As the despairing monk of mediaeval times, apparently abandoned by the
love of God, turned to Satan and worshipped him, so Tannhaeuser, cast out
of the Kingdom of Heaven by the words of the Pope, and renounced by
Elizabeth, again gives himself up to sensuality, which is here
contrasted with spiritual love, and represented as demoniacal.
Tannhaeuser is not vacillating between the love of two women--a
spiritualised and a sensual love; he is wavering between the purely
spiritual love of Elizabeth and promiscuous sexuality represented by
Venus, not centring on her as an individual, but diffused, as it were,
through her whole kingdom. The dualism which rends the whole universe is
strongly and uncompromisingly emphasised in text and music, and Wagner
himself explained to the opera singer, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, that the
main characteristic of the principal part was "the intensest expression
of delight and remorse without any intermediate stage of feeling,
changing abruptly and decisively.
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