Cartas . Para AUGUST ROECKEL

Carta 1

14/08/1851

The external circumstances of my life are easily told. After our separation, or rather at the close of the disastrous events J when we last met, I went first to Paris, but there I felt everything was at once repugnant to me ; and though I was only remotely brought into contact with the artistic world, its whole conditions so repelled me that, after a very short stay, I left and went to Switzerland, and at Zurich I speedily found amongst the Swiss a circle of devoted, loyal, and sympathetic friends. This beautiful Alpine land at once revived me. I trust that you have sufficient fortitude not to be cast down by hearing this in your captivity. After I had lived down the painful impressions made on me by recent events, by the contrariness of present circumstances, and more especially by the fate of many of my friends, I felt my individual life quickened and restored to warmth and fulness by deliverance from the fetters and constraints of an impossible position.

I realised that I was the only artist who as such had grasped the movement of the times. On this subject i.e.on Art and its relation to life—I spoke out my views publicly as an author. Of course I do not know if you were allowed to see my writings. The first publication was a short pamphlet, entitled Art and Revolution, in which I denied to everything that passes muster as Art in the present day the true quality of Art. In a small book that appeared shortly after, The Art-work of the Future, I demonstrated the impotence of modern Art, resulting from its disintegration into different branches, which constitute the sole artistic life of the present day. And to this I opposed the Art of the future, the only Art that is truly in touch with life and penetrated with vital force, and represented it in such a way that it stood out in sharp contrast to the merely academic, or merely fashionable, Art of the present day.
When I had completed this work, I had occasion, early in 1850, to return to Paris. During the interval Liszt had been working hard in my interests. He and my other friends were convinced that my one hope of a career lay in making my mark in the Paris Opera House. In spite of a sense of despair, I forced myself to yield the point to them. I sketched out a scenario, and started once more for Paris. The effort nearly cost me my life. My detestation of the artistic world of Paris, and the constraint that I had to put on myself, had such a powerful influence on me and affected me so strongly that it brought on complete nervous prostration, and from that prostration I only recovered by a tremendous effort of will—a sort of act of desperation—which constrained me to turn my back on all my friends and to seek refuge amongst,utter strangers. At that very time—I was in Bordeaux—I learnt through a French newspaper that you and Bakunin* had been condemned to death. I wrote you a letter, hoping that it would reach you in time to bid you both a last farewell. Soon after I discovered that the rumour had been a false one, and the letter which I had sent to Dresden to be forwarded to you was, naturally enough under the circumstances, detained. My intention to fly from my friends was frustrated by the great sympathy and affection evinced for me by a certain family. This household,composed almost entirely of women, lived some considerable time in Dresden, and is known to you,if I am not mistaken, through your brother.






Lately I have once more given expression to my convictions as a man and as an artist-poet, —in the first place, and at some length, on the  subject of my own dramatic Art, in a book entitled Opera and Drama, and upon my own individual relations to Art in a "Communication to my Friends," which will appear as the preface to an edition of my three poems, The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser, and Lohengrin.







but in the said "Communication" I have made it very clear that I care for no sympathy from those who distinguish between the "man" and the " artist," and I have pointed out the folly of making such a distinction. How unworthy—how, to put it frankly, absolutely contemptible—our " Art " of the present day is, has at last become apparent now that it has cast aside all sense of shame and openly acknowledges that its one concern is to be a paying business. You may imagine how unhappy a man of my stamp feels under such circum- stances. With open eyes, I have to abandon myself to illusions, in order to find my justification for a creative activity, conscious all the time that my activity merely serves to deceive me as to the general rottenness of things.

