



Produced by Dianne Bean





THE PERFECT WAGNERITE: A COMMENTARY ON THE NIBLUNG'S RING

by Bernard Shaw




Preface to the First German Edition

In reading through this German version of my book in the Manuscript of
my friend Siegfried Trebitsch, I was struck by the inadequacy of the
merely negative explanation given by me of the irrelevance of Night
Falls On The Gods to the general philosophic scheme of The Ring. That
explanation is correct as far as it goes; but, put as I put it, it now
seems to me to suggest that the operatic character of Night Falls On
The Gods was the result of indifference or forgetfulness produced by the
lapse of twenty-five years between the first projection of the work and
its completion. Now it is clear that in whatever other ways Wagner may
have changed, he never became careless and he never became indifferent.
I have therefore inserted a new section in which I show how the
revolutionary history of Western Europe from the Liberal explosion of
1848 to the confused attempt at a socialist, military, and municipal
administration in Paris in 1871 (that is to say, from the beginning of
The Niblung's Ring by Wagner to the long-delayed completion of Night
Falls On The Gods), demonstrated practically that the passing away of
the present order was going to be a much more complicated business than
it appears in Wagner's Siegfried. I have therefore interpolated a new
chapter which will perhaps induce some readers of the original English
text to read the book again in German.

For some time to come, indeed, I shall have to refer English readers to
this German edition as the most complete in existence.

My obligation to Herr Trebitsch for making me a living German author
instead of merely a translated