The vision of Venus appears before his eyes, but at
Wolfram's exclamation, "Elizabeth!" he realises in a flash that
Elizabeth has been praying for him day and night, and has given her life
to save him. Before this sudden illumination the power of Venus sinks
into nothing; divine love falls into his darkness like a ray of
light--"Oh, sacred love's eternal power!"--it quickens his own love
which is striving upwards, and with the words: "Saint Elizabeth, pray
for me!" he sinks to the ground. His way, like Faust's, although
one-sidedly emotional, leads from chaos and sin to pure love and
salvation, not through his own strength but by the help vouchsafed to
him in the love of his glorified mistress.
By the side of the struggling, suffering Tannhaeuser, tossed hither and
thither between God and the devil, between Elizabeth and Venus, stands
Wolfram, the untempted woman-worshipper. The two extremes clash upon
each other in the contest of the minnesingers. Tannhaeuser, at war with
himself, exasperated by the calm, matter-of-fact way in which Wolfram
sings the praise of spiritual love, rushes to the other extreme and
bursts into rapturous praise of the goddess of love and the pleasure of
the senses.
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