To continue theorising would be repugnant to me, and Liszt has stimulated me to a new work of Art. I have done the poetic version of Young Siegfried, which I confess has been a source of great happiness to me. My hero, a child of Nature, has grown up in the forest under the care of a dwarf (Mime, the Nibelung) Who has brought him up in the hope that he may become the slayer of the dragon—the guardian of the treasure. This treasure of the Nibelungs constitutes a very important element in the poem. Every sort of crime is connected with it. Siegfried is a being much like the youth in the fairy tale who goes out into the world that he may learn what fear is, which he quite fails to do, owing to his healthy natural instincts and his inability to see things otherwise than as they actually are. He slays the dragon, and kills his foster father the dwarf, who for the sake of the treasure was secretly plotting to murder him. Siegfried, in whom the longing to escape from loneliness has awakened, is led by the voice of a bird—intelligible to him from the moment when he accidentally tasted the dragon's blood—to the fire-girt rock where Brunhilde lies in a deep sleep. Siegfried penetrates the flames, kisses Brunhilde, and the woman in her awakens to the raptures of love. I cannot enlarge farther on the subject now possibly I may be allowed to send you the poem itself. Only one word more: in our ardent discussions together we have already touched on this subject—It is not possible for us to attain to all that we can be and should be, so long as the woman is unawakened. But why do I harp upon this string to you, my poor friend ? Believe me, I too am sad that I can do nothing beyond harping and singing. I shall finish my Young Siegfried, but not for one moment shall I be deceived about it, or fail to see that it is a beautiful illusion and that reality is the one thing that matters. It often seems to me that our invisible bonds have a more constraining power than the actual fetters by which others are bound. And yet, this I know, and this comfort I can offer you—do not be vexed with me, for it is the one hope by which we can all encourage one another,—let us strive to be and to keep healthy and natural, lor therein lies, everything'—hope, comfort, confidence.

 

- 12 September, 1852

My published writings testify to my want of freedom as an artist; the lash of compulsion alone forced me to become an author, and nothing was further from my thoughts than to write"Books".  Had it been otherwise, the chances are you would not have had cause to complain so much of my style. 

But the time for literary work is past with me; to have gone on with it, would have killed me. On the other hand, I have embarked on a great artistic undertaking, namely, the completion of a poem consisting of three dramas with a separate prologue, which I shall then set to music, and which—God knows when, where and how—I mean some day to have put on the stage. The whole poem will be called The Ring of the Nibelung ; the prologue, "The Theft of the Rhine-gold". the first part of the drama will be "The Walkure;" the second part, "Young Siegfried;" and the third part, "Siegfried's Death." The three dramas are completed ; but I have still to put the prologue into verse. By the end of this year, I hope to be able to submit the printed poem to my friends. The working- out of the whole subject (in my present state of health) will, of course, need a great deal of time; as to the performance, that must be

relegated to a nebulous"future." With regard to the scheme, you will receive full information, in the very detailed "Communication to my Friends," in which I treat of my own artistic development. This "Communication" forms the preface to my three "opera poems" The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser, and Lohengrin. The book appeared at the beginning of this year, and I gave orders for a copy to be sent to you: probably you were forbidden to see it;, but should this not be the case, let me know, and I shall see that the matter is put right.

The most recent was a book of instructions for the performance of my "Tann- hauser." For you must know that at the present moment a considerable number of German theatres are preparing to bring it out ; even the Berlin Court theatre is making arrangements for its performance, and I anticipate that ere long this opera will have been given in all our theatres. Unfortunately, this prospect can no longer give me pleasure—in every respect it comes too late ; and besides, I know that the work will never be performed as I meant that it should be. Possibly, performers and public may appreciate the softer, more emotional parts of the work; but they will never realise the energy of passion that underlies it. I also greatly doubt whether this unexpected and growing fame will pave the way for a performance at a future day of my Nibelung dramas; for, in my opinion, the possibility of such a performance depends on conditions quite alien to the prevailing ideas on life and art. The most painful thing to me—in spite of apparent success—is to recognise that I owe the greater part of this success to a misunder- standing of the true meaning of my work ; on this subject I have no further illusions.

-  June 8th, 1853.




For I do not doubt that—when I am ready for it—means will be provided here for an adequate performance, according to my own ideas, of my dramatic works. To bring this about it will be necessary that I should devote myself for some years exclusively to the education of a company such as I require. When that is achieved I shall have all my operas, above all my Nibelungen drama, performed during a whole year in a theatre specially erected for the purpose, built of light materials, but adapted to the true needs of dramatic representation. I shall then have attained, if not my ideal, at least all that mortal man can aspire to. In the meantime I must save my strength and health—often very feeble—in order to accomplish the music of my Nibelung drama. This will take me at least three or four years.

My fame is ever on the increase; I am looked upon as an unheard of phenomenon, impossible to classify pamphlets and magazine articles innumerable are written about me; misapprehension and admiration reciprocally work each other up. How unspeakably indifferent I remain to it all Nothing would induce me to return for a moment to quill-driving, I am so discouraged by constant misapprehension of my writings, and disheartened by realising that the inner meaning of my whole being and of my views remains a closed book. One thing alone could avail to comfort me. Not only am I admired, I am also beloved—where criticism ceases, love steps in, and many hearts have been brought closer to me. But this very sympathy remains a thing apart, aloof from me ; it only touches my life indirectly, and that life having taken the bend it has, I can only contemplate this wealth of love as from a great distance. If I could become a thorough egoist it would be better for me ; but there is no help for it, and, like you, I feel it is only by resignation that I can be true to myself.

