# Chapter XIII: Wagner and the Counterfeit of Art explained — What Is Art? > Chapter companion for What Is Art? by Leo Tolstoy. ## What happens Tolstoy uses Richard Wagner's operas, particularly 'The Nibelung's Ring', as a prime example of counterfeit art. He argues that Wagner's attempt to force music to serve poetry destroys true artistic creation, producing only imitations that rely on borrowed poeticality, imitation, striking effects, and interestingness. Tolstoy describes attending a performance in Moscow and compares the experience to hypnotism or spiritualist séances, claiming that the audience's admiration stems from artificial conditions rather than genuine artistic infection. ## Themes in this chapter ### True Art vs. Counterfeit Art Tolstoy contrasts Wagner's operas as counterfeit art—relying on borrowings, imitation, effects, and interestingness—with true art that expresses the artist's intimate feelings. ### Perversion of Art by Professionalism and Gain Wagner's success is attributed to his exceptional position with royal resources, allowing him to command all methods of counterfeiting art for commercial and social acclaim. ### Art as a Means of Human Union Implied in the critique: Wagner's forced union of music and drama fails to achieve the genuine union of artistic infection that true art creates. ## Character check-ins ### Leo Tolstoy Author and critic; attends Wagner performance in Moscow and analyzes the counterfeit nature of Wagner's art. ### Richard Wagner Composer whose works, especially 'The Nibelung's Ring', are used as the central example of counterfeit art. ### Ludwig van Beethoven Mentioned as a composer of true art, contrasted with Wagner's imitative methods. ### Frédéric Chopin Mentioned as a composer of true art, contrasted with Wagner's counterfeit approach. ### Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Cited as a gifted composer whose operas succeeded because music dominated the text, unlike Wagner's forced union. ### Carl Maria von Weber Mentioned alongside Mozart and Rossini as a composer whose operas achieved artistic effect despite absurd texts. ## Key lines > The reason why I have selected his work for my illustration is, that in no other counterfeit of art known to me are all the methods by which art is counterfeited—namely, borrowings, imitation, effects, and interestingness—so ably and powerfully united. Tolstoy chooses Wagner's opera because it combines all four methods of counterfeiting art—borrowing from antiquity, imitating nature, using striking effects, and creating interest—more skillfully than any other example. _Tolstoy's central justification for using Wagner as the archetype of counterfeit art._ > People say, 'You cannot judge without having seen Wagner performed at Bayreuth: in the dark, where the orchestra is out of sight concealed under the stage, and where the performance is brought to the highest perfection.' And this just proves that we have here no question of art, but one of hypnotism. The claim that one must experience Wagner's operas in the special conditions of Bayreuth reveals that the effect is not artistic but hypnotic, like a spiritualist séance. _Tolstoy compares the Wagnerian experience to hypnotism and spiritualism, arguing it bypasses genuine artistic perception._ > In a true work of art—poem, drama, picture, song, or symphony—it is impossible to extract one line, one scene, one figure, or one bar from its place and put it in another, without infringing the significance of the whole work; just as it is impossible, without infringing the life of an organic being, to extract an organ from one place and insert it in another. True art has an organic unity where every part is essential to the whole, unlike Wagner's music where parts can be rearranged without loss of meaning. _Tolstoy's criterion for distinguishing true art from counterfeit: the inseparability of form and content._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/what_is_art_se/chapters/xiii - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/what_is_art_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/what_is_art_se/chapters