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 R OGE R ROG ER ALLEN
ALLEN
ROGER ALLEN is a Fellow of “This incisive, scholarly and Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886–1954)
St Peter’s College, Oxford has entered the historical memory
entertaining biography of as a renowned interpreter of the
and author of Richard Wagner’s
Beethoven (1870): A New one of the towering figures canon of Austro-German musical
masterworks. His extensive legacy
Translation (Boydell Press, 2014). of twentieth-century music- of recorded performances of
making illuminates not just Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner
his subject, not just his times and Wagner is widely regarded

Wilhelm FURTWÄNGLER
as unsurpassed. Yet more than
but also profound issues of sixty years after his death he
the relationship between remains a controversial figure: the

A RT A ND T HE PO LIT IC S O F T HE U NPO LIT IC A L

complexities and equivocacy of
culture, society and politics.” his high-profile position within the
TIM BLANNING Third Reich still cast a long shadow
Emeritus Professor of Modern European over his reputation.
History, University of Cambridge

This book builds an intellectual

biography of Furtwängler, probing
this ambiguity, through a critical
“Roger Allen’s penetrating examination of his extensive
and authoritative study series of essays, addresses
of Wilhelm Furtwängler and symphonies. It traces the
development of his thought from
as musician, thinker and its foundations in late nineteenth-
composer is mandatory century traditions of Bildung
and associated discourses of
reading for the many people conservative-minded nationalism,
that are fascinated by the
turbulent cultural history of
Germany during the first half
Wilhelm through the turbulent years of
the Weimar Republic and the
cultural and moral dilemmas of

FURTWÄNGLER
the Nazi period, to the post-World
of the twentieth century.” War II years of Bundesrepublik
reconstruction, in which the
ERIK LEVI beleaguered idealist found
Professor of Music, Royal Holloway, himself adrift in an alien cultural
University of London A RT A N D THE PO LI T ICS O F T H E UNPO L IT ICAL environment overshadowed by
the unfolding narrative of the Nazi
holocaust. The book will be of
interest not only to music scholars
but to cultural and intellectual
historians as well.
Cover image: Wilhelm Furtwängler
c. 1937 © Lotte Meitner-Graf. By kind
permission of The Lotte Meitner-Graf
Archive www.LotteMeitnerGraf.com.
Cover design: www.stay-creative.co.uk
 Wilhelm Furtwängler

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 Wilhelm Furtwängler rehearsing the Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestra in London, November 1948

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 Wilhelm Furtwängler
ART AND THE POLITICS OF THE UNPOLITICAL

ROGER ALLEN

the boydell press

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 © Roger Allen 2018

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation

no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner

The right of Roger Allen to be identified as

the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published 2018

The Boydell Press, Woodbridge

ISBN 978 1 78327 283 9

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd

PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs
for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate

This publication is printed on acid-free paper

Designed and typeset by BBR Design, Sheffield

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 For Pamela

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2311 (Boydell - Wilhelm Furtwängler).indd 6 04/04/2018 4:49 pm
 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations  viii

List of Abbreviations  ix
Prelude  x
Acknowledgements  xiii
Preface  xv
Note on Translations  xxi
Chronology  xxiii
Introduction  1
1. Wilhelm Furtwängler: The Historical, Cultural and Intellectual
Background  6
2. Childhood and Youth (1886–1911)  32
3. Lübeck and Mannheim (1911–20)  54
4. Furtwängler in the Weimar Republic (1919–33)  87
5. Furtwängler and the Nazi State I (1933–35)  109
6. Furtwängler and the Nazi State II (1935–45)  132
7. Reflection and Reaction: Furtwängler in the Immediate
Post-War Period (1945–50)  169
8. Furtwängler as Symphonist  187
9. ‘All Greatness is Simplicity’ (1951–54)  203
10. Afterword  225

Appendix 1. Two Furtwängler Essays  230

Appendix 2. Thomas Mann, ‘Germany and the Germans’ (1945)  236
Appendix 3. Audio and Visual Sources  252

Bibliography  256
Index  274

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 ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece Wilhelm Furtwängler rehearsing the Berlin Philharmonic

Orchestra in London, November 1948 (photo dpa, Hamburg)
1 Wilhelm Furtwängler aged thirteen  34
2 Furtwängler in 1902 aged sixteen (Interfoto/Alamy stock photo)  42
3 Title page of Friedrich Huch’s Enzio, inscribed by Walter
Riezler (Zentralbibliothek Zürich, reproduced by kind
permission)  49
4 Furtwängler in Mannheim, 1915–20  72
5 Furtwängler at Tanneck, c.1920  88
6 Furtwängler, Goebbels and Richard Strauss. Caricature by
Gregor Rabinovitch (1889–1953), undated, probably late 1934
(Zentralbibliothek Zürich, reproduced by kind permission of
Silver Hesse)  110
7 Furtwängler in Potsdam, 1934 (photo Wolfgang Kiepenheuer)  125
8 Furtwängler in London outside Covent Garden Opera House,
1937 (photo Hannes Kilian, Stuttgart)  133
9 Furtwängler skiing in the Arlberg, March 1941 (photo Lothar
Rübelt, Wien)  163
10 Furtwängler in Berlin, 1947 (photo Keßler)  170
11 Furtwängler in 1954  222

The author and publishers are grateful to all the institutions and individuals listed
for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every
effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any
omission, and the publishers will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement
in subsequent editions.

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 ABBREVIATIONS

Full citations are given in the bibliography

AZN Wilhelm Furtwängler, Aufzeichnungen

CM Wilhelm Furtwängler, Concerning Music (English translation of
Gespräche über Musik)
FM Furtwängler on Music, Essays and Addresses translated and edited
by Ronald Taylor
GM Wilhelm Furtwängler, Gespräche über Musik
GSD Richard Wagner, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, 10 vols
NBKS Wilhelm Furtwängler, Notebooks (English translation of
Aufzeichnungen)
PW Richard Wagner’s Prose Works, translated and edited by W. Ashton
Ellis, 8 vols
SPK Furtwängler Nachlass der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer
Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung mit Mendelssohn-Archiv
TW Wilhelm Furtwängler, Ton und Wort
VMS Wilhelm Furtwängler, Vermächtnis

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 PRELUDE

In February 1948 Wilhelm Furtwängler returned to conduct in England

for the first time since the end of World War II. He appeared with the
London Philharmonic Orchestra in no fewer than ten concerts in London,
Birmingham, Leicester, Watford and Wimbledon. He then travelled to
Argentina, Switzerland and Italy before returning to London in September
of that year for a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies given with the
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall.
The most significant of these visits by far was that which he made
in November 1948 with his ‘own’ Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. This
renowned but politically compromised ensemble had earlier been invited to
visit England by an Anglican clergyman, John Collins (1905–82), Chaplain
and Dean of Oriel College in the University of Oxford, until promoted in
1948 by Prime Minister Clement Attlee to a Canonry of St Paul’s Cathedral
in London. Collins was a vigorous social reformer and strong opponent of
nuclear weapons who in the years after the end of hostilities worked tirelessly
for international reconciliation between the former wartime enemies.
In September 1947 he made a two-week-long visit to Germany where,
apparently on an impulse, he invited the Berlin Philharmonic to make a tour
of England under the direction of both the young Sergiu Celibidache and
Furtwängler.1
There were many diplomatic, administrative, organisational and financial
difficulties to be overcome; but these eventually proved surmountable and the
tour arranged for November 1948. The first concert was originally scheduled
for 3 November in the notoriously difficult acoustic of London’s St Paul’s
Cathedral; but at the last minute the cathedral authorities had a change of
heart and the event was relocated to the cavernous Empress Hall in Earl’s
Court. As the commentator of the London-based news agency Visnews Ltd
put it in the breathless newsreel style of the time:

1 Diana Collins, Partners in Protest: Life with Canon Collins (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd,
1992), p. 160.

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 P RE LU D E  xi

The 103 musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the

renowned Dr Wilhelm Furtwängler rehearse Brahms’ Fourth Symphony
for their concert in the Empress Hall, Earls Court. The Orchestra had been
invited by the Dean of Oriel College, Oxford as gesture of reconciliation.