Let me know whether you have received the "Ring of the Nibelung," and, if not, whether you will be allowed to have it. It is the climax of my present artistic achievement.

 

 

- 26th January, 1854

During all this confusion I was unable to answer your letter, and meant to do so on
my return to Zurich. But once there, I was overcome with such an intense longing to get to work at the music of my " Rheingold " that I was not in a proper frame of mind to reply to your critical remarks on my poem. 

Here my art must come to my aid, and the work that I conceived under this influence is no other than my Nibelung poem; I am inclined to think that it was not so much the obscurity of my version of the poem, as the point of view which you persistently adopted in opposition to mine, which was the cause of your failing to understand many important parts in it. Such mistakes are of course only possible in the case of a reader who substitutes his own ideas for those of the poet, while the simple-minded reader, perhaps unconsciously to himself, takes in the matter more easily, just as it is. For myself the poem can only be interpreted in the following way :

Presentment of reality in the sense in which I have interpreted it above. Instead of the words

"A fateful day is dawning for the gods ;
And wilt thou not deliver up the ring ? 

Then be assur'd thy race ere long shall end 

Thy noble race—in shameful overthrow."

I now make Erda say merely

•• All that is—ends
A fateful day dawns for the gods

I counsel you beware of the ring."

We must learn to die, and to die in the fullest sense of the word. The fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness, and this fear is only generated when love itself begins to wane. How came it that this feeling which imparts the highest blessedness to all things living was so far lost sight of by the human race that at last it came to this : all that mankind did, ordered, and established was conceived only in fear of the end ? My poem sets this forth. It reveals Nature in her undisguised truth, with all those inconsistencies which, in their endless multiplicity, embrace even directly conflicting elements. But it is not the repulse of Alberich by the Rhine-daughters—the repulse was inevitable owing to their nature—that was the cause of all the mischief. Alberichandhisringwould have been powerless to harm the gods had they not themselves been susceptible to evil. Wherein then is the root of the matter to be sought? Examine the first scene between Wotan and Fricka, which leads up to the scene in the second act of "The Walkiire." The necessity of prolonging beyond the point of change the subjection to the tie that binds them—a tie resulting from an involuntary illusion of love, the duty of maintaining at all costs the relation into which they have entered, and so placing themselves in hopeless opposition to the universal law of change and renewal, which governs the world of phenomena—these are the conditions which bring the pair of them to a state of torment and mutual lovelessness. The development of the whole poem sets forth the necessity of recognizing and yielding to the change, the many-sidedness, the multiplicity, and the eternal renewing of reality and of life. Wotan rises to the tragic height of willing his own destruction. This is the lesson that we have to learn from the history of mankind : to will what necessity imposes, and ourselves to bring it about. Thecreativeproductofthissupreme, self-destroying will, its victorious achievement, is a fearless human being, one who never ceases to love: Siegfried. That is the whole matter. . As a matter of detail, the mischief-making power, the poison that is fatal to love, appears under the guise' of the gold stolen from Nature and misapplied—the Nibelungs' ring, never to be redeemed from the curse that clings to it until it has been restored to Nature and the gold sunkagaininthedepthsoftheRhine. But it is only quite at the end that Wotan realizes this, when he himself has reached the goal of his tragic career; what Loge had foretold to him in the beginning with a touching insistence, the god consumed by ambition had ignored. Later in Fafner's deed he merely recognized the power of the curse ; it is only when the ring works its destroying spell on Siegfried himself that he realizes that only by restoration of what was stolen can the evil be annulled, and he deliberately makes his own destruction part of the conditions on which must depend the annulling of the original mischief.

Experience is everything. Moreover, Siegfried alone (man by himself) is not the complete human being : he is merely the half; it is only along with Briinhilde that he becomes the redeemer. Totheisolatedbeingnotallthings are possible; there is need of more than one, and it is woman, suffering and willing to sacrifice herself, who becomes at last the real, conscious redeemer: for what is love it self but the"eternal feminine " (das ewig Weibliche).
So much for the broad and general lines of the poem, which may be taken as summing up its more particular and special features.

