reported incident in full reality, foregoes the exhibition of so many of his object’s attributes as he deems needful to sacrifice in order to display one principal attribute in so enhanced a fashion that it shall make known forthwith the character of the whole … . [P. 81] Through this restriction the plastic artist and poet arrive at that intensifying of their object and its re-presentment which answers to the conception of the Ideal [as found, for instance, in Wagner’s “Wonder,” his musical motifs, feelings which distill a vast amount of experience widely disbursed in time and space, such as Wotan’s confession to Bruennhilde of his history], and through a … realisation of the Ideal, they obtain an effect completely indemnifying us for the impossible inspection of every facet of the object’s manifestation in Time and Space; and to such an extent, that this mode of representment is acknowledged to be the only resultful, nay, the only possible method of dealing with real objects, their aspects being inexhaustible.
To this ideal, the only veritable art, however, the mime [Wagner is using “mime” here in the sense of “actor” on the stage] steps up with all the matter-of-fact-ness of an object moving in Time and Space, and gives the man who compares him with the picture somewhat the terrifying impression as though a mirror-image were descending from its glass and walking up and down the room before our eyes. (…) He presents himself as Nature’s intermediate link, through which that absolutely realistic Mother of all Being incites the Ideal within you [This may well explain Wagner’s insertion of lyrical Nature-mood music when Mime is telling Siegfried how much Siegfried owes him.]. Like as [P. 82] no human Reason (Vernunft) can discharge the commonest diurnal act of Nature and yet she never tires of forcing herself in constant newness on Reason's apprehension: so the mime [Wagner here refers to the mime as he appears on the stage as an actor who imitates life] reveals to the poet or potter ever new, untold and countless possibilities of human being, to be fathomed by him who could invent not one of these possibilities, by him to be redeemed into a higher being. – This is Realism [Mime] in its relation to Idealism [Siegfried]. Both belong to Art’s domain, and their difference lies in that between the imitation and the interpretation (Nachbildung) of Nature.” [730W-{9-12/67} German Art and German Policy: PW Vol. IV, p. 80-82]
And in his following remarks Wagner describes the imitative mime as representing a transitional phase in evolution between animal and man, for in Wagner’s view the genius stands to the average man as the average man stands to his immediate animal ancestors, the apes:
[P. 79] “… we described the relation of the merely imitative Mime to the truly poetic ‘interpretative’ artist as resembling that of the monkey to the man … . (…) Were the poetising artist [Siegfried] ashamed to recognise himself as an originally merely-imitative mime [Mime] developed into an ‘interpreter’ of Nature, then Man himself must be no less ashamed at finding himself again in Nature as a reasoning ape: but it would be very foolish of him, and simply prove that he had not got very far with the thing which distinguishes him from an un-reasoning ape. – The analogy adduced, however, will prove most luminous if, granting our descent from monkeys, we ask why Nature did not take her last step from Animal to Man from the elephant [P. 80] or dog, with whom we meet decidedly more-developed intellectual faculties than with the monkey? For, very profitably to our subject, this question can be answered by another: why from a pedant no poet, from a physiologist no sculptor or painter … ? – In Nature’s election of the ape, for her last and weightiest step, there lies a secret which calls us to deep pondering: whoso should fully fathom it, perchance could tell us why the wisest-constituted States [Wotan’s social order established on the basis of coercive law] fall through, ay, the sublimest Religions [mortal man’s worship of the gods