The programme was exclusively of Austro-German music: J. S. Bach’s

Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D; Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G (Op. 68)
with the English pianist Dame Myra Hess as soloist; and Brahms’ Symphony
No. 4 (Op. 98). The participation of Myra Hess was especially significant.
During the war she had famously organised a series of concerts at London’s
National Gallery as a morale-boosting exercise in support of service
personnel. John Collins had initially approached her with some diffidence, but
as soon as she understood the purpose of the concert she agreed to perform.
Now Myra Hess, symbol of wartime resistance, and Wilhelm Furtwängler,
the public face of German music during the Nazi period, appeared together
as symbols of a spirit of reconciliation between Great Britain and Germany.
The effect of the concert was overpowering. One critic remarked that ‘Dame
Myra Hess’s playing had a touch of crusader’s fire’. Another wrote: ‘Scarcely
anyone in that vast audience can have remained unmoved at the visible
symbol of reconciliation when, after memorable performance, Dame Myra
Hess and Wilhelm Furtwängler stood to receive applause hand in hand.’2
In all Furtwängler gave four concerts of Bach, Beethoven, Schubert,
Brahms and Richard Strauss in London, Liverpool, Birmingham and
Oxford. The orchestra was warmly received wherever it travelled and the tour
was a significant turning point not only in the rehabilitation of the politi-
cally compromised Furtwängler but also in the restitution of relationships
between Great Britain and Germany. Sadly, because of a dispute between
the Musicians’ Union and the BBC, the concerts were not broadcast and no
complete recordings are known to exist; but something of the visceral power
of the music-making can be experienced in a surviving newsreel film-clip of
Furtwängler rehearsing the end of the Brahms Symphony in preparation for
the London concert.3
Though much of the focus in this footage is on the orchestra, in the
shots of Furtwängler we see and hear an evident master at work, exercising
absolute control over the players, who were familiar enough with his require-
ments to need no more than occasional eye contact. The trembling arms and
famously indecisive beat seem to advertise a kind of daemonic ‘possession’
by the music, whose very essence seems visibly matched by his considerable

2 Ibid., p. 168.
3 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leYbb5KZYDg> (accessed 10 November 2017).

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 xii P RE LU D E

height and powerfully modelled head resting upon a long neck. Furtwängler
the master conductor had lost nothing of his power to mesmerise orchestra
and audience alike with the volcanic intensity of his music-making. The spirit
of German music appears to animate and flow through his physical gestures.
Here all the power and ambivalence of German Music as represented by
Wilhelm Furtwängler, officially exonerated from blame yet indelibly
associated in the public imagination with the Third Reich, is strongly
projected. The purpose of what follows will be to probe that ambivalence,
accepting Furtwängler as the master musician he was, while considering the
historical and ideological foundations of that mastery in ways that, rather
than follow the well-trodden path of establishing what he did or did not do
for the Nazi regime, respond to more recent scholarship on the antecedents
and aftermath of the Third Reich.

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to thank the following for their assistance in the
preparation of this study: the late Frau Elisabeth Furtwängler (1910–2012),
for granting initial access to the material held in the Furtwängler estate,
Zentralbibliothek Zürich, and for permission to translate extracts from
Furtwängler’s writings and photographic material held in the Furtwängler
Nachlass; Prof. Dr Andreas Furtwängler for renewing that permission; Peter
McMullin of Blackwell’s Music Shop, Oxford, for help in obtaining many of
the German scores and texts necessary for this study; Sue Palmer for intensive
coaching in the German language, checking translations and helping to unravel
some of Furtwängler’s more complicated syntax; the late Ronald Taylor for
permission to quote extracts from Furtwängler on Music; similarly to Shaun
Whiteside for permission to quote from his translation of the Furtwängler
Notebooks; James Treadwell, for advice in matters of literary theory; Jean
Christoph Gero, Director of the Musikabteilung, Preußischer Kulturbesitz,
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, for his assistance both before and during research
visits made to consult the portion of the Furtwängler Nachlass held in Berlin;
the staff of the Musikabteilung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich for prompt assistance
in answering queries and providing material; and to Silver Hesse (Zurich) for
permission to reproduce the caricature of Furtwängler, Goebbels and Richard
Strauss by Gregor Rabinovitch. I am also grateful to my colleagues the Master,
Mark Damazer, and the Fellows of St Peter’s College, Oxford, for granting
me sabbatical leave to bring this project to completion; to my colleagues in
the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, for their continued interest and
support; and especially to my former student Matthew Thomson for so ably
covering my academic duties during my absence.
My especial thanks go to my former teacher Michael Nicholas, who long ago
when I was a schoolboy in Northampton loaned me his EMI LP recording of
Tristan und Isolde and first made me aware of Wilhelm Furtwängler; to my close
friend and colleague Chris Walton, sometime director of the Musikabteilung,
Zentralbibliothek Zürich, for generous hospitality in Zurich when this research
was in its early stages, for suggesting so many fruitful lines of enquiry and for
consistently keeping up a uniform and gentle pressure when the project was

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 xiv AC K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

displaced by other things and was in danger of disappearing completely below

the horizon. Michael Middeke, Editorial Director of the Boydell Press, provided
the motivation I needed to dust off my original research and return to it after
a fallow period during which I left Furtwängler in abeyance and pursued other
interests. His assistant, Megan Milan, and Boydell’s Production Manager,
Rohais Haughton, promptly answered my many queries and gave constant
support during the publication process. My Oxford friends Margaret Bent, and
Barbara Eichner, Christian Leitmeir and their son Martin, gave me continuous
encouragement along the way. The late Brian Hitch was indefatigable in his
assistance with making sense of Furtwängler’s more abstruse German syntax.
Bojan Bujić suggested readings and answered enquiries concerning the more
obscure corners of the æsthetic and philosophical systems in which Furtwängler
was so deeply embedded. Peter Pulzer helpfully guided my investigations in
the labyrinthine complexities of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century
German political history over tea at All Souls college. Nicholas Attfield gave
expert input from his specialist field, the ‘Conservative Revolution’ in early-
twentieth-century German music. My Germanist colleague and academic
neighbour Kevin Hilliard patiently answered my many questions about Goethe
in particular and subtleties of meaning in German texts in general. Nicholas
Attfield, Hilda Meldrum Brown and Barry Millington kindly read early drafts
of the complete text, gave invaluable input from their respective fields of
expertise and through their enthusiasm for the project encouraged me to keep
going. My former student Peter Hall carefully prepared the music examples
extracted from the full scores. My Oxford mentor Peter Franklin suggested
many of the original critical lines of enquiry and has since its inception taken an
enthusiastic and close personal interest in this work. His scrupulous criticisms,
suggestions and detailed comments on the penultimate draft immeasurably
improved the final version. To them all I express my most grateful thanks. All
mistakes and errors are, of course, my own, for which I take full responsibility.
Lastly, I have to express my warmest thanks to my wife Pamela. Without her
dedicated support and help so unstintingly given over so many years, this study
simply would not have been begun, let alone brought to completion. This book
is dedicated to her.
In addition to the above, the author is grateful to and pleased to
acknowledge the following copyright holders:
• Furtwängler on Music, tr. Ronald Taylor, Copyright 1991, Scolar Press.
Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK.
• Ries & Erler (Berlin) for permission to prepare music examples from
the full scores of Furtwängler’s symphonies.
• Zentralbibliothek Zürich for permission to reproduce material held in
the Furtwängler Nachlass.

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 PREFACE

Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886–1954) is both a monument to a grand tradition

and an example of how the phenomenon of the Great Man can distort the
perception of history. The aim of what follows is therefore to penetrate the
aura that presently surrounds the icon of a particular ‘Great Conductor’ and
engage with the phenomenon he represented: that of an artist driven by an
ideological world-view which determined everything he did and which drove
him to extremes of both perversity and greatness.
Furtwängler has entered the historical memory primarily as a supreme
interpreter of the central repertoire of the Austro-German canon of musical
masterworks. His extensive legacy of sound recordings, whether captured
live through radio broadcasts or made in the studio, are the main routes of
access to his art. They are now almost universally available and are regularly
remastered and reissued in various formats. As a body of work these
recordings are freighted with historical meaning: for the historian of perfor-
mance they are a direct record of past orchestral and operatic practice; for
the cultural historian, the live recordings in particular document significant
historical events, for example the 1936 Bayreuth Festival, concerts given
during the war years (such as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony given in Berlin
on 22 March 1942), or those from the period after the defeat of Germany in
1945 when Furtwängler was permitted to resume his conducting activities
following the conclusion of de-Nazification proceedings. The catalogue is far
too extensive for even a cursory treatment to be remotely comprehensive.
Representative examples taken from the relevant period will nevertheless
here be examined as primary historical evidence.
Film sources of Furtwängler are limited but also of considerable value.
The image showing the conductor shaking hands with Goebbels following
the conclusion of the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on
the eve of Hitler’s birthday on 19 April 1942 is a powerful reminder of how
the Nazis made propaganda out of art. Furtwängler conducting Wagner’s
Meistersinger overture as part of a 1942 Strength through Joy (Kraft durch
Freude) film before a rapt audience of seemingly absorbed industrial workers
brought Wagner out of the opera house and onto the factory floor as a means

