your sake, beloved, it shall be done!”--”The singer sits!” announces Kothner ”Begin!” shouts Beckin!” Walther takes his cue, and si the bridle upon the neck of inspiration, he directly before them all pours forth his full heart in profuse strains of unprenorant of their conventions; he has genius, that is all, and its daring; is a poet born, not made; is at the moment, beside all the rest, uplifted by the divine fire of his love--and his song is right as some natural object, a crystal or a flower Consu, it has yet the character perfectly of an iush, the rush, the profusion of lovely ornament, the unrestraint,--but essentially orderly, the unrestraint, like that of an ar, in only apparent confusion, up a height, to assured victory The urge, the clih, to Walther's being really inside of it, to his having cast his whole self into it, with his straining after a goal, his desperate necessity to win
In this case, verily the style is the , ”Thus shouted Spring in the woods, till they rang again! And as the sound died away in distant waves, in the distance a sound was born, drawing nearer and nearer in a rows, it resounds, the woods re-echo with a multitude of sweet voices Loud and clear, it sweeps anear, to what a torrent it is grown! Like clangour of bells rings the multiple voice of Joy! The forest, how readily it responds to the call which has wakened it anew to life, and entones the sweet canticle of Spring!”
The Marker's chalk is not idle; a number of workmanlike scratches have been heard Walther has stopped short, jarred by the sound
He resue, devoured by envy and chagrin, Winter, in his ar of withered leaves, he sits spying atchful eye and ear for a chance to bring to grief the happy singing”
The singer bounds to his feet ”None the less, 'Begin!' The cry rang in my breast, when I was as yet wholly unaware of love! And in , which woke me as if from a drea palpitations; ed my blood, its streaht pressed the host of sighs,--increasing, in the wild tumult of joy, to the innumerableness of the sea My breast, hat rapture it responds to the call which has wakened it to new life, and entones the lovely canticle of Love!”
He has hardly ceased, when Beckmesser thrusts apart the curtains
”Have you finished? I have quite finished with the blackboard!” He holds up for inspection the blackboard, overscored on both sides with great chalk-oodness to listen,” demands Walther i is to publishwherever else you please Here you have failed” Beck the blackboard
”I beg you will examine,been heard of I should not have believed it though you had all affirmed it under oath” Walther, in the innocence of his youth, loudly appeals: ”Do you intend to allow him, masters, to interrupt ?” Pogner's courtesy interferes: ”One word, friend Marker, are you not out of temper?” Beckinning or end, defective ! Not one proper breathing-space anywhere! No appropriate colouring--and of e! Then, what a htly-spurs tone, tall-pine-trees tone and haughty-stripling tone! (Which perh moved by the desire to amaze, was yet a faithful reporter of the refineree readily with Beckmesser, are really relieved to find their impressions boldly put into for Walther's unprecedented leaping to his feet in the heat of inspiration has given offence to this one; the other ter at the ear-drums”
They are about to subscribe unanimously to Beckmesser's verdict that he has lost his case, when Sachs's voice breaks in upon the confusion He has listened to Walther in coetful absorption The absence of all jealousy in his large nature leaves his enuine first-hand i is not repelled by the new and strange The close of the younghas found him won, enlisted, prepossessed
He calls the masters to halt ”Not every one shares in your opinion!
The Knight's song struck h he forsook the beaten track, he strode along with fir step” Sachs nods to hi of the intense pleasure he has just experienced ”When you find that you have been trying to measure by your own rules that which does not lie within the coet your rules and try to discover the rules of that which you wish to e talk is not destined to be fruitfully heard in the agitation of prejudice, alar the majority of the masters ”Oh, very well,” fu a loophole to bunglers, that theyto the people as much as you please, in ain admission save in accordance with rule!”
Sachs insists that Walther uild of thecounterbalanced by Sachs!” ”God forbid,” speaks Sachs, ”that I should desire anything contrary to the guild's laws; but a those very laws it stands written that the Marker shall be so chosen that neither love nor hate o on lover's feet, how should he not yield to the te a rival to derision before the assee ”What concern of Master Sachs's is it on what sort of feet I go? Let hi me shoes that will not hurt hty poet, it's a sorry business with my foot-wear
See there, all down at the heel, the sole half off and shuffling!
