“I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven.” These words begin the deathbed confession of “R …,” a fictional character of Richard Wagner's creation, the central figure in the novella “A Death in Paris.” “R …” is a poor German expatriate musician who, in an earlier novella, had made “A Pilgrimage to Beethoven.” Between these two short prose works, written and first published between 1840 and 1841, the twenty-seven-year-old Wagner fuses contemporary ideas and topoi with characteristics deeply ingrained in German cultural discourse to produce a figure both familiar and new. The poor, honest, German musician, who composes for the love of music rather than for monetary gain. Music as the transcendental art form. The great composers (Germans, of course) forming a divine succession. All these ideas, rich in signs, were then circulating. With sleight of hand, Wagner concentrates them into a single character, has him die on the printed page, only to reappear as the nucleus of the public persona Wagner adopted for the remainder of his career: therein lies the novelty. Richard Wagner's public image is a literary creation. Moreover, it is one of such complexity, so full of meaning, that it demands the careful unpacking to which the remainder of this chapter will be devoted.

The term “image” can be understood both visually and conceptually. Because the advent of photography coincided with Wagner's adult life, we have an even more accurate idea of how Wagner looked than we do of his illustrious predecessors like Mozart and Beethoven.