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 xvi P RE FAC E

of cultural morale-boosting.1 The clip already mentioned of a rehearsal of the

last movement of Brahms’ Fourth Symphony in London (2 or 3 November
1948) made during the first tour abroad of the Berlin Philharmonic together
with film of a complete performance of Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel (extracted
from a film entitled Der Botschafter der Musik produced in 1951) are reminders
of the rehabilitation process of German musical culture and of Furtwängler
himself in the post-war period. If, as the saying has it, a picture is worth a
thousand words, then these images have much to tell.
Furtwängler’s reputation as a conductor and interpreter of the works of
others is so embedded in the historical memory that his output as a composer
is often overlooked. In this respect he was not so much a lion of the podium
following the model of his predecessor Arthur Nikisch but part of a much
older Kapellmeister tradition, stretching back to Wagner and Mendelssohn,
of composers who conducted their own works and the works of others.
Furtwängler’s claim that he considered himself a composer first and a
conductor second does not entirely stand up to scrutiny. As Chris Walton has
observed, Furtwängler’s bursts of intense compositional activity coincided
with periods when his conducting activity was constrained either by circum-
stance or design.2 This is certainly true of his three quasi-Brucknerian
symphonies, especially No. 2 in E minor, begun in the final stages of the
war and completed during the early part of his post-war exile in Switzerland
(1944–45), and the Third Symphony in C sharp minor. (Furtwängler was
still engaged on revising the finale to this equally large-scale work when
he died in 1954.) Furtwängler’s symphonies are today very seldom played;
and even if they are given occasional outings it is only as curiosities and
because they are by a famous conductor rather than as part of any ongoing
repertoire. The First Symphony was never performed in Furtwängler’s
lifetime and, as we shall see in Chapter 8, there is evidence to suggest that
he never regarded it as finished. Furtwängler himself made a commercial
recording of the Second Symphony and there are live performances, though
in inferior sound, captured in Vienna (22 February 1953) and Stuttgart (30
March 1954). Even a Furtwängler champion of the international standing of
Daniel Barenboim could not succeed in bringing Furtwängler the composer
into the mainstream repertoire. His commercial recording with the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra (12–15 December 2001) of the Second Symphony is
the best extant recording of any Furtwängler work, but remains sui generis:
a curiosity rather than an important rediscovery of an unjustly neglected

1 All film sources are fully referenced in Appendix 3.

2 See Chris Walton, ‘Wilhelm Furtwängler and the Return of the Muse’, in Lies and
Epiphanies (New York: University of Rochester Press, 2014), pp. 94–109, here pp. 95–7.

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 P RE FAC E  xvii

masterpiece. It is ironic that it was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under

a conductor of Jewish origin who made this recording: in 1948 Furtwängler
withdrew his acceptance of an invitation to conduct a series of concerts in
Chicago on account of the hostility of a group of musicians that included the
pianists Vladimir Horowitz and Artur Rubinstein.
Yet Furtwängler’s music, and the Second and Third Symphonies in
particular, should not be dismissed out of hand as symphonic dinosaurs:
they are significant cultural statements with a good deal to tell. First, in
spite of their prolixity and unwieldy structure, they both contain music
of great expressive beauty. The slow movement of No. 3 (the concluding
movement if it is performed without the unrevised finale in the manner of
the incomplete Bruckner Ninth) is a threnody that inhabits the same world
as Strauss’ Metamorphosen (1945), a work Furtwängler conducted infre-
quently but memorably in the post-war years. Secondly the question must
be asked why Furtwängler composed three symphonies in a self-consciously
Romantic idiom broadly following a Brucknerian model at this point in time.
Even by the conventions of fifty years earlier they are conservative in style.
There is no attempt to engage with the chromatic idioms of later Wagner or
Bruckner. The harmonic language is steeped in the tonally more secure world
of Schumann and Brahms. A relevant compositional voice seems to be that
of Hans Pfitzner who, as we know from Furtwängler’s letters, occupied his
thoughts a good deal during the period in which these works were composed.
To what extent were the Second and Third Symphonies in particular cultural
memories in dialogue with the grand Austro-German symphonic tradition as
Furtwängler perceived it, in the context of Europe after World War II?
What is less well known, particularly in the English-speaking world,
is that Furtwängler wrote extensively on music and associated matters.
The principal published sources of his formally composed writings are
two anthologies. The first and most extensive is Ton und Wort: Aufsätze
und Vorträge 1918–1954 (Sound and Word: Essays and Addresses 1918–1954).
This publication was authorised by Furtwängler during his lifetime and
consists of a collection of essays, articles and lectures arranged in chron-
ological order that encompasses almost the entire span of his professional
and creative life. It contains the majority of his extended essays and is the
principal resource for the study of his writings. Included are studies of
Bach, Beethoven, Bruckner, Brahms, the music theorist Heinrich Schenker,
and his most extensive essay ‘The Case of Wagner, freely after Nietzsche’
(‘Der Fall Wagner, frei nach Nietzsche’, 1941). The second anthology is the
posthumously published Vermächtnis: Nachgelassene Schriften (1956). The
title, roughly translated as Legacy: Posthumous Writings, is a clear reference
to the eponymous poem by Goethe with its closing reference to ‘devising

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 xviii P RE FAC E

patterns for noble souls as the highest calling’: it consists of a collection of

diary jottings arranged chronologically followed by a series of fragmentary
writings and more substantial essays.3 The third important collection of
Furtwängler’s writings, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Aufzeichnungen 1924–1954
(1980), was edited by Elisabeth Furtwängler and Günter Birkner; English
translation by Shaun Whiteside, edited and with an introduction by Michael
Tanner, Wilhelm Furtwängler: Notebooks 1924–1954 (1989).4 Throughout his
life Furtwängler carried a notebook in which he recorded his thoughts (in
what for him was an aphoristic style) on artistic, philosophical and musical
matters. These personal jottings were never intended for the public eye: as
such they are a cultural document of the first importance and of incalcu-
lable value to the historian. However, in the form in which they are presently
available they are highly problematic for the published edition represents no
more than a selection from Furtwängler’s complete diaries. For the purposes
of the present study careful comparisons have therefore been made between
the entry in question and the manuscript sources.
The same critical difficulties apply to the volume edited by Frank Thiess,
Wilhelm Furtwängler: Briefe (1964; Vierte Auflage, 1980), for this again
represents only a selection of Furtwängler’s correspondence, held in the
Berlin State Library (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin). The collection by Thiess
is useful as far as it goes, for it contains the early exchanges between the
young Furtwängler and Bertel von Hildebrand; these letters are the principal
source for a study of the origins of the world-view which was to infuse his
writings and, with the important exception of the change in his attitude
towards Wagner, predominate in his thinking for the remainder of his life.5
A further publication to appear under Furtwängler’s own name is Gespräche
über Musik (1948), translated into English as Conversations about Music by
L. J. Lawrence (1953). This consists of a series of transcripts of seven conver-
sations on predetermined musical subjects which took place in 1937 between
Furtwängler and Walter Abendroth. In 1947 Furtwängler added a further
chapter in which he considers the problems of modern music. This book is
the most concentrated source of his musical æsthetic and is described by the
author Hans-Hubert Schönzeler as ‘Furtwängler’s musical Credo’.6
The Furtwängler Nachlass is divided between the Zentralbibliothek
Zürich and the Staatsbibliothek Berlin. Manuscripts and typescripts of most,

3 See Goethe, Vermächtnis, in translation by David Luke in Goethe: The Penguin Poets
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964), pp. 276–8.
4 For a review of Aufzeichnungen by Carl Dahlhaus, see Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6
December 1980.
5 For a review of Briefe, see Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 28 November 1964.
6 Hans-Hubert Schönzeler, Furtwängler (London: Duckworth, 1990), p. 163.