I cannot believe that you have misapprehended my meaning and intention: only it seems to me that you have attached more importance to the connecting links and parts of the great chain than they, as such, deserve ; and as if you had been bound to do this, in order to read into my poem your own preconceived ideas. As a whole I do not agree with your criticisms with regard to a certain want of lucidity and distinctness of statement: on the contrary, I believe that a true instinct has kept me from a too great definiteness; for it has been borne in on me, that an absolute disclosing of the intention disturbs true insight. What you want in drama—as indeed

in all works of Art—is to achieve your end, not by statement of the artist's intentions, but by the presentment of life as the resultant, not of arbitrary forces, but of eternal laws. It is just this that distinguishes my poetical material from all the poetical material which alone absorbs poets' minds at the present day.

For example, by insisting, as you do, that the intention of Wotan's appearance on the scene in "Young Siegfried" should be more clearly defined, you are prejudicing in a marked manner the fateful element in the development of the drama,which to me is so important. After his farewell to Briinhilde, Wotan is in all truth a departed spirit ; true to his high resolve, he must now leave things alone, and renouncing all power over them, let them go as they will.
For this reason, he is now only the "Wanderer." Look well at him, for in every point he resembles us. Here presents the actual sum of the Intelligence of the Present, whereas Siegfried is the man greatly desired and longed for by us of the Future. But we who long for him cannot fashion him ; he must fashion himself and by means of our annihilation. Taken in this way, Wotan is, you must acknowledge, highly interesting; whereas he would seem to us most unworthy if he appeared as a subtle intriguer, which indeed he would be if he gave counsel apparently against Siegfried, though in reality favorable to Siegfried and consequently to himself. That were a deception worthy of our political heroes, but not of my jovial god, bent on his own annihilation. Look at him in his juxtaposition to Siegfried in the third Act. In presence of his impending destruction, the god has at last become so completely human that contrary to his high resolve—there is once more a stirring of his ancient pride, brought about by his jealousy for Brunhilde—his vulnerable point, as it has now become. He will, so to speak, not allow himself to be merely thrust aside; he

chooses rather to fall before the conquering might of Siegfried. But this part is so little premeditated and intentional, that in a sudden burst of passion the longing for victory over- powers him, a victory moreover which he admits could only have made him more miserable. Holding the views I do, I could only give the faintest and subtlest indication of my design. Of course, I do not mean my hero to make the impression of a wholly unconscious creature on the contrary, I have sought in Siegfried to represent my ideal of the perfect human being, whose highest consciousness manifests itself in the acknowledgment that all consciousness must find expression in present life and action.

The enormous significance that I attach to this consciousness which can scarcely ever find adequate expression in mere words, will be quite clear to you in the scene between Siegfried and the Rhine-daughters. Here we see that infinite wisdom has come to Siegfried, for he has grasped the highest truth and knows that •death is better than a life of fear : knowledge of the ring, too, has come to him, but he does not leed its power, for he has something better to do ; he keeps it only as a proof that he at least has never learnt what fear means. Confess, in the presence of such a being, the splendor of the gods must be dimmed.

What strikes me most is your question, "Why, seeing that the gold is restored to the Rhine, is it necessary that the gods should perish? " I feel certain that, at a good performance, the most simple-minded spectator will be left in no doubt on that point. Certainly the downfall of the gods is no necessary part of the drama regarded as a mere contrapuntal nexus of motives. As such, indeed, it might have been turned, twisted, and interpreted to mean any conceivable thing—after the manner of lawyers and politicians. No, the necessity for this downfall had to arise out of our own deepest convictions, as it did with Wotan. And thus it was all- important to justify this catastrophe to the feelings of the spectator ; and it is so justified to any one who follows the course of the whole action with all its simple and natural motives. When finally Wotan gives expression to this sense of necessity, he only proclaims that which we have all along felt must needs be. At the end of " Rhine Gold " when Loge watches the gods enter Walhalla and speaks these fateful words: "They hasten towards their end who imagine themselves so strong in their might," he, in that moment, only gives utterance to our own conviction ; for any one who has followed the prelude sympathetically, and not in a hyper-critical, cavilling spirit, but abandoning himself to his impressions and feelings, will entirely agree with Loge.

