ennhilde to
the funeral pyre, they are neither an inspiration nor a delight. One has
the impression of a great gulf yawning at one's feet, and the anguish of
seeing those one loves fall into it.

I have often regretted that Wagner's first conception of _Siegfried_
changed in the course of years; and in spite of the magnificent
_denouement_ of _Goetterdaemmerung_ (which is really more effective in a
concert room, for the real tragedy ends with Siegfried's death), I
cannot help thinking with regret how fine a more optimistic poem from
this revolutionary of '48 might have been. People tell me that it would
then have been less true to life. But why should it be truthful to
depict life only as a bad thing? Life is neither good nor bad it is just
what we make it, and the result of the way in which we look at it. Joy
is as real as sorrow, and a very fertile source of action. What
inspiration there is in the laugh of a great man! Let us welcome,
therefore, the sparkling if transient gaiety of _Siegfried_.

Wagner wrote to Malwida von Meysenbug: "I have, by chance, just been
reading Plutarch's life of Timoleon. That life ended very happily--a
rare and unheard-of thing, especially in history. It does one good to
think that such a thing is possible. It moved me profoundly."

I feel the same when I hear _Siegfried_. We are rarely allowed to
contemplate happiness in great tragic art; but when we may, how splendid
it is, and how good for one!

"TRISTAN"

Tristan towers like a mountain above all other love poems, as Wagner
above all other artists of his century. It is the outcome of a sublime
conception, though the work as a whole is far from perfect. Of perfect
works there is none where Wagner is concerned. The effort necessary for
the creation of them was too great to be long sustained; for a single
work might means years of toil. And the tense emotions of a whole drama
cannot be expressed by a series of sudden inspirations put into form the
moment they are conceived. Long and arduous labour is necessary. These
giants, fashioned like Michelangelo's, these concentrated tempests of
heroic force and decadent complexity, are not arrested, like the work of
a sculptor or painter, in one moment of their action; they live and go
on living in endless detail of sensation. To expect sustained
inspiration is to expect what is not human. Genius may reveal what is
divine; it may call up and catch a glimpse of _die Muetter_, but it
c