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 P RE FAC E  xix

though not all, of Furtwängler’s published articles and essays are contained
in the portion of the Nachlass held in Zurich. In some cases these articles
exist in several different versions; as will become clear in the course of this
study, comparison between the various versions can be revealing. The Zurich
material was deposited together with the musical manuscripts in 1970 by
Elisabeth Furtwängler, who rather ruefully comments in her memoir of
her husband: ‘I would have preferred it if this material could have gone to
a German library, but only Zurich expressed interest.’7 In addition to the
primary source material for Furtwängler’s compositions, published articles
and essays, there is a comprehensive collection of newspaper articles and
reviews relating to Furtwängler’s career; an invaluable resource which saves
the historian endless archival research in newspaper offices and archives. A
full list of Furtwängler’s extant compositions and writings can be found in
Wilhelm Furtwängler in Diskussion, edited by Chris Walton, Jürg Stenzl et al.
(1996), pp. 85–132. The portion of the Nachlass containing Furtwängler’s
extensive correspondence, together with further copies of the formally
composed writings etc. is held in Musikabteilung mit Mendelssohn-Archiv,
Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Staatsbibliothek Berlin. The Furtwängler literary
estate has been extensively consulted during the course of this study; in
addition to the unpublished material, the published articles and essays to be
found in Ton und Wort and Vermächtnis, many of which are not yet translated
and are therefore not available to the English reader, have received careful
critical attention. Representative translations of two published articles
on Heinrich Schenker (1947) and Hans Pfitzner (1948) are included in
Appendix 1.
The bibliography of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century German
political and cultural history is of course extensive. I mention a few studies
that have left a particularly strong impression. Golo Mann’s History of
Germany in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (1958) is a classic and stands
alone. Of more recent books Erik Levi’s Music in the Third Reich (1994) is
indispensable, as are groundbreaking studies such as Michael Kater’s The
Twisted Muse (1997) and Pamela Potter’s Most German of the Arts: Musicology
and Society from the Weimar Republic to the End of Hitler’s Reich (1998).
Richard Evans’ authoritative writings on the Third Reich, in particular his
assessment of Hitler’s Cultural Revolution in The Coming of the Third Reich
(2003), are invaluable; Peter Pulzer’s concise Germany 1870–1945 (1997) is a
model of clarity and precision in the treatment of complex historical issues;
Saul Friedländer’s Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution 1933–39
(1997) is a model of disinterest and balanced historical judgement. New

7 Elisabeth Furtwängler, Über Wilhelm Furtwängler (Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1979), p. 25.

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 xx P RE FAC E

perspectives and lines of enquiry suggested by Nicholas Cook’s The Schenker

Project (2007), Alexander Rehding’s Music and Monumentality (2009) and
meta-discussions of absolute music such as Mark Evan Bonds’ Absolute
Music: The History of an Idea (2014) provided a particularly strong impulse to
return to work on Furtwängler. There is a general bibliography of all works
consulted at the end of the volume.
The intention in what follows is to approach a critical, intellectual
biography by tracing the progress and development of Furtwängler’s thought
from its foundation in late-nineteenth-century traditions of Bildung through
the cultural and moral dilemmas of the Nazi period to the post-war years
in which the beleaguered idealist found himself adrift in an alien cultural
environment. Chapter 1 therefore investigates the historical and cultural
background to Furtwängler’s privileged upbringing in the traditions of
Bildung. In Chapters 2 and 3 Furtwängler’s early reception of Beethoven is
considered together with the catalytic effect of his initial acquaintance with
the work of the theorist Heinrich Schenker and his empathy with Schenker’s
organicist methodology. Chapter 4 investigates how these ideas shaped
Furtwängler’s approach to musical performance and also how the inherent
ideological subtexts in much closely related contemporary theory shared
the intellectual premises that shaped developing nationalistic ideologies.
Chapters 5 and 6 examine how this performance æsthetic, with its almost
obsessive concern with the idea of organic cohesion, coincided with much
of the artistic and political ideology of Nazism, how such ideology inter-
sected with the kind of artistic experience Furtwängler strove to achieve in
performance and how this in itself helped support the Nazi state and gave
it cultural credibility. Chapter 7 investigates Furtwängler’s intellectual and
artistic position in the period immediately following the collapse of the Third
Reich; in his writings he called for a return to the ideology of the Wilhelmine
period as the only way of restoring true cultural values. Chapter 8 investi-
gates why after a long gap Furtwängler returned to composition and in the
last years of his life produced three large-scale symphonies in a tendentiously
Romantic idiom. Finally, Chapter 9 examines the two most important essays
from the last year of his life, which show how, in essence, his world-view
remained unchanged from that which was so firmly established in his
formative years. Each chapter begins with a brief sketch of relevant historical
and biographical details sustaining a necessary narrative thread and creating
a framework in which the relevant writings may be appropriately contextu-
alised. A chronology showing dates of significant events, articles and compo-
sitions is included on pp. xxiii-xxxi.

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 NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS

In the case of Furtwängler the study of primary source material, whether

published or archival, is beset with difficulties. Equally daunting are the
problems encountered by the non-native German speaker in attempting to
penetrate and understand Furtwängler’s thought patterns: his world-view is
thoroughly Germanic and rooted in the linguistic patterns and syntactical
traditions of the nineteenth century. He wrote in the German tradition of
idealistic philosophy as seen at its most complex in the writings of Kant
and Hegel. The problems facing the translator are therefore formidable. It
is fortunate that the late Ronald Taylor, sometime Professor of German in
the University of Sussex, translated a compilation from both Ton und Wort
and Vermächtnis which was subsequently published as an anthology entitled
Furtwängler on Music (1991).1 Taylor has rendered the English reader an
invaluable service. In his brief introduction he draws attention to the
problems encountered in translating Furtwängler’s originals into intelligible
English prose without obscuring some of the textual references. In a letter to
the present author dated 9 February 1998 he wrote: ‘One sometimes feels like
banging one’s head against the wall in the face of his foggy prose. The most
useful tool for dealing with it is sometimes not a torch but a machete, which
in the end does him a service, I think.’ In the present study translations are
either by the author or, where a translation by Taylor of a Furtwängler essay
exists, his helping hand has been gratefully accepted. Nevertheless, careful
line-by-line comparisons with the German originals have been made and in
some cases Taylor’s version has been modified accordingly in order to restore
resonances obscured in the interests of making a readable translation. All such
modifications are identified in footnotes. A similar practice has been followed
with regard to Shaun Whiteside’s translation of the Notebooks. This process
of comparison can reveal thought patterns and allusions that are not always
immediately obvious in translation, an example of which can be found in the
extended notebook entry on Bach’s Matthäus Passion (1939). Furtwängler

1 For a review of Furtwängler on Music by Chris Walton see Music and Letters, vol. 74,
no. 3 (1993), pp. 466–7.

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 xxii N OT E O N T RA N S L AT I O N S

writes ‘wer es nicht selbst fühlt, wird es nicht erreichen’ (whoever does not
feel it himself will not achieve it).2 This is a clear reference to Goethe’s Faust,
Part I: ‘wenn ihrs nicht fühlt, ihr werdets nicht erjagen’ (give up pursuing
eloquence, unless you can speak as you feel).3 To Furtwängler, as to most
educated Germans of his generation and cultural background, Faust was the
foundation of his literary heritage. His writings are infused with Faustian
references which, though a natural part of his expressive language, are not
always immediately obvious in translation.
Furtwängler’s thought does not lend itself to easy summary: for this reason
direct quotation, sometimes at length, has proved a necessary tool. It has
not, however, been the intention simply to provide an anthology of extracts
from the writings: the primary purpose here is to place the major published
essays and articles in historical context in such a way that a developing
critical exegesis becomes possible. It is hoped that what can appear to be
rather empty and prolix passages of æsthetic theorising will here be readable
as cogent indicators of an evolving intellectual biography of some historical
significance. Where there is a possibility of ambiguity, key German words,
and in some cases entire phrases, have of necessity been included. It must,
however, be said that ambiguity of expression, or sometimes just sheer
verbosity, is a recurring problem when examining Furtwängler’s writings. In
all cases the whereabouts of the original German text is specified.

2 AZN, p. 176; NBKS, p. 108.

3 Goethe, Faust, Part 1, line 534, tr. David Luke (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1987).

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 CHRONOLOGY

Date Wilhelm Furtwängler Significant Historical,

Life and Works Cultural and
Literary Events

1853 Adolf Furtwängler (father)

30 June born in Freiburg
1863 Adelheid Wendt (mother) born
14 September in Karlsruhe
1864 Richard Strauss born in
11 June Munich
1868 Heinrich Schenker born in
19 June Wisniowczyki, Austrian Galicia
1869 Hans Pfitzner born in Moscow
5 May
1871 Proclamation of the German
18 January Empire at Versailles
1875 Thomas Mann born in Lübeck
6 June
1876 First Bayreuth Festival
August
1883 Death of Richard Wagner in
13 February Venice
1886 Wilhelm Furtwängler born
25 January in Berlin
1887 Ferdinand Tönnies,
Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft
1888 Death of Kaiser
9 March Wilhelm I; succeeded briefly by
Friedrich III then by Wilhelm II
1889 Adolf Hitler born in Braunau
20 April am Inn, Austria

