This union is the inner meaning of marriage in the
modern sense--whether it is rarely or frequently realised is beside the
point.
In previous chapters I have illustrated various phenomena of the
emotional life by showing their reflections on the lives of two or three
distinguished men. In conclusion I will endeavour to point out the
reproduction of all the erotic stages through which the race has passed,
in the psychical evolution of Richard Wagner, and their immortalisation
in his works. We shall recognise in him the erotic representative of
modern man, a personality in whom all that which as a rule is vague and
only half expressed, has become great and typical. Love has been the
_leitmotif_ of his life. The concluding phrase of the crude fairy tale
_Die Feen_ ("The Fairies"), composed by the youth of nineteen, is: _the
infinite power of love_, and the last words written down two days before
his death, were: _love--tragedy_.
The opera _Das Liebesverbot_ ("The Prohibition to Love"), written in
1834, is eminently symptomatic of the first stage.
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