It is an amazing fact that the same genius should have experienced and
portrayed both stages so perfectly. Doubtless Tannhaeuser and Tristan are
the most personal self-revelations of the great lover, pulsating with
passion, and far remote from the colossal objective world of the
Niebelungs, the lofty serenity of Lohengrin and the wisdom of Parsifal.
Wagner had finished the _Ring_ before he conceived the idea of _Tristan
and Isolde_. (It was printed in 1852.) In the former he intentionally
raised the value of love and its position in the universe to a problem,
embodying his knowledge of the world, and more especially of the modern
world, in supernatural, mythical figures. The greatest ambition of man
is power and wealth, the symbol of which is a golden ring. Gold in
itself is innocent--elementary--a bauble at the bottom of the river, a
toy for laughing children; but the insatiable thirst for power and
wealth has robbed it of its harmlessness and made it the tool and symbol
of tyranny.
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