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 xxiv C H RO N O LO G Y

Date Wilhelm Furtwängler Significant Historical,

Life and Works Cultural and
Literary Events

1894 Appointment of Adolf

Furtwängler to Munich
University. Family moves to
Munich
1896 Death of Anton Bruckner in
Vienna
1897 Death of Johannes Brahms in
Vienna
1899 H. S. Chamberlain, Foundations
of the Nineteenth Century
1901 Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks
1902 Visits Florence with Ludwig
Curtius and the Hildebrand
family
1905 H. S. Chamberlain, Kant
1906 Conducts first orchestral
19 February concert with Kaim Orchestra of
Munich
1906–07 Zurich
1907 Death of Adolf Furtwängler in
10 October Athens
1907–09 Munich Court Opera with
Felix Mottl
1909–11 Strasbourg Opera with Hans
Pfitzner
1910 Friedrich Huch, Enzio
1911–15 Lübeck: Chief conductor of
Verein der Musikfreunde
1911 Reads Heinrich Schenker’s
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
1912 H. S. Chamberlain, Goethe;
Heinrich Schenker, Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony
1914 Austro-Hungary declares war
28 July on Serbia. Outbreak of World
War I
3–4 August Germany declares war on
France Britain declares war on
Germany

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 C H RO N O LO G Y  xxv

Date Wilhelm Furtwängler Significant Historical,

Life and Works Cultural and
Literary Events

1915 Essay: ‘Timely Reflections

of a Musician’ by Wilhelm
Furtwängler (Lübeck)
Chamberlain, Politische Ideale
1915–20 Mannheim: Hofkapellmeister
1917 Pfitzner: Palestrina, premiere in
12 June Munich conducted by Bruno
Walter
6 November Conducts Bruckner’s Eighth
Symphony
Article: Anton Bruckner’s
Eighth Symphony
14 December First appearance with Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra
1918 Thomas Mann, Reflections of a
Non-Political Man
Essay: ‘Remarks on Beethoven’s
Music’
Oswald Spengler, Decline of the
West, vol. 1
9 November Abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II
11 November Armistice between hostile
powers. ‘Stab in the back’
legend attributes German
defeat to betrayal by
Republicans.
1919 Conductor of Vienna
Tonkünstler Orchestra concerts
Hans Pfitzner, New Aesthetic of
Musical Impotence
Essay: ‘Remarks on
Wagner’s Ring’
3 May First meeting with Heinrich
Schenker
28 June Treaty of Versailles imposes
severe reparations on Germany
11 August Weimar Republic constitution
adopted (to 1933)

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 xxvi C H RO N O LO G Y

Date Wilhelm Furtwängler Significant Historical,

Life and Works Cultural and
Literary Events

1920 Conductor of Frankfurt

August Museumskonzerte in
succession to Willem
Mengelberg. Relinquishes
position in Mannheim
1921 First appearances with Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra
1922 Oswald Spengler, Decline of the
West, vol. 2
23 January Subsequently succeeds Nikisch Death of Arthur Nikisch
as Conductor of the Leipzig
Gewandhaus (until 1928) and
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras
27 January Pfitzner, Von Deutscher Seele
(Op. 28), premiere in Berlin
25 March First appearance with Vienna
Philharmonic Orchestra
1924 Thomas Mann, The Magic
Mountain
July/August Reopening of Bayreuth Festival
1925 (1927) Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf
1929 Hans Pfitzner, Das dunkle Reich
(Op. 38)
1930 Toscanini conducts New York
27 and 28 May Philharmonic Orchestra in
Berlin
Notebook entry: ‘Toscanini
in Germany: An article on
the true situation of German
music-making in 1930’
August Bayreuth Festival: Toscanini
conducts Tannhäuser and
Tristan
November/ Essay: ‘Interpretation: a
December Question of Musical Destiny’
1931 Appointed Musical Director of
Bayreuth Festival
23 July Festival debut conducting
Tristan und Isolde

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 C H RO N O LO G Y  xxvii

Date Wilhelm Furtwängler Significant Historical,

Life and Works Cultural and
Literary Events

1932 Address: ‘Classical Music in Fiftieth anniversary of the

19 April Crisis’ Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
1932 Essay: ‘Um Bayreuths Zukunft’,
28 June article giving reasons for
resignation as Music Director
of the Bayreuth Festival
1933 Posthumous publication of
Wilhelm Dilthey’s On German
Poetry and Music
30 January Hitler comes to power

13 February Thomas Mann, Address: ‘The

Sufferings and Greatness of
Richard Wagner’

21 March Day of Potsdam: conducts

Die Meistersinger at Berlin
Staatsoper
11 April Publication of open letter to
Goebbels in defence of Jewish
artists forced to leave Germany
16 May Address: ‘Johannes Brahms:
Address for the Johannes
Brahms Festival in Vienna,
16–21 May’
1934 Conducts Hindemith’s
11–12 March Symphonic Suite, Mathis der
Maler
25 November Article: ‘The Case of
Hindemith’
4 December Resigns all official posts
17 December Essay: ‘German Music
Problems’
1935 Compromise reached with
Goebbels
February/ Resumes conducting.
March Memorandum: ‘When I wrote
my article about Hindemith’
1936 Bayreuth Festival: Lohengrin
19 July

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 xxviii C H RO N O LO G Y

Date Wilhelm Furtwängler Significant Historical,

Life and Works Cultural and
Literary Events

1–16 August Eleventh Olympiad held in

Berlin
September to Sabbatical from conducting.
February 1937 Resumes composition
1937 Conversations about Music with
Walther Abendroth
4 March First Performance of Violin
Sonata No. 1
In Leipzig
May Conducts two cycles of the London: Coronation of King
Ring in London (Covent George VI
Garden Coronation Season)
6 June Regensburg Valhalla: Hitler
unveils bust of Bruckner.
Speech by Goebbels
26 October First Performance of
Symphonic Concerto for Piano
and Orchestra in Munich with
Edwin Fischer
1938 Hitler annexes Austria
13 March
May/June Last appearances at Covent
Garden: two cycles of the Ring
27 December Last appearance at Paris Opera:
Siegfried
1939 Address to the German
5 July Bruckner Society
1 September Hitler invades Poland
3 September Britain declares war on
Germany
1940 Hans Pfitzner, Symphony in C
(Op. 46)
19 Feb Symphony No. 1. First
Performance of Violin Sonata
No. 2 in Munich
1941 Essay: ‘The Case of Wagner,
April freely after Nietzsche’
1943 Marries Elisabeth Ackermann,
26 June neé Albert

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 “Still this great solitude is quick with life;
Myriads of insects, gaudy as the flowers
They flutter over, gentle quadrupeds,
And birds that scarce have learned the fear of man,
Are here, and sliding reptiles of the ground,
Startlingly beautiful.”

This vast wild region is inhabited by many animals that are rarely
found in any other portion of the State. The bear, the moose, the
panther, the deer, and most fur-bearing animals, make their homes
among its mountains. Arctic birds, too, that are never known farther
south, are seen in abundance. The whole district covers an area of
about six thousand square miles. The western district is eminent for
its fertility and beauty, and has also a high degree of zoological
interest.
The number of quadrupeds enumerated in the report, as found
within the State, is something more than one hundred. Each of these
is scientifically and fully described. Included in the volume are a
great number of illustrations, taken with the greatest care from the
living animals or the best specimens that could be found. The real
colors are preserved, and in every case the relative size is indicated.
The outlines, for the purpose of accuracy, were always taken with a
camera lucida, and the illustrations, drawn by Hill, were lithographed
by Endicott.
The whole style of the work is eminently worthy the enterprise,
results of which it contains, and the State which undertook its
fulfilment. We look for the forthcoming volumes with no little interest.
The botanical department has been under the charge of John Toney;
the mineralogical and chemical were assigned to Lewis C. Beck; the
geological to W. W. Mather, Ebenezer Emmons, James Hall, and
Leonard Vanuxem, and the palæontological to Timothy A. Conrad.
Beside these reports, the results of the survey appear in eight
several collections of specimens of the animals, plants, soils,
minerals, rocks and fossils, found within the State—one of which
collections constitutes a museum of natural history at the capital of
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institutions. We rejoice at the completion of this great survey, and
hope soon to see a similar exploration effected in every State of the
Union. The cause of science will receive from it an aid of which
scientific men alone can rightly estimate the value.

The Holy War, made by Shaddai upon Diabolus, for the

Regaining of the Metropolis of the World. By John
Bunyan. Philadelphia, American Sunday School Union.

The celebrated Dr. Owen was occasionally one of the hearers of

Bunyan, when he preached in London; and being asked by Charles
the Second how a learned man, like him, could listen to the prating
of an illiterate tinker, he is said to have replied, “May it please your
Majesty, could I possess that tinker’s abilities for preaching, I would
gladly relinquish all my scholarship.” His genius as an author was
even greater than he exhibited in the pulpit. Southey, Macauley, and
other eminent critics, regard him as one of the “immortal authors of
England.” The Pilgrim’s Progress has been the most popular of his
sixty or seventy works. Probably no book by an uninspired writer has
been more universally read. The Holy War was written ten years
after the appearance of that beautiful creation, and if not equal to it in
all respects, is certainly one of the most ingenious allegories in the
language, as well as one of the most useful exhibitions of practical
Christianity. The edition before us is superior to any other printed in
America, in its typography and illustrations.

