he middle ages, the only one with which Wagner was
familiar. "The form of the 'Flying Dutchman' is the mythic poem of the
people; a primeval trait of humanity is expressed in it with
heartrending force," Wagner says to those who in spite of Goethe's
"Faust" had formed no conception of the vitality, and poetic treasures
that lay concealed in the myth. In its general significance the motive
is to be considered as the longing for rest from the storms of life.
The Greeks symbolized this in Odysseus, who, during his wanderings at
sea, longed for his native land, his wife, and home--"On this earth
are all my pleasures rooted." Christianity, which recognizes only a
spiritual home, reversed this conception in the person of the
"Wandering Jew." For this wanderer, condemned eternally to live over
again a life, without purpose and without pleasure, and of which he
has long since grown weary, there is no deliverance on earth. Nothing
remains to him but the longing for death. Toward the close of
the middle ages, after the human mind had been satiated with the
supernatural, and the revival of vital activity impelled men to
new enterprises, this longing disclosed itself most boldly and
successfully in the history of the efforts to discover new worlds.
An "impetuous desire to perform manly deeds" seized mankind as the
earth-encircling, boundless ocean came into view, no longer the
closely encircled inland sea of the Greeks. The longing of Odysseus,
which in the "Wandering Jew" has grown into longing for death, now
aims at a new life, not yet revealed, but distinctly perceived in the
prospective. It is the form of the "Flying Dutchman," in which both
expressions of the human soul are joined in a new and strange union,
such as the spirit of the people alone can produce. He had sworn to
sail past a cape in spite of wind and waves, and for that is condemned
by a demon, the spirit of these elements, to sail on the ocean through
all eternity. He can gratify the longing which he feels, through a
woman, who will sacrifice herself for his love, but to the Jew it was
denied. He seeks this woman therefore that he may pass away forever.
There is this difference however: She is no longer Penelope caring for
her home, but woman in general, the loving soul of mankind, which the
world has lost in its eager strife to conquer new worlds, and which
can only be regained when this strife shall cease and yield to a new
activity, truer to human nature.

"Fr