And now let me say something to you about Brunhilde. You misunderstand her, too,when you attribute her refusal to give the ring up to Wotan to hardness and obstinacy. Can you not see that it was for love's sake that Brunhilde sundered herself from Wotan and from all the gods, because where Wotan clung to schemes^ she could only—love ? Above all, from the moment that Siegfried had awakened her she has no other knowledge than the knowledge of love. Now the symbol of this—after Sieg- fried's departure—is the ring. When Wotan claims it from her, one thing only is present to her spirit—what it was that originally alienated her from him, her having disobeyed for Love's sake; and this alone she is still conscious of, that for Love she has renounced her godhead. She knows also that one thing alone is
god-like, and that is Love; therefore let the splendour of Walhalla fall in ruins, she will not give up the ring (her love). Just consider how poor, avaricious and common she would have stood revealed to us, if she had refused the ring because she had learned (possibly from Siegfried) of its magic, and the power of gold. Surely you did not seriously think such a thing of so grand a woman ? But if you shudder because, being the woman she is, she should have preserved as a symbol of love just this ring on which the curse lay, then you will have penetrated my meaning, and will have under- stood the curse of the Nibelungs in its most terrible and tragic significance ; then you will admit the necessity of the whole of the last drama of "Siegfried's death." Thathadtobe compassed in order that the malign influence of the gold should be fully revealed. How did it come about that Brunhilde yielded so readily to the disguised Siegfried ? Simply because he had wrested the ring from her, in which her whole strength lay. The terror, the fatality (das Damonische) that underlie the whole of that scene seem entirely to have escaped you. Through the fire which it had been foreordained that none but Siegfried should pass, which actually none but he had passed, another has made his way to her with but little difficulty.

Everything totters round Briinhilde, everything is out of joint ; in a terrible conflict she is overcome, she is "forsaken of God." And moreover it is Siegfried in reality who orders her to share his couch; Siegfried whom she (unconsciously and thus with the greater bewilderment) almost recognises, by his gleaming eye, in spite of his disguise. You must feel that something is being enacted that is not to be expressed in mere words—and it is wrong of you to challenge me to explain it in words.
Well, I have certainly expanded pretty freely the fear of doing so was really the cause of my delay in writing. I was perturbed to find that you had so completely misunderstood certain features of my drama. Thishasmadeclearto me, that only in its complete form and under favourable circumstances would the work be safe from misapprehension, and as I was seized with a violent longing to begin the musical composition, I gladly gave myself up to my desire, before writing to you. The completion of the music of " Rhine Gold," at once so difficult and so important, has restored my sense of security, as you perceive. I now realise myself how much of the whole spirit and meaning of my poem is only made clear by the music ; I cannot now for my life even look at the words without the musical accompaniment. In the course of time I hope to send you the score. For the present, all I need say is that it has worked up to a perfect unity; there is scarcely a bar in the orchestra which is not developed out of preceding motifs. But it is difficult to enter fully upon this in a letter.
What you say as to the carrying out and performance of the whole work meets with my full approval ; on these points your judgment is infallible. I shall certainly follow your advice.

How I am ever to bring about a complete representation of the cycle is still a grave problem. But when the time comes I shall attack it, for otherwise I should be deprived of my one serious aim in life. I believe there would be no difficulty about the merely mechanical part of the undertaking ; but how about my performers ? The very thought makes me groan. Of course I must look to young artists who have not been already entirely ruined by our present Opera system. Idon'teveninmydreamsthinkofso- called "stars." How I am to educate my young company is the question. What I should like would be to have my whole troupe together for a year, without allowing them to perform once in public. I should in that way have daily intercourse with them, and train them both on their human and their artistic side, thus allowing them gradually to ripen for their task. Sounder the most favourable conditions I could not count on a first performance before the summer of 1858.

But no matter how long it lasts, I feel something inspiring in such concentrated activity, for the sake of an object that is entirely of my own creation, which makes life worth living. As for the rest, I must turn a deaf ear to all your life-precepts and counsels; over these things one has no control—they come of themselves.

 

 

So I threw myself passionately after an interval of six years—into music, and determined not to write till I had finished the composition of "Rheingold." Well, that is done, and now I understand my own reluctance to answer you sooner ; for now, the work being accomplished, I am in a quite different position to reply to your criticism, or rather not to reply to it—that doubtless were best, for you are right in criticising ; but I, too, am right in conceiving and carrying out the work as best I can and may. Therefore, I shall not quarrel with you about it, but I should like to talk it over a little with you.

for each of us the only true, the only real life can only exist in the imagination as an unattained ideal. I had reached the age of thirty-six before I had divined the true meaning of my creative impulse ; up till then Art had seemed to me to be the end,life the means. But the discovery had come to me too late, and the result of following this new bent could not be other than tragic. A wider outlook into the actual world forces home the conviction that for the moment Love is impossible.