The Little Gift; Useful Stories; Poems for Little Folks. Three
small volumes.

Mr. Colman, of New York, in the autumn of every year, publishes

numerous miniature gift books for children, with fine engravings,
instructive tales and poems, etc., of which the above are specimens.
 Thulia: A Poem: By J. C. Palmer, M. D., U. S. N. Illustrated
with Twelve Original Designs, by A. Agate, Artist of the
late Exploring Expedition. One volume, octavo. New
York, Samuel Colman.

This beautifully printed and illustrated volume resembles very

much, in its appearance, the elegant edition of Gray’s “Elegy,”
published several years since in London. We can say no more in
praise of its typography and embellishments. The poem itself
possesses considerable merit. Doctor Palmer was attached to the
Exploring Expedition which returned to this country last summer from
the southern seas, and “Thulia” is founded on incidents which
occurred on the war-ship Peacock, and the schooner Flying Fish,
while in the Antarctic ocean. The verse is free and melodious, and
the ideas and illustrations generally appropriate and poetical. We
quote a lyric that will convey to the reader a just idea of the poet’s
style.

ANTARCTIC MARINER’S SONG.

Sweetly, from the land of roses,

Sighing comes the northern breeze;
And the smile of dawn reposes,
All in blushes, on the seas.
Now within the sleeping sail,
Murmurs soft the gentle gale.
Ease the sheet, and keep away:
Glory guides us South to-day!
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Opens for us to the Pole;
And, where never entered mortal,
Thither speed we to the goal.
Hopes before and doubts behind,
On we fly before the wind.
Steady, so—now let it blow!
Glory guides, and South we go.

Vainly do these gloomy borders,

All their frightful forms oppose;
Vainly frown these frozen warders,
Mailed in sleet, and helmed in snow.
Though, beneath the ghastly skies,
Curdled all the ocean lies,
Lash we up its foam anew—
Dash we all its terrors through!

Circled by these columns hoary,

All the field of fame is ours;
Here to carve a name in story,
Or a tomb beneath these towers.
Southward still our way we trace,
Winding through an icy maze.
Luff her to—there she goes through!
Glory leads, and we pursue.

The notes appended to the poem contain the most interesting

account of the expedition that has yet been given to the public.

Scenes in the Holy Land: one volume square duodecimo.

Philadelphia, American Sunday School Union.

This work is founded on, or rather is a free translation of, the

“Scènes Evangéliques” of Napoleon Roussel, published a year or
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the lives of the Savior and of the great apostle of the Gentiles,
written with singular simplicity and perspicuity, and illustrated with
numerous etchings by a clever French artist. It is published, we
believe, as a juvenile gift book for the holiday season.

Ladies’ Annual Register for 1843. New York, S. Colman.

The Ladies’ Annual Register is a neat little annuary, edited for

several years by Mrs. Gilman, of Charleston. It embraces, beside the
usual contents of the almanacs, many useful recipes for the
housewife, with anecdotes, poems, etc.

Biblical and Prophetical Works of Rev. George Bush, D. D.,

author of “The Life of Mohammed,” etc., and Professor
of Hebrew in the New York City University. New York,
Dayton & Newman.

Professor Bush is one of the most profound and ingenious

scholars and critics of the present age, and we perceive with
pleasure that he is rapidly multiplying the fruits of his industrious pen.
To all the lovers of sound biblical exposition it must be gratifying to
know that the Hebrew Scriptures are in a fair way to develop their
riches to the English reader more fully than ever before. Professor
Bush’s commentaries on the Old Testament, now extending to six
volumes, embrace all the works of the Pentateuch but the last two,
and these, we learn, he proposes shortly to enter upon. His careful
study, his scrupulous fidelity in eliciting the exact meaning of the
original, and his peculiar tact in explaining it, have made his Notes
everywhere popular, so that before the completion of the series, the
first volume has reached a sixth edition, the second a fifth, etc. In all
of them will be found discussions on the most important points of
biblical science, extending far beyond the ordinary dimensions of
expository notes, and amounting in fact to elaborate dissertations of
great value. Among the subjects thus extensively treated are, in
Genesis, the temptation and the fall, the dispersion from Babel, the
prophecies of Noah, the character of Melchizedec, the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah, the history of Joseph, and the prophetical
benedictions of Jacob; in Exodus, the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart,
the miracles of the magicians, the pillar of cloud as the seat of the
Shekinah, the decalogue, the Hebrew theocracy, the tabernacle, the
cherubim, the candle-stick, the shew bread, the altar, &c.; in
Leviticus, a clear and minute specification of the different sacrifices,
the law of marriage, including the case of marriage with a deceased
wife’s sister, very largely considered, and a full account of the Jewish
festivals. The sixth volume, including Joshua and Judges, contains
an ample and erudite exposition of the Song of Deborah, and an
extended discussion on the subject of Jeptha’s vow, with a view to
determine whether the Jewish warrior really sacrificed his daughter.
The Professor gives an array of very strong reasons in favor of the
negative.
In his celebrated “Treatise on the Millennium,” which merely as a
literary performance has received the highest commendations of the
critics, our author has assumed the position that the millennium,
strictly so called, is past. But by the millennium he does not
understand the golden age of the church, which he, in common with
nearly all good men, regards as a future era. He contends that as the
memorable period of the thousand years of the apocalypse is
distinguished mainly by the binding of the symbolical dragon, we
must first determine by the legitimate canons of interpretation what is
shadowed forth by this mystic personage, before we can assure
ourselves of the true character of the millennial age. But the dragon,
he supposes, is the grand hieroglyphic of Paganism—the “binding of
the dragon,” but a figurative phrase for the suppression of Paganism
within the limits of the Roman empire, a fulfilment which he contends
commenced in the reign of Constantine, and was consummated in
that of Theodosius, his successor. Professor Bush draws largely on
the pages of Gibbon in support of his theory, assuming all along the
great foundation principle that the apocalypse of John is but a series
of pictured emblems, shadowing forth the ecclesiastical and civil
history of the world. From a cursory examination of his Treatise, we
are inclined to adopt the opinion of one of the first theologians of our
country, that if his premises be admitted, his conclusion is irresistible;
and that he did not know how to gainsay the premises.
In the Hierophant, a monthly publication of which he is editor, he
enters elaborately into the nature of the prophetic symbols, and in
the last number brings out some grand results as to the physical
destiny of the globe. He assumes that a fair construction of the
language of the prophets is far from countenancing the idle dreams
of Miller and his school respecting the literal conflagration of the
heavens and the earth, and does not even teach that such a
catastrophe is ever to take place. He denies not that this may
possibly be the finale which awaits our planet and the solar system,
but if so, it is to be gathered rather from astronomy than revelation—
from the apocalypse of Newton, Laplace and Herschell, than from
that of John.
In general literature, in science and in art, America has furnished
some of the best names in the world of letters; but it is in theology
and religious philosophy that our countrymen have made the
greatest advances. We need but allude to Edwards, Dwight,
Emmons, Marsh, Beecher, Alexander, Stuart, McIlvaine, and Bush in
proof of this. Perhaps we may add to the list Orestes Brownson,
who, however erratic and peculiar, is a man of singular genius and
sincerity. In our endeavors to keep the readers of this magazine
advised of the condition of our literature, we should fail of our intent if
at times we did not notice books and authors of a grave character.
The useful and the true is in every thing the national aim. The
writings of which we have spoken particularly in this brief notice, are
distinguished for remarkable directness of language and logical
clearness, as much as for profound scholarship, and they are among
the most original works of their class brought out in our times.

Songs, Odes, and other Poems, on National Subjects:

Compiled from Various Sources: by William McCarty.
Three volumes duodecimo. Philadelphia, W. McCarty.
 Mr. McCarty is a bookseller, of the long established house of
McCarty & Davis, in Market street. He is an antiquary also, and has
in his chambers one of the best collections of books relating to our
history and antiquities to be found in this country. Several years ago
he “formed the plan of gathering together our national songs and
ballads, deeming the task, however humble,” he says, “one of which
the result would be acceptable to his countrymen.” He has since
gleaned from all the files of magazines, newspapers and other
periodicals, in the public libraries and in his own possession,
published since Braddock’s defeat at DuQuesne, every scrap of
verse, “good, bad, or indifferent,” relating to men, manners and
events in America, and had them printed in three neat volumes, the
first of which contains the “patriotic,” the second the “military,” and
the third the “naval.” It is certainly a very curious collection. Some of
the pieces, indeed, were written by foreigners, and have as little
relation to any thing in America as to the quackeries of Græfenberg;
and others are not decidedly poetical; but by far the greater number
belong to one or another of the divisions in which the compiler has
placed them, and, as he well remarks, “the present and future
generations of Americans will hardly disdain those strains, however
homely, which cheered and animated our citizen soldiers and
seamen, ‘in the times that tried men’s souls,’ at the camp-fire or on
the forecastle.” We perceive that Mr. McCarty has copied from our
Magazine for October most of the pieces included in the article on
“The Minstrelsy of the Revolution.” We have many others not
embraced in his volumes, of which we intend to present a few
additional specimens to our readers, in connection, perhaps, with
some of the most curious verses in the books he has given us.