His many verses and rhymes I would cheerfully dispense with, likewise his tales, his plays, and his co me home my new shoes for to-morrow!” The thrust tells Sachs scratches his ear a little ruefully, but is not found quite without a word to say The excuse he advances is that while it is his custom to write a verse on the sole of every shoe he delivers, he has not yet found a verse worthy of the learned town-clerk ”But,”
by a turn of the conversation directing it to a use nearer his heart, ”I very likely shall catch inspiration froht,”
he says, ”when I have heard the whole of his song! Wherefore let hin to Walther, ”Sing, in Master Marker's despite!”
Walther springs to the singing-chair, but the masters cry in a voice, ”An end! An end!” Walther, undaunted, climbs to his feet upon the very seat of the sacred chair, frohtily looks down upon it
And he sings with all his lungs and all his fire to s, determined to impose the impress of himself upon their h and floats over the snarling chorus of objection; and he sings his song, in spite of thee rustles forth the owl, and by his hooting rouses the hoarse choir of the ravens; in night-black swarpies, crows, and daws!
But thereupon soars upward on a pair of golden wings, wonderful, a Bird: his clearly-shi+ning pluht aloft in the air, rapturously he soars hither and thither, inviting ht My heart expands with a delicious pain,ht, away from that death-vault, the city, away to the hills of ho-place of birds, where long ago Walther, the Poet, wonI clear and loud the praise of my dearest lady, there mounts upward, little as Master Crows may relish it, the proud canticle of love!”
All this while the confusion of voices has not ceased or diminished
Beck over Walther's literary misdemeanours: Defective versification, unpronounceable words, misplaced rhy and rejecting the new-coner has looked on and taken no part, a dejected spectator He is sorry to see the Knight defeated, and he says to hih-handedness of the ht has risen in his reeable to have this fine fellow received in the guild, and subsequently into his faht naturally follows the other: ”The victor whom I now must fall back upon, who knows if ree of uneasiness as to whether Eva will choose that h all the htedly listened; has loved the boy's courage, and ht the masters to keep still and listen, or at least to let others listen ”No use! It is labour lost! One can hardly hear his oords The Knight can not froe, to go on singing like that! His heart is in the right place,--a very giant of a poet I, Hans Sachs, ht and a poet on top of it!” The apprentices, eeneral disorder, add their voices to the others, atteing froain and dance in circle around the Marker's platfor, not for a , has cliurative Bird, to its climax-point His throat shall burst, but he will be heard! His last note Walther holds for four bars: ”_Das stolze Lie----bes Lied!_” Sung to an end it is, the lofty canticle of love The singer ju farewell to you, esture, which rids hins them to the dust-heap of their sordid narrowness and en und verthan! Versungen und verthan!_” cry thea vote; ”_Versungen und verthan!_” He has failed in song, he is done with!
The song-trial is over The apprentices in merry tumult take apart the Marker's closet, hurry off benches and seats, rapidly clearing the church of all signs of theabstractedly at the singing-chair, while a snatch of Walther's song sings itself over in his memory Hisup and carrying off the chair With a half-esture of delicate mockery at himself for the spell he has so coer turns to the door, and the curtain falls
II
The second act shows the exterior of Pogner's house and of Sachs's, his neighbour across the street It is the close of day; David, putting up the shutters, is thinking of the morrow and its pleasures so intently that he does not, for ahi fellow-apprentice, until he turns around and beholds her, as so often! with a proood
Yes, you may peep That is for my precious treasure, but first, quick, tell ht? Did you instruct him to some purpose? Was he made a master?”--”Ah, Mistress Lene, it's a bad case! He failed utterly and miserably!”--”He failed?”
”Ay,--why should you so particularly care?” She jerks away the basket from his outstretched hand: ”Keep your hands to yourself!
Here is nothing for you! God ha'lord defeated!”
and hurries into the house, leaving him crest-fallen, an object ofof the interview
Goaded, he has finally plunged a fist, when Sachs's arrival upon the scene stops the disorder The boys nimbly scatter David is ordered indoors ”Close the shop and o in
The peacefulness of evening is upon the scene Pogner, with his daughter on his ar from a walk, comes down the lane which divides his house from Sachs's He hesitates at Sachs's door