Well, I have certainly expanded pretty freely the fear of doing so was really the cause of my delay in writing. I was perturbed to find that you had so completely misunderstood certain features of my drama. Thishasmadeclearto me, that only in its complete form and under favourable circumstances would the work be safe  from misapprehension, and as I was seized with a violent longing to begin the musical composition, I gladly gave myself up to my desire, before writing to you. The completion of the music of " Rhine Gold," at once so difficult and so important, has restored my sense of security, as you perceive. I now realise myself how much of the whole spirit and meaning of my poem is only made clear by the music; I cannot now for my life even look at the words without the musical accompaniment. In the course of time I hope to send you the score. For the present, all I need say is that it has worked up to a perfect unity; there is scarcely a bar in the orchestra which is not developed out of pre-ceding motifs. But it is difficult to enter fully upon this in a letter.

Sounder the most favourable conditions I could not count on a first performance before the summer of 1858.

My " Tannhauser " is being performed almost, everywhere in Germany ; especially has it been: taken up by the small theatres. The large ones, from reasons which one quite understands, still hold aloof. As regards the performances, I hear that they are for the most part wretchedly bad, so I do not quite know where the pleasure comes in. As I do not see them, I have ceased to be sensitive about this prostitution of my works; though a recent first performance of " Lohengrin " at Leipzig did make a very painful impression on me. I hear it was incredibly  bad. Amongst other things,not one word was clearly declaimed throughout the evening, except by the heralds. It has come to this, that 1 regret ever having given my works to the public. In Boston they have got the length of having Wagner nights,—concerts where nothing is given but my compositions. They want me to go to America ; if they could provide me there with the necessary means, who knows but that I should do so ? But to tour about as a giver of concerts, even for large sums of money, is what no one need expect of me.

-5/02/1855

But to come to the point—and in the first instance as regards outward circumstances,
I continue to lead a life of the utmost seclusion, absolutely and entirely given up to my great work, the composition of my Nibelung dramas. 

There I shall recover from the worries of London, and hope to compose my

"YoungSiegfried." I have finished the composition of the " Walkure," amid much anguish of spirit, of which no one knows anything, least of all my excellent wife. Peace to the subject! I will complete the instrumentation in London up to now I have only commenced it.

I only finished the fair copy of " Rheingold " last autumn. I at once sent the score to Dresden to have it copied by my old copyist there. Liszt, however, urged me so strongly and persistently to allow him to see the original, that I was obliged to interrupt the copying in order to let him do so. Liszt has only now returned the score to Dresden ;        

- August 23rd, 1856.

I made my most remarkable discovery in this respect with my Nibelung drama. It had taken form at a time when, with my ideas, I had built up an optimistic world, on Hellenic principles; believing that in order to realize such a world, it was only necessary for man to wish it. I ingeniously set aside the problem, why they did not wish it. I remember that it was with this definite creative purpose that I conceived the personality of Siegfried, with the intention of representing an existence free from pain.

But I meant in the presentment of the whole Nibelung myth to express my meaning even more clearly, by showing how from the first wrong-doing a whole world of evil arose, and consequently fell to pieces in order to teach us the lesson, that we must recognise evil and tear it up by the roots, and raise in its stead a righteous world. Iwasscarcelyawarethatin the working out, nay, in the first elaboration of my scheme, I was being unconsciously guided by a wholly different, infinitely more profound intuition, and that instead of conceiving a phase in the development of the world, I had grasped the very essence and meaning of the world itself in all its possible phases, and had realized its nothingness ; the consequence of which was, that as I was true to my living intuitions and not to my abstract ideas in my completed work, something quite different saw the light from what I had originally intended. But I remember that once, towards the end, I decided to bring out my original purpose, cost what it might, namely, in Briinhilde's final somewhat artificially coloured invocation to those around her, in which, having pointed out the ^vils of possession, she declares that in love alone is blessedness to be found, without {unfortunately) making quite clear what the nature of that Love is, which in the development of the myth we find playing the part of -destructive genius.

To this extent was I led astray in this one passage by the interposition of my intellectual intention. Strangely enough, I was always in despair over this said passage, and it required the complete subversion of my intellectual -conceptions, brought about by Schopenhauer, to discover to me the reason of my dissatisfaction, and to supply me with the only adequate Jkey-stone to my poem* in keeping with the whole idea of the drama, which consists in a simple and sincere recognition of the true  relations of things and complete abstinence from the attempt to preach any particular doctrine.

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