Wing-and-Wing, or Le Feu-Follet. By the author of “The

Red Rover,” “The Pilot,” “The Path Finder,” etc. Two
volumes, duodecimo. Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard.

We received this novel too recently to be able to do it justice in

our present number. It is a story of the sea, and from a cursory
examination we are inclined to believe it equal to Mr. Cooper’s most
celebrated naval romances. The scene is in the Mediterranean, in
the memorable years 1798 and 1799. Le Feu-Follet is a French
privateer, commanded by Raoul Yvard, a skilful, bold and chivalrous
sailor, and the interest of the tale turns principally upon the
manœuvres by which he preserves her from capture by the English
frigate Prosperine. The character second in importance on board the
republican privateer is Ithule Bolt, a shrewd Yankee, who, impressed
into the British navy, had shared in the dangers of Nelson’s victory,
and now added to a patriotic hatred of the English, some slight ill will
created by what he deemed unjustifiable appliances of the lash
during his service on board the Prosperine. Blended with the main
narrative is a history of the loves of the commander of Le Feu-Follet
and a beautiful Italian girl, Ghita Giuntotardi, one of our author’s
most admirably drawn heroines. Those who would know more of the
plot we refer to the book itself, or to the Yankee lieutenant, who in
due time returned to the United Slates, married a widow, and “settled
in life” somewhere in the Granite State. He is said at the present
moment to be an active abolitionist, a patron of the temperance
cause, and a terror to evil doers, under the appellation of Deacon
Bolt. We are pleased to learn that the publishers have fixed the price
of Wing-and-Wing at half a dollar—lower by fifty per cent. at least
than an American novel was ever sold for before. For this reason, as
well as on account of its remarkable merit, we predict for it a sale
equal to that of “The Spy,” or “The Red Rover.”

The Poets and Poetry of America: with a Historical

Introduction. By Rufus W. Griswold. Third edition. With
Illustrations by the First Artists.

Messrs. Carey & Hart have just issued a new edition of this work,
with beautiful illustrations from paintings by Leslie, Inman, Creswick,
Sully, Thompson, Verbryck, Hoyt, and Harding, engraved by Cheney,
Cushman, Dodson, and Forrest. We believe that no other book of so
expensive a character has passed to a second edition in the United
States during the year. The fact that this has reached a third edition
in six months seems to indicate that our poetical literature is properly
appreciated, in our own country, at least. The price of the third
edition has very properly been reduced to two dollars and a half.

The Little Boys’ and Girls’ Library: Edited by Mrs. Sarah J.

Hale. Six books, small quarto. New York, Edward
Dunigan.

The stories in these little volumes are written with taste and
simplicity. Though Mrs. Hale’s incidents are generally pleasing, we
do not in all cases approve their tendency. With deference for her
better judgment, we think the boy who, in “The Way to Save,” bought
the glass box, was much wiser than he who bought the draught
board.

The Youth’s Keepsake: A Christmas and New Year’s Gift

for Young People. The Annualette: A Christmas and
New Year’s Gift for Children. Philadelphia, Thomas,
Cowperthwaite & Co.

Two very beautiful and interesting annuals, of the character of

which the titles are sufficiently descriptive.

Sporting Scenes and Sundry Sketches: being the

Miscellaneous Writings of J. Cypress, jr. Edited by Frank
Forester. In Two vols., 12mo. New York, Gould, Banks &
Co., 1842.

“J. Cypress, jr.” was the late William P. Hawes, of the city of New
York; and “Frank Forester” is the name by which one of the finest
scholars, critics, and writers, whose productions have ever given a
charm to our periodical literature—Henry William Herbert, the author
of “Cromwell,” and numerous tales and other compositions in this
Magazine—is known in the “sporting world.” Mr. Hawes was
educated for the bar; his writings were generally on political or
sporting topics, in the daily gazettes, or the magazines. The
admirable series of papers, entitled “Fire Island Ana,” was written for
the American Monthly, while that work was under Mr. Herbert; and
most of his later compositions appeared in the “Turf Register.” We
have not room to do them justice. They have never been excelled in
this country, in richness of humor, freshness, or originality. Mr.
Hawes had the modesty of genius. He lived in the quiet enjoyment of
the life and the scenes he so felicitously delineated, and was
unknown as a writer beyond the limited circle of his intimate friends
until they and the world were deprived of his presence.

The Task, and other Poems: By William Cowper. One

volume, duodecimo. Philadelphia, Carey & Hart.

Among the poets who have written in the English language on

religious themes, Cowper unquestionably ranks next to Milton in
genius, and before him as a teacher. The Presbyterian poet is
admired for his sublime conceptions and his unequaled mastery of
language and the intricacies of rhythm; but the bard of Olney is loved
by the good and the true as a friend. The new edition of the Task is
one of the most beautiful specimens of typography produced in this
country, and the etchings, by Cheney, which illustrate it, are of
course admirably executed.

The Way of Life: By Charles Hodge, Professor in the

Theological Seminary of Princeton, New Jersey. One
volume duodecimo, pp. 348. Philadelphia, American
Sunday School Union.
 Among the many very excellent works published by the American
Sunday School Union, we know of none written with more ability, or
calculated to do more good than this admirable treatise. The plenary
inspiration of the Scriptures, the great practical doctrines they teach,
and the influence which these doctrines should exert upon the heart
and life, are set forth by the learned author with candor, simplicity
and eloquence.

Books for Youth: Heroines of Sacred History, by Mrs.

Steele; Philip and his Garden, by Charlotte Elizabeth;
Rocky Island, by Samuel Wilberforce; Alice Benden, by
Charlotte Elizabeth; Clementine Cuvier, by John Angell
James; The Simple Flower, by Charlotte Elizabeth; The
Flower of Innocence, by Charlotte Elizabeth; and Moral
Tales, by Robert Merry. New York, John S. Taylor & Co.

The eight volumes, of which we have given the titles above, are
bound in a uniform style, and constitute a very neat and excellent
library for juvenile readers. We know of no books that can be more
appropriately presented to the young in the approaching holidays
than those of Archdeacon Wilberforce, John Angell James, and
Charlotte Elizabeth.
 EDITOR’S TABLE.

Miss Barrett.—In this number will be found a series of sonnets

by Miss Elizabeth B. Barrett, among the first of her contributions to
any American periodical. They were originally intended for
“Arcturus,” to which magazine they were sent; but arriving after the
discontinuance of that periodical, its editors placed them at our
disposal, “thinking the good company into which they would be
introduced in ‘Graham,’ would be every way agreeable to the fair
authoress.”
Miss Barrett’s productions are unique in this age of lady authors.
They have the “touch of nature” in common with the best; they have,
too, sentiment, passion and fancy in the highest degree, without
reminding us of Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Norton, or L. E. L. Her
excellence is her own; her mind is colored by what it feeds on; the
fine tissue of her flowing style comes to us from the loom of Grecian
thought. She is the learned poetess of the day, familiar with Homer
and Æschylus and Sophocles, and to the musings of Tempe she has
added the inspiration of Christianity, “above all Greek, all Roman
fame.” She has translated the Prometheus to the delight of scholars,
and has lately contributed a series of very remarkable prose papers
to the London Athenæum. Her reading Greek recalls to us Roger
Ascham’s anecdote of Lady Jane Grey; but Lady Jane Grey has left
us no such verses.
A striking characteristic of Miss Barrett’s prose, is its prevailing
seriousness, approaching to solemnity—a garb borrowed from the
“sceptred pale” of her favorite Greek drama of fate. She loses much
with the general reader by a dim mysticism; but many of her later
poems are free from any such defect. The great writers whom she
loves will teach her the plain, simple, universal language of poetry.
Her dreams and abstractions, though “caviare to the generale,”
have their admirers, who will ever find in pure and elevated
philosophy expressed in the words of enthusiasm the living presence
of poetry. On Parnassus there are many groves: far from the dust of
the highway, embosomed in twilight woods that seem to symbol
Reverence and Faith trusting on the unseen, we may hear in the
whispering of the trees, the wavering breath of insect life, the
accompaniment of our poet’s strain. Despise not dreams and
reveries. With Cowley, Miss Barrett vindicates herself. “The father of
poets tells us, even dreams, too, are from God.”
We cannot here do justice to Miss Barrett’s volume of the
Seraphim, or to her other poems. We cannot here illustrate as we
would the lofty tone of her conceptions, which in grandeur and
human interest belong to the highest and most enduring of lyrical
strains. She has thrown aside sentimentality, the fluency without
thought, the cheap eloquence that marks a certain school of lady
poets, for the genuine language of emotion, the fire-new currency of
speech forged in the secret chambers of the heart. From two
volumes of her poetry before us, (unfamiliar as yet to American
readers—they cannot be so long,) we quote one poem, perhaps not
the most brilliant of all, but inferior to none of the rest in the pathos,
the tenderness, the deep Christian sympathy with human life, which
dwell in the soul of this rare poetess.

THE SLEEP.

“He giveth His beloved sleep.”—Psalm cxxvii. 2.

Of all the thoughts of God that are

Borne inward unto souls afar,
Along the Psalmist’s music deep⁠—
Now tell me if that any is,
For gift or grace surpassing this⁠—
“He giveth his beloved sleep?”
What would we give to our beloved?
The hero’s heart, to be unmoved⁠—
The poet’s star-tuned harp, to sweep⁠—
The senate’s shout to patriot vows—
The monarch’s crown, to light the brows?—
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”

What do we give to our beloved?

A little faith, all undisproved⁠—
A little dust, to overweep⁠—
And bitter memories, to make
The whole earth blasted for our sake!
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”

“Sleep soft, beloved!” we sometimes say,

But have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep:
But never doleful dream again
Shall break the happy slumber, when
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”

O earth, so full of dreary noises!

O men, with wailing in your voices!
O delved gold, the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse, that o’er it fall!
God makes a silence through you all,
And “giveth His beloved sleep!”

His dew drops mutely on the hill;

His cloud above it saileth still,
Though on its slope men toil and reap!
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
“He giveth His beloved sleep.”
 Ha! men may wonder while they scan
A living, thinking, feeling man,
In such a rest his heart to keep;
But angels say—and through the word
I ween their blessed smile is heard⁠—
“He giveth His beloved sleep!”

For me my heart that erst did go,

Most like a tired child at a show,
That sees through tears the juggler’s leap,⁠—
Would now its wearied vision close,
Would childlike on His love repose,
Who “giveth His beloved sleep!”

And friends!—dear friends!—when it shall be

That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep⁠—
Let me, most loving of you all,
Say, not a tear must o’er her fall⁠—
“He giveth His beloved sleep!”

Stars that Have Set in MDCCCXLII.—Among the dead of the

year now drawing to a close, America laments her Marsh and
Channing, and Europe, Sismondi and some less brilliant luminaries.
The Rev. James Marsh, D.D. was, at the time of his death, the
third day of July, Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy in
the University of Vermont. He was a calm, chaste scholar, an earnest
and profound thinker, and a powerful and eloquent advocate of the
highest principles of religion and philosophy, with the perfect
simplicity and grandeur of whose life were blended the rarest virtues
that adorn humanity. His principal published writings, excepting a few
articles in the leading reviews, and some translations from the
German, are devoted to those high and spiritual principles of
philosophy, of which Coleridge and Kant were the most celebrated
European exponents. We are pleased to learn that Professor Torrey,
one of the dearest friends of the departed, is now superintending the
publication of a complete edition of his works.
 The name of William Ellery Channing has been long familiar
to the readers of America and Great Britain. He was equally popular
in both countries, and in both was regarded as one of the greatest
authors of the age. The first edition of his collected writings we
believe was published some five or six years since in Glasgow, and
the last, in six octavo volumes, in Boston, in the winter of 1840. We
presume his later productions, unprinted sermons, etc.—sufficient to
fill several additional volumes—will soon be published, with his
memoirs. Doctor Channing was for a long period the leading divine
of the Unitarian belief, and though an ardent controvertist, was
regarded by all men with love and reverence. The purity of his life,
his high aims, his candor, and the dignity and beauty of his diction,
won for him a reputation that will endure when most of the names
now prominent in the world of letters are forgotten. He died in
Bennington, in Vermont, on his return way from an excursion among
the Green Mountains in search of health, on the second day of
October.
John Charles Leonard de Sismondi was one of the most
celebrated historical, political and æsthetical writers of the time. He
died near Geneva, on the twenty-fifth of June, in his sixty-ninth year.
He was the author of New Principles of Political Economy, A History
of the Italian Republics, A History of the Literature of Southern
Europe, A History of France, Julia Severn, a romance, and several
other works, making in the aggregate about one hundred and fifty
volumes, in the French editions. As a historian he has rarely been
surpassed, and in every department of letters he exercised a
powerful influence for nearly half a century.
Mr. James Grahame, author of the excellent History of the United
Slates which bears his name; Sir Robert Kerr Porter, the
traveler; Theodore E. Hook, the novelist, biographer, and dramatic
writer; and Robert Mudie, author of several works on natural
history, etc. were better known in this country than any of the other
literary characters who have died in Europe during the present year.

New Books.—We received several new works too late to be

noticed properly in our present number, of which we have space to
mention particularly only Mr. Norman’s “Rambles in Yucatan,” and
Mr. Lester’s observations on “The Condition and Fate of England,”
both from the press of Messrs. Langley, of New York. The first is an
exceedingly interesting work, and the last quite as good as the same
author’s “Glory and Shame of England.” We shall endeavor to do
them full justice in our Magazine for January.
The End of the Year.—With the present number we bring to a
close another year of the publication of Graham’s Magazine. The
many improvements which since our last anniversary have been
effected in the work, and the extraordinary accessions to our
subscription list—between twenty and thirty thousand in twelve
months!—impart to us a satisfaction which we trust is shared in
some degree by our million readers.
Since the commencement of the present year, Rufus W.
Griswold has become associated with the proprietor in the
editorship of the Magazine; and to our corps of contributors have
been added William C. Bryant and Richard H. Dana, the first
American poets, and the equals of any now living in the world;
James Fenimore Cooper, the greatest of living novelists; Charles
F. Hoffman, one of the most admired poets and prose writers of our
country; Elizabeth B. Barrett, the truest female poet who has
written in the English language; J. H. Mancur, the author of “Henri
Quatre;” George H. Colton, the author of “Tecumseh;” H. T.
Tuckerman, the author of “Isabelle, or Sicily,” etc.; the author of “A
New Home” and “Forest Life,” who, under the name of “Mary
Clavers,” has won a reputation second to that of none of the writers
of her sex in America; Mrs. E. F. Ellet, the well known author of
“The Characters of Schiller,” etc.; Mrs. Seba Smith, whose elegant
and truthful compositions are as universally admired as they are
read; and several others, whom we have not now space to mention.
All these, with our favorite old writers, Professor Longfellow,
George Hill, Edgar A. Poe, Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Stephens, and
others, we shall retain for our succeeding volumes.
We shall likewise receive regular contributions during the ensuing
year, from N. P. Willis, whose many admirable qualities as a writer
have made his name familiar wherever English literature is read; T.
C. Grattan, the popular author of “Highways and Byways,” “The
Heiress of Bruges,” etc.; “Maria del Occidente,” the author of
“Zophiel,” and many others, whose names will from month to month
grace our pages.
Let our Past speak for our Future. The improvements made in
Graham’s Magazine, in 1842, will be surpassed by those that we
shall introduce in 1843. In all the departments of our work we shall
remain in advance of every other candidate for the public favor.

The Author of the Sketch Book.—In a notice of the

Miscellanies of Sir Walter Scott, in the number of this Magazine for
September, we made allusion to reviews of various publications of
Mr. Washington Irving, which we had good reason for believing were
written by that gentleman himself. We learn with pleasure, from one
who speaks on the subject by authority, that Mr. Irving is guiltless of
the imputed self laudation. He did indeed write the article in the
London Quarterly on his “Chronicles of Grenada,” and received for it
the sum we mentioned; but, like so many of the modern “reviews,” it
had very little relation to the work which gave it a title, or to its author.

H. Hastings Weld.—We notice that this talented and agreeable

writer, formerly editor of the Brother Jonathan, has taken the editorial
charge of the United States Saturday Post, a family newspaper
of the largest class and circulation. We feel assured that the humor
and vivacity of Mr. Weld’s pen will tend to make the paper still more
popular, and to add greatly to the already enormous subscription list.
This paper already circulates more copies weekly than any other
family newspaper in the Union.

Transcriber’s Notes:
Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic
spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious punctuation
and typesetting errors have been corrected without note.

In the story Malina Gray, this concluding installment had two parts
titled Chapter III. The second Chapter III has been corrected to
Chapter IV.

[End of Graham’s Magazine, Vol. XXI, No. 6, December 1842,

George R. Graham, Editor]
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